Featured

China’s Coup: Saudi and Iranian Ambassadors arrive at Reopened Embassies, Stress Bilateral Relations, Regional Development

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Aljazeera reports that on Tuesday, the Saudi ambassador to Iran and the Iranian ambassador to Saudi Arabia both took up their duties at the two countries’ embassies. The restoration of full diplomatic relations, which had been disrupted in 2016, was brokered earlier this year by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Saudi […]

Climate Crisis

New Mexico Wind Farms: Largest Renewable Energy Infrastructure Project in US History, as High Density Line is Approved

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – About a year and a half ago, I wrote a piece on how New Mexico is set to become the Saudi Arabia of wind, which went viral. It described how four wind farms will have a capacity to generate 3.5 gigawatts of power, as much as four nuclear power plants. […]

Climate Crisis

Labor Day: Is Biden’s Green Energy IRA the most Pro-Worker Legislation in Decades?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s signature piece of legislation that was passed with no Republican support, contains $369 billion for the green energy transition. Since much of this funding leverages corporate and individual investments, its impact will be in the trillions of dollars. Given the dire climate crisis we […]

Featured

Belgian Minister says what Biden won’t: Israel is wiping Entire Palestinian Villages off the Map

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I heard Noam Chomsky speak in my youth about the press coverage of the Middle East in the United States, and as I remember it he at one point remarked that it was sometimes the regional newspapers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle that had the most honest headlines. In […]

Climate Crisis

Idalia: DeSantis may not want to “politicize” Climate Change, but Climate Change is determined to Politicize DeSantis

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, on being asked about human-caused climate change, said he did not want to “politicize the weather.” Of course, it is not the weather that is at issue but climate, which is long-term and repeated weather patterns. DeSantis ducked the question because Koch Industries and ExxonMobil etc. […]

Climate Crisis

Solar soars by 13%, Fossil Fuel use Plummets 17% in Europe in first 1/2 of 2023

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – At the energy think tank Ember, Matt Ewen and Sarah Brown have issued a new report showing that the use of fossil fuels in the European Union fell a remarkable 17% in the first two quarters of 2023, year over year. Indeed, hydrocarbons accounted for only a third of energy […]

Featured

“Friends of Israel:” Trying to outlaw Solidarity with Palestine

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Hil Aked, Friends of Israel: The Backlash against Palestine Solidarity (London: Verso, 2023). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Amid Israel’s assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank in early July, the House of the Commons passed a bill with significant implications for the United Kingdom’s relations with Israel/Palestine. […]

Africa

African and Maghrebi “Migrants” versus Ukrainian “Refugees”: Europe’s Racial Tunnel Vision Creates discriminatory, and deadly, Policies

Mohamed Jegham

Sousse, Tunisia (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The Mediterranean Sea route is still the most dangerous immigration route in the world. Since 2014, the UN has registered more than 20,000 deaths and disappearances in the Central Mediterranean Sea. Immigration to Europe is not a new phenomenon. Still, the numbers of immigrants have increased substantially […]

Featured

Putin’s Assassination of Prigozhin Decapitates Wagner’s Empire in Libya, Sudan, Syria and E. Europe, and Puts Oligarchs on Notice

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Russia confirmed Tuesday that Yevgeny Prigozhin, ex-convict oligarch and leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenaries, died in a plane crash last week. Prigozhin had, in fact, been a dead man walking ever since he masterminded an aborted mutiny against Russia’s military leadership on June 23 of this year. His […]