Новости за 23.11.2018

When the overnight low (109F in Oman) would be a record high in most places on Earth, you know your planet is in trouble. The evidence of our warming climate is all around us. At times it feels as if our world is unraveling. Ice shelfs melting. Seas rising. Rivers flooding. Wildfires broiling. Hurricanes destroy- ing. Droughts devastating. It’s not as if these events haven’t been around since the dawn of time, but man-made global warming is undoubtedly making matters much, much worse. There’s little... Читать дальше...

For those who have been following Venezuela closely in recent years there is a distinct sense of déjà vu regarding US foreign policy towards that South American nation. This is because Washington’s strategy of regime change in Venezuela is almost identical to the approach it has taken in Latin America on numerous occasions since World War Two. This strategy involves applying economic sanctions, extensive support for the opposition, and destabilization measures that create a sufficient degree of human... Читать дальше...

“The person who claims the legitimacy of the authority always bears the burden of justifying it. And if they can’t justify it, it’s illegitimate and should be dismantled. To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand anarchism as being much more than that.” —Noam Chomsky On December 7, 2018, Noam Chomsky turns 90 years More

“The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.” — Karl Marx “Give the man his due: @realDonaldTrump is on his way to becoming the uniter-in-Chief on an issue that has divided America for generations. Congrats to everyone on both sides who fought for this.” — Van Jones, of More

November has been quite a month, so far, in Afghanistan.  The level of violence has been appalling and the most serious recent atrocity was yet another suicide bombing in Kabul. It killed over fifty people and injured twice that many but didn’t merit a Trump tweet, which isn’t surprising because he doesn’t seem to be interested in the More

Since the early 1990s the US mass media has consistently portrayed the government of North Korea as a “desperate rogue regime run by a paranoid dictator now threatening the world with nuclear attack,” in the words of the American historian Bruce Cumings (North Korea: Another Country, 2003). Threatening. The world. The US has a population 13 More

As elementary school kids across the US don gaudily dyed chicken feathers and hop around like the fowl themselves for no discernible reason other than it’s what they’ve been told “Indians did,” their classmates watch on with stoicism in cardboard capotain hats, before together they fall upon plates of factory-farmed turkey. Yes, it’s Thanksgiving, and More

Occupy Health In May 2018, I met Susan Downs at an international conference at the University of Patras, Greece. She is a physician and a fearless documentary producer. Her motto is “Occupy Health.” The moment Downs realized I was the author of Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA, she invited me for More

The United States has been at war every day since its founding, often covertly and often in several parts of the world at once. As ghastly as that sentence is, it still does not capture the full picture. Indeed, prior to its founding, what would become the United States was engaged—as it would continue to be for More

The recent wildfires in California make me feel even more worried about the fate of anyone whose homes are built in the woods.  California has experienced the 9 of the largest fires in its history in the past two decades, but large fires have occurred in many other western states during the same period. What More

The November 15th Business Section of the New York Times carried the unintentionally insightful headline “Amazon Site is Upscale and ‘Distressed’’’. The Times story dealt with a provision added to last year’s GOP tax cut that created ‘Opportunity Zones’ meant to draw investment to neglected neighborhoods. Inserted by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the zones allow investors More

Polish government officials openly marching in a fascist parade along with tens of thousands of their country men and women. Police and city officials in the supposedly liberal city of Portland OR provoking antifascist protesters while protecting fascists and their sympathizers. An openly racist president of the United States declares that he is a nationalist. More

They are the Pigs in Animal Farm, preaching righteousness, peddling preposterousness and hoarding all the “milk and apples” for themselves. If the demogagic President Donald Trump and his greedy loyalist Republican abettors had their way, the American citizenry would be consigned to a life of Farm-like drudgery. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal More

Mister and Myth is West If black American scholars are like prizefighters, then West is not the greatest ever; that title belongs to W.E.B. Du Bois. Not the most powerful ever; that’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. Not the most influential; that would include Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, Black History Week founder Carter G. Woodson, More

A spate of “Help out this family!” crowdfunding campaigns have been cropping up in my facebook feed this week as refugees from the California fires resurface to find their homes reduced to ashes. One gofundme in particular stood out. Created by the brother of a young couple in their thirties, it featured a picture of More

Deval Patrick declares victory in the MA gubernatorial race, 2006. Drawing by Deniz Dutton, age 5 For Democrats, the 2020 primary season could come right out of their 2008 playbook, with a black man contesting a white woman for nomination to the highest office in the land. It’s unlikely that the name Deval Patrick does More

It isn’t often the UN Security Council votes unanimously to remove sanctions against a country, but this past Wednesday, November 14 they did just that by saying goodbye to nine years of UN just punishment against the small, socialist, east African country of Eritrea. It was Christmas Eve, 2009 when the USA forced through UN More

A new Democratic majority will take charge in the U.S. House of Representatives in January, thanks to a remarkable rebound in public participation in U.S. elections.  Based on early data, it appears that over 49% of eligible voters showed up at the polls this year, compared to a 70-year low of 36.4% in the last More

“[W]e may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” US president Donald Trump told the nation on November 20, but “[t]he United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region.” Many find More

Remarkable changes are taking place on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas are actually starting to demilitarize the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Just in the last couple weeks, they have taken down 22 guard posts, demined the Joint Security Area, and established a no-fly-zone about the peninsula’s dividing line. They’ve pulled back from confrontation along their More

There was a huge turnout in the 2018 election, with the number of voters up by almost 30 percent from the last mid-term in 2014. Both parties managed to effectively motivate their base and get them out to vote. While the outcome was not the decisive victory that the Democrats had hoped for, it did More

It was recently revealed how British universities are imitating the Premier League football in procuring star names in academia to boost their REF (Research Excellence Framework) rankings. First used in 2014 to assess the academic period of 2008 to 2013, the REF was to provide accountability for public investment in research as well as to establish More

The Continuing Dilemma from the Clinton / Obama Years and Why Liberalism Does Not Have a Home in Either Party Despite the most blatant violations of civil liberties in American history by a Republican Southern evangelical president fighting a never-ending crusade against “evil” itself, the three leading Democratic candidates for the 2008 presidential election, Hillary More

The parents on the global stage of power are bickering and now, such entertainingly distracting forums as APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum) are left without a unifying message.  This should hardly matter, but the absence of a final communiqué of agreement is being treated in some circles as the preliminary perturbations to conflict between More

Are the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid, London, Sharm el-Sheikh, Amman, Islamabad, Djakarta, Sanaa, Boston, Ottawa, Peshawar, Paris, Benghazi, Copenhagen, Tunis, Chattanooga, Ohio, Orlando, Nice, Berlin, Manchester, Barcelona.. not to mention the terrorist Palestinian attacks in Tel Aviv and the numerous terrorist bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq, committed by Muslims, young delinquents, thugs, petty More