I write these words not out of despair, but as an affirmation of the most rugged hopefulness I can muster. I was trained in climate science and I know what is coming. I have studied the rise and fall of empires so I am aware that fascist dictators and resource wars are likely to arise […]
NASA has just released new aerial photographs that show, close-up, an immense, 70-mile long rift in the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica. The breach is 300 feet wide and one-third of a mile deep. As it grows, an iceberg the size of Delaware will break off. Source: http://www.ecowatch.com/nasa-antartica-larsen-c-2144755963.html?slide=LEQjkX
At what age are you too old to achieve breakthrough success in your field? That question fascinates so many people, I suspect, because almost nobody considers themselves already entirely successful. The unpublished novelist longs to be published, the published one yearns for bestsellerdom, the bestselling superstar craves the Booker prize. (Also, everyone always thinks they’re […]
If the American left is to confront Donald Trump, it must have a movement with confidence and energy — one that will defend democracy with the same frantic urgency of conservatives trying to undermine it. In a word, it needs socialism.To see the power of a hardcore movement, you only need to look to North […]
In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, the United States saw a “national outbreak of hate” with a spike in assaults, intimidation, and harrassments towards ethnic and racial minorities, including children, women, and the LGBT community, a US civil rights group says.The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said in a report released on Tuesday […]
Slovenia has amended its constitution to make access to drinkable water a fundamental right for all citizens and stop it being commercialised. With 64 votes in favour and none against, the 90-seat parliament added an article to the EU country’s constitution saying “everyone has the right to drinkable water”. Source: Slovenia adds water to constitution […]
After wrongly predicting the election, political pundits are returning to TV talkshows to explain what will happen under a Trump presidency. But these predictions aren’t like TV anchors predicting the weather; these forecasts have a profound impact on the public reception to the Trump administration and the future course of US politics.The danger is that […]
President-elect Donald Trump ran on a fundamentally racist platform. President-elect Donald Trump promulgated the idea that Mexicans are rapists, blacks are trapped in inner cities, Muslims are terrorists and that America could only be great “again” by becoming what it was in the 1950s when all manner of de facto and de rigeur racism was […]
What I found more intriguing were the ethnographers, who were baffled by the living, breathing Klan members. These ethnographers found that Klansmen and Klanswomen seemed like “good” or “decent” folks. Even as Klan members defended racism, they seemed “nice,” polite even. In these earlier studies of white supremacists, a lingering question was: How could Klan […]
“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a […]