By Philip Donkersley | – When you think of bees, a hive humming with activity probably comes to mind. But most of the world’s 20,000 bee species don’t call a hive home. These wild species lead solitary lives instead, and around 70% of them build nests underground where they raise their offspring on the nectar […]
- Africa (148)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (848)
- Australasia (2)
- Australia (7)
- Authoritarianism (188)
- Canada (1)
- Cats (1)
- Culture (424)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (251)
- Dissent (290)
- Economy (743)
- Education (76)
- Elderly (3)
- Electricity Cost (1)
- Energy (1,107)
- Environment (1,538)
- Europe (798)
- Featured (2,722)
- fiction (5)
- Food (9)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (476)
- History (244)
- Human Rights (1,001)
- Immigration (17)
- International (614)
- Islamophobia (314)
- Juan Cole (268)
- Latin America (68)
- Latinos (3)
- leisure (21)
- media (378)
- Middle East (7,324)
- Arab World (4,650)
- Iran (922)
- Israel (707)
- Israel/ Palestine (1,972)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (265)
- Turkey (448)
- military (105)
- Modernism (1)
- nationalism (102)
- NATO (6)
- Natural Disasters (11)
- nuclear weapons (60)
- Patriarchy (2)
- Peace (80)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (11)
- privacy (20)
- racism (355)
- Rape (5)
- religion (1,197)
- Rights (128)
- robots (1)
- Romance (1)
- science (118)
- Secular (West) (8)
- Secularism (26)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (1)
- Spirituality (21)
- Statelessness (14)
- Surveillance (259)
- Terrorism (1,036)
- Tolerance (4)
- Uncategorized (8,046)
- United Nations (80)
- Urbanization (3)
- US Foreign Policy (609)
- US politics (4,068)
- Anti-War Movement (6)
- Campaign Finance (27)
- Censors (21)
- Central Intelligence Agency (59)
- Civil Rights (84)
- Congress (40)
- Conspiracy Theories (8)
- Constitution (324)
- crime (6)
- Democratic Party (605)
- Democratic Socialists of America (14)
- Domestic Terrorism (16)
- Drone Warfare (26)
- Espionage (117)
- Ethnicities (290)
- Far Right (236)
- FBI (42)
- Foreign Policy (203)
- Gay Rights (15)
- Guns (65)
- Immigration (197)
- Israel Lobbies (84)
- Marijuana (1)
- Militarization (229)
- National Security State (387)
- Native Americans (27)
- Nuclear arsenal (6)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (373)
- Police (35)
- prison reform (6)
- Private Prisons (1)
- Puerto Rico (25)
- Religious Right (1)
- Reproductive Choice (7)
- Republican Party (2,524)
- Supreme Court (60)
- Voter suppression (19)
- Whistleblowers (4)
- Xenophobia (8)
- Veterans (29)
- Voting Rights (4)
- War (282)
- White Supremacists (107)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (295)
- workers (149)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (123)
Mass Extinction
Whodunnit?: Hundreds of Thousands of Birds fell out of the Sky in Southwest and now we Know Why
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1963 horror film, The Birds, our avian cousins abruptly and for no apparent reason turned hostile and began attacking humans. It is based on a story by Daphne du Maurier. I fear that in 2020, humans turned the tables on a vast scale. In August, masses […]
UN Report: Human Environmental, Climate Destruction could unleash 800k Animal Viruses on Us
By Katie Woolaston and Judith Lorraine Fisher | – Human damage to biodiversity is leading us into a pandemic era. The virus that causes COVID-19, for example, is linked to similar viruses in bats, which may have been passed to humans via pangolins or another species. Environmental destruction such as land clearing, deforestation, climate change, […]
The Black Hole of Depressions: Doing nothing about Climate Emergency could cost more than all the Wealth in the World
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A study in Nature Communications has found that if you add in variability to calculations of the impact of climate change, the upper range of the damage it could do to property is $563 trillion.* That is in the worst case scenario where the world does virtually nothing to stop […]
Live fast, die small: how global heating is simplifying the world’s ecosystems
By Miguel Lurgi | – Global warming is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity worldwide. As temperatures increase, many species are forced to move to new habitats, like fish fleeing warming waters. While the fish have to adapt to new conditions elsewhere, it’s the effect that their departure has on other species that unpicks […]
On Day Scientists Announce Melting of Greenland Ice Sheet ‘Irreversible,’ Trump to permit Arctic oil, gas Drilling
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Trump administration on Monday finalized its plans to permit oil and gas drilling in the arctic wildlife reserve. This drilling will further imperil endangered species just by the setting up of the rigs, and it will desecrate land holy to the indigenous Gwich’in people, who call it “the sacred […]
Experts: Trump Border wall construction may imperil sacred stream, biodiversity in Desert
By Alisa Reznick/Arizona Public Media ( Cronkite News) – Wedged between a sprawl of saguaros and a busy highway in Mexico, Quitobaquito is a tiny oasis. Wildlife and Indigenous communities have long relied on this rare spring system for fresh water in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. The spring flows into a pond just […]
Plastic Found Lining Seabird Nests on a Worrying Scale
By Tom Ovenden | – From the packaging our food comes in to the clothes we wear, plastic is everywhere. We know that seabirds eat it and get tangled in it, but we are only just beginning to explore the impacts this has on their health and survival. This is really important, particularly in the […]
Unless we Halt Trump’s War on the Environment, the next Pandemic is coming for Us
( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Congress is already thinking about how to prevent the next pandemic. See how quickly Cory Booker (D-NJ) has teamed up with Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to write a letter calling for a global ban on “wet markets.” The current pandemic is reputed to have originated in a wet market […]