Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – While mainstream media celebrate the remarkable development in record time of vaccines spectacularly effective against the Covid virus, knowledge that might contribute to other medical breakthroughs is being steadily undermined. This decline is not the result of some dramatic lawsuit or corporate takeover. It is one of […]
Archives for October 2021
Israel/Palestine: Facebook Censors Discussion of Rights Issues
Human Rights Watch – (Washington, DC) – Facebook has wrongfully removed and suppressed content by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses carried out in Israel and Palestine during the May 2021 hostilities. The company’s acknowledgment of errors and attempts to correct some of them are insufficient and do not address the scale […]
Why ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day is Replacing ‘Columbus Day’
By Susan C. Faircloth | – Columbus Day celebrations in the United States – meant to honor the legacy of the man credited with “discovering” the New World – are almost as old as the nation itself. The earliest known Columbus Day celebration took place on Oct. 12, 1792, on the 300th anniversary of his […]
Wahhabi Saudi Arabia has a More Rational Vaccine Mandate than the US Republican Party
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Republicans, among all Americans, are the most Islamophobic or Muslim-hating, with 72% holding that Muslims are more likely than members of other religions to encourage violence by their community. Republican TV idol Tucker Carlson called Iraqis “monkeys” and “illiterate” and maintains that “white men” invented civilization. That is, Muslims in […]
Collective Punishment as War Crime: 90% of Afghan Families Lack enough Food because the West is Punishing the Taliban
By John Sifton | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Afghanistan’s humanitarian situation is spiraling into catastrophe. Millions of Afghans are now facing severe economic stress and food insecurity in the wake of the Taliban’s August takeover, set off by widespread lost income, cash shortages, and rising food costs. Officials with the UN […]
Demands for Egypt’s U.S.-backed Egyptian Strongman al-Sisi to Release Activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, detained for 2 Years without Charge
By Ellery Roberts Biddle | – The life of Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah is in danger. The 39-year-old was jailed in 2019 on charges of spreading fake news, but, despite the limits of Egyptian law, he has yet to go to trial. At a recent hearing concerning the case, his lawyer […]
Who are Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, Climate Emergency Modelers who won Physics Nobel Prize?
By David Randall | – As a climate scientist myself, I was excited to learn that Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi have been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics. I first met Manabe when I was a graduate student in the early 1970s, so I was particularly pleased that the prize recognizes […]
Iraq is seeking 10 Gigawatts of Solar Power; if World had gone Green in ’80s, Would the US have ever invaded Iraq?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a historic irony, Iraq is turning to solar energy, according to Dania Saadi at SPGlobal. Ali Jawad at the Anadolu Agency reports that the Baghdad government is seeking to generate 10 gigawatts of solar power for electricity by 2030, though it already has several projects in train that will […]
No Apartheid here: Now Even Meretz Party just Meeting Palestinian Pres. Mahmoud Abbas shakes Israeli Coalition
By Adnan Abu Amer | The Israeli political and partisan scene is still experiencing echoes of the meeting that brought together leaders of the left-wing Meretz Party, headed by Nitzan Horowitz, partner in the government coalition, with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, at the Muqata headquarters in Ramallah. This created an atmosphere of tension within the […]