Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The details of the alleged Houthi operation against Saudi Arabia are still murky, and Saudi Arabia has so far declined to provide its side of the story. Al Jazeera Arabic on Sunday rounded up the details provided by the Houthis and by its Yemeni sources. First of all, Al Jazeera […]
Archives for September 2019
What the Dinosaurs Teach us: Earth won’t Recover from Human-Caused Mass Extinction for 2 mn Years
By Paul Bown, Samantha Gibbs, and Sarah Alvarez | – Around 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid struck the Earth, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, ammonites, and many other species. The asteroid was equally devastating at a microscopic level, driving ocean plankton to near-extinction. This crippled the base of the marine food chain […]
Israel’s systemic harassment of human rights workers
By Asa Winstanley | @AsaWinstanley | – Last week Israel … raided the offices of Addameer, a prisoners rights association, stealing some of its computers and hard drives.* This is all part of Israel’s long-running war against the Palestinian civilian population. It is a war to remove Palestinians from Palestine; to liquidate their existence as […]
Make America Greta Again
By Tom Engelhardt | – (Tomdispatch.com) – Look what Greta started and what she did to me! I took part in the recent climate-strike march in New York City — one of a quarter-million people (or maybe 60,000) who turned out there, along with four million others across all seven continents. Then I came home […]
Yemen’s Houthis Say they Invaded Saudi Arabia, Captured Thousands of Troops in Najran
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Update 9/30: The Houthi military operation appears to have been against Saudi-backed nationalist bases in the far north of Yemen, and the POWs taken seem to be mostly Yemeni nationalists, along with some Saudi officers and troops. There may have been Houthi infiltration of Najran and Jizan as well, but […]
Spies and the White House have a history of running wild without congressional oversight
By Charles Tiefer | – At the heart of the current crisis over President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is an intelligence whistleblower whose information has finally made it into public view. The whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s interaction with Zelenskiy was initially withheld from the House Intelligence Committee, something which the committee […]
The First Inscriptional Evidence for the Wife of the Prophet Muhammad, Aisha
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Saudi archeologist Muhammad al-Maghthawi has published a photograph of an inscription in the vicinity of Medina that seems to be the first to mention the Prophet’s third wife, `A`isha. It seems to date from the first century of the Muslim era (A. H.), and is probably from the late […]
Ukraine gave up its Nukes for a US Security Pledge; Then Trump Muscled Zelensky by Cutting Mil. Aide
(Informed Comment) – In the coverage of the current scandal, no one seems to be writing about the national security debt the US (and others) owes the Ukraine. Large numbers of missiles and nuclear weapons infrastructure were located in the Ukraine when the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became independent. In fact, for a while, […]
The Qur’an, the Prophet, and a Forgotten History – Juan Cole in conversation with Hamza Yusuf
From the podcast of the journal Renovatio: Journal of Zaytuna College. Juan Cole’s Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (2018) retells the history of the prophetic period in seventh-century Arabia through the context of a brutal war between the Iranian Sassanian Empire and the Roman Empire in the Near East. In this […]
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