Blogosphere

Blogosphere
Methane Emissions Crisis and Rapid Global Heating: It is all Fossil Fuel Drilling and Fracking
Juan Cole: So of the nearly 200 teragrams of methane that are put into our atmosphere every year, it is oil and gas drilling and fracking that are responsible for almost all of it. ... (methane is 80 times more powerful as a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide) ... Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is particularly thuggish. Another recent paper in Nature used satellite imaging to prove that “In the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, methane columns showed maxima over regions with the highest natural gas production.” ... The conclusion is that we should replace fossil fuels as quickly as possible with wind and solar and geothermal. ... But the other conclusion is that we should outlaw fracking immediately... [ Visit Website ]
Feb 20, 2020, 11:56am

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Bloomberg is Worse Than Trump
Margaret Kimberley: Billionaire Bloomberg was a lifelong Democrat who ran (for Mayor of New York) as a Republican in order to avoid a democratic primary that he feared losing. He won with the help of his bottomless pit of campaign money ... But Bloomberg unleashed the police in ways that Giuliani only dreamed of doing. His notorious stop and frisk policy victimized black New Yorkers millions of times. ... Bloomberg still has the right, influential people in his pocket. The media will endorse him. He has already bought off the Democratic National Committee and Emily’s List. ... past history tells us that Bloomberg is a Trump with more money and better manners. Yet his entrance into the race is proof that the billionaires will give up nothing. ... Bloomberg doesn’t have enemies because he buys them off... [ Visit Website ]
Feb 19, 2020, 3:23pm

Blogosphere
Israel’s Netanyahu boasts of having Destroyed US 1st Amendment and Free Speech
Juan Cole: Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted for corruption and is facing an election soon, just boasted that his ministry of strategic affairs has managed to undermine first amendment protections for free speech in the United States by lobbying state legislatures to pass laws forbidding the boycott of Israel. ... Anti-boycott laws of the Old South were used against Martin Luther King, Jr. and other activists in the Civil Rights movement ... Some 28 US states have passed laws prohibiting the boycott of Israel and attempting to punish this action by denying such individuals state contracts. ... University professors invited to speak on campus in the states with these horrid laws have been asked to sign statements they don’t boycott Israel before being allowed to speak. These procedures are the most dangerous assault on free speech in the United States since the McCarthy era... [ Visit Website ]
Feb 14, 2020, 12:34pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Trump Has No Opposition
Margaret Kimberley: The Bloomberg cash onslaught and the anti-Bernie conspiracy have laid bare the degree of collusion among the rulers. ... The Democratic Party is every bit as corrupt as its pretend rival, the Republican Party. ... The impeachment show, Iowa caucuses, and State of the Union address all put a spotlight on the fraud of democracy in this country. ... The rank and file are largely taken in by the nonsense. Any semblance of ideological difference occurred so long ago that there is little expectation of real change. ... The cheating has begun in earnest, and the only thing Democrats are resisting is any turn to the left. ... Even a little bit of reformism is off limits for the supposed leaders who are little more than errand boys and girls for the billionaires... [ Visit Website ]
Feb 12, 2020, 2:17pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents
Margaret Kimberley: The settler colonial state was an engine for genocide from the beginning. The American revolution was an effort to free the colonists from any limits the British might impose on their plans for conquest. Indigenous people were driven from their lands with violence, disease and displacement. Expanded settlement fortified the plantation economy and created a hell on earth for enslaved people. ... When the Civil War finally ended chattel slavery, there began a cycle of victories followed by vicious reaction, dashed hopes and betrayals. The process continues until this day. Despite some of the 45 men being designated as being “good for black people” there are none that deserve such an attribution. ... The presidents can be divided into very bad and less bad when discussing their impact on the lives of black people. Any gains in legal rights resulted from our own acts of resistance... [ Visit Website ]
Feb 5, 2020, 2:51pm

Blogosphere
Cramer: “We’re in the Death Knell Phase” of Big Oil, as 44% of Norway New Autos are Electric
Juan Cole: CNBC stock picker Jim Cramer startled his conservative fan base this week by refusing to push ExxonMobil and other petroleum stocks. ... He pointed out that pension funds all over the world are divesting from them because of pressure from a younger generation of investors who do not believe you can ever make a fossil fuel company sustainable ... In comparing petroleum securities to tobacco, Cramer is admitting that a large segment of the public now sees them as injurious to public health. ... In Norway in January, 44 percent of new car sales were electric. This is up from a 2019 average of 42 percent. ... There are tipping points in technology adoption such that sometimes old technologies are superseded with lightning speed.... [ Visit Website ]
Feb 5, 2020, 2:41pm

Blogosphere
Top 3 Ways America has been Deeply Wounded by Supporting Israel Lobbyists like Jared Kushner
Juan Cole: 1. Terrorism: The US support for the Israeli ownership of all of Jerusalem injures the religious feelings of 1.8 billion Muslims and it breeds terrorism against the US. It helped get Washington and New York blown up in 2001. ... 2. Opposition. ... The United States has gotten off on a wrong foot with many of the 1.8 billion Muslims because it supports treating the Palestinians the way white people in the Old South used to treat Black people. ... 3. War footing. ... The Steadfastness Front of countries opposed to the United States mostly had nothing against the US per se, they were angered by the ongoing ethnic cleansing and Apartheid policies toward the Palestinians... [ Visit Website ]
Jan 31, 2020, 2:09pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Negroes for Bloomberg
Margaret Kimberley: Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign should be a political deal breaker for black people in this country. The man who terrorized 700,000 mostly black New Yorkers with the NYPD stop and frisk policy should not be under serious consideration. ... The man with an estimated $55 billion net worth has lots of experience buying people off. ... The black misleadership class of compromised and callow politicians were tailor-made for this onslaught of Bloomberg’s cash. ... Bloomberg has correctly concluded that he can use his money to muddy the waters if Demoratic Party voters dare to think of their own needs and not those of the billionaires and their errand boys and girls. ... He is forced to take action because the very premise of capitalism is being called into question... [ Visit Website ]
Jan 29, 2020, 4:00pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: The Internet Does Washington’s Dirty Work
Margaret Kimberley: The internet is in the hands of private corporations. They decide who gets service, where they get it and at what speed. The growth of social media only exacerbated the problems of corporate control. ... who work hand in hand with the government. Ultimately they decide who can be seen and who cannot. ... When the U.S. government speaks, Facebook and Twitter listen and then do as they are told. When foreign governments are declared adversaries their representatives and advocates are censored. ... Facebook decides if “community standards” have been violated and restrict anyone who violates their opaque rules. Black people are routinely sent to “facebook jail” if their words anger racist white people... [ Visit Website ]
Jan 22, 2020, 3:21pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Solidarity with Moms 4 Housing
Margaret Kimberley: The displacement of black people from their communities isn’t new. Urban renewal, popular and accurately known as Negro removal, was a weapon in use for many years. ... Oakland where Moms 4 Housing took matters into their own hands ... They are mothers with young children and despite being employed could not find adequate places to live. ... These women took bold action when they moved into an empty house targeted by a real estate speculator and called it their own ... Critics say that the women are stealing. If so they are behaving no differently than the banksters whose malfeasance created the real estate bubble in the first place. ... They are no different than the politicians who do their bidding and allow the austerity regime to accelerate... [ Visit Website ]
Jan 15, 2020, 3:31pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Iran and the Need for Black Activism
Margaret Kimberley: For most of American history black people could be counted on to oppose United States war making abroad. If no one else spoke up in defense of countries declared enemies, we would. Posturing about strategic interests, the Cold War or the War on Terror brought sneers and disbelief even as the rest of the country swallowed lies and supported aggression. ... But that was before a black secretary of state, Colin Powell, told very big lies and made the case for the invasion of Iraq. ... The enemies of peace are many and powerful. The corporate media work hand in hand with the duopoly to convince Americans that war is peace and freedom is slavery. ... The people must be independent of all these forces. The common sense forged by the common experience of oppression must be resurrected... [ Visit Website ]
Jan 8, 2020, 4:07pm

Blogosphere
Climate Crisis Rages in Australia, with 14 of 15 hottest Places in World and Sydney Fire-Besieged
Juan Cole: Australia has been turned by the climate crisis into a huge oven. On Wednesday, 14 of the hottest places in the world were in Australia. ... Firefighters are combating 100 wildfires in New South Wales (NSW), with some of them encroaching on Sydney, Australia’s largest city. NSW declared a 7-day state of emergency. ... The continent-wide average temperature on Wednesday, of 107.4° F. (41.9° C.), the hottest in recorded history, broke the record set just on Tuesday. That was the average, which means there were places substantially hotter than that. ... Australia is a major exporter of coal and other hydrocarbons, and with 0.7 percent of the world population is responsible for 5% of carbon dioxide emissions if exported fuels are counted. That is staggering... [ Visit Website ]
Dec 20, 2019, 2:06pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Propaganda and the Defeat of Jeremy Corbyn
Margaret Kimberley: If Corbyn can be defeated with a libel it can work just as well on Sanders. ... The 2016 Brexit referendum played a significant role in these events. ... Corbyn and his party were relentlessly targeted by the corporate media who worked in collusion with the Tories, the surveillance state, and rightwing forces in the country. He was accused of being a Russian agent and an anti-Semite. ... “Repetition of a lie can change minds, much like subliminal messaging on a constant loop.” ... Corbyn was facing an establishment that had too much to lose if he won. They could not risk him freeing Julian Assange or returning gold illegally stolen from Venezuela or refusing to snatch Iranian oil tankers if the U.S. demanded it. They couldn’t risk anyone possibly disrupting the work of MI6... [ Visit Website ]
Dec 18, 2019, 2:38pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Abolish the Police
Margaret Kimberley: Trump’s attorney general threatened to withdraw police “protection” from Black communities – but, of course, no such thing exists. ... There is little benefit to the public in the way law enforcement officers work in this country. They rarely protect the public from violence. Most of their activity consists of finding any and every reason to put black people behind bars. The police are the 21st century slave patrol ... “We would be fortunate indeed if we were to lose police “protection.” ... The idea of abolishing the police should not be considered strange or outlandish. Doing so is a necessity and police departments prove it themselves every day. ... The police are and will remain a menace unless and until we have true community control over their operations... [ Visit Website ]
Dec 13, 2019, 3:26pm

Blogosphere
Freedom Rider: Liberals Love the Military
Margaret Kimberley: The trauma of Donald Trump’s presidency has created continued insanity for American liberals. They were never very trustworthy, due to their abiding belief in United States exceptionalism and an imagined right for it to intervene in the rest of the world as it pleased. ... If liberals were to be taken seriously they would question military values, question the nearly 20-year long presence of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan ... These wars are the longest in history and are war crimes by definition. ... The idea of American exceptionalism must be discarded completely. ... Of course that would mean questioning nearly every premise of political decision making in this country... [ Visit Website ]
Dec 5, 2019, 3:39pm

More Headlines

Latest Headlines

Meditations

Questions Without Answers Evoke Insights

From Cognitive Revolution To Psychological Revolution

Stop Eating Meat? Facing the Choice, Don't Choose

Features

Classic Who: Martin Luther King Also Had a Nightmare

Denver 2014 Cinco de Mayo Photos

Solstice of Winter Twenty Thirteen

Articles

The Golden Age Of White Collar Crime