European Union

Montréal (Special to Informed Comment) – Eighty years ago, on January 27, 1944, people in the street were hugging each other and weeping with joy. They were celebrating the end of a nearly 900 days brutal siege. Soviet forces lifted the siege of Leningrad after ferocious battles. Exactly a year later they liberated Auschwitz. Even […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Far Right Allies Plot to Take over the European Union and Sink its Green Deal

John Feffer

( Tomdispatch.com) – It would be funny if it weren’t so potentially tragic — and consequential. No, I’m not thinking about Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign but a related development: the latest decisions from the European Union (EU) about Ukraine. As 2023 ended, European nations failed to agree on a $54-billion package of assistance for […]

Africa

Namibia, Victim of Germany’s 1904 Genocide, Lambastes Berlin for Denying Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Countries of the global South are most often denied a voice in Europe and North America. Our cable news brings on often corrupt former generals to explain countries such as Iraq and Yemen, but no Iraqi-American or Yemeni-American professors or journalists who actually know what they are talking about. This […]

Climate Crisis

Renewables cover 52% of Germany’s Electricity Demand for First Time in 2023

Clean Energy Wire

By Sören Amelang | – ( Clean Energy Wire ) – Germany has generated more than half of the electricity it used this year with renewable energy for the first time, according to preliminary calculations by the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and utility association BDEW. “Renewable energies will have covered […]

European Union

The Empire of Whiteness: Race in the European Perspective

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Hans Kundnani, Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project. London: Hurst & Co., 2023. Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – What does it mean to be European? This is a complex but legitimate question. Still, one is unlikely to find an answer to the conundrum in the numerous billboards paid […]

Colonialism

Juan Cole on Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” (StayTunedNBC)

Juan Cole

Here is the interview Alex Greaney of StayTunedNBC did with Juan Cole about the Egypt scenes in Ridley Scott’s film, “Napoleon.” StayTunedNBC: “Juan Cole on Ridley Scott’s depiction of Napoleon in Egypt” I wrote a book about Bonaparte in Egypt for those of you who want to know more about the first major Western colonial […]

Colonialism

That Time when Napoleon Bonaparte’s Army in Palestine Burned Crops, Pounded Houses with Artillery, and Cut off Water to Cities

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On 24 June 1799 General Louis-Alexandre Berthier wrote a dispatch from Ottoman Palestine back to the French Ministry of War (people were more honest back then) about the French retreat from their failed attempt to take Ottoman Palestine. Since the army ravaged the Palestinian countryside with retaliatory attacks, given their […]

European Union

Ireland, a leader on Human Rights, Backs UNGA call for Gaza Humanitarian Ceasefire

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The situation in the besieged Palestinian Gaza Strip grew even more dire on Friday, as Israel bombed internet and telecommunications facilities, plunging the occupied territory into an information black hole, as Israeli military incursions began. All day Friday the Israeli Air Force subjected the desperately poor, densely populated cities of […]

European Union

A Divided European Union can’t Even Agree on need for Ceasefire in Israeli Campaign against Gaza

Marc Martorell Junyent

Munich (Special to Informed Comment) – The European Union’s initial response to the current Israel-Hamas war has been chaotic. Shortly after the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel – which left at least 1,400 Israelis dead – Olivér Várhelyi, the European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, announced the suspension of “all payments” by the European Commission […]