Europe

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In what French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called “an important geo-political gesture,” France, Germany and the UK have swung into action with the backing of the European Union to set up a mechanism, called Instex, which will permit European firms and banks to continue to trade with Iran without […]

Coal

Germany to End its Coal Industry, Go Green, within 20 Years

Clean Energy Wire

( Clean Energy Wire) – Energy transition home country Germany eyes a phase-out of coal power by 2038 at the very latest, as the country tries to get back on track to create a climate-friendly economy. In its highly anticipated phase-out proposal, the country’s coal commission said the world’s fourth largest economy could also wean […]

Featured

Ireland Bans Israeli Settler goods from Occupied Palestinian West Bank

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ireland’s parliament has voted by 78 votes to 45 to ban the importation into Ireland of goods produced by Israeli squatter firms in the militarily Occupied Palestinian West Bank. According to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on occupied territories, the occupying authority is forbidden to settle its own population in […]

European Union

How Hard will a Hard Brexit be on Britain and US? Very Hard

British Policy and Politics

By Craig Berry | – British Policy and Politics (LSE Blog) – When Theresa May proclaimed ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’, she was talking primarily about the long-term UK-EU relationship, not the initial divorce. Craig Berry explains how, through a combination of opportunism and incompetence, Britain crashing out of the EU has […]

European Union

Piteous Albion & Brexit: British PM Suffers Biggest Defeat in Modern History

AFP

London (AFP) – Prime Minister Theresa May will on Wednesday face a confidence vote after MPs overwhelmingly rejected her deal to leave the European Union, leaving Britain with no plan as it hurtles towards Brexit on March 29. May suffered the largest government defeat in modern British history on Tuesday night when the House of […]

Donald Trump

FBI opened Investigation of Trump’s Russia Ties over Comey Firing

AFP

Washington, DC| AFP | – The investigation — a dual counterintelligence and criminal probe — was launched after the president fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017, the Times said, citing anonymous sources. The counterintelligence aspect consisted of determining whether Trump was knowingly or unknowingly working for Moscow and whether he was a threat […]

Donald Trump

Smoking Gun: Trump Campaign’s Manafort supplied Polling data to Kremlin GRU

AFP

Washington, United States | AFP | Paul Manafort admitted to sharing US polling data with a Russian during the 2016 presidential race Two Ukrainian oligarchs were the intended recipients of US polling data President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman admitted to sharing with a Russian during the 2016 presidential race, a CNN report said Wednesday, […]

Displaced and Refugees

The Surprising Successes of Community Work with Muslim Refugees in Germany

Frances Trix

(Informed Comment) – The year after the recent influx of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan into Europe, I went to see how communities across Germany were responding. Chancellor Angela Merkel had said all communities in Germany must take 1.5 percent of their populations in asylum-seekers, so there were all manner of programs. I went […]

Germany

Germany: MSM won’t Tell you White Nationalist Drove into Muslim Refugees

TeleSur

A 50-year-old driver injured Syrian and Afganistan migrants and shouted racist comments as he was being arrested. A 50-year-old man has been arrested after driving his car into a crowd of people in Germany in what police say appears to be a racist attack. A group of migrants from Syria and Afghanistan was attacked in […]