Music: Arve Henriksen — ‘Ascent’
Dark money is pushing for a no-deal Brexit. Who is behind it?
George Monbiot writes: Modern governments respond to only two varieties of emergency: those whose solution is bombs and bullets, and those whose solution is bailouts for the banks. But what if they decided to take other threats as seriously? This week’s revelations of a catastrophic collapse in insect populations, jeopardising all terrestrial life, would prompt the equivalent of an emergency meeting of the UN security council. The escalating disasters of climate breakdown and soil loss would trigger spending at least…
Omar fires back at Trump, noting he has ‘trafficked in hate’ his entire life
"They don't look like Indians to me." Here's a 1993 clip of our racially sensitive president at a Native American affairs committee. https://t.co/pm1J3Hpy6F — Justin Kanew (@Kanew) February 10, 2019 The Washington Post reports: Rep. Ilhan Omar rejected President Trump’s call for her resignation by accusing him of having “trafficked in hate your whole life” while she privately has tried to make amends with her Jewish colleagues for her anti-Semitic comments. The Minnesota Democrat, who fired back at Trump on…
House votes to halt aid for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen
The New York Times reports: The House voted on Wednesday to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, a defiant and rare move to curtail presidential war powers that underscored anger with President Trump’s unflagging support for Saudi Arabia even after the killing of a Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi. The 248-177 vote, condemning a nearly four-year conflict in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians and inflicted a devastating famine, will pressure the Republican-controlled Senate to…
Trump confidant Thomas Barrack apologizes for being correctly understood as an apologist for murder
The Washington Post reports: Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a billionaire real estate investor who is one of President Trump’s closest confidants, apologized Wednesday after defending Saudi Arabia in the wake of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing and saying the United States has committed “equal or worse” atrocities. Barrack’s remarks on Khashoggi, made Tuesday at a summit in Abu Dhabi organized by the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute think tank, were first reported by Dubai’s Gulf News. “Whatever happened in Saudi Arabia, the…
Toxic neighbors: Taking action to solve the climate crisis
What science can tell us about how other creatures experience the world
Ross Andersen writes: Amid the human crush of Old Delhi, on the edge of a medieval bazaar, a red structure with cages on its roof rises three stories above the labyrinth of neon-lit stalls and narrow alleyways, its top floor emblazoned with two words: birds hospital. On a hot day last spring, I removed my shoes at the hospital’s entrance and walked up to the second-floor lobby, where a clerk in his late 20s was processing patients. An older woman…
How we discovered that Europeans used cattle 8,000 years ago
By Jane Gaastra, Haskel Greenfield & Marc Vander Linden The use of animals for their renewable products greatly increased human capabilities in prehistory. Secondary products – or anything that can be gleaned from a domestic animal repeatedly over its lifetime – expanded the capabilities of ancient human societies. They helped to provide enough food and labour surplus to make possible the first ancient civilisations. Apart from their meat, bones and skin, animals gave ancient people vital goods such as their…
Music: Arve Henriksen — ‘Opening Image’
The rise and fall of Britain’s political class
Jonathan Powell writes: The British political system used to be seen as one of the wonders of the world. A hundred years ago last month, Max Weber, the great German sociologist, gave a seminal lecture on “The Profession and Vocation of Politics” in Munich. Speaking in the chaotic and revolutionary aftermath of the First World War, he expressed his admiration for the British system and the way its politicians and officials managed to maintain prosperity and stability while allowing a…
A united Ireland now looks like an increasing possibility
Caelainn Hogan writes: When we were teenagers, a dyslexic friend of mine, who was exempt from studying Irish in school, started using the slogan “tiocfaidh ár lá”. When I asked him what it meant, he said “Up the IRA.” To this day he’s still slagged off for it, though he wasn’t exactly wrong. The meaning of those four syllables, “our day will come,” is synonymous with dissident Republicanism, but also speaks to the innate hope among many for a united…
The sick double standard in the Ilhan Omar controversy
Peter Beinart writes: [I]f we’re going to demand that politicians apologize for any hint of association with bigotry, let’s not stop with Ilhan Omar. Let’s hold her critics to the same standard. Establishing two legal systems in the same territory—one for Jews and one for Palestinians, as Israel does in the West Bank—is bigotry. Guaranteeing Jews in the West Bank citizenship, due process, free movement and the right to vote for the government that controls their lives while denying those…
Trump and the Republican leadership have Jewish blood on their hands
Joshua Leifer writes: Even before the most recent controversy, Republican politicians relentlessly vilified Representatives [Ilhan] Omar and [Rashida] Tlaib, the first Muslim-American congresswomen, conflating their support for BDS with anti-Semitism. Norm Coleman, a paid lobbyist for Saudi Arabia and chairman of the Republican Jewish coalition, admitted to the New York Times that the purpose of the anti-BDS bill recently passed in the Senate, which the ACLU warns may very well be unconstitutional, was to divide the Democrats and send the…
Apple and Google accused of helping Saudis ‘enforce gender apartheid’
Insider reports: Apple and Google have been accused of helping to “enforce gender apartheid” in Saudi Arabia, by offering a sinister app which allows men to track women and stop them leaving the country. Both Google Play and iTunes host Absher, a government web service which allows men to specify when and how women can cross Saudi borders, and to get close to real-time SMS updates when they travel. Absher also has benign functions — like paying parking fines —…
The much-heralded end of the Mueller investigation
Mikhaila Fogel and Benjamin Wittes write: Everyone is saying it: The Mueller investigation is winding down. The acting attorney general declared the investigation “close to completion” during a press conference. His wife, Marci Whitaker, has also insisted that the special counsel’s investigation is “wrapping up.” President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, William Barr, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that, given his public actions, Mueller is “well along” in his investigation. The press is buying it. NBC says we…
Swiss mystery company is at the heart of a Mueller puzzle
The Daily Beast reports: A little-known company located in Switzerland has come under scrutiny by the Special Counsel’s Office for its connection to Psy Group, the firm that created a social-media manipulation plan to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election. That’s according to three sources with knowledge of the office’s questioning, and documents obtained by The Daily Beast. Former employees of Psy Group said the FBI interviewed them in 2017 and asked detailed questions about the firm’s business and…