Brexit, Boris and bedlam: British politics ‘hobbled’ by stalemate

Published on Sep 9, 2019
In the United Kingdom, lawmakers rushed to complete work before Parliament disbands, approving a bill that requires Prime Minister Boris Johnson to delay Brexit if he doesn’t have a deal with the European Union by the October 31 deadline. But critics say Johnson’s dismissal of Parliament until mid-October is a ploy to foil anti-Brexit machinations. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.

Van challenges conservatives to step up on climate. Bi-partisan solutions are needed

Rebuild The Dream

Published on Sep 9, 2019
“To my Republican friends, it does not have to be this way. A decade ago addressing the climate crisis was a bipartisan issue. And it’s got to become that again. Come on my Republican friends if you don’t like the democratic proposals put forward your own but it’s tame for conservative America to speak up. This is not a hoax, all right. I challenge our veterans, our retired generals, sitting generals, put forward a statement to President Trump demanding action. You know that every scenario over at the Pentagon has climate chaos stirring up wars, they are going to threaten our national security. It’s time to speak up.

I challenge our red state farmers facing floods and draughts and fires, tell your congressional representatives to get to work dealing with this. And I call upon young Republicans, conservatives and libertarians who believe in science to speak out. You don’t like the green new deal, that’s fine. Put forward your own proposals but do not be silent. We cannot tackle a problem this big with only half of America’s leaders participating. But together, we can get something done.”

The Biggest Danger of the Trump Administration Revealed

Thom Hartmann Program

Published on Sep 9, 2019

What is the worse thing Donald Trump and his administration have left us?

Thom Hartmann reveals the most damaging thing Donald Trump has done, one that could turn our democracy into a banana republic!

Brexit: Parliament prepares to shutdown as government suffers new defeat – B BC News

BBC News

Published on Sep 9, 2019

Parliament is preparing to shut down for 5 weeks but it’s been a busy day of political developments.

Huw Edwards presents live from Westminster as a new law has been passed that’s designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Later the Prime Minister is expected to fail in an attempt to call a general election, after opposition MPs refused to support him.

Boris Johnson visited Ireland today and said that leaving the EU without a deal would be a failure of statecraft. He was accused by the Irish Prime Minister of failing to come up with practical solutions to the so-called Irish backstop –the insurance policy to prevent a hard border. The BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg rounds up the days events.

BBC News takes a close look at what the backstop is and, and what might come out of future negotiations, with Europe Editor Katya Adler.

And in a further twist this afternoon, the Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, a key figure in the parliamentary Brexit process, announced that he’d be standing down, at the end of next month. The BBC’s Deputy Political Editor John Pienaar looks at his political career.

How media feeds the Trump beast

RT America

Published on Sep 9, 2019

Melik Abdul of the Black Conservative Federation and former Florida Democratic Party chair Mitch Ceasar join Scottie Nell Hughes to discuss President Trump’s Twitter beef with model Chrissy Teigen and the way that the media has amplified the fallout from Trump’s much-derided “sharpie-gate” moment ahead of Hurricane Dorian.

A Big Storm, A Warming Planet

The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Published on Sep 9, 2019

Hurricane Dorian devastated the Bahamas and affecting parts of the U.S. and Canada. Climatologist Michael Mann joins Steve Paikin to make the case for why these types of storms are only becoming more deadlier due to climate change.

Aborted Afghan summit: “Trump’s not been completely honest”

Published on Sep 9, 2019
International Crisis Group’s Graeme Smith doubts that it’s Donald Trump that pulled the plug on the Camp David summit. Rather, the Taliban didn’t want to have their arms twisted after the offer of favorable terms in bilateral talks with the U.S. in Doha.

100th Anniversary of the Fordson Tractor

Fair Lane, Home of Clara & Henry Ford

Published on May 5, 2017

In 1917, Henry Ford and his son Edsel designed and launched the Model F tractor. Hailed as the “Model T of the Soil,” the Fordson Model F was the first lightweight, affordable tractor the world had seen. The labor and food shortage of World War I came to an end because of the Fordson tractor. It became the foundation on which American and European agriculture flourished in a changing world. To celebrate its 100th Anniversary, we are opening a new exhibit in the historic Garage at Henry’s Fair Lane estate. Admission is free! Check out www.henryfordestate.org for more information!

Overcoming the Multiple Legacies of European Colonialism: Can The West Survive Its Most Cherished Historical Myths? – Part 1 & 2 | EV & N – 324 & 325| CCTV

http://ecoethics.net/2014-ENVRE120/20190908-EV&N-324-Link.html

https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/660128

YouTube Version

There are many legacies of Europe’s and America’s colonial past that are problematic and threaten the future survival of humanity.

http://ecoethics.net/2014-ENVRE120/20190915-EV&N-325-Link.html

https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/662539

YouTube Version

The entire human community needs quickly to overcome the three enduring myths that form the core of the legacy of European colonialism:

1. The myth of racism (racial, cultural &/or religious exceptionalism).
2. The myth of ever  expanding “frontiers” and perpetual growth economics
   and
3. The myth of techno-scientific salvationism & the blindness to system-wide impacts of sector-specific “triumphs.”

While they may have received their largest and most extensive expression as enduring legacies of European maritime colonialism, these myths and metaphors are now widely shared by all cultures and political entities around the world.  Both China and India are openly embracing the notion of exploring “frontiers of space,” and no nation-state in the world has renounced the core operating assumptions of perpetual-growth economics, based very precariously on the myths of techno-scientific salvationism and the “magic” of the market.

There is now an emerging global awareness that it is the technologies we have devised (from nano-plastics to nuclear waste, or the expansion of antibiotic resistance to the costly carbon trap of petro-dependent agriculture) that leave us now with the gravest existential threats to our continued existence.  Science itself is leading us to understand that a blind faith in the mythology of techno-scientific salvationism is futile and perhaps suicidal.  Moreover, there are no longer any further terrestrial frontiers.  We are all now confined to a burning planet, and fantasies about “escape” to other “frontiers of space” remain just that — fantasies.

While the humanities with their focus on literature, philosophy and the arts often deal in alternate forms of reality than that which we encounter on a daily basis, surely one of their principal achievements over the centuries has been to help humans to engage in self-reflection and learn how to distinguish between fact and fantasy.

Now, perhaps more than ever, there is a crying need for a new understanding of the humanities to help us craft credible narratives for survival on a finite, rapidly warming and increasingly chaotic and unpredictable planet.  This task will not be easy because basic ethical principles of responsible reciprocal behavior are categorically rejected by the world’s dominant powers..

We all certainly hope that the forthcoming Inaugural Rhodes  Humanities Forum can assist us for years to come in forging the new narratives of change that will be needed for our collective survival.

Related:

• A New Paradigm for Environmental Protection for the 21st Century – Zinta Zommers, Dan Esty, Kumi Naidoo…
• The Man With A Plan… (…and his enduring challenge to Rhodes Scholars and world leaders today)
• “Fighting the World’s Fight” – Rhodes Scholars in Oxford and Beyond
• Transcending the Institutions We Inherit and Create: Climate Change and System Change in the Anthropocene
• The Rise and Coming Demise of “Free-Market” Fundamentalism – Viewpoints from Balliol College Over Time
• “Rubbish and Racism: Problems of Boundary in an Ecosystem”
• “…Just take the case of agriculture…”

 

Progressive News Site ThinkProgress Shuts Down After Failing to Secure Funding

Sep 09, 2019

In media news, the progressive news site ThinkProgress shut down Friday after it failed to secure funding. ThinkProgress was created in 2005 as a project of the Democratic Party think tank Center for American Progress Action Fund but was editorially independent. Journalist Zach Carter said in a tweet, “The collapse of ThinkProgress demonstrates that the Democratic Party establishment and its donor base have little to no interest in sustaining center-left media outlets, even in the Age of Trump. The election of Donald Trump and the rise of an American authoritarian movement seem not to have changed many minds among wealthy Democrats.”