IPCC’s starkest message yet: Radical steps needed to avert climate disaster

IPCC’s starkest message yet: Radical steps needed to avert climate disaster

Nature reports: Humanity probably isn’t going to prevent Earth from at least temporarily warming 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels — but aggressive action to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and extract carbon from the atmosphere could limit the increase and bring temperatures back down, according to the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report makes it clear, however, that the window is rapidly closing, and with it the opportunity to prevent the worst impacts of…

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U.S. blocks Russian debt payments and unveils new sanctions in bid to raise pressure on Moscow

U.S. blocks Russian debt payments and unveils new sanctions in bid to raise pressure on Moscow

Reuters reports: The United States stopped the Russian government on Monday from paying holders of its sovereign debt more than $600 million from reserves held at American banks, in a move meant to ratchet up pressure on Moscow and eat into its holdings of US dollars. Under sanctions put in place after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, foreign currency reserves held by the Russian central bank at US financial institutions were frozen. But the Treasury Department had been allowing…

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As Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts food production, experts question expanding use of cropland for biofuels

As Russia’s war on Ukraine disrupts food production, experts question expanding use of cropland for biofuels

Inside Climate News reports: In the six weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict has not only sent energy prices soaring, but has disrupted food production, pushing costs upward and stoking fears of global food shortages. The United Nations has warned of surging food insecurity in countries that depend on wheat from Ukraine, a critical and major breadbasket. Many of them were already teetering on the edge of hunger before the crisis. As these effects of the conflict ripple across…

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How a Russian propagandist justifies genocide in Ukraine

How a Russian propagandist justifies genocide in Ukraine

Mariia Kravchenko has posted a translation of an article by a Russian propagandist, originally published by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti: In this article, the author is describing ways how Russians want to wipe out Ukraine in the same way the Soviet regime did it. ⠀ It’s important to spread this article. The Russian war should be stopped now. It was supposed to be stopped 8 years ago when it only began. 71% of Russians feel proud about…

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Russia’s biggest rappers are going hard against Putin’s war on Ukraine

Russia’s biggest rappers are going hard against Putin’s war on Ukraine

Rolling Stone reports: A blazing-yellow Bentley. Face tattoos. Booming bass lines in a parking garage. The burnt-out husk of a bullet-riddled car. As the rapper, who would look comfortably at home on a Tekashi 69 set, spits bars about Cartier and riches from behind the wheel, a woman and her son are held at gunpoint. Suddenly, blood spatters the car’s glossy yellow contour as the victims are dispatched offscreen. This might look like just another hip-hop video. In fact, the…

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Elon Musk’s Twitter investment might be bad news for free speech

Elon Musk’s Twitter investment might be bad news for free speech

Timothy L. O’Brien writes: Elon Musk just bought a $3 billion stake in Twitter Inc., because when you’re the world’s richest human you can toss billions around like poker chips. This may be just another piece of performance art from Musk, who has alternately endorsed and pooh-poohed Bitcoin to great effect. He’s also taken to Twitter to hype altcoins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, while simultaneously warning followers: “Don’t bet the farm on crypto!” “True value is building products…

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Utopian thinking prompts us to get real about society’s needs

Utopian thinking prompts us to get real about society’s needs

William Paris writes: All politics seems to operate under the demand to be realistic. There is no quicker end to a political conversation than to describe someone’s ideas as ‘utopian’. The power of this pejorative draws upon seemingly obvious facts concerning human nature, empirical realities and social constraints. Whether we are considering demands to restructure our economic systems, how nations police citizenship claims and their borders, or our relationship to the environment, when these positions are called ‘utopian’, the assumption…

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Russian invaders are now treating the whole Ukrainian population as combatants, as dirt to be cleansed

Russian invaders are now treating the whole Ukrainian population as combatants, as dirt to be cleansed

Franklin Foer writes: On the morning of March 4, a teacher was sheltering in a basement in Bucha, an old railroad stop northwest of Kyiv that over the centuries had grown into a verdant suburb. The town lay along the Russian military’s intended path of conquest, leading into the Ukrainian capital. And while the invaders struggled to realize their overarching plan, they gained a toehold in Bucha. At 7 a.m., the teacher, huddled alone with her two dogs, heard a…

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History stokes Putin’s imperial dream of a ‘Greater Russia’

History stokes Putin’s imperial dream of a ‘Greater Russia’

Samuel McIlhagga writes: The Russian invasion of Ukraine has become an exemplary instance of the use of historical ideas to justify invasion. Whereas U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq was couched in abstract rhetoric about “the power and appeal of human liberty,” Putin has resorted to esoteric historical arguments to explain his choice to invade. Putin, in his information and propaganda war, has repeatedly used certain imperial tropes that make historical claims about how Russia should be…

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Women and girls recount huge scale of sexual violence inflicted by Russian soldiers in Ukraine

Women and girls recount huge scale of sexual violence inflicted by Russian soldiers in Ukraine

The Guardian reports: Women across Ukraine are grappling with the threat of rape as a weapon of war as growing evidence of sexual violence emerges from areas retaken from retreating Russian forces. The world was horrified on Sunday by a picture taken by the photographer Mikhail Palinchak on a highway 20km outside the capital, Kyiv, in which the bodies of one man and three women were piled under a blanket. The women were naked and their bodies had been partially…

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Hungary’s election, a dismal day for democracy

Hungary’s election, a dismal day for democracy

In an editorial, The Guardian says: What now for the European Union’s most challenged and compromised democracy? The scale of Viktor Orbán’s fourth consecutive election victory in Hungary was crushing, comprehensive and unexpected. Faced for the first time with a united opposition alliance that put internal differences aside, predictions of a close race – or at least a competitive one – were confounded. On a high turnout, Mr Orbán’s Fidesz party actually won a greater number of seats than it…

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Is Trump criminal referral by January 6 panel actually necessary?

Is Trump criminal referral by January 6 panel actually necessary?

Politico reports: Should the Jan. 6 committee ask the Justice Department to pursue a criminal case against Donald Trump? It’s a question with political heft but no practical effect — and some panel members are increasingly skeptical. After all, as multiple lawmakers on the select committee noted in recent interviews, the Justice Department is aware of the volume of evidence pointing to violations of the law by Trump. That evidence got underscored emphatically last week, when a federal judge ruled…

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The post-liberal intellectuals who are reshaping conservatism

The post-liberal intellectuals who are reshaping conservatism

Gabby Birenbaum and Phillip Longman write: On February 22, as tensions that would soon spill into war mounted on the Ukrainian border, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson opened his show—the most popular cable news program in the country—with a searing monologue ripping into the U.S. foreign policy establishment. At the center of it was a sinister question: Why should Americans hate Vladimir Putin? In a series of rhetorical questions, Carlson asked: Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened…

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Truth Social loses it ‘brains’ and Trump loses interest

Truth Social loses it ‘brains’ and Trump loses interest

Reuters reports: The two Southern tech entrepreneurs had the two qualities that Donald Trump’s Truth Social startup needed: tech-industry expertise and a politically conservative worldview aligned with the former president, a rare combination in the liberal-leaning industry centered in San Francisco. Josh Adams and Billy Boozer – the company’s chiefs of technology and product development – joined the venture last year and quickly became central players in its bid to build a social-media empire, backed by Trump’s powerful brand, to…

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Evidence is building that insects, octopus and other invertebrates feel emotions

Evidence is building that insects, octopus and other invertebrates feel emotions

ABC News (AU) reports: Up until the mid-1980s, human babies didn’t feel pain. Of course that’s not actually true, but due to research conducted in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was an attitude that still lingered among a small minority of scientists and medical professionals. So much so that some infant surgery was still conducted without, or with very little, anaesthesia in the US into the ’80s. Today, the question of physical and emotional experience has moved beyond…

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