Musings

Bad Planet by John Davis

Australia is an island continent composed of a vast treeless desert edged with a fringe of heavily urbanized temperate bush where the fierce heat of the land is moderated by onshore ocean breezes from the Pacific to the East and the Indian Ocean to the West. Now, areas of this temperate fringe are aflame as hot desert winds fan bush fires amidst a record series of early-summer heat waves. A world audience watches in horror as news reaches them framed in terms of houses destroyed, lives lost, koalas scorched and kookaburras that no longer sing in the oppressive heat. Greta tweets, “Not even catastrophes like these seem to bring any political action. How is this possible?”

Orchestrating Our Extinction

Listen. Just listen.....

Deep Division: Comparing Today and the 1960s by Donne Levy

America is a deeply divided nation. That fact may be the only thing that Americans of all racial, ethnic, and political groups can agree about. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in late 2017 indicated that 70 percent of the American people think the country is “as divided as during the Vietnam War.”

This division manifests itself in political ways exemplified by the partisan impeachment proceedings and gridlock. The Democratic-led House of Representatives passed 298 bills in 2019, yet the Republican-led Senate refused to consider hardly any of that legislation.

 

The country is also divided about race. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll taken in January 2020 indicates that 80% of African-Americans believe a white racist inhabits the White House and 70% believe their local police are racist. The FBI, having the responsibility to gather the statistics from state and local law enforcement agencies, reports that violent hate crimes have hit a 16-year high. Only once before has there been a greater spike in hate crimes and that was immediately following Sept. 11, 2001. President Trump’s harsh rhetoric further alienates people of color while satisfying his white right-wing base.

Science Will Not Stop Capitalism's War Against Nature by James Rozoff

Source: https://jamesrozoffsolutionist.blogspot.com

The scientific study of reality is one of detached observation. And that is a beautiful thing, it really is. The problem, however, is that the corporate capitalist approach to defining reality is influenced by self-interest and unafraid of narrative manipulation. It’s approach to facts is “How can they be spun?”
The rational, detached mind will never be able to defend nature from corporate capitalism. In fact, its track record has been to be a servant to corporate capitalism in its destruction of our environment.
In the abstract, science has a much greater love for nature than capital. But in the real world, science has served corporate interests at every turn. The capitalists who desire to turn trees into profit have terrifyingly sophisticated tools—created by cutting edge scientific technology—at their disposal. Corporations that seek oil have at their call all the geologists they require. Nuclear power and the threat it poses to our planet makes billions for the capitalists though it required the brightest scientific brains to bring it about.

Trump Has Laid the Groundwork for “Full-On Authoritarian Rule”

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat

                                                                 

 LISTEN: Ruth Ben-Ghiat Explains What Comes Next in Donald Trump's Authoritarian Assault on Democracy


Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a historian at New York University who specializes in authoritarianism, aesthetics, cultural politics, and Italian history. She is the author of numerous books including an upcoming project on authoritarianism and political strongmen.

 In this episode of the highly illuminatng podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Ben-Ghiat explains how Donald Trump is continuing to wear down America’s democratic institutions – and the public – to a point where authoritarian rule will be accepted as the new normal. Ben-Ghiat also warns how Trump leads a personality cult, which in keeping with how authoritarian regimes have historically taken power, is consuming the American government.

And Professor Ben-Ghiat predicts that Donald Trump is still waiting for the moment when he can declare a national emergency and fully take power by suspending the Constitution and the rule of law.

Tomatoes and Greed – The Exodus of Ghana's Farmers

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What do tomatoes have to do with mass migration? Tomatoes are a poker chip in global trade policies. Subsidized products from the EU, China and elsewhere are sold at dumping prices, destroying markets and livelihoods in Africa in the process.

Every two seconds, a person is forced to flee their home. Today, more than 70 million people have been displaced worldwide. The sad & tragic documentary sheds light on the causes of this crisis and traces how wealthy industrialized countries are contributing to the exodus from the Global South.

Trump's Real Base: The Billionaire Class by David Masciotra

Casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson, Trump’s patron-in-chief

Arthur Miller warned that "millions of Americans are aching for Ayatollah." Not even a man of the late playwright's brilliance could have predicted that the leader who commands cultlike devotion from the increasingly rabid and dangerous mass of citizens who reject rationality — to say nothing of democracy — would turn out to be a tabloid fixture with a golden penthouse straight out of Liberace's fantasies.

For reasons both understandable and more insidious, the mainstream media has obsessed over the "Trump base," those being the voters who, as the president himself once boasted, would support him even if he "shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue." Endless profiles of crusty Caucasians fill newspaper pages, all with identical or interchangeable details: the unemployed factory worker stares out the window while smoking a cigarette, lamenting the failures of the system and the repression of political correctness, but celebrating the tell-it-like-it-is, tough-guy virtues of his hero, the supposedly successful businessman who lies with every utterance, and who has enjoyed more privilege and more financial support from his family than the British royals.

The Trump cult proves that an alarmingly large amount of the electorate is unfit for participation in democratic society, but they are not the real problem. During a recent conversation I had with Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader and former presidential candidate said this: "For all of this talk about the 'Trump base,' he actually has two bases. The first base is the little-red-hat boys. The little-red-hat boys get all the attention, because they are loud, and it is easier to tell that story, especially for big media companies. The second base is corporate America. That base is much more powerful."

My Life Without Sugar by Olivia Judson

Three years ago, I stopped eating sugar. My plan was to have a sugar-free month, just to see if it made a difference. I had done similar experiments before – a month without caffeine, or alcohol, or reading news online. Aside from chocolate, I wasn’t a big eater of sugar, I thought, so I didn’t expect to notice any change. But I did.