Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A mere category 1 hurricane dumped so much water on Puerto Rico so quickly that one of its rivers has swollen to 25 feet above normal, even more than it rose during Hurricane Maria in 2017, which was a Category 5 hurricane. The island is beset by flash floods, and […]
Archives for September 2022
DeSantis and Abbot are Traffickers in Human Misery, Pranking Asylum-Seekers
Oakland (Special to Informed Comment) – Republican Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbot of Texas have pulled some repugnant, grandstanding stunts in their efforts to assume the mantle of Donald Trump’s base, and further their vainglorious presidential ambitions. What seems to them as a clever “gotcha’” stunt to embarrass President Joe Biden and […]
Endless Tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea: Europe’s Commitment to Rescue Would Save Lives
By Judith Sunderland, Associate Director, Europe and Central Asia Division |- ( Human Rights Watch ) – Last week, a four-year-old Syrian girl named Loujin died after spending days with others adrift on a boat that had set off from Lebanon. Yesterday, we learned of three more Syrian children, one-, two-, and twelve-years-old, and three […]
As Falls Russia, So Falls the World: Exceptionalism Goes Global
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Here’s a nightmare scenario: Unable to recruit enough soldiers from the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin takes North Korean leader Kim Jong-un up on his recent offer to send 100,000 North Koreans to join the Russian president’s ill-fated attempt to seize Ukraine. Kim has also promised to send North Korean workers to […]
Iran Security Fires on Crowd Protesting Death in Custody of Kurdish Woman for “Bad Veiling”, Wounds 13
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Saturday, 13 protesters were wounded when security forces opened fire on them outside the house of the governor in Saghez, Iranian Kurdistan. This, according to the Hengaw human rights organization. The demonstrators were expressing their fury over the death in police custody of Mahsa “Zhina” Amini, 22, a Kurdish […]
When Politicians get involved in Science: The marble statue of Gregor Mendel
It is 2022, the bicentenary of the birth of the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics, and this is being celebrated in all kinds of ways. In 1955, as a biology student, I travelled with a group of young people to Brno (then part of Czechoslovakia), where he had done his experiments with […]
‘It’s getting close’: As the megadrought grinds on, Southwest Water in Doubt
By Sydnee Wilson | – ( Cronkite News) – PHOENIX – NASA satellite photos show how drastically the water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead have receded in just the past few years. They demonstrate the severity of long-term drought and the challenges Arizona will face to conserve and enhance its precious water supply. […]
After oil: what Malaysia and Iran may look like in a post-Fossil Fuel Future
By Rowena Abdul Razak, London School of Economics and Political Science and Asma Mehan, Texas Tech University | – As the devastation of climate change makes the need to decarbonise clearer by the day, countries face the question of what to do with their old fossil fuel infrastructure. While some environmental activists have taken to […]
Top 6 things wrong with DeSantis’s Stunt of Flying Asylum-Seekers to Martha’s Vineyard
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Stunts like Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s program of rounding up and flying to Martha’s Vineyard Venezuelan and Colombian asylum-seekers, who are in the country legally awaiting the adjudication of their asylum status, have definite downsides. DeSantis helped run an explicitly racist Facebook page before he was governor of Florida, and […]
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