Iranians do want regime change — but not the kind Washington hawks are pushing

Iranians do want regime change — but not the kind Washington hawks are pushing

Comments 0 Comment

Vali Nasr writes: Talk of “regime change” is once again in the air, and this time Iran is in the gun sights. President Trump — who withdrew from the nuclear deal Iran had signed with the United States, Europe, Russia and China — still insists that his goal is diplomacy. Only “maximum pressure” will bring Iran back to the negotiating table, the White House says: That’s the rationale for punishing economic sanctions that are aimed at reducing Iran’s exports to…

Read More Read More

Venezuela’s collapse is the worst outside of war in decades, economists say

Venezuela’s collapse is the worst outside of war in decades, economists say

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: Zimbabwe’s collapse under Robert Mugabe. The fall of the Soviet Union. Cuba’s disastrous unraveling in the 1990s. The crumbling of Venezuela’s economy has now outpaced them all. Venezuela’s fall is the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years, economists say. “It’s really hard to think of a human tragedy of this scale outside civil war,” said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University and former chief economist at the…

Read More Read More

Matt Taibbi’s ‘liberal embrace of war’ screed cites zero liberals embracing war

Matt Taibbi’s ‘liberal embrace of war’ screed cites zero liberals embracing war

Comments 0 Comment

Jonathan Chait writes: Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has taken the brave and lonely stance that William Barr was wise and correct in his presentation of the Mueller report and decision not to charge the president with obstruction. (“It was Mueller, not Barr, who concluded there was no underlying crime,” concluded Taibbi, “so if the next stage of this madness is haggling over an obstruction charge, that would likely entail calling for a prosecution of Trump for obstructing an investigation into…

Read More Read More

Judge orders public release of what Michael Flynn said in call to Russian ambassador

Judge orders public release of what Michael Flynn said in call to Russian ambassador

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: A federal judge on Thursday ordered that prosecutors make public a transcript of a phone call that former national security adviser Michael Flynn tried hard to hide with a lie: his conversation with a Russian ambassador in late 2016. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington ordered the government also to provide a public transcript of a November 2017 voice mail involving Flynn. In that sensitive call, President Trump’s attorney left a message for Flynn’s…

Read More Read More

Air pollution is deadlier than tobacco smoking

Air pollution is deadlier than tobacco smoking

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: Air pollution may be damaging every organ and virtually every cell in the human body, according to a comprehensive new global review. The research shows head-to-toe harm, from heart and lung disease to diabetes and dementia, and from liver problems and bladder cancer to brittle bones and damaged skin. Fertility, foetuses and children are also affected by toxic air, the review found. The systemic damage is the result of pollutants causing inflammation that then floods through the…

Read More Read More

‘Wood wide web’ — the underground network of microbes that connects trees — mapped for first time

‘Wood wide web’ — the underground network of microbes that connects trees — mapped for first time

Comments 0 Comment

Science reports: Trees, from the mighty redwoods to slender dogwoods, would be nothing without their microbial sidekicks. Millions of species of fungi and bacteria swap nutrients between soil and the roots of trees, forming a vast, interconnected web of organisms throughout the woods. Now, for the first time, scientists have mapped this “wood wide web” on a global scale, using a database of more than 28,000 tree species living in more than 70 countries. “I haven’t seen anybody do anything…

Read More Read More

Trump tells Pentagon chief he does not want war with Iran

Trump tells Pentagon chief he does not want war with Iran

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: President Trump has told his acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, that he does not want to go to war with Iran, according to several administration officials, in a message to his hawkish aides that an intensifying American pressure campaign against the clerical-led government in Tehran must not escalate into open conflict. Mr. Trump’s statement, during a Wednesday morning meeting in the Situation Room, came during a briefing on the rising tensions with Iran. American intelligence…

Read More Read More

Trump’s social media bias reporting project is a data collection tool in disguise

Trump’s social media bias reporting project is a data collection tool in disguise

Comments 0 Comment

Casey Newton writes: Three years ago this month, Mark Zuckerberg gathered together a group of influential conservatives to defend Facebook against allegations of political bias. The company had found itself under pressure after Gizmodo reported that the editors who then worked for Facebook “routinely suppressed conservative news” from its since-abandoned Trending Topics module. It hoped that a roundtable discussion with Glenn Beck, Fox News host Dana Perino, and others would quell the growing panic that Silicon Valley liberals were stifling…

Read More Read More

Trump administration balks at global pact to crack down on online extremism

Trump administration balks at global pact to crack down on online extremism

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it would not sign an international accord intended to pressure the largest internet platforms to eradicate violent and extremist content, highlighting a broader divide between the United States and other countries over government’s role in determining what content is acceptable online. Citing free speech protections, the administration said in a statement that “the United States is not currently in a position to join the endorsement.” It added that…

Read More Read More

Corruption: Trump pardons billionaire fraudster who wrote glowing book about him

Corruption: Trump pardons billionaire fraudster who wrote glowing book about him

Comments 0 Comment

Vox reports: On Wednesday, President Donald Trump followed through on a campaign promise he made to Conrad Black, a former media mogul and business partner, by pardoning him for fraud and obstruction of justice convictions. In late 2015, Black — who was convicted in 2007 and spent more than three years in prison before being released in 2012 — wrote a piece for National Review headlined “Trump Is the Good Guy.” “It is time to look more seriously at the…

Read More Read More

Facebook busts Israel-based campaign to disrupt elections

Facebook busts Israel-based campaign to disrupt elections

Comments 0 Comment

The Associated Press reports: Facebook said Thursday it banned an Israeli company that ran an influence campaign aimed at disrupting elections in various countries and has canceled dozens of accounts engaged in spreading disinformation. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, told reporters that the tech giant had purged 65 Israeli accounts, 161 pages, dozens of groups and four Instagram accounts. Although Facebook said the individuals behind the network attempted to conceal their identities, it discovered that many were linked…

Read More Read More

If reason exists without deliberation, it cannot be uniquely human

If reason exists without deliberation, it cannot be uniquely human

Comments 0 Comment

By Justin E H Smith Philosophers and cognitive scientists today generally comprehend the domain of reason as a certain power of making inferences, confined to the thoughts and actions of human beings alone. Like echolocation in bats or photosynthesis in plants, reason is an evolved power, but unlike these, the prevailing theory goes, it emerged exactly once in the history of evolution (porpoises and shrews also echolocate, cyanobacteria photosynthesise). Reason is exceedingly rare, a hapax legomenon of nature, and yet this…

Read More Read More

‘Something is changing,’ says Midwest mayor who doesn’t want to say ‘climate change’

‘Something is changing,’ says Midwest mayor who doesn’t want to say ‘climate change’

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: The Mississippi River, which gushed into downtown Davenport at record levels two weeks ago, has finally retreated toward its banks. Left behind: A truck-size hole in the temporary flood barrier, dead fish on mud-caked Pershing Avenue, and an urgent conversation about how to shield the city from the next flood. As Mayor Frank Klipsch of Davenport starts that conversation — a wide-ranging discussion of upstream levee heights, riverfront development and whether the city should install…

Read More Read More

Trump’s interior secretary: ‘I haven’t lost any sleep over’ record CO2 levels

Trump’s interior secretary: ‘I haven’t lost any sleep over’ record CO2 levels

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s interior secretary hasn’t “lost sleep over”, the record-breaking levels of pollution heating the planet, he told US lawmakers in an oversight hearing. The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii observed carbon dioxide levels of 415 parts per million in the atmosphere on Friday – the highest ever documented. Asked to rank his concern on a scale of 1 to 10, by the Pennsylvania Democratic congressman Matt Cartwright, David Bernhardt pointed to US climate progress. “I believe…

Read More Read More