2022

Timbuktu Manuscripts Online promise to re-balance the African Continent’s place in World intellectual History

By Charles C. Stewart, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | – The ancient Timbuktu manuscripts of Mali were back in the headlines following internet giant Google’s initiative to host a collection of them at an online gallery. The images of the documents, text in Arabic, can be found at a page called Mali Magic. No […]

African-Americans

Ketanji Brown Jackson joins a Court that once Ruled Black Women had no Rights at All

Juan Cole

Revised. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – An unprecedented ceremony at the White House on Friday celebrated the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She noted in her remarks, “It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme […]

Climate Crisis

Germany boosts renewables with “biggest energy policy reform in decades”

Julian Wettengel

By Kerstine Appunn and Julian Wettengel | – ( Clean Energy Wire ) – Germany wants to fight the climate crisis and its heavy dependence on fossil fuel imports by speeding up the rollout of renewables with a massive overhaul of key energy legislation. In the “biggest energy policy reform in decades,” the coalition of […]

Russia

Syria’s dire economy and years of fighting send young ‘mercenaries’ to fight in Ukraine

Global Voices

By Raseef22 | – ( Globalvoices.org ) – Following years of a devastating war that continues to fragment the country, Syria is now exporting professional mercenaries to other hotspots of conflict, including Libya and the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and they are soon expected to arrive in Ukraine. They packed their fighting experience and headed to foreign […]

Agriculture

IPCC report: We can’t Meet Climate Goals, without Deeply Slashing our CO2 Emissions

The Conversation

Jack Marley | – The world has the means to avert the greatest ravages of global heating – but we must deploy them immediately, while eliminating the fuels and activities that threaten to warm Earth beyond safe levels. This is the conclusion of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a […]

Featured

Wind generation for First Time Outstrips both Coal and Nuclear in US

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ben Storrow of Climate Wire tweeted this week that “Last Tuesday, total U.S. wind generation exceeded 2,000 GWh, making wind the second largest producer of electricity in the United States after natural gas for that 24-hour period. Did a quick look at EIA’s numbers going back to 2018. Don’t think […]

Natural Gas

Bin Putin? How Russia is increasingly becoming the Saudi Arabia of the North

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – A failed military intervention. The genocidal killing of citizens. Economic isolation by the international community. The arrests of anti-war protestors at home and the shuttering of independent media. Any one of these factors could mark the end of an ordinary political leader. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin has not […]

Evangelicals

War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values

The Conversation

By Melani McAlister, George Washington University | – In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to pray for Vladimir Putin. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange request” given that Russia was clearly about to invade Ukraine. But Graham asked that believers “pray that God would work in his […]

Russia

My Grandfather Fled Ukraine 140 Years Ago, Now it is an Icon of Our long History of War

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Excuse me if I wander a little today — and if it bothers you, don’t blame me, blame Vladimir Putin. After all, I didn’t decide to invade Ukraine, the place my grandfather fled almost 140 years ago. I suspect, in fact, that I was an adult before I even knew such a […]

Archives for 2022