2021

Were Humanity’s Oldest Monumental Religious Sites Erected in NW Saudi Arabia? 1,000 ‘Rectangles’ Older than Stonehenge

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Hugh Thomas and a team of Australian researchers have just published a groundbreaking article in the journal Antiquity describing their research into the mysterious “Rectangles” (mustatīl) dotting Northwest Arabia. This region lies due south of Israel-Palestine and Jordan. Rectangles. h/t ‘Antiquity.’ The Rectangles date from roughly 7,500 years before present, […]

Investment

Don’t Let Wall Street Get Rich Speculating on our Water

Jim Hightower

( Otherwords.org ) – Shameless speculators are trying to privatize and commoditize the water all humans need to live. By Jim Hightower | April 28, 2021 Oh great — here comes a new stealth attack on the fragile, life-sustaining natural resources of Planet Earth. This latest assault by Wall Street alchemists would redefine one of […]

Batteries

Delivery Trucks are beginning to go electric: And swappable Batteries Help

The Conversation

By Gail Broadbent and Graciela Metternicht | – Australia’s trucking industry is making moves to go electric. The latest development — a system for using swappable batteries instead of time-consuming recharge stations for long-haul trucks between Sydney and Brisbane — shows how this transition is gathering momentum. There will be clear socio-economic, environmental and health-related […]

Israel/ Palestine

Israeli security forces arrest Palestinian journalist Alaa al-Rimawi in Ramallah: Must disclose his Location, Charges

Committee to Protect Journalists

( Committee to Protect Journalists) – Israeli authorities should immediately make public any charges against Palestinian journalist Alaa al-Rimawi and disclose where he is being held, or release him unconditionally at once, the Committee to Protect Journalists said last week Early on the morning of April 21, a group of about 12 Israeli soldiers raided […]

Batteries

It Can be Done: California Briefly reaches 94.5% Renewable Electricity

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sammy Roth at the LA Times/ Boiling Point Newsletter reports that California’s main power grid was powered for several hours last Saturday by 90% renewables. For just four seconds that day, the grid, which covers 4/5s of the state, reached 94.5% generation by green energy. California is the world’s fifth […]

Israel/ Palestine

How the US is shielding Israel from Apartheid charges and itself from complicity charges

Ramona Wadi

( Middle East Monitor) – The Palestinians mentioned apartheid in connection with Israel long before B’Tselem used the description. Now it is the turn of Human Rights Watch (HRW) to — rightfully, if belatedly — accuse Israel of apartheid in its latest report titled A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and […]

Far Right

Violent Extremism: QAnon and the offline dangers of online speech

The Conversation

By Chandell Gosse and Jaigris Hodson | – The new docuseries, Q: Into the Storm, is an investigation into the QAnon conspiracy theory and the shadowy online subcultures and spaces that fuel it. An important narrative throughout the series is the negative consequences of online speech, which demonstrates the danger of digital dualism: the tendency […]

Militarization

No, getting out of Afghanistan doesn’t end America’s Forever Wars: A Lifetime “at War”

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) Here’s the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in history up to that moment, given the […]

Featured

Why Jerusalem is Sacred to Muslims, and why even the Emirates are Rebuking Israel for Persecuting Palestinians There

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan began Monday, April 12, and for the succeeding week and a half there was trouble at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. Muslim youth were used to gathering in the square in front of the the gate, which had been built by the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman […]

Archives for 2021