Europe

By Bartłomiej Derski | Euractiv.com / WysokieNapiecie.pl | translated by Alexandra Brzozowski | – – Since 1990, the production of “green” electricity in Germany has increased by 1,000% and export rates, according to preliminary data for 2017, just smashed another record. EURACTIV Poland’s partner WysokieNapiecie.pl reports. When Germany was reunified, three electricity sources reigned supreme: […]

Featured

Russia-aided Syria shoots down Israeli F-16 after downing of Iranian Drone

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Syrian anti-aircraft batteries scored a rare shoot-down of an Israeli F-16 late Saturday morning local time. It is being alleged by a whole range of analysts that this shoot-down could not have happened without Russian help. It required that the anti-aircraft personnel break Israeli radar jamming. […]

Evolution

In Blow for British White Nationalists, Their Ancestor was Black

contributors

TeleSur | – – The connection often made between Britishness and whiteness was “not an immutable truth,” said Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist. Cutting-edge DNA analysis of the oldest complete skeleton found in Britain has revealed that the first modern humans living on the territory had “dark to black skin.” Tom Booth, an archaeologist at […]

Colonialism

British Empire’s hidden workings in India and Iran revealed in remarkable new film footage

contributors

By Jonathan Westaway | The Conversation | – – In a basement office at the Royal Geographical Society in London’s South Kensington, grainy 16mm film footage flickers silently across the screen, one of over a hundred expeditionary and travel films digitised recently by the society and the British Film Institute. They are now free to […]

Antisemitism

Right’s ban on phrase “Polish Death Camps” Backfires on Warsaw

Juan Cole

Sławomir Sierakowski | (Project Syndicate) | – – A new Polish law criminalizes blaming Poles for any wrongdoing against other nations. But the move only serves to highlight the fact that some Poles were complicit in crimes against Jews, while jeopardizing the country’s relationship with its three most important allies: the US, Germany, and Ukraine. […]

Featured

Russia Mounts intensive Syria Air Campaign in Response to Downed Jet

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Russian side of the story, presented in the Syrian press, is that an al-Qaeda-linked group in Idlib, a northwestern province of Syria, used a shoulder-mounted missile launcher to shoot down a Russian fighter jet. The pilot ejected and landed, but then was attacked by ground […]

Donald Trump

Chiefs Of Three Russian Intelligence Agencies Travel To Washington

contributors

Mike Eckel | ( RFE/RL) | – – WASHINGTON — The directors of Russia’s three main intelligence and espionage agencies all traveled to the U.S. capital in recent days, in what observers said was a highly unusual occurrence coming at a time of heightened U.S.-Russian tensions. Russia’s ambassador to the United States had earlier confirmed […]

Featured

Trump declines to Sanction Russia, Spurring Speculation about Putin Hold

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Trump administration has refused to implement new sanctions on the Russian defense sector, as mandated by Congress’s “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” or CAATSA. Congress passed the bill last year and it was reluctantly finally signed by Trump in August. It is vaguely worded […]

Germany

German Anti-Muslim Party Member in Surprise Conversion to Islam

contributors

TeleSur | – – Arthur Wagner resigned from Alternative for Germany (AfD) on January 11 for “personal reasons” and “only afterwards was it known that he had converted to Islam.” Arthur Wagner, a former leading member of German far-right anti-Muslim party Alternative for Germany (AfD), based in Brandenburg, has announced his conversion to Islam in […]