CNN reported that at a Paducah Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Kentucky on Tuesday, someone asked if Republicans would fill a Supreme Court seat if it opened up in 2020:
Of course, this admission confirms that he never believed the principle that he propounded in 2020 after Justice Antonin Scalia died, that no Supreme Court justice should be confirmed during a presidential election year. Under McConnell’s leadership, the Senate never even considered President Barack Obama’s nominee Judge Merrick Garland. This was based on a made-up principle at the time, with no justification and no rational basis, but McConnell pretended that he believed it, and the Republican Party went right along with him.
He said the decision to block Garland was about “a principle, not a person.”
The principle, he said, was based on the idea that voters […]
Credit: Mr. Fish / Truthdig
In “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,” published in 1988, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky exposed the techniques that the commercial media used to promote and defend the economic, social and political agendas of the ruling elites. These techniques included portraying victims as either worthy or unworthy of sympathy. A Catholic priest such as Jerzy Popiełuszko, for example, murdered by the communist regime in Poland in 1984, was deified, but four Catholic missionaries who were raped and murdered in 1980 in El Salvador by U.S.-backed death squads were slandered as fellow travelers of the “Marxist” rebel movement. The techniques also included both narrowing the debate in a way that buttressed the elite consensus and intentionally failing to challenge the intentions of the ruling elites or the actual structures of power.
“Manufacturing Consent” was published on the eve of three revolutions that have dramatically transformed the news industry: the rise of right-wing radio and Fox-style TV news that abandon the media’s faux objectivity, the […]
Replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy only takes us backwards, continuing our addiction to burning and extraction, and causing extensive ecological damage.
The bioenergy industry gives the impression of being at the forefront of tackling climate change. Every wood pellet that’s burned communicates the illusion of innovative progress away from fossil fuels and towards ‘renewable’ energy.
In the context of our urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is easy to be persuaded by a strategy which can supposedly help steer us away from impending doom.
Before I took my job working to protect forests I was under the impression that bioenergy was something positive.
Capitalism growth
Since humans first discovered how to create fire about 1.5 million years ago, our ability to harness the flames has sustained us, warmed us, and fed us.
Most of the world is fiercely globalised and intensely capitalist, focusing on – or subjected to – short-term economic gain.
Societies in the global north have become demanding and consumerist, reaching ever further afield for products to satisfy our desires. We have plunged deep into oil wells, and exploited pristine, ecologically priceless ecosystems in the Arctic and
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
