US politics

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Biden administration launched 85 air strikes on Friday against small bases of the Party of God Brigades (Kata’ib Hizbullah), an Iraqi Shiite militia active in Iraq and Syria. The organization is likely the culprit in Sunday’s drone strike against the Tower 22 US base in the far north of […]

Constitution

US District Court Judge: “It is every individual’s obligation to confront the current siege in Gaza”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California ruled Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by Palestinian-Americans and the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq against President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for their involvement in an Israeli genocide against […]

Pentagon

Remote Warfare and Expendable People: Forever War means never Having to say you’re Sorry

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In war, people die for absurd reasons or often no reason at all. They die due to accidents of birth, the misfortune of being born in the wrong place — Cambodia or Gaza, Afghanistan or Ukraine — at the wrong time. They die due to happenstance, choosing to shelter indoors when […]

Featured

How Biden inherited the War with an Iraqi Shiite Militia from Bush, Trump and Netanyahu

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The “Party of God Brigades” (Kata’ib Hizbullah) of Iraq struck the Tower 22 US military base in the far north of Jordan on the border with Syria on Sunday, killing three US military personnel and wounding dozens more. The Shiite militia said that it was part of its continued attempt […]

National Security State

Ron DeSantis: Yet Another Cog in Guantanamo’s Torture Machine

Common Dreams

Roy Eidelson ( Commondreams.org ) – Recently, there have been troubling revelations about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — a leading 2024 GOP presidential aspirant — concerning his conduct as a Navy JAG officer at Guantanamo Bay. His responsibilities at the detention facility apparently included responding to claims of mistreatment from the war-on-terror prisoners there. Relatively […]

Israel/ Palestine

Western moral Credibility is dying along with Thousands of Gaza Citizens

The Conversation

By Shaun Narine, St. Thomas University (Canada) | – The western world’s feeble response to Israel’s attack on Gaza has severely damaged the West’s already tenuous moral credibility in the Global South and undermined the foundations of the human rights regime and international law developed after the Second World War. The West claims it champions […]

Democratic Party

Israel’s Victory in Gaza turns Pyrrhic as a Majority of Youths and Democrats brand it Genocidal

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel is losing its campaign against Gaza not so much on the battlefield — though it is unclear that very many of its military goals have been accomplished — but in the court of public opinion. The Israeli far right has long ignored such PR setbacks, convinced that as long […]

Islamophobia

Israel, the United States, and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror: From September 11, 2001, to October 7, 2023 (and Beyond)

Maha Hilal

Maha Hilal ( Tomdispatch.com ) – In a New Yorker piece published five days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, American critic and public intellectual Susan Sontag wrote, “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, […]

Anti-intellectualism

Legal Bullying Aims to Silence Campus Critics of Israel

Common Dreams

Title VI was designed to end discrimination and harassment on campus, but the law can also be misused, as partisans of Israel have done, to protect Israel from criticism and stifle pro-Palestinian voices. By Michael Schwalbe | – (Commondreams.org ) – A sad fact of jurisprudence in an unequal world is that good laws created […]