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by Dave Rollo

Okeechobee County is located in Florida’s Heartland Region, within the 3000-square mile Kissimmee River Basin. The Heartland stretches from Orlando in the north to the intertidal coast of mangrove forests to the south, forming an area commonly referred to as the “River of Grass.” Water flowed hundreds of miles through this enormous network of marshlands, helping to shape an ecosystem of unrivalled subtropical biodiversity.

Today,

The post Okeechobee County: Kept Great with Conservation appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

James Scott, the Yale political scientist who specialized in so many things, has died. Jim was a scholar of peasant politics and societies, Southeast Asia, state planning, ecology, forestry, Balzac, and much else. He meant a great deal to a great many people, intellectually and personally, but there’s a small cohort of us, who came to Yale in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for whom he holds a special place in our hearts. We had come to the political science department intending to study political theory, only to discover, upon our arrival, that the official political theorists on the faculty were neither political nor theoretical. Though we tried to make it work as theorists, many of us in this […]

Joe Biden gave a moving speech from the Oval Office last night explaining his decision to withdraw from the race. He pointedly said, “In this sacred space, I’m surrounded by portraits of extraordinary American presidents. Thomas Jefferson wrote the immortal words that guide this nation. George Washington showed us presidents are not kings.” He asked if the character of the president still matters and tasked voters to question whether Trump (to whom he did not refer by name) would uphold the sanctity of democracy and the presidency. Biden questioned, notably, if the character of a president still matters, and without naming Donald Trump, asked voters to question whether the Republican nominee would uphold the sanctity of the presidency or US democracy. [No, definitely not.] He said, “This sacred task of perfecting our union is not about me, it’s about you,”  That is true. Are there enough of us out there willing to step up and fight back this fascist MAGA movement that’s led by a cretinous imbecile? We’re about to find out.

In case of emergency, break glass ceiling To Donald Trump’s backward-looking “Make America Great Again” movement, Vice President Kamala Harris says forcefully, “We’re not going back.” Her rally crowds now chant it. @dailymail Kamala Harris said ‘we’re not going back!’ to ‘failed economic policies,’ which prompted chants from the crowd. #kamala #kamalaharris #vicepresident #president #trump #election #politics #usa #wisconsin #brat ♬ original sound – frankiepolari “So here’s the thing about breaking barriers,” Harris told the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies in Wasghington, D.C. on Monday. She’s broken a few. “Breaking barriers does not mean you start on one side of the barrier and you end up on the other side. There’s breaking involved. And when you break things, you get cut. And you may bleed. And it is worth it every time, every time.” This campaign to push back the fascist urges of the MAGA Republican Party’s Christian nationalists will not be pretty. Their once racist and sexist dog whistles now are fog horns.

The families of civilians killed by the U.S. in Somalia share their ideas of justice in a new report. The Pentagon has no response.

The post U.S. Has Never Apologized to Somali Drone Strike Victims — Even When It Admitted to Killing Civilians appeared first on The Intercept.

At the end of the last century, hoping to drive the United States from Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sought to draw in the American military. He reportedly wanted to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil,” provoking savage asymmetric conflicts that would send home a stream of “wooden boxes and coffins” and weaken American resolve. “This is when you will leave,” he predicted. After the 9/11 attacks, Washington took the bait, launching interventions across the Greater Middle East and Africa. What followed was a slew of sputtering counterterrorism failures and stalemates in places ranging from Niger and Burkina Faso to Somalia and Yemen, a dismal loss, after 20 years,... Read more

Source: Suicide Squad appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

An asterisk mark or a pivot point It won’t be enough to break the spell. It’s not news that former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) opposes Donald Trump. Last year he called Trump a man with the moral compass of an axe murderer. Duncan announced he would support Joe Biden for president in May, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.” But about six seconds into the first presidential debate it was clear that Biden was not capable of handling the rigors of the campaign. If Harris is the one to pick up the baton, Duncan is on board. With Kamala Harris now the presumptive Democratic nominee, Duncan announced on FKA Twitter he will support her. He repeated his stance in a Wednesday interview on AJC’s “Politically Georgia” podcast. Duncan disagrees with Democrats on abortion. But he isn’t shy about hijacking the Democratic Party to restore a Republican Party “I can actually recognize.” He wants back a country where neighbors can disagree without being disagreeable.

On July 13, after Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple shots at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the world saw the difference between presence of mind and absence of mind. Trump, who was shot in the right ear, gave an extraordinary demonstration of the first of these qualities. He flinched as he felt the bullet. […]

The post Savior Complexes appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

Sorry, everybody, I hate to be that guy, but what’s going on with the apocalypse orgy? It’s happening, right? Do we have any more details about it, or are we just going into this whole doomsday orgy thing completely off the cuff?

Seriously, what are the logistics behind the apocalypse orgy?

Look, I know everyone’s in favor of having one massive, horrifying doomsday orgy in the last precious moments before our planet becomes completely uninhabitable. But I just think that we, as a group, have to be realistic and realize that a truly great doomsday orgy isn’t going to happen overnight. In science fiction, it always looks so easy: every time a society like ours is about to face a mass extinction, they descend, almost by magic, into a writhing orgy where seas of gyrating bodies fill the streets in a desperate attempt to numb their existential dread with the temporary comforts of thrusting flesh and undulating genitalia.

The University overruled its temporary ban on fossil fuel cash with a new policy which could see it take multi-million-pound gifts from the industry

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Doctor Who, The Dark Tower, Deadpool, Criminal Minds, WBD/NBA, Evil, Superman, TUA, Tracker, HOTD, and more!

An interview with The Ink, about where we are, how we got here and where we need to go. George Monbiot, interviewed by The Ink, 9th July 2024 TI: Can you walk us through how you define neoliberalism” — the “Invisible Doctrine” of the book’s title. And of “capitalism,” for that matter? GM: Let’s start […]

Spud diplomacy – can a potato salad contest ease tensions over a controversial power station between Czech and Polish neighbours?

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

He was an octogenarian Nobel-winning psychologist, I was a nervous 20-something film producer. Here’s what struck me most

- by Namir Khaliq

Read at Psyche

When babies are born, they cry in the accent of their mother tongue: how does language begin in the womb?

- by Darshana Narayanan

Read at Aeon

Last week, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza strip is unlawful. It also found Israel guilty of violating the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid. Even though this merely confirms what has already been asserted for decades by Palestinian civil society, human […]

The international de-mining organisation, HALO, estimates that up to two million landmines may have been laid across Ukraine since February 2022 – the explosive devices set up as traps to injure and kill anyone who unwittingly triggers them

The UK General Election was held on Thursday, July 4, 2024 and the British Labour Party stormed home winning 411 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons to take a huge simple majority of 174 seats. The awful Tories were cleaned out well and truly and only managed 121 seats a loss overall…

During the ongoing war in Ukraine, Russia's prized fleet has been decimated, with one-third of its naval vessels either sunk or damaged

Political Economy Seminar

Class, Party, and American Politics in 2024

Speaker: Matthew Karp, Princeton University

Time and date: Friday, 2 August 2024, 4-5:30 pm

Location: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 650, The University of Sydney

Abstract: It may be the most pervasive question in twenty-first century politics, all across the post-industrial world: Why have so many working-class voters, the backbone of socialist and progressive struggles across the twentieth century, turned away from parties of the left? Everyone from Thomas Piketty to J.D. Vance seems to have weighed in, but the debate rages on. This talk explores the emergence of what some call “class dealignment” in the United States, focusing especially on the last two decades, and evaluating the current shape of both the Republican and Democratic political coalitions. Drawing on my work with the Center for Working Class Politics, I argue that dealignment represents an existential crisis for the American left and suggest some ways left-wing politicians might push back against these macro trends.