Danielle Guilday and Shane Farnan comment on a riff made by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at the National Press Club in which he said the Republican Party has gone “batshit crazy”.
The African Development Bank says it plans to electrify the poorest parts of the continent in 10 years by mobilizing 55 billion dollars per year . Uche Okoronkwo spoke with Yacine Fal, the banks representative, at the fourth international Africa development forum in Morrocco, to find out the banks progress so far using its leverage to encourage financing not just in the power sector but in agriculture
Oil militants in the Niger Delta region have freed five foreign hostages they seized last month off the coast of the country. The freed hostages are two Filipinos, two Russians, and a Georgian national. The five of them were taken by the militants at the end of January. Initially authorities believed the perpetrators were separatists, but those claims were denied. It’s not clear at this stage whether a ransom was paid for their release.
Maddie Moate explores whether or not we could have lived alongside dinosaurs, would you live with the dinosaurs? With thanks to palaeontologist Steve Brusatte.
Farming First interviews Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the very first recipient of the World Food Prize, on the current priorities for research in agriculture. Have they changed from Norman Borlaug’s day?
The Oasis of the Seas crew has 10 hours to unload and restock the floating city with a week’s worth of food and supplies. That includes 10,272 rolls of toilet paper, 7,397 pounds of cheese and 1,000 new light bulbs. (Feb. 26)
A scientific analysis of a natural gas leak near Los Angeles says that it was the biggest in US history.
By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent
The Aliso Canyon blowout vented almost 100,000 tonnes of methane into the atmosphere before it was plugged.
The impact on the climate is said to be the equivalent of the annual emissions of half a million cars.
Researchers say it had a far bigger warming effect than the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
First detected on 23 October, the leak came from one of the 115 wells connected to a massive underground natural gas storage facility, the fifth largest in the US.
Seven unsuccessful attempts were made to shut down the billowing plumes of methane and ethane by the owners, Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas).
The World Health Organization warns that the Zika virus, rapidly spreading throughout Latin America will affect many more people before it is stopped. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports that doctors and scientists have made preventing the virus’s spread a top priority.
Originally published at – http://www.voanews.com/media/video/32…
Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr. (born July 5, 1947) is an American historian specializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. He is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. He is also a retired career officer in the Armor Branch of the United States Army, retiring with the rank of Colonel. He is a former director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005), now part of the Pardee School of Global Studies.
Bacevich has been “a persistent, vocal critic of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure.” In March 2007, he described George W. Bush’s endorsement of such “preventive wars” as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent.” His son, also an Army officer, died fighting in the Iraq War in May 2007.
Bacevich was born in Normal, Illinois, the son of Martha Ellen (Bulfer) and Andrew Bacevich.[4] His father was of Lithuanian descent and his mother was of Irish, German, and English ancestry.[5] He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1969 and served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, serving in Vietnam from the summer of 1970 to the summer of 1971. Later he held posts in Germany, including the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment; the United States; and the Persian Gulf up to his retirement from the service with the rank of Colonel in the early 1990s. His early retirement is thought to be a result of his taking responsibility for the Camp Doha explosion[6] in 1991 while in charge of the 11th ACR.[7] He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins University before joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998.
On May 13, 2007, Bacevich’s son, 1LT Andrew John Bacevich, was killed in action in Iraq by an improvised explosive device south of Samarra in Salah ad Din Governorate.[8] The younger Bacevich, 27, was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army,[9] assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.
Bacevich also has three daughters.
Bacevich has described himself as a “Catholic conservative” [10] and initially published writings in a number of politically oriented magazines, including The Wilson Quarterly. His recent writings have professed a dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration and many of its intellectual supporters on matters of American foreign policy.
On August 15, 2008, Bacevich appeared as the guest of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS to promote his book, The Limits of Power. As in both of his previous books, The Long War (2007) and The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (2005), Bacevich is critical of American foreign policy in the post Cold War era, maintaining the United States has developed an over-reliance on military power, in contrast to diplomacy, to achieve its foreign policy aims. He also asserts that policymakers in particular, and the American people in general, overestimate the usefulness of military force in foreign affairs. Bacevich believes romanticized images of war in popular culture (especially movies) interact with the lack of actual military service among most of the U.S. population to produce in the American people a highly unrealistic, even dangerous notion of what combat and military service are really like.
Bacevich conceived The New American Militarism as “a corrective to what has become the conventional critique of U.S. policies since 9/11 but [also] as a challenge to the orthodox historical context employed to justify those policies.”
Finally, he attempts to place current policies in historical context, as part of an American tradition going back to the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, a tradition (of an interventionist, militarized foreign policy) which has strong bi-partisan roots. To lay an intellectual foundation for this argument, he cites two influential historians from the 20th century: Charles A. Beard and William Appleman Williams.
Ultimately, Bacevich eschews the partisanship of current debate about American foreign policy as short-sighted and ahistorical. Instead of blaming only one president (or his advisors) for contemporary policies, Bacevich sees both Republicans and Democrats as sharing responsibility for policies which may not be in the nation’s best interest.
In March 2003, at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bacevich wrote in The Los Angeles Times that “if, as seems probable, the effort encounters greater resistance than its architects imagine, our way of life may find itself tested in ways that will make the Vietnam War look like a mere blip in American history.”
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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