2023

India, 3rd biggest CO2 Emitter, will Pause new Coal Plants for 5 Years in favor of Batteries, New Solar

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sibi Arasu at the Associated Press reports that the Indian government is going to pause new coal plants for 5 years in favor of concentrating on new battery power. This step is a huge about-face for India, and it matters. Some 73% of Indian energy still comes from coal, and […]

Israel/ Palestine

A man without a Strategy: How Netanyahu is provoking Armed Intifada in the West Bank

Middle East Monitor

Dr Ramzy Baroud RamzyBaroud After signing a military decree on 18 May, allowing illegal Israeli Jewish settlers to reclaim the abandoned Homesh settlement located in the northern Occupied West Bank, the Israeli government has informed the US Biden Administration that it will not turn the area into a new settlement. The latter revelation was […]

Climate Crisis

Increasing Heat is already a Factor in human Migration – New Study

The Conversation

By Rita Issa, University of East Anglia | – It was getting hotter. Frank May got off his mat and padded over to look out the window. Umber stucco walls and tiles, the colour of the local clay… [he] took a deep breath. It reminded him of the air in a sauna. This, the coolest […]

Pentagon

The Compulsion to Intervene: Why Washington Underwrites Violence in Ukraine

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, he’s positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in […]

Donald Trump

Smoking Gun: Trump’s Theft of Classified Iran Materials Caught on Tape, May bring him down

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – When Trump murdered several people by drone at Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020, including Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian government vowed that it would get revenge on him someday. It was a hollow threat. Iran’s rulers know better than to provoke the U.S. at that level. Ironically […]

Authoritarianism

Turkey: what to expect from Erdoğan, his ultranationalist Alliance and their ‘Family Values’ Pledges

The Conversation

Balki Begumhan Bayhan, Coventry University | – (The Conversation) – After a bitter and hard-fought campaign that went to a second run-off vote, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has retained the Turkish presidency in an election that some deemed as “free but not fair”. Having first won power in 2003, Erdoğan has been able to extend his […]

Environment

Environmental Hazard: How Russia’s War in Ukraine Threatens the Planet

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has resulted in the deaths so far of more than 8,700 Ukrainian civilians, including more than 500 children. It has caused a massive drop in the country’s economic output, with GDP declining by 29.1 percent. And it has had widespread consequences for the […]

US Foreign Policy

The Wars we don’t (Care to) See: Aggression Made Easy

Tomdispatch

By David Barsamian and Norman Solomon ( Tomdispatch.com ) – [The following is excerpted and adapted from David Barsamian’s recent interview with Norman Solomon at AlternativeRadio.org.] David Barsamian: American Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He made an opening statement to the Tribunal on November 21, 1945, because there was […]

Batteries

Tipping Point? Global Investments in Low-Carbon Energy Outstrip Fossil Fuel Commitments by 1.7 to 1 for First Time in World History

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Globally, investors will sink $1.7 trillion into low-carbon energy this year — for the first time more than will be invested in fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the IEA, said, “For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, about 1.7 dollars are […]

Archives for 2023