Europe

By Arnold Isaacs ( Tomdispatch.com) – This month’s catastrophic violence in Israel and Gaza — specifically, the contradictory statements from each side on the other’s war crimes — has taken me back to a revealing personal moment almost exactly 18 years ago, recalling a different war in a different part of the world. That day […]

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 […]

Featured

Biden’s Historically Illiterate and Hypocritical Speech on Ukraine and Gaza

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Biden administration’s foreign policy is a mess and lacks any real consistency. This messiness was on full display in the president’s brief address on Thursday evening, a plea for Congressional funding of both the US struggle to get Russia back out of Ukraine and of support for the extremist […]

Climate Crisis

How our Petty Wars are Distracting us from the Existential Challenge of Climate Change

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – Let’s admit it: We are indeed mad creatures. This should truly have been the time of our discontent. The northern hemisphere just experienced the hottest summer in recorded history, including month by month the warmest June, July, August, and (by a country mile) September ever. Staggering heat records were set in place […]

Africa

The Other Imperialism: Russia’s Mercenaries Abroad

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – One of modern history’s major empires is falling apart right now, right before our eyes. Yet precious few in the media have reported on this extraordinary event, much less offered any analysis of its implications for the fast-changing shape of global power. Over the past 60 years, France has used every […]

Climate Crisis

Germany adds 50% more Wind Power Year over Year as Approvals are Streamlined

Clean Energy Wire

By Jack McGovan | – ( Clean Energy Wire ) – Germany has added 50 percent more new wind power capacity in the first nine months of 2023 than in the same time period last year, reports news agency dpa in an article published by the Stuttgarter Zeitung. Preliminary figures seen by dpa show that […]

Colonialism

Irish History Resonates in Gaza

Hugh J. Curran

“I and the public know/ What all schoolchildren learn/ Those to whom evil is done/ do evil in return.” — W. H. Auden | Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – There were elements in Ireland whose anger against Britain overwhelmed any other sentiment. Three hundred years of settler colonialism, dispossession and denigration of […]

Eastern Europe

Israel-Gaza Conflict: An Opportunity for Putin in Ukraine while the World is Distracted

The Conversation

By Robert M. Dover, University of Hull | – Time is an ally of Russia in the Ukrainian conflict. Russia needs to reduce its rate of battlefield deaths and remain militarily active in Ukraine for as long as possible. A great aid to Vladimir Putin would be a disruption in the supply of weapons to […]