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A “Final Warning” on Climate

https://steadystate.org/a-final-warning-on-climate/
Created
Fri, 31/03/2023 - 01:05
by Gary Gardner

Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued what Greenpeace International called the “final warning” in the global effort to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. After three decades of increasingly insistent wake-up calls, the Panel laid out the sobering reality: Meeting the temperature goal set by the global community in 2015 is impossible without an immediate response, “a quantum leap in climate action,” in the words of United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The post A “Final Warning” on Climate appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

To Hell and Back

https://tomdispatch.com/to-hell-and-back/
Created
Fri, 31/03/2023 - 00:32

Here’s something we seldom focus on when it comes to war, American-style, even during the just-passed 20th anniversary of our disastrous invasion of Iraq: many more soldiers survive armed conflict than die from it. This has been especially so during this country’s twenty-first-century War on Terror, which is still playing out in all too many lands globally. And here’s something to add to that reality: even though many more soldiers survive, they do so with ever more injuries of various sorts — conditions that the Veterans Affairs (VA) and military doctors euphemistically call polytrauma. For some of this, you can thank ever-more-sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and other gems of modern warfare like “smart” suicide bombs that can burn, blind,... Read more


Paul Theroux: Diary

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n08/paul-theroux/diary
Created
Fri, 31/03/2023 - 00:00
Instead of being paid serious money, writers were treated to rituals of gratitude and expressions of friendship: lunches and launches. Long lunches were bonding ceremonies and a form of homage, ideally one o’clock to around four at a good restaurant, starting with a schooner of sherry, ending with a tulip-shaped glass of port, and two or three dishes in between, not including a luscious dessert or an aromatic cheese board.


James Meek: ‘That’s my tank on fire’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n08/james-meek/that-s-my-tank-on-fire
Created
Fri, 31/03/2023 - 00:00
In my horror and despair, in those first weeks, particularly when the systemic cruelty of the Russian military showed itself – not just towards civilians and the Ukrainian military, but towards its own troops – I was glad to see video of Russian hardware being destroyed. If it was not, it would kill more Ukrainians. I gradually remembered that inside the destroyed war machines were people.


Miranda Carter: Wasp-Waisted Minoans

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n08/miranda-carter/wasp-waisted-minoans
Created
Fri, 31/03/2023 - 00:00
Mary Renault’s novels manifest an unfashionably unabashed admiration for male heroism and an intense pleasure in male beauty and physicality. She didn’t mind that male readers and reviewers constantly misgendered her; ‘I’ve never been a feminist,’ she wrote to a female friend in the 1960s, ‘simply because all those years my inner persona occupied two sexes too indiscriminately to take part in a sex war.’

An “omnidirectional storm” is here

https://digbysblog.net/2023/03/30/an-omnidirectional-storm-is-here/
Created
Fri, 31/03/2023 - 00:00
Watch for it, red staters Chris Cooper, a poli-sci professor at Western Carolina University, observes a GOP move you’ll likely see in your red-state legislature if you have not already. This one is from North Carolina. Republicans can’t have private donors who support democracy stepping in to prop up state and local Boards of Elections the GOP means to starve of funds. What? No mention of a Hungarian-American businessman in the bill? Attend your local Board meeting. It will likely come up among conspiracy theorists there. The GOP really is pulling out every stop to sabotage elections and undermine any of your rights they can get their hands on. Women’s rights, their personal autonomy and freedoms, are under assault too. You’ve noticed? North Carolina Republicans rolled out their abortion ban legislation on Wednesday too: RALEIGH, N.C. (WGHP) – Four Republicans in the North Carolina House have filed a bill that would ban legal abortion in the state except as necessary to save a mother’s life. House Bill 533 was filed Wednesday by state Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beautfort), its primary sponsor, Rep. Ben Moss (R-Moore), Rep.