Featured

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Fiona Harvey at The Guardian reports that the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report due out Monday will stress the need to slash methane emissions if we have any hope of keeping extra global heating to 3.6 degrees F. (1.5C). Scientists worry that as we get above that […]

Climate Crisis

Biden’s Moonshot: America’s Cars are going Electric, “Fast!” with Union Labor

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Joe Biden is good at multi-tasking. His announcement on Thursday that he wants 50% of all cars sold in the US in 2030 to be electric or plugin hybrids will appeal to many environmentalists, or at least the electric part will. But the transcript at rev.com/ demonstrates that President Biden […]

Congress

In Bid to Recapture Congress’ Power to Declare War, Key Senate Committee advances Repeal of Iraq War Authorizations

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trish Turner at ABC News reports that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted to repeal the two Authorizations for Use of Military Force in Iraq passed in 1991 for the Gulf War and in 2002 for George W. Bush’s war on Iraq. I’m personally happy about this, since I […]

Featured

Trump’s Tehran Poison Pill: US Trade Embargo provokes Iranian Attacks in Gulf, Making Return to Nuclear Deal Harder

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The BBC reports that a bitumen tanker, the MV Asphalt Princess, was boarded by nine men on Tuesday and hijacked. It cites unnamed “analysts,” presumably MI6, to the effect that the hijacking was the work of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. The MV Asphalt Princess, owned by the United Arab […]

Featured

Living in the Dark: Palestinians in Gaza, besieged by Israel and deprived of Electricity, Can’t even Refrigerate their Food

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The International Committee of the Red Cross has released a detailed study of life for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that is just as depressing as you would imagine. The electricity situation there has been touch and go for years, in large part because of the illegal Israeli civilian blockade […]

Featured

Palestinian Christians welcome U.S. United Church of Christ affirmation of right to Boycott Israel for Occupation of Palestinian Territories

Juan Cole

Palestinians UCC BDS Occupation Israel

Children

As Florida’s cases Spike to Unprecedented 21,683, Ron “Satan” DeSantis wants to Kill your Kids

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jeffrey S. Solocheck at the Miami Herald reports that Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Friday issued a royal decree forbidding school districts to require that pupils wear a mask and threatening to cut funding from any that defied him. DeSantis has also banned Florida municipalities from putting in renewed mitigation […]

Coal

Renewables for first time on Record generated more Electricity than either Coal or Nuclear in US in 2020: EIA

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Energy Information Administration, the primary authority in the federal government on energy numbers, concludes that renewables, primarily hydro, wind and solar, rose to become 21% of electricity generation in the US in 2020. This is the first time on record that renewables were the second-largest generator of electricity in […]

Archaeology

The U.S. Committed Cliocide (Destruction of History) in Iraq, and even Returning Gilgamesh Can’t Fix it

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The US government has returned 17,000 archeological artifacts to Iraq, many of them over 4,000 years old. This, according to Al Jazeera The objects and tablets were looted from the country during the chaos of the Bush administration’s rule of that country and were smuggled into the U.S., then sold […]