Music: Tom Misch — ‘Wander With Me’ ft. Carmody
Only rebellion will prevent an ecological apocalypse
George Monbiot writes: By throwing up our hands about the calamities that could one day afflict us, we disguise and distance them, converting concrete choices into indecipherable dread. We might relieve ourselves of moral agency by claiming that it’s already too late to act, but in doing so we condemn others to destitution or death. Catastrophe afflicts people now and, unlike those in the rich world who can still afford to wallow in despair, they are forced to respond in…
Ilhan Omar’s deeply American message
Peter Beinart writes: I watched Ilhan Omar’s recent address to the Council of American Islamic Relations for the same reason most people did: to see whether she had—as Donald Trump claimed—minimized the 9/11 terrorist attacks. What I found was unexpected. In offering a vision for how to live as an American Muslim, her speech to CAIR beautifully evoked what I treasure about being an American Jew. Omar’s core argument was simple: We Muslims are not guests here. We are as…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quits Facebook, calls social media a ‘public health risk’
The Washington Post reports: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose mastery of social media has helped drive the national conversation and shed light on the inner workings of congressional power, has given up on the most popular social network in the world. In an interview Sunday with the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery,” the New York Democrat said she stopped using her Facebook account and was scaling back on all social media, which she described as a “public health risk” because it can…
The Good Friday agreement is under threat – but it is key to resolving Brexit
Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern write: For some the defining image, and in some ways crowning moment of the Northern Ireland peace process is that of Ian Paisley, the loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader laughing and smiling alongside former IRA leader Martin McGuiness after they became colleagues. Even we, back in 1998, as we signed the agreement, with Paisley baying “treachery and treason” at the gates, could not have dared imagine that a decade later Paisley would be first…
William Barr’s history of misleading Congress
Ryan Goodman writes: On Friday the thirteenth October 1989, by happenstance the same day as the “Black Friday” market crash, news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It is highly uncommon for any OLC memo to make headlines. This one did because it was issued in “unusual secrecy” and concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the…
Interior Dept. opens ethics investigation of its new chief, David Bernhardt
The New York Times reports: The Interior Department’s internal watchdog has opened an investigation into ethics complaints against the agency’s newly installed secretary, David Bernhardt. Mr. Bernhardt, a former lobbyist for the oil and agribusiness industries, was confirmed by the Senate last week to head the agency, which oversees the nation’s 500 million acres of public land and vast coastal waters. He has played a central role in writing policies designed to advance President Trump’s policy of “energy dominance” and…
The interplay that brings together order and disorder
Alan Lightman writes: Planets, stars, life, even the direction of time all depend on disorder. And we human beings as well. Especially if, along with disorder, we group together such concepts as randomness, novelty, spontaneity, free will and unpredictability. We might put all of these ideas in the same psychic basket. Within the oppositional category of order, we can gather together notions such as systems, law, reason, rationality, pattern, predictability. While the different clusters of concepts are not mirror images…
Music: Tom Misch & Carmody — ‘Easy Love’
Central American farmers head to the U.S., fleeing climate change
The New York Times reports: The farmer stood in his patch of forlorn coffee plants, their leaves sick and wilted, the next harvest in doubt. Last year, two of his brothers and a sister, desperate to find a better way to survive, abandoned their small coffee farms in this mountainous part of Honduras and migrated north, eventually sneaking into the United States. Then in February, the farmer’s 16-year-old son also headed north, ignoring the family’s pleas to stay. The challenges…
New concerns Trump administration may be laying legal groundwork for military action against Iran
ABC News reports: When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the Trump administration would designate a branch of Iran’s military as a foreign terrorist organization Monday, he said, “The Trump administration is simply recognizing a basic reality.” But critics say they are concerned that it may also be part of an effort to bend reality enough to provide legal justification for armed conflict with Iran. “I am troubled that the administration can’t unequivocally say that you haven’t been given power….
Seattle isn’t afraid of immigrants, Mr. Trump
Jenny A. Durkan, Mayor of Seattle, writes: Here’s a message to President Trump: Seattle is not afraid of immigrants and refugees. In fact, we have always welcomed people who have faced tremendous hardships around the world. Immigrants and refugees are part of Seattle’s heritage, and they will continue to make us the city of the future. What does scare us? A president and federal government that would seek to weaponize a law enforcement agency to punish perceived political enemies. A…
Pete Buttigieg: The folksy mayor who speaks seven languages
Adam Wren writes: The first question out of everyone’s mouth, of course, was about his experience. Buttigieg came prepared. “Look, I’ve got more experience in government than the president of the United States,” he said in a Jan. 31 interview on CBS This Morning. “I’ve got more years of executive experience than the vice president. And I have more military experience than anybody behind that desk since George H.W. Bush. It’s not a conventional background, but I don’t think it’s…
China’s application of facial recognition technology may begin a new era of automated racism
The New York Times reports: The Chinese government has drawn wide international condemnation for its harsh crackdown on ethnic Muslims in its western region, including holding as many as a million of them in detention camps. Now, documents and interviews show that the authorities are also using a vast, secret system of advanced facial recognition technology to track and control the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority. It is the first known example of a government intentionally using artificial intelligence for…
Non-modern humans were more complex — and artistic — than we thought
Marc Kissel writes: Not surprisingly, claims of symbolic artifacts made by non-modern humans have been met with intense scrutiny. Part of this is due to the fragmentary nature of the early archaeological record, but there is also a deeply held assumption that only Homo sapiens could produce such artifacts. Rather than fetishizing the ability to make symbols, we should instead concentrate on how our ancestors found novel and innovate ways to create and share meaning. My colleague, Agustín Fuentes, and…
Music: Hocus Pocus — ‘Touriste’ ft. Elodie Rama & Tribeca