Featured

Pope Leo XIV: “We Know Israel does not … Accept” Palestinian State, But “We see it as the only Solution”

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Pope Leo XIV flew from Turkiye to Lebanon on Sunday, and surprised the press corps flying with him by making some comments to them. His predecessor, Pope Francis, had been more engaged with the press in such situations. Justin McClellan at the National Catholic Reporter reports that Leo said that […]

Featured

Sorry, White Nationalists, Europeans were Black until the Rise of Rome, and Rome was Multiracial

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – We live in a time when a once level-headed anti-populist politician such as J. D. Vance has increasingly adopted the language of white nationalism, signing on to the Great Replacement theory that nefarious forces, often coded as Jewish, are bringing in immigrants to replace “white” Americans, attacking “multiculturalism” and aligning […]

Featured

Syrian FM: Israel’s deadly Incursion against Islamic Group a ‘War Crime’ after 13 killed

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli military forces made a raid into Syria on Friday that from what I can gather turned into a disaster for them. Israeli troops mounted an assault on the hamlet of Beit Jinn southeast of Damascus, where they maintained that three members of the Lebanon-based Islamic Group (al-Jama`ah al-Islamiyyah) constituted […]

Displaced and Refugees

Amnesty: So-Called Gaza ‘Ceasefire’ becoming Smokescreen for continued Israeli Genocide

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Amnesty International concludes that, over a month after a ceasefire was agreed upon in Gaza and all living Israeli hostages were returned, the Israeli authorities continue to pursue the textbook definition of genocide “by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” Moreover, Israeli […]

Brazil

Accelerating Climate Change and Global Inequality: Indigenous People were the Heroes of COP30

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Contradictions pervaded the latest UN climate conference (COP30) held in Belem, Brazil. Progressive President Lula da Silva of Brazil proclaimed it would a positive turning point in progress, while he authorized his state-owned oil producer to do exploratory drilling for oil near the Great Amazon Reef System. […]

Democratic Socialists of America

Mamdani was Right to Handle Trump, but the Left must Remember that the President is Still a Toxic Nationalist

Norman Solomon

San Francisco (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) | – Across the political spectrum – with alarm on the right and delight on the left – the display of warmth from President Trump toward Zohran Mamdani last Friday set off shock waves. Trump’s lavish praise of New York’s mayor-elect in the Oval Office was a 180-degree […]

Featured

The Ecocide of Gaza

Dan Steinbock

In the past two years, Israeli obliteration has turned Gaza into an uninhabitable death zone. What is less known, however, is that this is the effect of decades of deliberate ecocide – and of the West’s purposeful efforts to undermine both genocide and ecocide legislation. New York (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The final […]

Climate Crisis

The Hot Tub of Death? Bill Gates, Hurricane Melissa, and a Civilization Under Threat

Juan Cole

Here is my essay for this week’s Tomdispatch.com. Don’t miss Tom Engelhardt’s canny introduction, in which he points to Donald Trump’s climate denialism as a context for that of his “billionaire buddies.” And by the way, it has now been shown that Hurricane Melissa clocked a wind gust of a mind-boggling 252 mph shortly before […]

Climate Crisis

The COP30 Climate Meet had One Job, and Totally Crashed and Burned

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – COP30 in Belém, Brazil, has ended without an agreement by member states to reaffirm the phasing out of fossil fuels, which is the only way to avert rolling climate catastrophes. COP28 at Dubai had included such language. The vague advice to countries to cut down on their carbon dioxide emissions […]