The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: Quatrain of the Day For the earliest collection of verse attributed to Omar Khayyam see my just-published The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian (NB: the poem above isn’t in this collection– there are lots of such anthologies, and Whinfield favored the late Indian manuscripts.) Here […]
Archives for May 2020
Frankenfuel: The Market is done with Big Oil and Coal, but will they Lumber on with Gov’t Subsidies?
Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Are the big oil stocks headed for collapse? Citizens as diverse as climate activist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben and CNBC finance guru Jim Cramer seem to think so. Here is Cramer as reported by Axios in early February even before the historic plunge in crude prices.\ […]
Trump’s Rush to Reopen Economy is a Death Sentence for Some Minority Workers
By Negin Owliaei | – ( Otherwords.org) – Every morning for the last two months, I’ve checked the news in my home state of Florida with growing concern. First came the photos of unemployed people lining up to file for benefits in person, denied access to an overburdened system. Then came the news that only […]
Coronavirus and the End of American Exceptionalism
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Remember the song “Over There”? “Over there, over there Send the word, send the word over there That the Yanks are coming, The Yanks are coming, The drums rum-tumming everywhere…” Maybe not, since it was popular so long ago, but it was meant to inspire American troops saying goodbye to their […]
Male Face Masks have been the Height of Masculinity for Centuries: Why see Coronavirus Masks as Wimpy?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A recent study of the way Americans are adapting to the coronavirus found that “Men more than women agree that wearing a face covering is shameful, not cool, a sign of weakness, and a stigma”. The study indicated that American men resist wearing face masks more than do women, partly […]
72 Years of Birthdays for Israel, 72 Years of Catastrophe for Palestinians
( Middle East Monitor ) – Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist militias and the newly-formed Israeli army expelled more than half of the indigenous population of Palestine. Some 800,000 Palestinians were either forced out literally at the barrel of a gun, or fled in fear of being massacred by the Zionist forces. This is commemorated […]
Coronavirus Effect: In One Year, Share of Coal in German Public Power Supply Cratered to 16% from 30%
By Freja Eriksen | — ( Clean Energy Wire) – Coal’s share in Germany’s net public power production fell to around 16 percent in April 2020, shows data by Fraunhofer ISE’s Energy Charts. The institute’s Energy Charts project does not include data on the amount of power the generating facilities consume themselves to operate, or […]
As 27 Million Lose Job-based Health Insurance, Imagine if there were No Obamacare
By Simon F. Haeder | – The loss of 31 million jobs due to coronvirus has an added downside: 27 million have lost job-based health insurance. The worst may still lie ahead. One study estimated that 25 to 43 million people could lose coverage from their employer. The situation for many Americans feels dramatic. Fortunately, […]
I guess “Islam” doesn’t Hate us After All: Trump pins hopes for Vaccine on Muslim-American Slaoui
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump became president in part by playing on fears, resentments and outright hatred among some segments of the American public, especially of a racial and religious sort. He bashed Mexican-Americans as drug dealers and rapists, and recently blamed Chinese-Americans for the coronavirus. But no group came in for so fierce […]
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