Новости за 16.12.2015

It seems to be the 1930s all over again in Europe, though “ideologies” were supposed to have died with the overthrow of the Soviet Union. Thankfully, Marine LePen’s radical right party, National Front, has just been defeated in France’s regional elections, but not before the media went “epileptic” over her projected victory. Still, France remains in a “state of emergency,” decreed by a socialist government after the attacks on Paris. Today’s Europe reminds me of the city in Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague (1947). Читать дальше...

Consumers, safety activists, Big Food, biotech companies and many of the US’s importing and exporting partners have been closely watching to see if the FDA would approve the genetically engineered AquAdvantage Salmon, which it did last month. Of course unlabeled GE crops are eaten by millions and GE animals have been created to make human More

This past Sunday (December 13th, 2015) the first HaaretzQ conference took place at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. Self-described as “an opportunity to ask and discuss the most pressing questions around Israel today and engage in a new Israeli American discussion about the future”, the conference began with keynote addresses by prominent politicians such as Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Member of Knesset (MK) and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary General Dr. Читать дальше...

In case you missed last night’s two hour steelcage GOP extravaganza, here’s the 26-second food fight between frontrunner Donald Trump and Jeb Bush that everyone is talking about. Not surprisingly, the topic was one that dominated the discussion all night: What candidate is best qualified to savage civil liberties at home while bombing the rest More

That the leading Republican Party presidential candidate, multi-billionaire Donald Trump, is a full-blown reactionary caricature of a capitalist politician is now the common parlance of most major media outlets. Even the relatively conservative Washington Post featured a Dec. 1 Dana Milibank column entitled, “Donald Trump Racist Bigot.” Milibank, reflecting the general unease at Trump’s virulently racist, misogynist, More

In its nine years of existence, WikiLeaks has become the first global 4th estate. Their 2008 release of the classified US military video documenting the slaying of Iraqi civilians in New Baghdad made the whistle-blowing site a household name. Despite the US government’s efforts to stop their publications, the organization has proven itself to be More

A petition has been filed by activist and campaigner Aruna Rodrigues against three persons of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC). The GEAC is India’s apex regulatory body. Rodrigues is seeking the initiation of contempt proceedings for wilfully and deliberately disobeying the explicit orders of the Supreme Court (SC) 8th May 2007, 15th February 2007, More

The Paris Agreementhas mostly been greeted with enthusiasm, though it contains at least one obvious flaw. Few seem to have noticed that the main tool mooted for keeping us within the 2C global warming target is a massive expansion of carbon trading, including offsetting, which allows the market exchange of credits between companies and nations to More

Children at the Afghan Peace Volunteer’s Borderfree Street Kid’s School learn from Ellis Brooks and Dr. Hakim about resolving conflicts peacefully. Photo:  Dr. Hakim Here in Kabul, over breakfast with Afghan Peace Volunteers, or APVs, we easily recalled key elements of the conflict resolution and peer mediation “train the trainers” workshops that Ellis Brooks, with Voices More

Whatever happens with Donald Trump’s candidacy- whether he rides his durable poll numbers to the Republican nomination, runs as an independent, or withdraws from the race completely- the ideas he’s introduced to the mainstream political dialogue will have a long shelf life. In the wake of the Paris attacks in November, a lot of politically More

Somehow, we wind up with a Congress and a President who cannot seem to get anything done, at least to redeem middle class salaries and underclass economic mobility. Government seems to have done a fine job in standing by while “families near the top had a 70 percent increase in income from 1963 to 2013, while the More

“How our ally is using British arms runs counter to our self-proclaimed role in the world, and our aid efforts.” – Major General Tim Cross, Dec 14, 2015. The Saudi Arabian effort in Yemen has been essentially written off by its Western allies as one of those things. In terms of strategy, there are bigger More

Recent comments by US politicians have left many troubled, worried about a replay of Nazi-era Germany here in the United States. The specter of the Jewish Holocaust recast upon Muslim and refugee bodies haunts many. In times such as these, the stories of courageous, organized resistance to the Nazis bear repeating. Of these, the efforts More

It is hard to reasonably argue why one would want to make or watch a 13-hour movie and what value there is in distributing, exhibiting, and, most importantly, celebrating the visual and mental workout of watching and allegedly digesting a 13 hour movie. Is the 13-hour movie the utmost championing of the cinematic art or More

In 2014, Florida’s legislature passed the Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act. The idea was to make strains of marijuana that are low in THC (the stuff that gets you high) and high in CBD (the stuff that helps children with seizure disorders) legal with a doctor’s prescription. A year-and-a-half later, patients still await legal permission to More