2023

Xi Jinping backs Palestine entry into Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as Beijing offers to Mediate Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas accomplished a great deal on his 4-day visit to Beijing, including a Chinese agreement to try to bring Palestine into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, if the other members agree. Chinese President Xi Jinping and he announced on Tuesday a strategic partnership. Some months ago Foreign Minister […]

Climate Crisis

To Avert Climate Catastrophe, US and Europe must stop Competing and Start Cooperating

Foreign Policy in Focus

Originally published in European Alternatives. ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – From a foreign policy perspective, transatlantic relations appear to have reached new heights. The United States and European Union both support Ukraine’s efforts to expel Russian troops from its territory. On the military front, NATO is enjoying boom times thanks to the reemergence […]

Acidification of Oceans

Oceans absorb 30% of our CO2 Emissions; Phytoplankton are Central to its Climate Impacts

The Conversation

By Tyler Rohr, University of Tasmania; Anthony Richardson, The University of Queensland; and Elizabeth Shadwick, CSIRO | – The ocean holds 60 times more carbon than the atmosphere and absorbs almost 30% of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from human activities. This means the ocean is key to understanding the global carbon cycle and thus our […]

Climate Crisis

9/11, Climate Change Style: How burning Fossil Fuels is making our own Planet Alien to Us

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – As it turns out, it’s never too late. I mention that only because last week, at nearly 79, I managed to visit Mars for the first time. You know, the red planet, or rather — so it seemed to me — the orange planet. And take my word for it, it […]

Donald Trump

Iran confirms it is Talking with the Biden Administration about Nuclear Enrichment, Prisoners and Regional Relations

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is coming out that the US and Iran have been talking privately in Oman about a range of bilateral issues, including prisoner exchanges and Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program. This news emerged, according to Barak Ravid at Axios in the form of a complaint from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin […]

censorship

Governments at Bonn Climate Talks Should Press United Arab Emirates on Rights

Human Rights Watch

Joe Stork Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Division (Human Rights Watch ) – Ahmed Mansoor, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) best-known human rights defender, has been arbitrarily imprisoned, in isolation, since security forces raided his home just before midnight on March 20, 2017. Local media reported he was arrested and convicted for publishing […]

Anti-intellectualism

Restricting College Tenure will hurt State Economies, Many Warn

Florida Phoenix

By: Stephen Elliott – Daniel Brinks, who chairs the government department at the University of Texas at Austin, doesn’t usually have a tough time recruiting professors. After all, UT is one of the best research universities in the country, located in a high-tech boomtown with a thriving music scene, a warm climate and first-rate enchiladas. […]

Agriculture

‘We are gambling with the future of our Planet for the sake of Hamburgers’: Peter Singer on Climate Change

The Conversation

By Peter Singer, Princeton University | – (The Conversation) – I wasn’t aware of climate change until the 1980s — hardly anyone was — and even when we recognised the dire threat that burning fossil fuels posed, it took time for the role of animal production in warming the planet to be understood. Today, though, […]

Donald Trump

The Trials of Donald Trump and Aaron Burr: 3 Similarities and 2 Differences

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Only three holders of the top executive offices in the country, the presidency and the vice presidency, have ever been tried in federal court. They are Aaron Burr (d. 1836), who had served as Thomas Jefferson’s vice president; Spiro T. Agnew (d. 1996), who served as Tricky Dick Nixon’s vice […]

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