US Foreign Policy

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Why has the Democratic leadership shown such reluctance to take effective legislative action to halt the flow of arms and military supplies to Israel, given the Netanyahu government’s orchestrated genocide and starvation in Gaza? Despite the overwhelming consensus among grassroots Democrats, the Democratic National Committee just last […]

censorship

Host, Bully, Hypocrite: The US’s Shameful Gatekeeping of the United Nations

Middle East Monitor

by Ranjan Solomon ( Middle East Monitor ) – The United States is once again demonstrating that it is unfit to serve as host of the United Nations Headquarters. Reports that Washington may deny a visa to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for an upcoming UN encounter evoke bitter memories of 1988, when Yasser Arafat […]

Hizbullah

Risking Regional Chaos: The US-Israeli Plan to End UN Peacekeeping in S. Lebanon

The Conversation

By Vanessa Newby, Monash University and Chiara Ruffa, Sciences Po (The Conversation) – The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) is seen by many as an essential peacekeeping buffer between Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah. But Israeli pressure, US doubts over Unifil’s cost-effectiveness and the fragile state of Lebanon’s politics means there is a risk […]

Featured

More Americans now Sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new opinion poll by the Sadat Center at the University of Maryland finds a sea change in the American public on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who say they sympathize with Palestinians (28%) exceeds the percentage who sympathize […]

Genocide

Gaza: US Forces Can Be Liable for Assisting Israeli War Crimes (HRW)

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Washington, DC) – US military personnel could face legal liability for assisting Israeli forces who commit war crimes in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said today. Direct participation by US forces in military operations in Gaza since October 2023, including by providing intelligence for Israeli strikes and conducting extensive coordination and planning, […]

Afghanistan

How Musk / DOGE falsely accused an Afghan Refugee and Ruined his and his Family’s Lives

ProPublica

By Avi Asher-Schapiro and Christopher Bing | – DOGE staffers exposed a sensitive U.S.-funded Afghanistan program and falsely suggested a contractor was involved in an off-books mission. ( ProPublica ) – It was early morning on April 1 when Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old exiled Afghan scholar, got a panicked message from his son. Halimi’s name […]

Climate Crisis

America may have invaded Iraq for its Oil, but Solar Power is what Iraqis now Want

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iraqi farmers, tired of high electricity bills and frequent blackouts, are turning to solar panels, according to Khalid Al-Mousuly at Reuters. Farmers need electricity to run water pumps for irrigation. It isn’t just the farmers. With nearly a gigawatt annually in solar panel imports, Iraq has emerged as the third-largest […]

Israel/ Palestine

New Peace Plan increases Pressure on Israel and US as Momentum grows for Palestinian Statehood

The Conversation

By Scott Lucas, University College Dublin (The Conversation) – A new vision for Middle East peace emerged this week which proposes the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza and the West Bank, the disarming and disbanding of Hamas and the creation of a unified Palestinian state. The plan emerged from a “high-level conference” in New York […]

Featured

Albanese Sanctions: Marco Rubio now Acting just Like Putin, Charging Human Rights Officials

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday slapped personal sanctions on United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, in a bizarre through-the-looking-glass statement, every word of which is either a lie or used to mean the opposite of what it means in ordinary language. Rubio barefacedly wrote, […]