I looked into Tariq Ali because the Rolling Stones wrote Street Fighting Man about Tariq. I felt intrigued why a legendary Rock’n’Roll band wrote a song about a revered Pakistani British Intellectual who opposes Colonialist genocide. I wrote about You Can’t Please All, and The Extreme Center because Tariq Ali’s politics and knowledge seemed Democratic Solicialist/ Palestine and the current fascism relevant.

For this column: I accomplished a New Years ambition. I read Verso Books Tariq Ali’s Street Fighting Years, An Autobiography of the Sixties. The Hip Hop music journalist found an intersection of Rock’n’Roll and Hip Hop.

Did Rock’n’Roll history exist because Tariq Ali and Malcolm X sat together as Malcolm X debated some bloke in England? In Tariq Ali’s time with Malcolm while Malcolm left the Nation of Islam after Malcolm expanded his worldview, Tariq Ali didn’t know his exact opinion about Malcolm X until Ali built with Malcolm.

A shock and awe. The phrase is apt in describing what Israel has done in the occupied West Bank almost immediately following the events of October 7, 2023, and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein defines “shock and awe” not merely as a military tactic, but as a political and economic strategy that exploits moments of collective trauma—whether caused by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse—to impose radical policies that would otherwise be resisted. According to Klein, societies in a state of shock are rendered disoriented and vulnerable, allowing those in power to push through sweeping transformations while opposition is fragmented or overwhelmed.

Google acquires clean energy developer

Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced last month it will acquire clean energy and data center infrastructure developer Intersect in a $4.75 billion deal expected to close in the first half of this year.

The portfolio Alphabet will acquire includes projects under construction in Texas and California.

The acquisition represents a new approach for Alphabet. In the past it had relied on utilities and independent energy developers to bring power generation online for its data center loads. Acquisition of Intersect indicates that Google plans to construct, own and manage its own clean energy power plants.

ERCOT's large load queue jumped almost 300 percent last year

And speaking of data centers, they are driving a rapid increase in the number and capacity of large load interconnection requests in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (or ERCOT) region, according to a December report from the grid operator.

This article first appeared on Substack

I woke up shortly before 6 AM. I checked my blood pressure, took my meds, placed an order for a prescription in my pharmacy’s automatic phone system, checked my glucose (116), for which I only had to poke my finger three times this morning, and then I turned on my TV as the coffee was brewing.

I had my TV set on the multiview setting again, with the channels being MS Now, CNN, ESPN, and Fox News. Fox News had a headline about protesters surrounding ICE agents in Minneapolis. But the scene didn't show protesters surrounding ICE agents. It showed ICE in cars driving down a Minneapolis street with a few protesters throwing water bottles and snowballs at them. What stood out to me is how Fox described it, because what else was being shown on TV was ICE shooting tear gas at the protesters.