Featured

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Yair Wallach in a post at X notes that Jewish Power Party member Amihay Eliyahu proposes that Palestinians be treated by Israel as Puerto Ricans are by the United States. This is a horrible and outrageous idea from the extremist corner of the Israeli far right, which Tamir Pardo, a […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Change is the New Mideast Extremism — Iraq Hottest Place on Earth, as Iran goes into Lockdown

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The deadly effects of ideological extremism in the Middle East for the past few decades have caused governments and journalists to focus on it. The Arabic word is al-taṭarruf. I was interested, however, to see the word put to a different purpose in a Sky News Arabia article , where […]

Bill of Rights

Trump’s Indictment for Jan. 6: Revisiting “Psychopathocracy”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A Grand Jury empaneled by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has issued an indictment (full text here) against Donald John Trump on four counts, Smith delivered a statement, saying, “Today, an indictment was unsealed charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring […]

China

In 2024, China will hit Peak Gasoline, with its Demand on a Downward Spiral ever After

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Yale Environment 360 points to recent energy reports as suggesting that China will hit peak gasoline next year. That is, after 2024 the country’s demand for gasoline to fuel automobiles will fall every year. China was one of the last advanced economies to lift COVID-19 restrictions, as President Xi Jinping […]

Climate Crisis

Could Solar Panel Arrays in Earth Orbit provide all the Clean Electricity We’d Ever Need?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The European Space Agency isn’t as well known in the U.S. as NASA or even Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. The $7 bn.-a-year agency funded by 22 European states, however, has what could turn out to be a game-changing idea for solar power. ESA is contemplating installing a solar panel […]

Climate Crisis

WMO: July to be Hottest month on Record, as World enters era of Global Boiling, Global Burning

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The World Meteorological Association said this weekend as July comes to a close that it will have been the hottest month in recorded history. Its first three weeks were certainly the hottest on record. It likely will have been the hottest month in 120,000 years. Modern homo sapiens as a […]

Climate Crisis

Renewable Energy poised to overtake Coal, Providing 1/3 of Global Electricity: IEA

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The International Energy Agency’s report on electricity markets is out and it has some good news. Depending on how cold the winters are, the IEA expects renewable sources of energy to outstrip coal in 2024, and forever thereafter. It calls this change “structural.” That is, it isn’t a blip or […]

Featured

The Other Sinead O’Connor, Pro-Palestinian Critic of Violent Israeli Extremist Ben-Gvir, and Muslim Convert

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tragically, Sinead O’Connor is dead at 56. Many of the obituaries of Irish protest singer have been oddly thin, and have ignored key moments in her life. One was her contretemps with Israeli extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, now the country’s Minister of National Security. She later became fiercely critical of the […]

Featured

Will the Triumph of the Messianic Israeli Far Right Destabilize the Country?

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The Israeli government voted this week to limit their Supreme Court’s ability to overturn unconstitutional laws after several months of debate. This elicited storm of global criticism, including from the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which said it is “gravely concerned” that this will further fracture Israel and American […]