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But Russia’s denial of past ‘Novichok’ programmes is misleading

Nerve agent found in Salisbury does not conclusively prove Russian complicity
Russia’s denial of a Novichok programme is true but misleading — a secret nerve agent programme to create Novichok-type agents was run under a different name
Western states have extensively researched and synthesized the Novichok class of agents
Novichok was most recently synthesized by Iran, details of which were provided to the OPCW
Russian Novichok stockpiles were destroyed in the 1990s, but it is theoretically possible that some capability still exists, though no evidence for this is available

The US and its European allies have coordinated the largest collective expulsion of Russian diplomats in history. Russia has promised to retaliate in kind. Yet despite the sense of certainty around Russian culpability in the Salisbury incident, questions remain around the state of the available evidence.

As contradictory narratives proliferate amidst conflicting Western and Russian government statements and media reports, a clearer picture of the secret history of the nerve agent used in the Salisbury poisonings is emerging.

In an exclusive interview with INSURGE, a former senior official at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from 1993 to 2006, Dr Ralf Trapp, said that at this stage there is no conclusive evidence that Russia was the source of the nerve agent used in Salisbury. He pointed to compelling evidence that Russia did run a secret research programme to create Novichok-type nerve agents — and strongly criticised Russia’s denials of that programme. While justifying grounds for suspicion, there is as yet no decisive proof that Russia retained such a Novichok programme or capability today, he said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The degenerative impacts of our money system

March 27, 2018

The degenerative impacts of our money system

“The way that a national economy preys on its internal colonies is by the destruction of communities”

— Wendell Berry

The creation of money with interest has two main impacts on the operation of today’s economies.

Our monetary system creates the need for economic growth by design

One of the most important lessons of the economics dimension of Gaia Education’s online course in ‘Design for Sustainability’ is to understand that the current design of our money system has an inbuilt growth imperative. Let’s go over this again: Consider that over 90 per cent of the money in circulation has been created by banks as debt. Borrowers are obliged to repay both the capital and interest. The only place more money can come from in order to pay this interest is an expansion in the money supply overall — new loans issues and debts entered into in order for the system to keep functioning.

For economic growth to take place new investments have to drive further loans (debts) to be issued and this in turn stimulates more rapid economic growth. To keep the wheel spinning, consumption has to keep growing. We have created a material culture that is addicted to the rapid exploitation of non-renewable natural resources and levels of fossil fuel consumption that are driving us beyond humanity’s safe operating space, beyond planetary boundaries and towards a future of catastrophic climate change. The spiral of degeneration and decrease in whole systems health and viability will continue, if we do not respond promptly, globally collaboratively, and decisively as one humanity.

The creation of a money system that pays differential interest to lenders and borrowers, by design creates a system that needs exponential growth in order to keep going This is because, as the size of the economy grows year on year, so the volume of required interest repayments increases, even if the interest rate remains the same. This is called the compounding of interest, or compound interest. As a result of compound interest, our money necessarily follows an exponential growth pattern: at 3% compound interest, it doubles in 24 years; at 6%, it takes 12 years; at 12%, 6 years (Martenson 2011).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Army document: US strategy to ‘dethrone’ Putin for oil pipelines might provoke WW3

March 8, 2018

French soldiers unload tanks from a train in northern Poland for a NATO military exercise (Source: LA Times)

Published by INSURGE intelligence, a crowdfundedinvestigative journalism platform for people and planet. Support us to report where others fear to tread.

A US Army document concedes the real interests driving US military strategy toward Russia: dominating oil pipeline routes, accessing the vast natural resources of Central Asia, and enforcing the expansion of American capitalism worldwide.

The Russians are coming. They hacked our elections. They are lurking behind numerous alternative political movements and news outlets. Such is the overwhelming chorus from traditional reporting on Russia, which sees the United States as being under threat from fanatical Russian expansionism — expansionism which has gone so far as to interfere dramatically in the 2016 Presidential elections.

Russia is certainly an authoritarian regime with its own regional imperial ambitions. President Vladimir Putin and his cronies are responsible for massive deaths and human rights violations against populations at home and abroad (the latter in war theaters like Syria and elsewhere). Putin has strengthened a system of oligarchical state-dominated predatory capitalism which has widened extreme inequality and concentrated elite wealth. And we will no doubt learn more about what shenanigans Russia did, or did not, get up to in relation to US elections.

For the most part, these are not especially dangerous things to report on from the comfort of the West. Somewhat lacking from conventional reporting, on the other hand, is serious reflection on whether US policies toward Russia have contributed directly to the deterioration of US-Russia relations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

City of London financiers contemplate “imminent” 2018 US stock market crash of up to “50%”

February 14, 2018

City of London financiers contemplate “imminent” 2018 US stock market crash of up to “50%”

Coming dramatic decline of US stock prices would trigger global recession, finds grim forecast to be explored at roundtable hosted by British financial services think-tank

A new analysis published on the website of a London-based think-tank, funded by the world’s biggest banking and financial services institutions, warns that the US stock market is on the brink of an imminent crash that could trigger another global recession.

The document by a senior US economist and former Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England is published on the website of the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation (CSFI), which runs around 100 roundtable events a year involving financial services insiders from the UK and beyond.

The document forecasts that in 2018, US stock prices are likely to plummet by as much as “forty to fifty percent” — compared to the less than five percent plunge in early February. The document was published weeks before the recent stock market volatility.

The warning of a forty to fifty percent drop points to the prospect of a global financial crash worse than the 2008 banking collapse.

It comes at a time when the Federal Reserve, Bank of England and other authorities are looking to tighten up their cheap money policies, as economic growth is at its highest levels since the 2008 slump.

The new analysis is an ‘open letter’ by US economist Robert Aliber, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a world renowned authority in identifying the source of shocks behind over forty banking crises that have occurred since the 1970s.

The ‘open letter’, dated January 21st 2018, is published on CSFI’s website at this link http://www.csfi.org/s/QUARTERLYJAN12018.docx, and mentioned in an announcement of a forthcoming breakfast conversation with Professor Aliber in late February.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Garbage In, Garbage Out: Tech Journalism, Fake News and the Russia Threat Narrative

February 13, 2018

Garbage In, Garbage Out: Tech Journalism, Fake News and the Russia Threat Narrative

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question … Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness.”
George Orwell, 1945, ‘The Freedom of the Press’

When leading media platforms in new technology and innovation, that proclaim to be the cutting-edge in tech and digital culture commentary, earnestly promote establishment narratives in deference to the US intelligence community, embrace a pattern of dumbing down which is increasingly conspicuous, and now, given the ominous proliferation of technological trajectories which all of us will be required to adapt to while approaching the third decade of the twenty-first century: does a hyper-liberal bias pose as much of a problem in tech journalism as it does in the larger sphere of corporate mainstream press?

And when it is verging on the kind of mainstream media malpractice seen in recent months, when major outlets would rush to judgment over anti-Russian stories, why might this become a more harmful problem in tech reporting than you might think?

At a time when mainstream media has become an extension of the military-industrial complex, when those who espouse freedom, civil liberties, and human rights have given in to mass surveillance, censorship, and perpetual war — by hyper-liberal tech journalism I refer to the abundance of popular media publications online (and in print) that collectively share a focus on a less-formal alternative to traditional journals in how they cover emerging technologies, innovation, multimedia, and science.

My focus will be on a number of the popular (large audience) platforms such as Wired, The Verge, Motherboard, Ars Technica, and MIT Technology Review.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Facebook will infiltrate national elections and rule the world in less than 10 years — unless we stop it

December 29, 2017

How Facebook will infiltrate national elections and rule the world in less than 10 years — unless we stop it

What do NATO, private military contractors, giant arms manufacturers, wine merchants, the NSA, Trump, British property tycoons, Russian oligarchs, and Big Oil have in common? The world’s largest social network

Published to launch the new beta platform for INSURGE intelligence, a crowdfunded journalism platform for Open Inquiry and coordinated action in service of people and planet. Become an owner of the media revolution.

Imagine a world in which everybody gave away their freedom, willingly, in return for being able to belong to a toxic network which, rather than enriching their lives, profited from eroding civil discourse, polarizing communities, and manipulating their minds.

Wouldn’t you wonder what was wrong with these people?

You would. And yet that is the world you are about to inhabit, right now. Unless you do something about it.

This story is a call to action. A call on citizens, technologists, philanthropists, journalists and beyond to take action to disrupt our current path to a dystopian, monocultural future. As such, it experiments with a new form of journalistic narrative called Open Inquiry, that aims to balance out the investigation of power with a recognition of solutions and alternatives.

Facebook is on track to become more powerful than the National Security Agency — so says a senior advisor to the US military intelligence community who predicted the rise of artificial intelligence and robot warfare. In less than a decade, Facebook’s growth will mean it potentially has the ability to monitor almost everyone on the planet. This will make the firm more powerful than any other government contractor in the world.

This prospect has dangerous ramifications for democracy. Increasing evidence reveals that Facebook’s most lucrative business model is to outsource itself as a conduit for psychological warfare to any third party that wants to influence the beliefs and behaviors of citizens.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

China’s economic boom is about to be cut short by peak oil, warns state-funded study

October 5, 2017

China’s economic boom is about to be cut short by peak oil, warns state-funded study

A new scientific study led by the China University of Petroleum in Beijing, funded by the Chinese government, concludes that China is about to experience a peak in its total oil production as early as next year.

Without finding an alternative source of “new abundant energy resources”, the study warns, the 2018 peak in China’s combined conventional and unconventional oil will undermine continuing economic growth and “challenge the sustainable development of Chinese society.”

This also has major implications for the prospect of a 2018 oil squeeze — as China scales its domestic oil peak, rising demand will impact world oil markets in a way most forecasters aren’t anticipating, contributing to a potential supply squeeze. That could happen in 2018 proper, or in the early years that follow.

There are various scenarios that follow from here — China could: shift to reducing its massive demand for energy, a tall order in itself given population growth projections and rising consumption; accelerate a renewable energy transition; or militarise the South China Sea for more deepwater oil and gas.

Right now, China appears to be incoherently pursuing all three strategies, with varying rates of success. But one thing is clear — China’s decisions on how it addresses its coming post-peak future will impact regional and global political and energy security for the foreseeable future.

Fossil fuelled-growth

The study was published on 19 September by Springer’s peer-reviewed Petroleum Science journal, which is supported by China’s three major oil corporations, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petroleum Corporation (Sinopec), and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

Since 1978, China has experienced an average annual economic growth rate of 9.8%, and is now the world’s second largest economy after the United States.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How the CIA made Google

August 29, 2017

How the CIA made Google

Inside the secret network behind mass surveillance, endless war, and Skynet—

part 1

THIS IS PART ONE. READ PART TWO HERE.

This exclusive is being released for free in the public interest, and was enabled by crowdfunding. I’d like to thank my amazing community of patrons for their support, which gave me the opportunity to work on this in-depth investigation. Please support independent, investigative journalism for the global commons.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, western governments are moving fast to legitimize expanded powers of mass surveillance and controls on the internet, all in the name of fighting terrorism.

US and European politicians have called to protect NSA-style snooping, and to advance the capacity to intrude on internet privacy by outlawing encryption. One idea is to establish a telecoms partnership that would unilaterally delete content deemed to “fuel hatred and violence” in situations considered “appropriate.” Heated discussions are going on at government and parliamentary level to explore cracking down on lawyer-clientconfidentiality.

What any of this would have done to prevent the Charlie Hebdo attacks remains a mystery, especially given that we already know the terrorists were on the radar of French intelligence for up to a decade.

There is little new in this story. The 9/11 atrocity was the first of many terrorist attacks, each succeeded by the dramatic extension of draconian state powers at the expense of civil liberties, backed up with the projection of military force in regions identified as hotspots harbouring terrorists. Yet there is little indication that this tried and tested formula has done anything to reduce the danger. If anything, we appear to be locked into a deepening cycle of violence with no clear end in sight.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Can economic growth continue without fossil fuels? The IPCC thinks so — here’s why its decarbonisation models are broken

August 16, 2017

Can economic growth continue without fossil fuels? The IPCC thinks so — here’s why its decarbonisation models are broken

Published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a crowdfunded investigative journalism project for people and planet. Support us to keep digging where others fear to tread.

In this third contribution to our symposium, ‘Pathways to the Post-Carbon Economy’, biophysical economist Graham Palmer assesses the plausibility of conventional economic forecasts of a global energy transition away from fossil fuels.

Most forecasts paint a rosy picture of continued, unimpeded economic growth, even as the world weans itself entirely off carbon-intensive energy sources. But are such scenarios really possible?

Palmer argues that they aren’t — not when we consider how the economy is fundamentally embedded in its biophysical environment. And if it isn’t, then we need a new approach to modelling, which pays greater attention the intimate relationship between energy, our societies, and their economies.

Climate change discourse is structured around competing narratives — degrowth, pro-renewables, pro-nuclear, localism, green business, techno-optimism, and so on. The energy scenario modelling by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a foundation for much of the discourse.

Integrated models are connected with socioeconomic and technological storylines to forecast a picture of key characteristics of future transformation pathways.

When we look at models from the most recent IPCC report (AR5), we see that that baseline scenarios project a 300% to 800% increase in GDP-per-capita by 2100. In these scenarios, strong mitigation is achieved with global consumption losses of only between 3 to 11% relative to baseline. Hence, the net-cost of decarbonising seems trivial over the long run.

From this perspective, the solution that follows is to put in place appropriate policies, support technology, remove fossil fuel subsidies and apply a modest but comprehensive carbon price.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

EXCLUSIVE: Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA

July 5, 2017

EXCLUSIVE: Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA

US military intelligence agencies have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows

Plato’s Cave reimagined for the Hollywood era — copyright Derek Swansonn

Tom Secker and Matthew Alford report on their astonishing findings from trawling through thousands of new US military and intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made — not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years.

This raises new questions not only about the way censorship works in the modern entertainment industry, but also about Hollywood’s little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus.

When we first looked at the relationship between politics, film and television at the turn of the 21st century, we accepted the consensus opinion that a small office at the Pentagon had, on request, assisted the production of around 200 movies throughout the history of modern media, with minimal input on the scripts.

How ignorant we were.

More appropriately, how misled we had been.

We have recently acquired 4,000 new pages of documents from the Pentagon and CIA through the Freedom of Information Act. For us, these documents were the final nail in the coffin.

These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.

The previous best estimate, in a dry academic book way back in 2005, was that the Pentagon had worked on less than 600 films and an unspecified handful of television shows.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Republican insider: Trump is creating Deep State 2.0, but it might crash the economy (EXCLUSIVE)

March 5, 2017

Republican insider: Trump is creating Deep State 2.0, but it might crash the economy (EXCLUSIVE)

Former GOP staffer says American president is a ‘mutation’ of unaccountable oligarchy pulling the strings of Democrats and Republicans alike

Mike Lofgren is a former Republican Congressional aide who spent 28 years as a Congressional staff member before retiring in 2011. During the last 16 years of his career, he held a high level national security clearance as a senior analyst for the House and Senate budget committees. His position gave him a first-hand insider’s perspective on a wide range of US government policies, from the lucrative bank bailouts, to accelerating Pentagon spending; from botched disaster relief after Hurricane Katrine, to the contradictions of the ‘war on terror’.

Now Lofgren is speaking out about the Donald Trump administration, its dangerous relationship with the American Deep State — and what it means for the future of the American Republic.

Mike Lofgren, 28-year veteran GOP staffer. Source: BillMoyers.com

Oligarchy

Last year, Lofgren released his second book, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, in which he drew on his insider experience on Capitol Hill to reveal the inner workings of the US government.

His chief contention is that the US political system has, for all intents and purposes, become an oligarchy — with different Democrat and Republican administrations pursuing policies that remain constrained within the same defunct paradigm of extractive finance in service to the burgeoning bureaucracies of private defense firms, giant corporations, and global banks — benefiting the few at the expense of the many.

I caught up with Lofgren to find out the former longtime Republican operative’s prognosis for how the Deep State will fare in the Age of Trump.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Defence industry poised for billion dollar profits from global riot ‘contagion’

May 7, 2016

Riot gear on sale at the 2015 Milipol security expo in Paris (Credit: IB Times)

Defence industry poised for billion dollar profits from global riot ‘contagion’

Forecasts of relentless civil unrest in the US, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia seen as massive ‘investment opportunity’

The next five years will see the international market for ‘riot control systems’ boom to a value of more than $5 billion at an annual growth rate of 5%, according to a new report by a global business intelligence firm.

The report forecasts a dramatic rise in civil unrest across the world, including in North America and Europe, driven by an increase in Ferguson-style incidents and “extremist attacks.”

The Middle East, North Africa and Asia-Pacific regions will also experience a persistent rise in conflicts.

This increasing trend in instability promises billions of dollars of profits for global defence firms, concludes the report, published last month by Infiniti Research Ltd., a market intelligence firm whose clients include Fortune 500 companies.

“Protests, riots, and demonstrations are major issues faced by the law enforcement agencies across the world,” said Abhay Singh, a lead defence technology analyst at the firm. “In addition the increase in incidents of civil wars in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt along with an increase in the global defence budget will generate demand for riot control systems.”

Europe, the Middle East and Africa will be the largest market, collectively experiencing a rate of growth at over 5%, exceeding $2 billion by 2020. Under the subheading, ‘EMEA: increase in extremist attacks to boost growth’, the report, priced at over $2,000, explains:

“Over the past years, Europe witnessed an increase in extremist attacks, which has raised concerns among the law enforcement and defense industries to equip themselves with modern equipment and protect civilians from external threats. In 2015, the Paris attacks and the killing of journalists in France are some of the examples of growing terrorism in Europe.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years

April 20, 2016

Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years

British MPs launch landmark report on impending environmental ‘limits’ to economic growth

A report commissioned on behalf of a cross-party group of British MPs authored by a former UK government advisor, the first of its kind, says that industrial civilisation is currently on track to experience “an eventual collapse of production and living standards” in the next few decades if business-as-usual continues.

The report published by the new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Limits to Growth, which launched in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening, reviews the scientific merits of a controversial 1972 model by a team of MIT scientists, which forecasted a possible collapse of civilisation due to resource depletion.

The report launch at the House of Commons was addressed by Anders Wijkman, co-chair of the Club of Rome, which originally commissioned the MIT study.

At the time, the MIT team’s findings had been widely criticised in the media for being alarmist. To this day, it is often believed that the ‘limits to growth’ forecasts were dramatically wrong.

But the new report by the APPG on Limits to Growth, whose members consist of Conservative, Labour, Green and Scottish National Party members of parliament, reviews the scientific literature and finds that the original model remains surprisingly robust.

Authored by Professor Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey, who was Economics Commissioner on the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, and former Carbon Brief policy analyst Robin Webster, the report concludes that:

“There is unsettling evidence that society is tracking the ‘standard run’ of the original study — which leads ultimately to collapse. Detailed and recent analyses suggest that production peaks for some key resources may only be decades away.”

The 1972 team used their system dynamics model of the consumption of key planetary resources to explore a range of different scenarios.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Profits of death: disaster capitalists fan flames of war in Syria

March 16, 2016

Syrian refugee prays after arriving on shores of Greece

Profits of death: disaster capitalists fan flames of war in Syria

American, European and Russian corporations are the only ones winning from humanitarian disasters of their own making

As a tentative ceasefire continues to hold in Syria, with the next round of peace talks having resumed this week, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there might be an end in sight to a conflict that has raged for nearly five years.

But as with every war in the Middle East, nothing is quite as it seems.

According to Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine, corporatist (a more pertinent term for what many of us consider “neoliberal”) policymakers — those that are inherently intertwined with both Government and multinational companies — take advantage of catastrophes such as economic collapse, hurricanes, terrorist attacks and even war, to further what she describes as their “policy trinity”: the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending.

In short, disaster capitalism is premised on a simple philosophy: where there’s chaos, there’s money to be made.

From Pinochet’s Chilean coup and subsequent reforms in the 70s, via Thatcher, to the Falklands conflict and the miner’s strike; from 9/11 to the second invasion of Iraq, Klein argues that the economist Milton Friedman was the spiritual leader of this “shock doctrine”:

“The falling bombs, the bursts of terror, the pounding winds serve to soften up whole societies much as the blaring music and blows in the torture cells soften up prisoners. Like the terrorised prisoner who gives up the names of his comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Quilliam Foundation is financed by Tea-Party conservatives investigated by Sam Harris

January 10, 2016

The Quilliam Foundation is financed by Tea-Party conservatives investigated by Sam Harris

And Ghaffar Hussain, a London Borough PREVENT manager, is listed as a co-leader for their million dollar project

The Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think-tank in London that has influenced British government national security strategies, has received over a million dollars in funding from an American conservative philanthropic organisation, with close ties to the Tea Party and extreme right-wing Christian networks.

The funding comes in the form of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, for a total of $1,080,997, covering the period from September 2014 to June 2017.

One of the project leaders for the grant is Ghaffar Hussain, a former managing director of the Quilliam Foundation. Hussain is no longer formally employed by Quilliam, however. Today, he manages the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism (Prevent) programme in the London Borough of Newham.

Templeton, the Christian right, and anti-science

In 2014, ‘New Atheist’ icon Sam Harris donated $20,000 to the Quilliam Foundation. Harris has advocated “war with Islam,” including defending regime change in Iraq, advocating torture, and promoting mass profiling of Muslims “or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim.”

Despite his engagements with Nawaz, as exemplified in their co-authored book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, Harris has never renounced such views, and Nawaz has not challenged them.

Ironically, a recent investigation commissioned by Harris concluded that the John Templeton Foundation, which now funds Quilliam, had a worrying “history of funding what could be seen as anti-science activities and groups.”

The John Templeton Foundation specialises in funding programmes that bring science and religion closer, including in some cases sponsoring dubious pseudo-scientific projects on ‘faith healing.’

For that reason, the Foundation is shunned by many prominent scientists, including for instance the well-known biologist Richard Dawkins. These scientists criticise the foundation’s promotion of conservative Christian religious ideology and right-wing causes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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Our monetary system creates the need for economic growth by design

A US Army document concedes the real interests driving US military strategy toward Russia: dominating oil pipeline routes, accessing the vast natural resources of Central Asia, and enforcing the expansion of American capitalism worldwide.

Imagine a world in which everybody gave away their freedom, willingly, in return for being able to belong to a toxic network which, rather than enriching their lives, profited from eroding civil discourse, polarizing communities, and manipulating their minds.

Wouldn’t you wonder what was wrong with these people?

You would. And yet that is the world you are about to inhabit, right now. Unless you do something about it.

Fossil fuelled-growth

In this third contribution to our symposium, ‘Pathways to the Post-Carbon Economy’, biophysical economist Graham Palmer assesses the plausibility of conventional economic forecasts of a global energy transition away from fossil fuels.

Most forecasts paint a rosy picture of continued, unimpeded economic growth, even as the world weans itself entirely off carbon-intensive energy sources. But are such scenarios really possible?

Palmer argues that they aren’t — not when we consider how the economy is fundamentally embedded in its biophysical environment. And if it isn’t, then we need a new approach to modelling, which pays greater attention the intimate relationship between energy, our societies, and their economies.

Tom Secker and Matthew Alford report on their astonishing findings from trawling through thousands of new US military and intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made — not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years.

This raises new questions not only about the way censorship works in the modern entertainment industry, but also about Hollywood’s little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus.

Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years

And Ghaffar Hussain, a London Borough PREVENT manager, is listed as a co-leader for their million dollar project

Templeton, the Christian right, and anti-science

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