Featured

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Spain, the world’s 15th largest economy and the fourth-largest in Europe, recently ran for 9 hours entirely on wind, solar and hydro. It is not the first time the renewables supplied all of the country’s domestic electricity needs on the peninsula, but it is the first time they did so […]

Featured

Smotrich Plans to Send 500k further Israeli Squatters in to Steal More Palestinian Land in West Bank

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Yaniv Kubovich and Ben Samuels at Haaretz report that far-right extremist Bezalel Smotrich is preparing to send in another half-million Israeli squatters to steal Palestinian land in the West Bank. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionism bloc in parliament and the finance minister in the Netanyahu cabinet, who […]

Featured

Is Israel Over-Hyping the Supposed Iran Threat?

Marc Martorell Junyent

Review of Jonathan G. Leslie, Fear and Insecurity: Israel and the Iran Threat Narrative (London: Hurst and Co., 2022). Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – “Words have consequences,” writes Jonathan G. Leslie on the last page of his book “Fear and Insecurity: Israel and the Iran Threat Narrative.” He argues that the predominant Israeli […]

Climate Crisis

2/3s of the Summer Dry Air that encourages Wildfires comes from Humanity burning Fossil Fuels

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The earth’s atmosphere can make things wet or dry them out depending on the water vapor pressure. When there is a Vapor Pressure Deficit, it dries the earth out. VPD is defined as “a measure of atmospheric water demand defined as the difference between the amount of water vapor in […]

China

China and the Axis of the Sanctioned: How America’s Divide-and-Rule Strategy in the Middle East Backfired

Juan Cole

( Tomdispatch.com) – A photo Beijing released on March 6th of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign minister Wang Yi* delivered a seismic shock in Washington. There he was, standing between Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, and Saudi National Security Adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban. They were awkwardly shaking hands on an […]

Donald Trump

DeSantis’ Florida as the Epicenter of the New Culture Wars: The Coming Battle for America’s Political Soul

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The concept of “woke” culture is an existential threat to Republican office holders and party officials. Led by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and other Donald Trump wannabes, Republicans have embarked on a campaign to bury information, books and literature; illustrating their agenda to promote racism as acceptable, […]

Featured

United Nations for First Time Recognizes 1948 Israeli Ethnic Cleansing (Nakbah) of Palestinians

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Today, May 15, for the first time a commemoration will be held at the United Nations HQ in New York City of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of about half of all the Palestinians, the bulk of which was carried out by Jewish military forces, as Israeli intelligence admitted at the […]

Featured

Not just Cards and Flowers: The 1st ‘Mother’s Day for Peace’ was Held in New York in 1872

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenville, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment – Feature) – The 19th century origins of Mother’s Day differ vastly in spirit and purpose from celebrations of it in the 20th and 21st centuries. Mother’s Day was first inspired by two women with diverse but compatible social and political purposes. Prior to the Civil War, Ann Reeves […]

Climate Crisis

For First Time, Wind provided more Power than Fossil Gas for Britain, enough to Power 300 mn. Teslas

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new study commissioned by the UK private electric utility Drax and carried out by professors at Imperial College London has confirmed that in the first quarter of this year, wind turbines in Britain generated more electricity than did fossil gas plants. This is the first time the UK got […]