In May 2012, in the warm Chicago sunshine, I sat with journalist Jim Foley who had just returned from Syria. Jim and I had come for a large demonstration against a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). War reporting in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria had not been easy on Jim, who was an easy-going man. “You can’t get …
Sophie Janicke – How Positive Media Can Make Us Better People
Deadpool is the highest-grossing film in the United States so far this year—and one of the most controversial. Though the film has scored points with critics and audiences for its irreverent take on the superhero genre, its extreme gore has raised some familiar questions and objections about the role of violence in films. But look at the highest-grossing film of 2016 internationally, …
‘There is No Doubt’: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s
Throughout Exxon’s global operations, the company knew that CO2 was a harmful pollutant in the atmosphere years earlier than previously reported. DeSmog has uncovered Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s stating unequivocally “there is no doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem” well understood within the company. “It is assumed that the major …
Darby Saxbe – This Is Your Brain On Poverty
This guest post was written by Suzanne Houston, a doctoral candidate in developmental psychology at USC who uses neuroimaging techniques to study brain development in children and adolescents. All of you reading this sentence have been adolescents at one point. You have experienced the years marked by self-consciousness and peer pressure; when your parents were too strict, and your teachers too annoying. …
JAN WILLIS – A Peaceful World Begins With Small Peaceful Actions
To change the world, says Jan Willis, we need hope. And hope grows from nonviolent actions, no matter how small. Sharing this tiny planet amidst a vast universe, we are all interconnected beings, incapable even for a nanosecond of complete independence. Yet we conduct our lives as though we each possessed complete and ultimate control of our individual, isolated universes. We …
Sanders Still Strongest Candidate as New Poll Shows Trump and Clinton in Near-Tie
Though the media and political establishment have all but declared Hillary Clinton the official Democratic presidential candidate, new polling on Monday shows that Bernie Sanders continues to fare significantly better when matched against Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. According to the latest George Washington (GW) University Battleground Poll, Clinton’s lead over Trump has shrunk to 3 percentage points, with her besting the billionaire developer …
ROBERT REICH – The Endgame of 2016′s Anti-Establishment Politics
Will Bernie Sanders’s supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination? Likewise, if Donald Trump is denied the Republican nomination, will his supporters back whoever gets the Republican nod? If 2008 is any guide, the answer is unambiguously yes to both. About 90 percent of people who backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries that year ended up …
Gary G. Kohls – And Why it has Lost its Trustworthiness When it Comes to Vaccine Policy
Despite the fact that I am a physician, I have long been suspicious of the influence of giant multinational medical corporate cartels that are best referred to as Big Pharma, Big Vaccine, Big Medicine, Big Insurance, Big Food, Big Agrichemical, etc. Most clear-headed observers of these industries (that meet the psychiatrist’s DSM definition of sociopathic entities) are justifiably concerned about …
HORACE G. CAMPBELL – New Push for Military Intervention in Libya: Who Will Control the Libyan Central Bank?
There is intense push for the NATO countries to make an overt intervention in Libya. In this moment, the justification is to fight the Islamic State and to prevent terror from spreading across the Mediterranean to Europe. As is the case in matters of the destruction of African societies, the governments of Britain and France are in the forefront of …
Nathan Halverson – The world already would be out of water if everyone ate like Americans
If the rest of the world ate like Americans, the planet would have run out of freshwater 15 years ago, according to the world’s largest food company. In private, Nestle executives told U.S. officials that the world is on a collision course with doom because Americans eat too much meat, and now, other countries are following suit, according to a secret …