Новости за 15.10.2018

One of the more useful allusions hidden in plain sight in the recent IPCC / UN report on climate crisis is the distinction between the pre-industrial and industrial ages that defines the era of climate crisis. Industrial capitalism, a/k/a capitalism, is the cause of climate crisis. Plenty of pseudo-scientific rubbish about human caused and Anthropocene can be found in the report’s text. But industry--- the integration of science and technology in capitalist production, is identified as the cause. Читать дальше...

The Syrian civil war has always been devilishly complex, with multiple actors following different scripts, but in the past few months it appeared to be winding down. The Damascus government now controls 60 percent of the country and the major population centers, the Islamic State has been routed, and the rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are largely cornered in Idilb Province in the country’s northwest. But suddenly the Americans moved the goal posts—maybe—the Russians have fallen out with the Israelis... Читать дальше...

The plot to supposedly murder Jamal Khashoggi, as apparently proved by Turkish audio and video evidence shown to US officials, is a grisly mixture of savagery and stupidity: Jack the Ripper meets Inspector Clouseau. Neither element is surprising because violent overreaction to minor threats is a traditional feature of dictatorial rule. As seems to be the case with Saudi Arabia today, Iraq under Saddam Hussein made immense efforts to eliminate exiled critics who posed no danger to the regime. More

Trump has already claimed to have resolved the refugee and Jerusalem issues simply through unilateral moves, moves that pleased the Israelis and pissed off the Palestinians, who are expected to relinquish any right of return for the dispossessed and to give up any hope for an East Jerusalem capital of any future state. And Team Trump has cut all aid to the Palestinians, refugees or not, intending to redirect the money elsewhere (but not to the taxpayers) — unless they play ball. More

“There is an air of unreality about this stated case. It has the appearance of a Law School moot based on an episode taken from the adventures of Maxwell Smart”. It was with some levity that Justice Mason described the Australian Secret Intelligence Service’s botched training session at the Sheraton Hotel, Melbourne, in November 1983. More

Spain’s governing Socialists have received backing from the radical left United Podemos to deliver hikes in the minimum wage and income tax on the rich. The deal makes it more likely that  Pedro Sánchez’s minority government can get its budget for next year through parliament and stave off calls from the right-wing opposition to bring More

Chants of “No More War” from delegates at the 2016 Democratic National Convention gave voice to sentiments that still resonate through the base of the party and the broad U.S. public, notably in communities with higher rates of military sacrifice. While Trump’s 2016 victories in swing states may well have been aided by his posing More

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the peak of the financial crisis, news outlets continue to feature pieces how another one, possibly worse, is just around the corner. This mostly shows that the folks who control these outlets learned absolutely nothing from the last crisis. As I have pointed out endlessly, the story was More

I’ve argued that the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia comprise an axis (a true “Axis of Evil”) united (for very different reasons) in opposition to Iran. The Saudi king has urged Washington to topple the Islamic Republic, which it considers heretical and the fountainhead of regional Shiite militancy. Robert Gates (Defense Secretary 2006-11) recalled meeting More

There are Democrats in West Virginia who are going to vote for Senator Joe Manchin – no matter that he’s a corporate Democrat, no matter that he supports Big Pharma and the fossil fuel industry, no matter that he was the only Democratic Senator to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. More

Lately, I find myself speculating about the possibility that perhaps the increase of global temperature and the human complicity through the acceleration of carbon release are having an effect on the thinking and behavior of people. There has seemingly always been a divide between what we humans claim we want and believe and what we More

Science answers many questions but not of morality or wisdom. Human judgment is responsible there. But morality began with evolution. It was useful work that people did that had survival value. So, the tribe recognized that those who carried their load and were able to contribute above their need were desirable members of the tribe. More

Food and environment campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has just produced the report ‘Shockingly high levels of weedkiller found in popular breakfast cereals marketed for British children’. In this 68-page document, she draws from new research in the UK that mirrors findings from the US about the dangerous levels of glyphosate found in food, especially products More

It is an organisation not without its problems. Conceived in the heat of idealism, and promoted as the vanguard of medical rescue and human rights advocacy, Médecins Sans Frontières has had its faults.  Its co-founder Bernard Kouchner went a bit awry when he turned such advocacy into full blown interventionism.  As Nicolas Sarkozy’s foreign minister, More

For the last few years, there has been a debate about whether we should stay the course or cut and run in the Middle East (Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, whatever). We’ve been in or out the last17 years of what began as the so-called Iraq War, which could be our first 100 Years War. We’re in, More