Featured

Even Red-State Louisiana Eyes 5 Gigawatts of Offshore Wind Generation, replacing declining Oil Industry

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Windpower Monthly reports that the state of Louisiana’s Climate Commission Task Force assembled by Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards is eyeing 5 gigawatts of electric power generation through massive new wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico, by 2035. The project would be part of the state’s goal of getting […]

Corporate Surveillance

Did the Pegasus Spyware Netanyahu used against Palestinians and gave to Saudis bring him Down?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Pegasus spyware made by the Israeli NSO company and backed by the Israeli state has been used extensively against Palestinians to keep them stateless, and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu used access to the software as an incentive for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to improve relations […]

Authoritarianism

Beer Hall Putsch 2.0: Republican Nat’l Committee Channels their inner Hitler in defending Capitol Insurrectionists

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican National Committee’s censure of Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) slammed the two for “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” and of “utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power for partisan purposes.” The […]

Featured

Is Peace on the Verge of breaking out between US and Iran? Biden waives some Trump-Era Sanctions

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al Jazeera English reports that the Biden administration has restored a key waiver for Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program that allows third parties such as Russia and France to consult with Tehran about how to dial back and repurpose the program. Without the waiver, if some officials had gone off […]

Featured

The Great Disruption Begins: Global Market Share of Electric Cars doubles in a Year, Triples in Two

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – International Energy Agency analysts Leonardo Paoli and Timur Gül write that, globally, electric car sales more than doubled in 2021 to 6.6 million, while they had been 3 million in 2020 and 2.2 million in 2019. Moreover, they say, all the net increase in automobile sales in 2021 came from […]

Epidemics

The Boosted are 97 times less likely to die of Covid, as Republican Party Death Cult Kills Tens of Thousands

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United States has failed Covid. Compared to most other industrialized countries, its per capita rate of infection and death is much higher. Despite having plenty of vaccines, there has been a lag in getting them into people’s arms, especially into the arms of the most at-risk group, of those […]

Featured

Apartheid 2.0: Amnesty International Joins Chorus condemning Israeli rule over stateless Palestinians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli state has won the trifecta of condemnation by major human rights organizations, as, on Tuesday, Amnesty International joined with Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem in calling Israeli rule over the 5 million Palestinians of the Occupied Palestinian Territories a form of Apartheid. Amnesty carried out its investigation and […]

Featured

How the Ukraine Crisis is Changing Biden’s Mideast Policy: The Rise and Rise of Qatar

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Russia’s massing of over 100,000 troops around Ukraine has provoked a diplomatic and military crisis, but also a potential energy crisis. That is because Europe gets about one third of its natural gas from the Russian Federation, and Germany gets about half of its from that source. Natural gas prices […]

Arab Americans

Islamophobia and the Capitol Insurrection: How the FBI Ignored White Radicals While Spying 24/7 on Muslim Americans

Juan Cole

This is my new column at Tomdispatch.com . After you give it a read, do visit the link for the original to see Tom Engelhardt’s incisive introduction. ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson excused one of the leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers organization implicated in the January 6th insurrection by describing […]