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This is not the age of certainty. We are in the time of contradictions: The Fourteenth Newsletter (2022)
It is hard to fathom the depths of our time, the terrible wars, and the confounding information that whizzes by without much wisdom. Certainties that flood the airwaves and the internet are easy to come by, but are they derived from an honest assessment of the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russian banks (part of a broader United States sanctions policy that now afflicts approximately thirty countries)?
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National responsibility for ecological breakdown: a fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017
We propose a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown by assessing nations’ cumulative material use in excess of equitable and sustainable boundaries.
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IPCC report calls for ‘immediate and deep’ carbon cuts to slow climate change
Current pledges to cut emissions won’t be enough to slow climate change, according to a new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
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Ben Lewis on Kautsky, Democracy and Republicanism
Ben Lewis, the translator and editor of “Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism” talks with Green Left’s Barry Healy.
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Andreas Malm & the Zetkin Collective – ‘White Skin, Black Fuel’
As regular readers of this blog will be aware I think that Andreas Malm, even where I disagree with key points of his argument, is one of the most stimulating Marxist authors on environmental politics.
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Briefing: World hunger and the war in Ukraine
The New Cold War is rapidly heating up, with severe consequences for people around the world. Our new series, Briefings, provides the key facts on these matters of global concern.
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Remembering Aijaz Ahmad
UCI Chancellor’s Professor of Comparative Literature Aijaz Ahmad passed away in his home in Irvine on March 9, 2022.
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What race is and isn’t – excerpts from ‘Racism, Not Race’
Most people who are fighting against racism are doing so with their metaphorical hands tied behind their backs because they are not clear about what race is and what it is not.
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Antarctica on edge
East Antarctica, often times referred to as “the final frontier of global warming,” is making headlines once again.
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Capitalism’s crimes against nature — interview with author Jeff Sparrow
Australian socialist Jeff Sparrow is a writer, broadcaster and Guardian Australia columnist. He spoke to climate activist Martin Empson about his book, ‘Crimes Against Nature—Capitalism and Global Heating.’
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In the World, there are many traps, and it is necessary to shatter them: The Twelfth Newsletter (2022)
On 31 March 1964, the Brazilian military initiated a coup d’état against the democratically-elected progressive government of President João Goulart.
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‘The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology’
The product of several decades of research, this is a book accessibly written but rigorously researched with footnotes meticulously collected for those looking for a jumping off point through various archives.
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Record heat waves sweeping both Poles of Earth, climate scientists warn of danger
While the world is concerned about climate change and almost irreversible global warming, the polar region is specifically important owing to their sensitive climatic conditions.
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There is no ‘green transition’
These days it’s no longer viable for the rich and powerful and their political servants simply to deny the reality of climate change and other environmental challenges. The new fad is to talk up whatever (inevitably small-scale) green initiatives are happening, and spruik the array of magical technological fixes that, like Forrest’s beloved “green hydrogen”, are always somehow just on the verge of taking off.
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Globalisation and the relocation of capital and labour
The twin phenomena associated with contemporary globalisation, of migration of capital from the metropolis to parts of the third world, and of migration of labour from the erstwhile second world to the metropolis, have the effect of weakening the working class movement everywhere.
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Climate research strike? Linking up environmental science with the ‘science of society’
Hundreds of IPCC scientists provide the United Nations periodically with reports on adverse impacts of climate change. The most recent report, issued in February, details rising seas, terrible droughts, atypical weather events, thawing permafrost, dying forests, and massive displacement of populations.
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The People of the Book
By “People of the Book” it meant principally Jews and Christians. These book-based religions were an intellectual innovation. The book-basis gave Christianity and Islam an expansive power and a cultural breadth that earlier religions had not had.
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Max Ajl in conversation with Habib Ayeb on food sovereignty and the environment
Max Ajl interviews radical geographer and activist Habib Ayeb. Habib Ayeb is a founder member of the NGO Observatory of Food Sovereignty and Environment (OSAE) and Max Ajl is a Postdoc at Wageningen University’s Rural Sociology Group, associate editor at Agrarian South and the author of A People’s Green New Deal.
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The huge gap between how serious nuclear war is and how seriously it’s being taken
Sometimes I’m not sure what presents a greater threat to humanity, nuclear war or the colossal stupidity that has made it possible.
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Many Africans reject Washington’s position on Ukraine crisis
HALF OF THE COUNTRIES ABSTAINING FROM THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION CONDEMNING MOSCOW WERE AFRICAN UNION MEMBER STATES