Category Archives: What interests us

The shocking truth

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“The shocking truth,” The Economist, Aug 27th 2013

The numbers may be small but they are growing. In 2011 documentary films grossed £11m at the British box office. This was only 1% of the year’s total box-office takings but it was a six-fold increase on the year before. Moreover, while the budgets can be high they are still much cheaper to produce than studio features.

But why are audiences increasingly choosing fact over fiction? Perhaps the current dearth of realism (endless comic-book sequels and apocalyptic action movies) is forcing more discerning viewers to choose authentic storytelling over spectacular visuals and far-fetched plots. Documentaries such as “Blackfish” may also fill a gap in investigative journalism, as fewer newspapers and broadcasters invest in long-term projects.
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Solar Energy Perspectives

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“Solar Energy Perspectives,” International Energy Agency‌, 2011

In 90 minutes, enough sunlight strikes the earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year. While solar energy is abundant, it represents a tiny fraction of the world’s current energy mix. But this is changing rapidly and is being driven by global action to improve energy access and supply security, and to mitigate climate change.

Download the report here.

MLK’s vehement condemnations of US militarism are more relevant than ever

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Glenn Greenwald, “MLK’s vehement condemnations of US militarism are more relevant than ever,” The Guardian, 21 January 2013

The civil right achievements of Martin Luther King are quite justly the focus of the annual birthday commemoration of his legacy. But it is remarkable, as I’ve noted before on this holiday, how completely his vehement anti-war advocacy is ignored when commemorating his life (just as his economic views are). By King’s own description, his work against US violence and militarism, not only in Vietnam but generally, was central – indispensable – to his worldview and activism, yet it has been almost completely erased from how he is remembered.
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Nuke the Budget

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Tom Z. Collina, “Nuke the Budget,” Foreign Policy, August 9 2013

Consider this: The Pentagon, as directed by Congress, must dramatically cut its budget. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warns the projected cuts are so large that they would “break” key parts of the military’s national security strategy, and even then “the savings fall well short” of meeting the $500 billion 10-year target.

At the same time, President Barack Obama, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Pentagon have determined that the United States has more strategic nuclear warheads than it needs to deter potential threats and can therefore reduce the deployed stockpile by up to one-third, to about 1,000 warheads. Hagel supported even deeper nuclear reductions before he was tapped to head the Pentagon.

Perfect target for budget cuts, right? Wrong, says Hagel, who has taken the U.S. nuclear weapons budget off the chopping block, all $31 billion per year of it. …
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Famine as a crime against humanity

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Abdi Ismail Samatar, “Famine as a crime against humanity,” Al Jazeera, 01 Dec 2011

Drought does not necessarily lead to famine: The catastrophe in Somalia was man-made.

The coordinator of the Monitoring Group recently published an article in which he claimed that the Somali famine is not only a catastrophe, but that identifiable individuals and groups engaged in the production of the famine and therefore have committed crimes against humanity. This bold statement by the coordinator of the Monitoring Group demands careful assessment.

It has been common wisdom for decades that droughts do not by themselves lead to famines, and the cause of the latter is the failure by national and international authorities to take action long before people run out of food. There have been 10 major droughts over the last 50 years in the Horn of Africa in general, and in Somalia in particular.

The evidence gleaned from this climatic record show that most droughts did not produce famine. …
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Sharing science is a crime

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Charles Davis, “Sharing science is a crime,” Al Jazeera, 03 Aug 2013

The more one shares, the more one undermines a future patent application and a system that encourages privatisation.

It doesn’t matter if you start out working for a university. Scientists are given two choices for getting their research funded, academia or not: go to work for the Pentagon or start making something you can patent. And the government and its corporations want it that way.

Of the $140bn in research and development funding requested by President Barack Obama for 2013, according to the Congressional Research Service, more than half goes through the Department of Defense; less than $30bn through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). That invariably leads to a shift in resources, with scientists going to where the money is: instead of finding ways to cure, finding high-tech ways to kill or otherwise aid the war effort. Researchers at the University of Arizona, for instance, received a $1.5m grant to “adapt their breast cancer imaging research for detection of embedded explosives”, which speaks rather well to the US government’s priorities and the toll it takes on research that has the general public in mind. …
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Selfish traits not favoured by evolution

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Melissa Hogenboom, “Selfish traits not favoured by evolution, study shows,” BBC News, 2 August 2013

Evolution does not favour selfish people, according to new research.

This challenges a previous theory which suggested it was preferable to put yourself first.

Instead, it pays to be co-operative, shown in a model of “the prisoner’s dilemma”, a scenario of game theory – the study of strategic decision-making.

Published in Nature Communications, the team says their work shows that exhibiting only selfish traits would have made us become extinct.
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How Buck McKeon created a global drone enterprise

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Tara McKelvey, “How Buck McKeon created a global drone enterprise,” BBC News Magazine, 2 August 2013

Many countries, including China and Israel, make drones. Yet the US is the world’s leader in creating technology for drones and in promoting their use – for both military and civilian purposes. The interest in drones in the US crosses political lines, with both Democrats and Republicans investing in the aircraft. …

Less well known, however, is the fact that drones are used in the civilian airspace over the US, UK and Europe.

It is a growing, if under-reported, trend. Many of the drones used in Pakistan, along with those sent to Afghanistan, now have a permanent home in the US. These drones are turned over to civilians who work for the federal Customs and Border Protection agency, police departments, and other government offices.

The story of how drones became a robust niche in domestic law enforcement – and part of the commercial world as well – is rooted in Washington DC. Indeed, the rise of the drone can be traced in part to one man, Howard “Buck” McKeon.

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WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic, 2013

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Enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship

The continued success in global tobacco control is detailed in this year’s WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2013. The fourth in the series, this year’s report presents the status of the MPOWER measures, with country-specific data updated and aggregated through 2012. In addition, the report provides a special focus on legislation to ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS) in WHO Member States and an in-depth analyses of TAPS bans were performed, allowing for a more detailed understanding of progress and future challenges in this area.
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What’s disrupting you? Take Action now to let governments know you want an EDC Free Future

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Information alert

What’s disrupting you? Take Action now to let governments know you want an EDC Free Future

Brussels, 30 July 2013 – A coalition of public interest groups representing more than 31 organisations across Europe have launched a Take Action initiative for an EDC-Free Future.

This fun and creative Take Action photo initiative is part of the EDC-Free Europe campaign [1] set up in March 2013 by a diverse group of campaign partners with a common concern about endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and how they may be affecting our health. EDCs are linked to serious health conditions such as cancers, fertility problems and diabetes and obesity. These chemicals are used in a wide range of everyday products and objects, including children’s toys, personal care, consumer and electronic products. They can also end up as residues on our food.
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Despite West’s Efforts, Afghan Youths Cling to Traditional Ways

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Azam Ahmed And Habib Zahori, “Despite West’s Efforts, Afghan Youths Cling to Traditional Ways,” The New York Times, July 31 2013

To those who like to think that the foreign presence here has left more than spent shells and hollowed-out buildings, what the young people of Kabul wear and value can itself offer a sense of comfort. These trappings of the West, the hope goes, belong to a generation ready to embrace women’s rights, democracy and other ideals that America and its allies have spent billions of dollars trying to instill. …

“If someone thinks that youngsters have changed, they should think twice,” said Amina Mustaqim Jawid, the director of the Afghan Women’s Coalition Against Corruption. “These young men grew up in a war environment. They don’t know about their own rights; how can we expect them to know about their sisters’ rights, their mothers’ rights or their wives’ rights? If they wear jeans and have Western haircuts, that doesn’t mean they are progressive.”

Read the full article here.

 

‘Go home or face arrest’

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Jeremy Harding , “‘Go home or face arrest’,” London Review of Books, 1 August 2013

Three years ago in Arizona, Russell Pearce, the leader of the state senate, hit the ‘illegal’ button, and a strange thing happened: authorised migrants and citizens of non-US extraction – often the first to call for stricter immigration targets – changed their position and started muttering about racism. Meanwhile, as the round-ups began, thousands of unauthorised workers left for neighbouring states and the local economy went from steep decline to death row.

Unauthorised arrivals by boat have always been a prickly issue in Australia.

Read the full article here.

There Is No Good Drug War

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Maya Schenwar, Interview “There Is No Good Drug War,” Truthout, 31 July 2013

Twenty years ago, when acclaimed neuroscientist Carl Hart began studying drugs, he was motivated by a desire to help communities like the one in which he grew up: poor communities of color that had been, he believed, ravaged by the crack “epidemic.” The media craze around crack headlines was swirling to a fever pitch at the time – the late ’80s and early ’90s – and, Hart writes, “I became utterly convinced that crack cocaine was the cause of everything that I now saw as wrong with the neighborhood.”

However, nothing is that straightforward, in the world or in High Price, and Hart’s work in the lab called into question some of his most deeply rooted assumptions.
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80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment

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Hope Yen, “80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment: Survey,” AP, 07/28/13

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend. …
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The “Unusual” Yet Ubiquitous Left-Right Alliance: Towards an Anti-Establishment Center

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Sam Husseini, “The ‘Unusual’ Yet Ubiquitous Left-Right Alliance: Towards an Anti-Establishment Center,” Sam Husseini’s Blog, 28 July 2013

Every time you have this convergence of progressives and conservatives against the establishment, it’s regarded as “unusual” “odd” or “bizarre”  — even though it keeps coming up on issue after issue: war, military spending, trade, corporate power, Wall Street, fossil fuel subsidies, as well as — in the case of the NSA spying on the citizenry — the central issue of Constitutional rights and civil liberties. 

As documented below, the meme in the media and elsewhere is a permanent note of surprise, when it should be an established aspect of U.S. politics: There are in fact two “centers” — one that is pro-war and Wall Street (the establishment center) — and another that is pro-peace and populist (the anti-establishment center)
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The rising independence movement in Okinawa

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Trefor Moss, “Okinawa: the Scotland of Asia?,” The Diplomat, July 24 2013

The tension over the large U.S. military presence on Okinawa seems never to subside, the U.S. Marines’ deployment of noisy, and possibly quite dangerous, MV-22 Osprey aircraft having been one recent trigger. And yet, if asked to vote today, Okinawans would overwhelmingly stick with the status quo: a recent poll by Ryukyu Shimpo found that only 5 percent of citizens favor independence, with 62 percent opposed. Then again, these things start from humble beginnings, and independence is at the very least being discussed seriously. Okinawa has a complex relationship both with Tokyo and with the U.S. military, and it is too casual to dismiss the notion of independence as the pipedream of just a handful of local activists.
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The Pentagon Has Too Many Generals

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Benjamin Freeman, “The Pentagon Has Too Many Generals,” U.S.News & World Report, July 24 2013

Over the past 10 years, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan raged, the U.S. military’s enlisted ranks shrank, while the officer corps – particularly the general and flag officer ranks – and the bureaucracy supporting these top commanders, grew immensely.

Earlier this month Third Way released a report on this trend, reaching a disquieting conclusion – the U.S. military is more top-heavy than it has ever been. While I, and others, have documented this trend before, it’s only gotten worse. The U.S. military now has an officer-to-enlisted personnel ratio that’s at an all-time high; this imbalance will only worsen with the recent announcement of further reductions to the force. …
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Who Are We at War With? That’s Classified

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Cora Currier, “Who Are We at War With? That’s Classified,” ProPublica, July 26 2013

In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again that the U.S. is at war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.”

So who exactly are those associated forces? It’s a secret.
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Solar Could Help Australia Phase Out Coal Power by 2040

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“Solar Could Help Australia Phase Out Coal Power by 2040,” Solar Energy News, July 26 2013

Australia could phase out almost all its fossil-fuel sourced electricity by 2040 if it doubled the current rate of take-up of solar energy and wind energy maintained its current growth pace, said Professor Ken Baldwin, director of ANU’s Energy Change Institute. …

Solar energy, currently dominated by photovoltaic cells, is adding about 1 gigawatt of capacity annually, roughly equivalent to the amount added by wind farms. If the pace of solar energy expansion doubled, starting in 2025, it would overtake fossil-fuel fired power plants by 2030 and leave only a couple of gigawatts of coal or gas power by 2040 – down from almost 40 gigawatts now. …
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