By Nancy Bird, UCL | – Pre-colonial African history is alive with tales of civilisations rising and falling and of different cultures intermingling across the continent. We have now shed more light on some of these societies using the science of genetics. In a study published in Science Advances, my co-authors and I used DNA […]
- Africa (237)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (1,219)
- Australasia (8)
- Australia (25)
- Authoritarianism (382)
- Canada (6)
- Cats (1)
- Celtic Religion (1)
- Culture (517)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (323)
- Dissent (423)
- Ecology (1)
- Economy (1,021)
- Agriculture (3)
- Banking (67)
- Carbon Footprint (6)
- Corporations (50)
- Cryptocurrency (2)
- Debt (21)
- Degrowth (1)
- Democratic Socialism (20)
- Demographic Decline (1)
- Development (26)
- Downward Mobility (1)
- Employment (118)
- Food Insecurity (21)
- Homelessness (15)
- Industry (5)
- Inequality (422)
- Inflation (5)
- infrastructure (10)
- Investment (92)
- Market Crash (10)
- Middle Class (61)
- Monopolies (8)
- Neoliberalism (200)
- Plutocracy (612)
- Poverty (205)
- Regulation (2)
- Sanctions (4)
- Taxes (37)
- Technology (3)
- Trade (113)
- Weapons sales (6)
- Education (141)
- Elderly (3)
- Electricity Cost (2)
- Energy (1,696)
- Batteries (49)
- Coal (137)
- Fossil Fuels (317)
- Fracking (50)
- Geothermal (7)
- Green ammonia (5)
- Green Energy (409)
- Green Hydrogen (8)
- Heat Pumps (5)
- Hydroelectric (14)
- Natural Gas (107)
- Nuclear Energy (157)
- Petroleum (297)
- Power Grid (12)
- Pumped Hydro (6)
- Solar Energy (398)
- Tar Sands (13)
- Wave Energy (9)
- wind energy (333)
- Environment (2,596)
- Climate Change (1,540)
- Acidification of Oceans (54)
- Agriculture (25)
- Biodiversity (12)
- Climate Refugees (2)
- CO2 (114)
- Dehydration (5)
- Denialism (145)
- Desalinization (4)
- Desertification (158)
- Divestment (2)
- Dust Storms (6)
- Environmental Investment (1)
- Extreme Weather (294)
- Flooding (135)
- Food Supply (2)
- Forests (17)
- Green New Deal (40)
- Greenwashing (3)
- Mass Extinction (61)
- Methane (20)
- Net Carbon Zerio (8)
- Nitrous Oxide (2)
- Rainforests (19)
- Rivers (11)
- Sea Level (334)
- Soil Carbon Release (14)
- Super Storms (251)
- wildfires (232)
- Wood Buildings (1)
- Climate Crisis (1,247)
- Drought (289)
- Ecology (10)
- Environmentalism (392)
- Green Transportation (249)
- Ice Melt (132)
- Invasive Species (2)
- Islands (1)
- Oceans (100)
- Oil Spills (7)
- Pollution (227)
- Water (92)
- wildlife (19)
- Climate Change (1,540)
- Europe (1,335)
- Featured (3,886)
- fiction (5)
- Food (14)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (663)
- History (342)
- Human Rights (1,411)
- Apartheid (258)
- censorship (287)
- Death Penalty (30)
- Disappeared (3)
- Displaced and Refugees (562)
- Food Insecurity (18)
- Gay rights (29)
- Genocide (40)
- Human Rights Watch (90)
- Migrants (4)
- Slavery and Trafficking (16)
- Starvation (2)
- Torture (97)
- Trans Rights (3)
- Transgender Rights (4)
- Unlawful Imprisonment (99)
- Unlwful Killing (76)
- War Crimes (378)
- War Rape (7)
- Immigration (20)
- International (791)
- Islamophobia (375)
- Juan Cole (270)
- Latin America (99)
- Latinos (4)
- leisure (21)
- media (469)
- Middle East (9,308)
- Arab World (5,148)
- Iran (1,283)
- Israel (879)
- Israel/ Palestine (3,104)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (289)
- Turkey (575)
- Turkiye (101)
- military (123)
- Modernism (3)
- nationalism (116)
- NATO (36)
- Natural Disasters (13)
- Neocolonialism (1)
- nuclear weapons (103)
- Patriarchy (10)
- Peace (136)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Planetary Exploration (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (12)
- privacy (21)
- racism (462)
- Rape (8)
- religion (1,468)
- Rights (139)
- robots (3)
- Romance (1)
- science (150)
- Secular (West) (9)
- Secularism (30)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (2)
- Spirituality (22)
- Statelessness (15)
- Stranded Assets (1)
- Surveillance (278)
- Terrorism (1,091)
- Tolerance (6)
- Uncategorized (8,075)
- United Nations (137)
- Urbanization (4)
- US Foreign Policy (1,286)
- US politics (5,239)
- Anti-War Movement (13)
- Campaign Finance (31)
- Censors (22)
- Central Intelligence Agency (63)
- Charity (1)
- Civil Rights (96)
- Congress (78)
- Conspiracy Theories (23)
- Constitution (397)
- Courts (12)
- crime (12)
- Democratic Party (944)
- Democratic Socialists of America (22)
- Domestic Terrorism (20)
- Drone Warfare (27)
- Espionage (124)
- Ethnicities (380)
- Far Right (388)
- FBI (47)
- Foreign Policy (204)
- Gay Rights (17)
- Guns (94)
- Immigration (236)
- Israel Lobbies (125)
- Marijuana (4)
- Militarization (271)
- National Security State (471)
- Native Americans (40)
- Nuclear arsenal (7)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (557)
- Police (43)
- prison reform (9)
- Private Prisons (2)
- Progressive Politics (12)
- Puerto Rico (30)
- Religious Right (15)
- Reproductive Choice (66)
- Republican Party (2,920)
- Supreme Court (125)
- Voter suppression (35)
- Whistleblowers (5)
- Xenophobia (9)
- Veterans (35)
- Voting Rights (16)
- War (500)
- White Supremacists (225)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (550)
- workers (231)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (210)
Africa
DNA Study: Medieval Iranian Merchants account for Half of the Ancestry of Swahili People of East African Coast
By Chapurukha Kusimba, University of South Florida and David Reich, Harvard University | – The legacy of the medieval Swahili civilization is a source of extraordinary pride in East Africa, as reflected in its language being the official tongue of Kenya, Tanzania and even inland countries like Uganda and Rwanda, far from the Indian Ocean […]
Tunisia: Racist Violence Targets Black Migrants, Refugees
Human Rights Watch – (Tunis) – President Kais Saied’s recent attempt to mitigate the serious harm that a speech he made on February 21, 2023, caused Black African migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees in Tunisia does not go far enough, Human Rights Watch said today. Measures announced on March 5 fall far short of the […]
Tunisia’s wave of racist attacks: ‘I’m afraid. I can just disappear’
Amelia Smith amyinthedesert ( Middle East Monitor ) – One student in Tunis fears most for his female colleagues; a story is circulating that Tunisian men pretending to be police are approaching sub-Saharan African women, luring them away and then raping them. Another student, Modeste from Benin, says he and his friends recently […]
South Africa downgrades Israeli Embassy over Ongoing Apartheid (and they should know)
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Middle East Eye reports that the South African parliament has voted to downgrade the Israeli embassy in Pretoria to liaison status. The resolution was introduced by the tiny center-left National Freedom Party, which has only two seats in parliament. Its passage was assured, however, when the African National Congress […]
Jimmy Carter’s Man in Sudan
Strasbourg, France (Special to Informed Comment) – I am not quite able to remember the first time I met President Carter, but I do remember when I first went to see him at his home in Plains. It was the fall of 2016 and I was thirty-six. I had been a mid-level staffer at The […]
Israeli Delegate Expelled from African Union Summit, in what may be First Global South Reaction to new Extremist Netanyahu Government
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Saturday at the opening of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Israeli delegate was asked to leave. Sharon Bar-Li, the deputy director of the African desk at the Israeli foreign ministry, was escorted out of the opening session by security guards, according to the Al Jazeera […]
Sudan Military-Civilian Pact Omits Key Justice Reforms, including an End to Impunity (HRW)
Human Rights Watch – (Nairobi) – Sudan’s political actors and international partners should ensure that progress on human rights and accountability for serious human rights violations are central to any new transition, Human Rights Watch said today. This includes an end to the violent crackdown against peaceful protesters, releasing arbitrarily detained protesters, and taking concrete […]
Biden, Seeking to Compete with China, Hosts Africa Summit
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Biden is hosting a 3-day summit with leaders of 49 African countries plus the head of the African Union Commission, and Wednesday was the second day of meetings. The African continent is just enormous. European and North American mapmakers typically use a projection that enlarges the northern hemisphere (giving […]