Worldwide catastrophe as shorebirds face extinction

Worldwide catastrophe as shorebirds face extinction

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  John W. Fitzpatrick and Nathan R. Senner write: A worldwide catastrophe is underway among an extraordinary group of birds — the marathon migrants we know as shorebirds. Numbers of some species are falling so quickly that many biologists fear an imminent planet-wide wave of extinctions. These declines represent the No. 1 conservation crisis facing birds in the world today. Climate change, coastal development, the destruction of wetlands and hunting are all culprits. And because these birds depend for their…

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Should scientists advocate on the issue of climate change?

Should scientists advocate on the issue of climate change?

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Ingfei Chen writes: I was recently chatting with a friend who specializes in science education when we touched upon a conundrum: Researchers who study climate change grasp the dire need to cut planet-warming carbon emissions that come from burning fossil fuels, yet many of them shrink from voicing their views at public events or to the press. The stock-in-trade of scientists is their objectivity, my friend explained. The worry is that advocating for an agenda may diminish their credibility, hurt…

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EU agrees total ban on bee-harming pesticides

EU agrees total ban on bee-harming pesticides

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The Guardian reports: The European Union will ban the world’s most widely used insecticides from all fields due to the serious danger they pose to bees. The ban on neonicotinoids, approved by member nations on Friday, is expected to come into force by the end of 2018 and will mean they can only be used in closed greenhouses. Bees and other insects are vital for global food production as they pollinate three-quarters of all crops. The plummeting numbers of pollinators…

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Kim says he’ll give up nuclear weapons if U.S. promises not to invade

Kim says he’ll give up nuclear weapons if U.S. promises not to invade

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The New York Times reports: North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, told President Moon Jae-in of South Korea when they met that he would abandon his nuclear weapons if the United States would agree to formally end the Korean War and promise that it would not invade his country, a South Korean government spokesman said Sunday. In a faith-building gesture ahead of a summit meeting with President Trump, Mr. Kim also said he would invite experts and journalists from South Korea…

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Israeli soldiers still smashing the bones of Palestinians

Israeli soldiers still smashing the bones of Palestinians

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The Washington Post reports: Mohammad al-Ajouri is a lanky teenager who loves to run, a medal-winning track star with ambitions to compete abroad. But last month, while participating in a protest along Gaza’s border, he was struck by a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. It penetrated his calf, shattering his leg before exiting the shin. Doctors tried to save the limb, but an infection soon spread. The leg had to be amputated. During the past month of demonstrations along…

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New law in China mandates ‘all of society’ honor its heroes and martyrs

New law in China mandates ‘all of society’ honor its heroes and martyrs

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Eight decades after his grandfather was killed during the Chinese civil war, Fang Huaqing is fighting to defend his legacy as a Communist hero. Mr. Fang has filed legal complaints against online critics of his ancestor’s record over the past year. His campaign got a boost Friday, when China’s legislature passed a law that requires “all of society” to “honor, study and defend” Communist Party-approved heroes and martyrs. The law, which takes effect Tuesday, subjects…

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A Korean peace process is underway – but it still depends on the U.S. and China

A Korean peace process is underway – but it still depends on the U.S. and China

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By Ed Griffith, University of Central Lancashire The meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in is certainly one of the most dramatic and momentous events in the recent history of East Asia. Beyond the symbolism of cross-border handshakes and tree planting (not to mention a controversially decorated mango mousse that briefly ticked off Japan), the joint declaration that a peace treaty will be agreed this year and that the two countries share a goal of denuclearisation…

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In a feel-good Korea summit, Kim lays the groundwork for meeting with Trump

In a feel-good Korea summit, Kim lays the groundwork for meeting with Trump

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The Washington Post reports: North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has laid the foundations for a meeting with President Trump as soon as next month, signaling a willingness to discuss denuclearization and trying to dispel the idea that he’s an unreliable “Little Rocket Man.” In an astonishing turn of events, a beaming Kim on Friday stepped across the border into South Korea for a day of talks that began and ended with him holding hands with the president of the South,…

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Say goodbye to the information age — it’s all about reputation now

Say goodbye to the information age — it’s all about reputation now

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By Gloria Origgi, Aeon There is an underappreciated paradox of knowledge that plays a pivotal role in our advanced hyper-connected liberal democracies: the greater the amount of information that circulates, the more we rely on so-called reputational devices to evaluate it. What makes this paradoxical is that the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us more cognitively autonomous. Rather, it renders us more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations…

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American Jews have abandoned Gaza — and the truth

American Jews have abandoned Gaza — and the truth

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Peter Beinart writes: “In our time,” wrote George Orwell in 1946, “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” British colonialism, the Soviet gulag and America’s dropping of an atomic bomb, he argued, “can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face.” So how do people defend the indefensible? Through “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” By obscuring the truth. So it is, more than 70 years later, with…

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The deep roots of Trump’s war on the press

The deep roots of Trump’s war on the press

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Tim Alberta writes: You couldn’t miss it. Arriving in Cleveland for the 2016 Republican National Convention, visitors found themselves staring at an enormous white billboard, slapped across the top of a tall concrete building in the city’s bustling downtown, screaming a simple directive: “DON’T BELIEVE THE LIBERAL MEDIA!” The signage—black letters against a white backdrop, save for “LIBERAL MEDIA” in bloody red—was ample around town the week of Donald Trump’s coronation in Cleveland. It was carried on top of taxicabs;…

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Two mass murders reveal how difficult—and important—it is to correctly identify terrorism

Two mass murders reveal how difficult—and important—it is to correctly identify terrorism

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J.M. Berger writes: Two mass murders took place within 48 hours this week. Both attackers were adherents of extremist ideologies. Both terrorized people. But one of these two attacks was clearly terrorism, and one was apparently not. What’s the difference? Early Sunday morning, Travis Reinking walked into a Tennessee Waffle House wearing nothing but a jacket and started shooting, killing four and wounding several more. Early reporting indicates that Reinking had a history of apparent mental illness. But Reinking also…

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Sea-level rise caused by climate change will make most atolls uninhabitable by the mid-21st century

Sea-level rise caused by climate change will make most atolls uninhabitable by the mid-21st century

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The Washington Post reports: More than a thousand low-lying tropical islands risk becoming “uninhabitable” by the middle of the century — or possibly sooner — because of rising sea levels, upending the populations of some island nations and endangering key U.S. military assets, according to new research published Wednesday. The threats to the islands are twofold. In the long term, the rising seas threaten to inundate the islands entirely. More immediately, as seas rise, the islands will more frequently deal…

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Natalie Portman and the crisis of liberal Zionism

Natalie Portman and the crisis of liberal Zionism

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Eric Levitz writes: There have always been tensions between liberal universalism and Jewish nationalism. But the rise of the Trumpist right has heightened such contradictions. To remain true to both AIPAC and progressivism, a liberal Zionist must now lament border walls in Texas but defend them in the West Bank; condemn Republicans who suggest that nonwhite babies pose a threat to American civilization as proto-Nazis and endorse Israel’s right to defend itself against the “demographic threat” that is Palestinian children;…

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Reflective and unreflective atheists

Reflective and unreflective atheists

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Patrick Freyne writes: John Gray is a self-described atheist who thinks that prominent advocates of atheism have made non-belief seem intolerant, uninspiring and dull. At the end of the first chapter of his new book, Seven Types of Atheism, he concludes that “the organised atheism of the present century is mostly a media phenomenon and best appreciated as a type of entertainment”. He laughs when I remind him of this sick burn. “I wrote the book partly as a riposte…

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