Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – There appears to be some movement in the indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States over the reentry of the United States into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and a return to full compliance with it by Iran. The European countries directly talking to Iran presented what they called […]
19 Years ago America Really Wanted Iraq’s Basra for its Oil, which is now Making it Uninhabitable
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Poet Robert Frost asked if the world would end by fire or ice. It turns out that it is both, the fire of global heating and the melting of earth’s surface ice and resultant biblical floods. Nowhere is this more clear than in Iraq. Not everyone will suffer equally from […]
UN, Britain Denounce Israeli Jackboot Assaults on Offices of Palestinian Human Rights Organizations
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that on Thursday, Israeli Occupation troops made a dawn raid on the offices of several human rights and civil society organizations in the towns of Ramallah and al-Bireh in the Palestinian West Bank, which they then closed and locked up. The Israeli forces assaulted […]
No, Israel hasn’t Committed 50 Holocausts against Palestinians or Even One; but it has Committed Apartheid
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The head of the rump Palestine Authority that has a presence in 40% of the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas, created a scandal when he said on Tuesday at a news conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, “From 1947 to the present day, Israel has committed 50 massacres in […]
You know you want an Electric Car. What does the IRA mean for Consumers this Year?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Thinking of buying an electric car? With the signing by President Biden yesterday of the Inflation Reduction Act, it is a great time to make the move from expensive and destructive gasoline to a much cleaner electric vehicle. But the rules on the $7,500 federal tax break for buying a […]
As Last Coal Plant closes, Cheap Solar Power Rescues Hawaii, which has reached ~40% Renewables
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Veteran green energy journalist Julian Spector at Canary Media tells the story of how the last-minute opening this July of the 39-megawatt (MW) Mililani 1 solar farm out near Pearl Harbor — which is hooked up to a 156 MW battery — saved Hawaii from brownouts when its last coal […]
Why Fightin’ Joe Biden may be the most Consequential President in Forty Years
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Joe Biden has been easy for the pundit class to write off. He isn’t, unlike Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, a great speechifier. He overcame his childhood stutter, but he still sometimes hesitates just as he gets to an applause line. He is still the little guy who got picked […]
Climate Emergency: Europe Parched, Farms Fallow, as Lakes and Rivers Dry up in worst Drought since time of Christ
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Europe is in the throes of a once-in-500 years severe drought that is making its rivers into shallow streams and its lakes into vanishing puddles. The mighty Rhine in Germany is so low that it may soon not be navigable. The biggest lake in Italy is fast disappearing. These are […]
In Honor of Salman Rushdie, Novelist and Stabbing Victim: Midnight’s Other Children, by Juan Cole
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize-winning novelist, was repeatedly stabbed on Friday at a literary event at Chautauqua Institution in western New York, where he was arguing that the U.S. should give asylum to persecuted writers. Allegedly one Hadi Matar of New Jersey, wearing a black mask, leaped up onto the stage […]
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