Новости за 02.07.2018

Many say the resignation of Justice Kennedy represents a 'threat to democracy' because Trump will no doubt appoint someone keen to serve his authoritarian bent. But a democracy that can be threatened or even "destroyed" by the resignation of one unelected official (with a lifelong term) and the appointment of another unelected official (with a lifelong term) by an 'elected' official who didn't even receive the majority of votes is a strange kind of democracy, isn't it? More

In the wake of the Democratic Party’s shameful betrayal over Seattle’s Amazon Tax - a tax on big business to fund affordable housing - housing costs continue to soar off the charts with no solution in sight. Nearly half of the city’s renters are now officially “rent burdened,” while one fifth spend more than half their income on housing. More

I remember visiting the the OccupyICEPDX encampment during its first week in Portland, Oregon in which activists successfully shut down the local I.C.E. Facility. I was able to have conversations with several activists and assist in carrying heavy items around the camp. The activists told me what made this occupation so successful was once they More

Politically, I’m a nobody or at worst a pebble in the wingtip of a few people in Manhattan’s political establishment. Socially, I’m someone who’s been in a lot of rooms you and my closest friends haven’t been in, been offered shady weird deals, and have come to know that, in politics, friends and enemies are More

Why does the announcement of a Trump-Putin summit occasion such fear and trembling, such weeping and gnashing of teeth? (“Hold on to your Alaska,” glares MNBC’s Rachel Maddow, intimating that Trump might give it back in Helsinki.) For the same reason the Trump-Kim summit has met with disdain, if not alarm. (Isn’t North Korea a More

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat its mistakes blah blah blah, someone said —Americans don’t even pay attention to the news, so how the heck are they supposed to remember it after it becomes history? So we keep making the same mistakes over and over. In foreign policy the biggest mistake the United More

Climate Change sounds vast and impersonal, but it’s really a very personal matter; a global crisis caused by the individual actions humanity has collectively taken. All too often such actions proceed from a position of ignorance selfishness and habit, and are undertaken with little or no understanding of the effects on the natural environment. The More

$88,000. This is how much Jeff Bezos has to spend to be equivalent to the average person’s $1. He is of course, the richest man in the world right now. If you’re like most Americans you’ve probably got your kid ordering slime on Amazon Prime as we speak. Just think if we had progressive vending More

Well, here we go again. On June 27, US Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, effective July 31. Cue crisis, as defined by President John F. Kennedy’s inaccurate characterization of the Chinese analog: “Two characters, one representing danger and the other, opportunity.” Democrats and Republicans have, for 30 years, alternated between anticipation More

The regulatory system for GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in India is in tatters. So said the Coalition for a GMFree India (CGMFI) in 2017 after media reports about the illegal cultivation of GM soybean in the country. In India, five high-level reports have already advised against the adoption of GM crops: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt More

The world can’t give All its life and live We must give back or lose it. — “Music is the Food of Thought”, written by Tony McPhee When The Groundhogs released Who Will Save The World in 1972, it followed a popular format in rock music at the time – theme albums. But the theme More

“Hello, Donald! It’s me, the guy you made sure everyone knew was Jewish on Twitter,” Jon Stewart said as he took his seat on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show on June 28.  “I know you’re upset about all the criticism you’ve been taking in the ‘fake news’ and the ’fake’ late-night shows. It’s just, we’re all More

In spite of  British Foreign Office policy that “the Royal Family should not make official visits to Israel due to its historic and grave violations of human rights, international law and UN resolutions,” Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, made just such an official visit last week – the first royal to do so since the More

A wise old mother is Nature– She guideth her children’s feet — Andrew Downing Not long ago on the Wild Oceans Facebook page we shared an article by George Monbiot entitled, If Children Lose Contact with Nature They Won’t Fight for It. The author describes the removal of children from the natural world as an “environmental More

The Washington Post had yet another hysterical piece about how “America’s Severe Trucker Shortage” could undermine the economy. While the piece features the usual complaints from employers about how they can’t get anyone to work for them no matter how much they pay, the data indicate they aren’t trying very hard. Here’s the inflation adjusted More