Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Biden administration’s Infrastructure and Jobs Act, passed in October, and the new fuel standards set by the EPA will have a positive impact on electric vehicles in the United States in the coming year. Let’s review this good news. 1. Consumers will see a doubling of electric offerings, from […]
Archives for December 2021
Three Reasons to be Hopeful Democrats will Still Pass Key Parts of Build Back Better
By Karen Dolan | – ( Otherwords.org ) – There’s no getting around it: 2021 has been a tough year. As with 2020, many of us are glad to see its back end. Do let the door hit you on the way out. Yet, there is more than just Senator Joe Manchin’s coal and Omicron […]
The Long Arm of Religious Intolerance: Where the Inquisition was Strongest, Poverty and Mistrust Still Prevail
By Jordi Vidal-Robert, Hans-Joachim Voth, and Mauricio Drelichman | – From Imperial Rome to the Crusades, to modern North Korea or the treatment of Rohingya in Myanmar, religious persecution has been a tool of state control for millennia. While its immediate violence and human consequences are obvious, less obvious is whether it leaves scars centuries […]
No Santa Claus for Christians of Lebanon, Syria or Palestine this Year as US Piles on With Sanctions or Neglect
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Why is America imposing hardships on the Christians of the Middle East? Xinhua’s reporter visited Syria and found that the Christians in Damascus don’t appear to be able to put up much in the way of Christmas lights in the Christian district of Bab Touma. They complain of a lack […]
A Few Magnificent Things That Happened in 2021
By Peter Certo | – ( Otherwords.org) – It would be easy to survey the end of 2021 and see another year in wreckage. There’s the pandemic that won’t end. Rising inflation. Climate disasters. A democracy that looks creakier by the day. And that was before West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin hit the brakes on […]
Keep it in the Ground: We can’t limit Global Heating to Safe Levels unless We Ban all new Oil and Gas Fields
By David Waltham | – As a professor of geophysics, I have spent 36 years training young geologists destined to work in the fossil fuel industry how to look for oil and gas. But now I believe it’s time to stop fossil-fuel exploration and halt the development of all new oil and gas fields. We […]
The Nativity, Jesus and Mary in Paintings of the Muslim Mughal Court of India
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Here’s a Christmas entry. The Mughal dynasty, originating in what is now Uzbekistan, ruled India from 1526 until the 18th century, though the dynasty continued under British rule until 1857. Some of the members of the royal family were remarkably open-minded about religion, being a Muslim minority in a sea […]
Will the US ‘Combating Islamophobia Act’ signal a Change towards hate Crime in America?
( Middle East Monitor) – The result of a vote in the US House of Representatives on 14 December may signal a change in Washington’s approach to the social-political evil that is Islamophobia. However, we should not jump to hasty conclusions. Amazingly, Congress was nearly split on the vote. While 219 representatives voted in favour […]
2021: a grim year for Free Speech as hundreds of Journalists are arrested in an increasingly authoritarian World
By Dina Matar | – Hundreds of journalists killed or arrested, rising numbers of female media workers targeted, floods of misinformation and hate speech and ineffectual or hostile governments unable or unwilling to protect the public’s right to know. The 2021 press freedom index released recently by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) makes for grim reading. […]
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