Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – NPR reports that on Wednesday, President Biden called Russian dictator Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” for the first time. The report notes that this outburst is unusual for Biden, who prizes personal diplomacy and must know that such a charge would make it more difficult to negotiate with Putin down […]
Top 7 Ways Iran evaded US Sanctions that Putin could Follow
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The sorts of sanctions and boycotts the United States and its allies are placing on Russia resemble those applied by Washington to Iran off and on in the past decade, though so far the measures in place against Tehran are still far more severe than what has been done to […]
Russia-driven Energy Crisis leads Wind Superpower Scotland to Floor the Accelerator on Renewables
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Scotland actually has a “Net Zero and Energy Minister,” Michael Matheson. Jane McLeod at the National writes that Matheson sees the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a wake-up call for Scotland to hit the accelerator regarding its green energy plans. Scotland already gets nearly 100% of […]
Comrades in Crazy: Top 4 Putin Trolls in the Republican Party, starting with Tucker Carlson
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Vladimir Putin is admired on the American Right as no foreign leader has been since Adolf Hitler. Today’s counterparts of Charles Lindbergh and Father Coughlin are arguably more organized, and they have the advantage of prominent perches in both old and new media. 1. Tucker Carlson likes Putin in a […]
Democrats in Congress Want Windfall Tax on Big Oil, Consumer Rebates, and cheap Green Energy
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has introduced, and several other congressional Democrats have co-sponsored, a bill to curb big petroleum companies engaged in profiteering. Whitehouse said at his site, “We’ve seen this script before, and we cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to once again collect a massive windfall by taking […]
This is Where We came in: Will Russia’s Syrian Mercenaries in Ukraine form a new Al-Qaeda?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Thursday, according to Alarabiya (quoting Tass) Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he would permit foreign fighters from the Middle East to aid the Russian war effort in Ukraine. At the same time, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that some 16,000 fighters in the Middle East had expressed […]
Gigi Hadid’s Palestine Pledge and ‘Anti-Palestinianism’: The Great Vogue Controversy
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Arab News reports that Vogue did an instagram posting about model Gigi Hadid’s pledge to donate her fall earnings to Ukraine and Palestine, but erased the Palestine part. The erasure attracted widespread condemnation from progressives, and Vogue has now amended its Instagram posting to restore the model’s pledge to […]
Oil Sheikhs have us Behind the 8-Ball: The UAE’s mixed Signals on Oil underline need for US to move Rapidly to Green Transportation
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – America is paying the price for lagging behind in its adoption of electric vehicles and in putting in more electric mass transit. Because we are still mostly a society that moves on gasoline, we are dependent on the worst people in the world for our energy. Even where we produce […]
Ukraine: What the Libya War tells us about Why we Really don’t want a NATO No-Fly Zone
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tracy Wilkinson at the Los Angeles Times writes about the no-fly zone proposed by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the flat refusal of the Pentagon to go in that direction. The clamor for a no-fly zone among some in Congress and in US civil society, however, displays a remarkable […]
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