Middle East Today
Egypt relies on the import of 60% of its wheat. Due to the meager
availability of water, Egypt cultivates only 5 to 6 million feddans, of
acres. Sudan, on the other hand, has regular rain. It was estimated that
the regular annual rain fall in Sudan was estimated to be 1000 billion
cu.m., in addition to rivers water. Hence, both Egypt and Sudan
complement each other regarding cultivation. Egypt po
News From Atlantis.
In the process of writing on this blog I have had the pleasure of
meeting many interesting people. This month is a bit of an achievement
for this blog. It is now ten years since I wrote the first post on here.
Regular readers will have seen my many meanderings in the realms of
conspiracy theories, politics and the like. As the blog passes the ten
year mark, it is fitting to thank all those I have
NolanChart.com
When
I was a young adolescent, I never read the books that teachers
assigned. I am not saying I didn’t read books, just saying I […]
It’s
very well-known that over the years countless proposals have been made
to amend the US Constitution, but it’s somewhat fallen out of favor
except […]
It’s
everything we have come to expect from the Republican Party: deceit,
ruthlessness, dishonesty, lack of principle, aiding and abetting an
enemy, and intense partisanship. […]
The
frequent argument of both some paleoconservatives, reactionaries, or
even disillusioned moderates is that conservatives (both with and
distinct from the Republican Party) are just […]
Donald
Trump has violated most conventional wisdom in American politics.
Repeatedly, the President, as a candidate and now as our Chief Executive
has gone where […]
August
6, 2018 is a date which will live in infamy. The tech giants of the
information age have overplayed their hand in a synchronized and […]
If governments were doing their jobs, a Skip The Dishes food delivery
driver wouldn’t have to sue for basic employment rights. Charleen
Pokornik, who started driving for the company in Winnipeg two years ago,
says the company is wrongly claiming the drivers are independent
contractors, not employees. Increasingly, jobs have been changing — and
generally for the worse. More part-time work, more pe
Racism, being as all-American as rotten apple pie, has gotten a huge
fertilizing boost thanks to modern technology. The Internet has spawned
acres upon acres of toxic cyber-orchards which are poisoning millions
upon millions of social media users all over this precious Land of the
Free. With homegrown neo-Nazis to the right of us and Kremlin bots to
the right-left of us, how in the world can #Res
You have to hand it to Donald Trump. Not only is he an expert at
controlling the media he only pretends to despise as "fake," he also
knows how to stir up corporate churnalism to a sustained furious boil,
salted liberally with outrage from a can.. It took a Trump to turn
George Bush's torture architect and Barack Obama's drone assassination
guru into Resistance, Inc's latest action hero. John Bre
Despite his best efforts, Donald Trump is not quite the shoo-in for
best performance by a rich, famous, entitled and clueless narcissist
this week. The internet is exploding because Madonna made her VMA show
tribute to the late Aretha Franklin all about herself and her own
struggles to achieve fame and fortune. She is now known as Me-donna,
which is quite a big step up from Material Girl. She's m
Have you noticed that more and more corporate media pundits are paying
some positive attention to socialism these days? If they can't beat such
attractive upstarts as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, they might as well at
least pretend to join them in the pre-midterms interim. There'll be
plenty of time after November to curb both their enthusiasm and ours.
Color me skeptical, but when neoliberal scribe
Sirius the dog star is still high in the sky. It's so bright, in fact,
that on cloudy days you can even see him with the naked eye. At times he
can even outshine the sun itself. But in American End-Times, nobody but
nobody outshines Reality Star Donald Trump. Not even reality starlet
Omorosa. So what better time for him to call another woman a dog, and
what better time for the media to bay like h
So today I got my marching orders to vacate the flooded, incipiently
moldy premises as of 3 p.m. Sunday so that Serve Pro can get on with
making it like it never even happened. Granted, this was pretty short
notice on the part of the landlord who had given me a date of a week
from now to check into the hotel. But professionals that they hopefully
are, Serve Pro found itself unexpectedly ahead of
Schools Matter
Roughly two months ago I discovered Southern New Hampshire University
had become the first academic institution in North America to issue a
diploma credential / education transcript on the Blockchain. It
surprised me. I knew Learning Machine (MIT) was working on this in
Malta, but I had no clue there was a domestic trial underway. I dove in,
did a lot of research, and created the map below. To vi
For many past generations of college bound students, the years of
elementary and high school focused on getting kids ready for a different
kind of learning that focused on breadth and depth, analysis,
synthesis, collaboration, perspective, nuance, and even taste. What
young college aspirant of the past, including me, did not heard how it
would be different "when you get to college." That was befo
For Immediate Release July 25, 2018 Proposed Borrower Defense Rule
Shortchanges Defrauded Students, Ends Accountability for For-Profit
Colleges WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Education
released a draft proposal to overhaul the Obama Administration’s
Borrower Defense to Repaymentrule. The revision would alter how students
secure loan forgiveness when institutions fail to deliver
Screw You Guys, I'm Going Home
I'm on vacation, and so are many Americans. You shouldn’t have to worry
about your job while you’re on vacation. Or should you? A recent survey
found that 49% of Americans are taking no vacation this summer. Sadly,
52% did not use all their vacation days last year, and 24% have taken no
vaction in at least a year. But you're not one of these sad cases.
You’ve earned three weeks of vacation, and w
In
light of Omarosa's recordings of conversations with her bosses at the
White House, I thought I'd discuss a question I'm asked all the time in
my law practice: Is it legal to record a conversation at work?
Unfortunately, there's no easy answer to this question, and a mistake
can land you in jail. Illegal tape recording can have both criminal and
civil penalties. My advice is almost always: When
Syria Comment
A billboard near a main entrance to the city of Hasaka, Syria announces
“Hasaka Welcomes You” in the Arabic, Assyrian, and Kurdish languages
beneath a prominently-displayed image of PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan.
Photo: Wladimir Van Wilgenburg By Max J. Joseph and Mardean Isaac
Introduction The purpose of this article is to provide a critique of the
Rojava project through a close examination of the
The Duck of Minerva
The following is a guest post by Andrew Owsiak , Associate Professor at
the University of Georgia and Book Editor for International Studies
Review. The race to push scholarly research into the world carries a few
consequences, perhaps the most notable being that it proves challenging
to stay up-to-date with what is published. To help with this, some
journals, for example International Studies Rev
This is a guest post from Zoe Marks. Zoe Marks is currently Director of
the Global Development Academy at the University of Edinburgh and
Program Director of the MSc in African Studies ; in September 2018, she
will join the faculty at Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on
peace and conflict, gender, and inequality and has been published in
various outlets, including African Affairs and
Following the Trump administration is really tiring. And I’m not
talking about the last two years — it’s a challenge to survive single
weeks of their news cycle. Hell, a Friday afternoon is already taxing.
That is why over here in Europe we’re very careful about checking
headlines and Twitter Friday night. The outrage at the next fecal storm
would keep you up better than a crying baby/ thoughts o
This topic came up on twitter–how do we get our friends and relatives
to understand the academic job market? My first take: don’t bother. It
can get really confusing really fast. I consider my family
well-educated, yet deep into my career, my mother thought that my
appearances on TV and radio would help me get another job. Nope. Given
that job market season is approaching (sorry!),* here’s my lis
This post comes from Steve Weber , Professor at the I-School and
Department of Political Science and Director of the Center for Long-Term
Cybersecurity at the University of California, Berkeley, and a
co-director of the Bridging the Gap project. It has become common in
2018 to hear that the United States and China are locking themselves
into an Artificial Intelligence ‘arms race’ . While global p
This is a guest post from Peter Henne , Assistant Professor at the
University of Vermont. Robert Gilpin passed away recently. Most of us
knew him as the author of War and Change in World Politics . Others knew
him primarily from his work on international political economy. But I
had another connection with him; Gilpin was a Vermonter, and an alumni
of the University of Vermont (where I am a profe
The Straight Goods
Is It ‘Reporting’ or ‘Creative Writing’ in the province of Alberta?
Written by Robin Mathews , August 2018 Looking at the article “ Freedom
and Loathing in Lethbridge” by Tadzio Richards for Alberta Views is a
depressing undertaking. Dressed, apparently, in the clothing of serious
investigation – the reality of its sham nature is disappointing … for
there is no question that clear light needs to
thwap's schoolyard
George Orwell's 1984 describes how a totalitarian government can
manipulate people into believing the most grotesque, inhuman
absurdities. It can delude people into thinking they're free, even
though they're miserable and trapped in a system they can't control. It
robs them of the words, the capabilities, to even understand what is
wrong, to explain it to themselves. To a great degree WE live in
Sort of. I still think humanity is too stupid to survive. I still think
blogging is a waste of time. But it seems to me that living a lie is
also a complete waste of time. Recently, I've been seeing a lot of
click-bait titles about how to have a better life. You know these sorts
of articles: "Yoga hacks for greater energy." "This Billionaire CEO
Avoids These 5 Bad Habits." "The BEST Way To Respon
Welcome to Pottersville 2 (Blogging Against Fascism!)
If
you've been lucky enough to not be paying attention to your coming
demise, economic and physical, don't stop now. Because if you watch the
following short video, you will catch up. And they are not kidding. In
fact, if you watch the "News" coverage put out by any of the major
networks, you will have absolutely no idea what is, and has been for
years, happening to your pocketbook (and
What Is Sustainable
Once upon a time, all humans in Europe were nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Today, we know little about those prehistoric wild folks. Over the
centuries, farming, animal husbandry, ceramics, textiles, and other
technologies from the Middle East slithered westward into Europe.
Eventually, almost all of the wild folks were either absorbed into the
turbulent new culture or eliminated by it. In Europe, the
Vilhelm Moberg was born in 1898, in a remote village where remnants of
the peasant way of life persisted. He wrote A History of the Swedish
People , which spanned two volumes: (1) before the Renaissance, and (2)
after. Moberg’s writing has been translated into 20 languages, and
Swedes have bought six million copies of his books. Most histories focus
on the big shots, the decision makers, the conq
If you're an app developer for MLB, or if you're with Roku or AppleTV,
skip down to the final paragraphs! Because Allan and I follow a baseball
an out-of-town baseball team, we subscribe to MLB.TV, and have done so
for ages. As much as I dislike pay-per-TV services, being able to watch
any baseball game at any time, with either the home or away feed, is
amazing. Once we were able to do this by st
Once
again, Google has reduced the ease and functionality of Blogger. A
while back, the layout of the Blogger dashboard changed. I used to be
able to see an overview of all my blogs plus my "following" list on one
dashboard page. I found this very useful, and I imagine that other users
who also moderate more than one blog would have agreed. Now I can no
longer check for and moderate comments on al
Court and Spark , 1974 Writing about the music of Joni Mitchell has
been a huge challenge. My love of music and my writing abilities seem to
live in separate spheres: I write with my brain, but I listen with my
heart. If writing about Joni's music has been challenging, writing about
Court and Spark feels impossible. The love and connection I feel for
this music is impossible to put into words. So
When the author Saul Bellow died in 2005 at the age of 90, I was
saddened and disappointed by the scant attention paid to his passing.
Bellow was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. His novels
are still relevant, in a way that many of past generations are not. And
his writing... his writing is simply astounding. With this in mind, and
my love of nonfiction, I looked forward to readin
WWF - Latest News
WWF- Russia would be releasing ten bisons into the wild in North
Ossetia during August. The restoration of bisons in North Ossetia is a
part of a strategy to re-introduce the animals in the country. The first
six bisons arrived in Caucasus from the Oksky nature reserve (Ryazan
region) today, after a 2000 km travel. The new arrivals include purebred
two male and four female bisons. The animals wer
Brazil's protected areas (Pas) such as the Amazon and Caatinga are
known globally for the incredible biodiversity treasures they hold. In
2016, there were approximately 17 million visitors in Brazilian
protected areas and according to a new study published this week,
greater investment in the environmental management of these areas could
help yield even more economic gains for the country. The bo
A Very Public Sociologist
As the dust settles after another episode in Labour's interminable
anti-semitism wars, one in which we're told there's a "fine line"
between opposing Israel's oppression of Palestinians and anti-Jewish
racism, it seems even the most gutter attacks will do as long as it's
seen to damage Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. Yet let's step back
and assess the factional battlefield. It does look like
22 years ago, Thursday mornings almost always meant a hangover. And
yet, somehow, I was able to drag my minging carcass to the class room
for a two-hour session on Comparative Social Transformations. Don't let
the dry title fool you as our lecturer, Alan Sillitoe (no, not the Alan
Sillitoe) took us through a bit of classical sociology, the collapse of
the post-war consensus, the debates around Ea
I see John Rentoul has peered into the crystal ball and has predicted
that a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party would not do as well in the next
election compared to 2017. Does he have a point or will his forecasts,
just like those for last year's general election, prove as useless as
Mystic Meg's? Let's examine his reasoning. There are three strings to
John's bow. In reverse order, the Tories will n
And so the blood moon hung low in the firmament as lions and lambs
joyfully cantered and capered about the field. The end of the world? No,
the first round up of new(ish) left blogs and assorted doings since
Nebuchadnezzar vacated Babylon's throne. Blogging might be dead, but
only because everyone's at it. Micro-blogging, Facebook statuses,
podcasting, haunting comments sections, blogging is invi
Let's go back to the old school.
Here are three scenarios. These all actually happened. 1. At a party
conference not too long ago, Nora Mulready, an activist and Progress
supporter spotted Seumas Milne in the lobby of the hotel. She strode up
to him and started ranting, peppering her invective with a few choice
words that would overfill a swear jar. 2. After a Parliamentary session,
behind the speaker's chair Margaret Hodge butt
ArmsControlWonk
As
many of you know, the latest annual China Military Power Report
produced by the U.S. Department of Defense for Congress came out last
week. The reports contains quite a few interesting tidbits, but I
spotted one thing that really stood out against the backdrop of expected
developments and progress in China’s missile programs. In …
Quote
of the week: “Nuclear destruction destroys the meaning of death by
depriving it of its individuality.” — Hans Morgenthau Hans Morganthau
was part of a wave of intellectuals who found refuge in the United
States as Europe was coming apart at the seams with the rise of Nazi
Germany. He is perhaps best known …
Quote
of the week: “The most spectacular event of the past half century is
one that did not occur. We have enjoyed sixty years without nuclear
weapons exploded in anger. What a stunning achievement – or, if not
achievement, what stunning good fortune.” — Thomas Schelling, Nobel
Prize acceptance speech, December 8, 2005 Tom Schelling …
The
imprint on public consciousness of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima,
which occurred 73 years ago today, has faded greatly. The hibakusha, or
survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which
killed more than 130,000 and left tens of thousands of others with
horrendous injuries, have been the most ardent proponents of nuclear …
Ellen
Nakashima and Joby Warrick have a bombshell story about North Korea
producing one, possible two, Hwasong-15 ICBMs at its Sanumdong facility.
Aaron and Jeffrey discuss the role that MIIS and open source played in
corroborating the report. This episode brought to you by Jeffrey’s new
novel, The 2020 Commission Report. Links of Note: …
My
colleagues Catherine Dill, Cameron Trainer and I were reminded when
looking at satellite imagery of Nampo, taken yesterday morning, that
North Korea’s evasive tactics are successfully keeping the country’s
coal and iron exporters in business. Prior to being sanctioned by the
UN, these export commodities were amongst North Korea’s biggest earners.
Information about trade in North Korean coal …
Chase
Iron Eyes entered a plea agreement today on charges related to Last
Child Camp at Standing Rock. Prosecutors amended the felony riot charge
and criminal trespass charge, and reduced the charges to a misdemeanor.
Read more:
https://lastrealindians.com/north-dakota-drops-felony-charges-against-chase-iron-eyes/
'We Are Not Terrorists' video just released by Chase Iron Eyes and
Photo
Salmon River, Calif. Secretary Zinke issues memo to maximize federal
water deliveries at expense of fisheries By Dan Bacher Censored News On
Friday, August 17, U.S. Secretary of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke
issued a controversial memo calling for actions to be taken to "maximize
Central Valley Project deliveries" to agribusiness and other water
contractors. These
.
A coalition of environmental and consumer groups held a press
conference against AB 813 at the State Capitol in Sacramento yesterday.
Photo by Dan Bacher. Groups rally against bill that will hand over
California electricity grid to Trump administration By Dan Bacher
Censored News SACRAMENTO — A press conference and rally on the south
steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento
.
Six youths demanding a fossil fuel extraction freeze arrested in sit in
at Jerry Brown's Office By Dan Bacher Censored News SACRAMENTO, Cal --
As massive wildfires continued to ravage the state, 35 California youth
held a sit-in at Governor Jerry Brown's office at the state capitol in
Sacramento on Tuesday, August 7, demanding that he freeze new fossil
fuel drilling and develop a
.
Brutal Arrest of Water Protector Defending Atchafalaya in Louisiana
L'eau Est La Vie Camp - No Bayou Bridge Censored News Water Protector
who was trapped at the top of a tree climbed down early this morning and
was TASERED, ARRESTED, and is being held on $10,000 BAIL The Bayou
Bridge Pipeline on the Louisiana Gulf Coast is at the end of the Dakota
Access Pipeline.
Navajo
Councilman Wants Half Million Dollars for Attorney to Keep Dirty Coal
Power Plant Operating By Brenda Norrell Censored News Navajo Councilman
LoRenzo Bates wants the Navajo Nation to spend a half million dollars to
keep a dirty coal fired power plant operating. The proposed $500,000
would be for a contract attorney to negotiate a new owner for the power
plant. Navajo
Centauri Dreams
How close would a passing star have to come to produce drastic results
on the outer Solar System? According to researchers at the Max Planck
Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, roughly 3 times Neptune’s
distance would be disruptive enough to explain what we see beyond that
planet’s orbit today. Led by Susanne Pfalzner, the scientists have been
modeling close stellar flybys of other planetary s
The first time I ran into the term ‘water world,’ it had a seductive
quality. After all, we think of habitable zones in terms of water on the
surface, and a world with an overabundance of water suggested a kind of
celestial Polynesia, archipelagos surrounded by a planet-circling,
azure sea. But we immediately run into problems when we think about
planets with substantially more water than Earth.
The death of V.S. Naipaul (1932-2018), that cross-grained and all too
combative man who saw so unflinchingly into the post-colonial lands from
which he drew his heritage, invariably brings to mind his strangest
novel, The Enigma of Arrival (Vintage Books, 1987). Temporarily settled
into a cottage in Wiltshire in rural England, the author looks back on
his career in search of a renewal as cyclic a
Beta Pictoris b continues to instruct us in the ways of exoplanet
finding. Consider: The young world was identified in 2008 through direct
imaging via the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern
Observatory site at Cerro Paranal (Chile). Actually seeing an exoplanet
is no small feat. We are in this case talking about a bright A-class
star some 63 light years away in the wash of whose light
When we think about what is usually called ‘planetary protection,’
we’re talking about the probes we send to possibly life-bearing places
like Mars or Europa. It would confound our investigations if we couldn’t
be sure we hadn’t contaminated such a place with microorganisms from
Earth, unwittingly carried aboard a lander that was not properly
stripped of such passengers. Even our Cassini Saturn o
Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth , by Adam
Frank. W.W. Norton & Co. (2018), 272 pp. Although he has published
several previous books and is well represented in the technical
literature, Adam Frank (University of Rochester) found himself suddenly
thrust onto the public stage with an op-ed he
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