Latin America

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stirred controversy when he said, “What is happening in the Gaza Strip and with the Palestinian people did not exist at any other historical moment. Or rather, it did: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.” He continued, “It is not a war […]

Arab Spring

Why, Despite the Arab Spring and Mass Protests of the 2010s, People Got the Opposite of What they Wanted

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – At the end of 2019, there was no shortage of articles looking retrospectively at the events that had shaped the decade of the 2010s. One of them was aptly titled “A […]

Climate Crisis

Goodbye Acapulco: 205 mph Winds destroy 80% of Infrastructure, do $18 bn of Damage in Climate Change Warning

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Gaza City is not the only place that has been reduced to rubble in the past week. Dan Stillman at WaPo points out that Hurricane Otis hit Acapulco on October 25 with 205 mph winds, “among the strongest ever measured.” Iván Cabrera at N+ reports that the megastorm destroyed 80% […]

Brazil

Why did China attend MBS’s Ukraine Peace Conference in Saudi Arabia? Breaking with Moscow or Keeping Options Open?

Neil Thompson

London (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – China has come out in favour of a third round of talks to design a peace framework for the conflict in Ukraine following its attendance at an international forum in the Saudi city of Jeddah earlier this month. China’s attendance and active participation in the summit was seen […]

Biodiversity

The Forgotten Amazon: As a Critical Summit Nears, Politicians must Work Against Deforestation in Bolivia’s Amazon

The Conversation

By Victor Galaz, Stockholm University | – When asked to situate the world’s most iconic rainforest on a map, most people will pinpoint Brazil. And given the intense media coverage of the country’s deforestation and fires – concerns reached a peak under former president Jair Bolsonaro and his free-for-all approach – they might also imagine […]

Central America

The Crimes and Dangers of Elliott Abrams: Why Biden Should not Appoint Him

Waging Nonviolence

Ariel Gold and Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler ( Waging Nonviolence ) – It was a bright sunny March morning in 1980. Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was saying mass at a church hospital in San Salvador when a bullet from a sniper rifle ripped through his heart. He stumbled and fell to the ground, […]

Featured

In wake of Mexican Senate Vote to Recognize Palestine, Palestinians seek to upgrade to Full Embassy in Mexico City

Juan Cole

Revised. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Spanish-language Twitter account for Palestine, “Palestino Hoy,” announced on Thursday that the Palestinian delegation in Mexico City will now be upgraded from a “Special Delegation” to a full embassy, after Mexico fully recognized the state of Palestine. N.B. Some commentators allege that this announcement is solely from the […]

China

Can the U.S. Adjust Sensibly to a Multipolar World?

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink) – In his 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy reassured Americans that the decline the United States was facing after a century of international dominance was “relative and not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests […]

Brazil

Lula is Right that the UN Security Council Can’t Resolve Major Conflicts, whether Ukraine or Palestine

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a state visit to Portugal and Spain last week. He was primarily seeking trade agreements, and especially wished to prepare the way for agreement this summer on a huge European Union – Latin American free trade zone. Article continues after bonus IC […]