3450. Does Relying on Science Strengthen Authoritarianism or Weaken It?

By Susanna Siegel, Tampabay.com, May 29, 2020

Susanna Siegel is a philosophy professor at Harvard University

Think about this. For months now, masses of people have radically adjusted their behavior in response to information that could only be discovered by scientists. Epidemiology has made our interdependence visible: it has never been more true that an injury to one is an injury to all.

What are the political implications of this massive reliance on scientific expertise during the pandemic? Does relying on scientific expertise strengthen authoritarianism or weaken it.

Some surmise that Donald Trump’s presidency is over, thinking that voters will blame death, sickness and economic demise at the hands of COVID-19 on Trump for his negligence, for systematically replacing experts with industry insiders poised to profit from their position in government, and for insouciant golfing while the death toll climbed toward 100,000 on a somber Memorial Day.

But protests against lockdowns, mask-wearing, and social distancing show a counter-narrative, where pandemic-induced paralysis is ultimately the fault of Democratic governors and mayors. This response is a key ingredient in the recipe of a demagogue: sow fear, confusion and chaos, then blame it on a political opponent and pose as a leader who can correct the problem. The recipe works frighteningly well (as Plato warned millennia ago), and in our time it has created the paradox of Trump: authoritarian politics combined with a dysfunctional government.

If the pandemic creates new political vulnerabilities, they may lie in generating a felt need for nuanced information and fresh appreciation for its moral stakes. When social concerns depend on the results of scientific inquiry, there’s a large-scale capture of attention by questions that only science can answer.

Trump’s White House briefings have chiefly served his personal political ends: self-congratulations and attacks on the media. They have not focused on information. But to know when your child can safely go to school again, you have to know a lot of facts that only scientists can find out. And science unfolds in dribs and drabs, full of qualifications and guesses. The models of rates of infection, death, immunity and recovery are full of noise.

Yet these limitations and uncertainty have not caused large-scale doubt of scientists. Instead, the uncertainty surrounding the expertise seems to be having a different effect: people are riveted to the latest findings.

It’s not quite a suspense novel published serially in a newspaper or a television series filled with cliffhangers. But the flow of information from experts to the public has a similar momentum, generating a massive ever-growing desire to know more about COVID-19’s symptoms, risk factors, rates of fatality and infection; about demographic differences in infection and what they might mean for life and the economy. One piece of new information can stoke or quiet your fear, anger, or hope. In that respect, the flow of pandemic news is an emotionally charged narrative that opens more questions than it answers. If political news before the pandemic felt like jabs of information that left you in need of a “news fast,” during the pandemic it is more likely to leave you in the throes of inquiry in an attempt to discern whether it is safe enough to go out.

We’ve seen that gross negligence does not undermine authoritarian politics. But the need for reliable information about a life-altering situation might.

What makes a leader authoritarian is behaving as if authority resides in a person, not in the facts that give you reasons to do one thing or another. Authoritarian politics thrives on the kind of confusion that feels resolved if you only choose sides.

When Trump contradicts Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice to wear a mask and disregards his own Center for Disease Control’s recommendation, he forces people to decide whom to believe. Brazil’s authoritarian president, Jair Bolsonaro, publicly disagreed with this health minister about the need for social distancing -- and then fired him.

The uncertainty surrounding the pandemic is not resolved by picking sides. Individual leaders can coordinate, manage the flow of information and make humane political decisions. But they can’t on their own find a vaccine, produce serology tests or devise an ethical plan for safely re-opening the economy.

Once you are gripped by questions like “When will it be safe to congregate” or “Will my family be able to get medical care?”, political incitements to trust or distrust individuals may lose their force. There is no single person who embodies the medical expertise that has influenced behavior worldwide. On the face of it, putting stock in scientific expertise poses a threat to authoritarian governments – which is why Trump has tried so hard to get rid of it.

1770. Better Than Slavery? One Statistic About Income Inequality in the U.S.

By Justin Wolfers, The New York Times, March 13, 2015

The Wall Street bonus pool for last year is roughly double the total earnings of all Americans who work full time at the federal minimum wage.

That claim, which comes from a new report from Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies, is one of the more striking sound bites I have heard in quite some time. And so I thought it worth digging in to the data to see if it checks out. Short answer: It does, although given the uncertainty in these sorts of calculations, the precise ratio could easily be a bit higher or lower.

Let’s start with the Wall Street bonuses. The New York State Comptroller reported on Wednesday that the size of the bonus pool paid to securities industries employees in New York City was $28.5 billion. Dividing this total among 167,800 workers yields an average bonus of $172,860, which seems plausible enough. For sure, some received much, much bigger bonuses, and many received nothing.

What about the total earnings of full-time workers at the federal minimum wage? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are 1.03 million full-time workers paid an hourly wage of $7.25 or less. These people tend to work around 40 hours a week on average. If they all earn $7.25 per hour and work 50 weeks per year, the total earnings of this group come to nearly $15 billion. Ms. Anderson, whose report usefully shows all her work, prefers an estimate of 37 hours per week — which looks too low to me based on other data — and 52 weeks per year, so after rounding, she gets to a total of $14 billion.

Rather than quibble over which number is correct, it makes more sense to highlight the more important uncertainties surrounding any estimate. The count of workers at federal minimum wage includes only those who are paid hourly, and so omits those paid weekly or monthly. On the flip side, the B.L.S. count is based on income before tips and commissions, and so may overstate the number of people with low hourly earnings. And while my calculation assumed that all minimum wage workers earn $7.25 per hour, in fact many earn less than this, including wait staff and others who rely on tips, some students and young workers, certain farmworkers, and those whose bosses simply flout the minimum wage law.

For all of these uncertainties, the broad picture doesn’t change. My judgment is that we can be pretty confident that Ms. Anderson’s estimate that the sum of Wall Street bonuses is roughly twice the total amount paid to all full-time workers paid minimum wage seems like a fair characterization.

Justin Wolfers is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan.

1688. Citizens Revolt in Burkina Faso

By Ernest Harsch, African Futures, December 9, 2014

Even the long months of demonstrations and strikes that came before did not fully prepare the people of Burkina Faso for what they would accomplish during the last week of October 2014. In Ouagadougou, the capital, hundreds of thousands—organizers claimed a million—packed the central square on Tuesday, 28 October, to protest President Blaise Compaoré’s “constitutional coup,” as they called his plan to force through an amendment enabling him to run for reelection yet again, after more than a quarter century in power. Similar outpourings hit Koudougou, Ouahigouya, Kaya, Koupéla, Dori, and other towns across the country. Most were disciplined and peaceful, in line with opposition instructions. In the eastern town of Fada N’Gourma, however, several thousand burned the headquarters of Compaoré’s ruling party. In Bobo-Dioulasso, a commercial center in the west, young protesters symbolically pulled down a statue of Compaoré—while leaving untouched one of the late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi right next to it.[1]

Despite those massive turnouts, and despite women’s demonstrations the day before and trade union demonstrations the day after, Compaoré and his allies persisted. They announced that on 30 October their deputies in the National Assembly would vote to change the constitution. If adopted, their amendment would have permitted Compaoré to run not just for one more term but for three more. Some party leaders were already looking beyond the next election in 2015 and only half-jokingly suggested that their slogan should be Blaise Compaoré 2020.

Disgusted by the arrogance, people again occupied the streets and squares of major cities the morning of the planned vote. Their mood was now angrier, as protesters insisted more forcefully that Compaoré resign, and their tactics turned confrontational. Thousands sacked the National Assembly, preventing the vote. They attacked the government’s television network, forcing it off the air. The mayor’s office, ruling party headquarters, and homes of high officials were burned. Some protesters were killed as security forces tried to disperse them. Thousands marched to the presidential palace, but were blocked by troops. Similar scenes of rage swept the country. Only days later did reports trickle in confirming the extent of the destruction, much of it carefully targeted against government symbols and supporters.

Although the embattled president now agreed to leave the constitution intact, he still insisted on staying in office until the end of his term, provoking huge crowds to again fill the streets on 31 October. Already, some soldiers from Camp Guillaume in central Ouagadougou had joined the anti-Compaoré demonstrators, while other troops simply let protesters pass unhindered. Facing a split within their own ranks, military officers quickly decided to declare the government’s dissolution, before the situation in the streets escaped anyone’s control. Compaoré, finally bowing to reality, resigned that same day, and with French assistance fled to neighboring Côte d’Ivoire. Army officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida took charge temporarily, and opened talks with opposition parties and civil society groups on a speedy handover to a caretaker civilian-led transitional government. Michel Kafando, a retired diplomat, was selected by consensus as the new interim president and sworn in on 18 November, with the prime task of preparing elections within a year.

Revolutionary inspiration
These events recalled the popular revolutions in North Africa three years earlier, in both scope and the aim of bringing down long-entrenched authoritarian rulers. In fact, one of the more popular slogans in Burkina Faso, shouted by protesters and painted on walls, was “Blaise dégage” (Blaise, clear out), adapted from the Tunisian uprising.
In the immediate wake of the 2011 Arab Spring, activists throughout sub-Saharan Africa took inspiration and tried to initiate comparable movements, gaining some traction here and there, though not to the extent they had hoped.[2] The popular insurrection in Burkina Faso is now also drawing attention across the region, where mobilizations on such a scale have been rare—and rarer still in actually toppling a president. “A veritable democratic harmattan [desert wind] is sweeping Africa,” commented Francis Kpatindé, a well-known political scientist from Benin. “People who have been stifled can now legitimately think that what was possible in Ouagadougou could also be in Brazzaville, Kinshasa, Banjul, and elsewhere.” Across these capitals, as well as in other corners of the African continent (Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda and Angola), the events of Burkina have invigorated on-going debates about term limits, their constitutional provisions, and the future of longstanding rulers.

Where and to what extent the sparks from Burkina Faso may ignite fires elsewhere will depend largely on the combustibility of local conditions: Are social and political elites united behind the regime, or have cracks emerged at the top? Are people sufficiently aggrieved and their rulers so impervious to change that activists see no alternative but to risk open, mass defiance? And are they organized enough, especially at the grassroots level? As Mathias Dzon, an opposition leader in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo Republic, noted,  “we can’t say that Burkinabè went out into the streets to change their president in a spontaneous fashion. Some work went into it.”

“27 years is enough!”
The conditions for revolt in Burkina Faso certainly did not emerge overnight. They built up over a quarter of a century, encapsulated in the demonstrators’ slogan “27 years is enough!” By pointing to how long Compaoré had been in office, critics often recalled how the former army captain originally took power: through a military coup and the assassination of President Thomas Sankara, a popular and charismatic revolutionary leader.[3] Compaoré’s junta not only jailed, tortured, killed, or drove into exile those loyal to Sankara but also undid many of the innovations of Sankara’s revolutionary era, such as self-help mobilizations to build schools and health clinics and a greater reliance on domestic resources to develop the economy. The Compaoré regime chose instead to ally itself with conservative social elites and externally leaned more heavily on foreign aid and close ties with major Western capitals, especially Paris, the country’s former colonial ruler.[4]

The early 1990s brought a wave of prodemocracy movements across Africa, including in Burkina Faso. Facing domestic discontent and some pressure from France, Compaoré carefully orchestrated a shift to constitutional rule and multiparty elections. He erected a dominant party machine that relied partly on electoral fraud but mainly on the use of state resources and patronage favors to undermine opposition and secure high vote tallies in election after election. Though Burkina Faso now had the trappings of democracy, it was by most definitions a “semi-authoritarian” state.[5]

The regime’s repressive underbelly was dramatically highlighted by the 1998 assassination of independent journalist Norbert Zongo. Evidence pointed to Compaoré’s elite presidential guard, acting to keep Zongo from exposing a scandal implicating the president’s brother. The murder sparked a prolonged countrywide revolt.[6] Compaoré—a master of deflection, delay, and cooptation—survived only by promising reform. That included reinstating the constitution’s two-term presidential limit, which he had scrapped in 1997. But the subservient Constitutional Court ruled that the new limit did not apply retroactively, enabling Compaoré to run again in 2005 and 2010.

In early 2011, just a few months after Compaoré latest reelection, the country again plunged into crisis. This time the provocation was the death of a student from a severe police beating. Starting with angry youth demonstrations, the unrest persisted for months with a cascading series of labor marches, merchants’ protests, judges’ strikes, army and police mutinies, farmers’ boycotts, and attacks on mining sites.[7] The protests had no central direction, however, and opposition parties’ attempts to mobilize failed miserably.

On-the-ground organization
With the government now weakened by the mass unrest, the main opposition parties secured some advances in the December 2012 legislative election, increasing their representation from a dozen deputies to twenty-eight, more than a fifth of the total. The opposition’s new parliamentary leadership, headed by Zéphirin Diabré, forged a broad alliance of more than forty parties (the country has many others as well), with better organization and coordination than ever before.[8] When the ruling party pushed through a constitutional amendment to create a new senate, an upper house that would have been dominated by Compaoré loyalists, the opposition saw it as a maneuver to pave the way for lifting the presidential term limit. Through the latter half of 2013, the opposition parties, supported by labor unions and civil society groups, mounted large anti-senate demonstrations, effectively blocking its establishment.

Meanwhile, grassroots activists launched several new initiatives. Two popular musicians, the rapper Smockey and reggae artist Sams’k Le Jah, launched Balai Citoyen (Citizens’ Broom) in mid-2013. It was inspired in part by Y’en a Marre, a rapper-initiated citizens’ group in Senegal that had sparked a broad—and successful—popular movement against constitutional manipulation. Although not aligned with any party, Balai Citoyen had explicit political goals: to “sweep out” poor governance and preserve the presidential term limit. Within two months it had affiliated “clubs” in all of Ouagadougou’s neighborhoods and in most major cities. Its ability to speak the language of disaffected youth drew many more into active participation in antigovernment protests.

In early 2014, as the authorities began talking more seriously about a constitutional referendum, a new activist network emerged, the Collectif Anti-Référendum (CAR, Anti-Referendum Collective). Initially formed by 365 associations in Ouagadougou, it soon spread across the country and prompted the opposition parties to form their own local antireferendum action committees. Later in the year yet another grouping arose, the Front de Résistance Citoyenne (FRC, Citizens’ Resistance Front), comprising two dozen civil society associations and headed by prominent prodemocracy intellectuals. The trade unions, meanwhile, built their own alliances with consumer associations and others; they demonstrated and went on  strike to voice worker grievances and protest high prices, with defense of the constitution prominent among their demands.

The work of such activists did much to boost the demonstrations called by the opposition party leaders. They also contributed to an increasingly notable feature in many antigovernment actions: references to the late revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara. More than a quarter century after his death, Sankara remained a hero and inspiration to many young Burkinabè, his portrait carried by marchers, voice recordings played over demonstration sound systems, and sayings quoted in slogans and speeches. In the huge antigovernment outpourings of late October, Al Jazeera reported that many young protesters were inspired by the spirit of “Africa’s Che Guevara,” while the Paris daily Le Monde saw Compaoré’s overthrow as “the revenge of Thomas Sankara’s children.” Acknowledging such popular sentiments, Lt.-Col. Zida, the interim military leader, said that the Burkinabè people’s decision to rise up reflected an “identity of integrity that we have carried proudly since the August 1983 revolution” led by Sankara.

Whether motivated by revolutionary visions or just determined to see Compaoré gone, it was the young activists who spurred the final push to insurrection. Diabré and other senior opposition leaders had called the demonstrations and even urged their followers to engage in civil disobedience against the amendment vote. But it was members of Balai Citoyen, the CAR, and others on the frontlines who decided to breach the security lines around the National Assembly. According to Hervé Ouattara, president of the CAR and an initiator of the huge marches on the presidential palace on 30–31 October, leaders of his network understood that if Compaoré had to be forced out, “peaceful demonstrations would not be enough.” They prepared for confrontation, but also opened lines of communication with army officers. Those officers, convinced of the protesters’ determination, chose to avoid more bloodshed by deposing Compaoré.

Over the next year, the transition away from the Compaoré era will be full of uncertainties. The opposition leaders are focused on new elections, which they clearly hope to win. Others, closer to the activist networks, are also pushing for more fundamental changes: to improve people’s economic and social conditions, root out corruption, reform state institutions, and bring to justice the worst criminals of the ancien régime. Drawing analogies with the French revolution, one local journalist pointed to the rise of Burkina Faso’s own “sans-culottes,” “these revolutionaries from the popular strata, distinct from the dominant social categories.” Now awakened to their ability to alter the course of events, they will surely demand a voice in shaping the changes ahead.

Notes: 
[1]  Agence d’information du Burkina (Ouagadougou), October 28, 2014.
[2]  Ernest Harsch, “An African Spring in the Making: Protest and Voice Across a Continent,” Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, Vol. 13, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2012, pp. 45-61.
[3]  Ernest Harsch, Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2014.
[4]  René Otayek, Filiga Michel Sawadogo, and Jean-Pierre Guingané, eds. Le Burkina entre révolution et démocratie (1983-1993). Paris: Karthala, 1996.
[5]  Mathieu Hilgers and Jacinthe Mazzocchetti, eds. Révoltes et oppositions dans un régime semi-autoritaire: Le case du Burkina Faso. Paris: Karthala, 2010.
[6]  Ernest Harsch, “Trop, c’est trop!: Civil Insurgence in Burkina Faso, 1998-99,” Review of African Political Economy, No. 81, 1999, pp. 395-406
[7]  Leila Chouli, Burkina Faso 2011: Chronique d’un mouvement social, Lyon: Tahin Party, 2012.
[8]  “Burkina Faso: The Opposition Becomes Better Organized,” Economist Intelligence Unit (London), 9 July 2013.

- See more at: http://forums.ssrc.org/african-futures/2014/12/09/citizens-revolt-in-burkina-faso/#sthash.MJs7YPdJ.dpuf

1600. A Word With the Reader: Searching for Democracy

By Kamran Nayeri, October 21, 2014

On November 4 the mid-term elections are held in the United States.  I vote by mail and am sitting down with my voting options before me.  A little personal history is in order. 

I was born in Iran under the dictatorship of the U.S. imposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Elections meant nothing then and I left Iran for a college education in the United States when I was 18 years old in January 1969. 

As a non-citizen, I was not able to vote in the United State for the next ten year. 

The first time I ever voted was in the aftermath of the February 1979 revolution in Iran. It was in the referendum imposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini with a simple two-way option: “Islamic Republic: yes or no.”  I voted “no” although the newly installed Islamic regime spread the word that a “no” vote was a vote for the old regime that we all had just overthrown!  Unsurprisingly, over 98% voted “yes” to Islamic Republic even though nobody knew what that was going to be like.  With such a “mandate” the Islamic regime held an election to an “assembly of experts” in Islamic jurisprudence in the summer of 1979 after it had unleashed a massive attack on democratic and political rights. The Islamic experts wrote a Constitution that essentially disenfranchised any critics of the clerical capitalist rule in Iran.

Thus, I took my right to vote seriously when I decided to become a U.S. citizen.  But let me share the dilemma of a good citizen.

I can vote for a number of California State offices, including the governor. But in each case I am given a choice between a Democrat and a Republican.  However, these parties are both openly supportive of the capitalist system that is the cause of our social and environmental problems.  We badly need candidates that openly propose alternative to the existing crisis generating system.  

Also, I can vote for a number of judicial offices.  Here the candidates are not (openly) partisan and the vote is for or against each individual instead of a choice between two or more candidates.  But I do not really know any of them. How could I vote for someone to be a judge if I do not know them to be just? 

Then there are candidates for the school governance bodies.  Here again the candidates do not declare party affiliations. But then again, I really do not know them to vote in favor or against them.   

Finally, they are “Measures” or “Propositions” put before voters. There are six state Measures on the ballot this year.  I voted in each case because these are easier to understand.  For example, Measure 48 would allow certain Indian tribes to use newly acquired land to build new casinos. In 2000, voters amended the state constitution to allow gaming on Indian land generally defined by federal law to have been titled before 1988.  Measure 48 supports a negotiated agreement between some Indian tribes and the California State officials to allow building additional casinos on the newly acquired land away from reservations expanding the range of casinos in the State. 

Gambling generally banned in California is allowed on land under the jurisdiction of Indian tribes. Using this legal advantage, Indian tribes have opened up casinos everywhere they could. It has been a lucrative business.  But it has also created mischief within and without Indian tribe territories.  Within the Indian community, it has caused certain competition for revenue from the casinos. In some cases, membership in the tribe has been questioned, denied or revoked to allow fewer hands in the money pot.  Gambling has brought undesirable consequences for the neighboring communities. In Santa Rose near where I live, there is bumper-to-bumper traffic on highway 101 close to weekends San Francisco Bay Area gamblers come to make their fortunes!  

From an emancipatory perspective, opening up casinos is neither a way forward to the Indians nor for the society as a whole. In fact, it erodes ancestral values of the Indians and visions of alternatives to the capitalism the largest gambling casino of all. 

Thus, even though it is easier to unpack the issues surrounding a Proposition or Measure, they are usually a reflection of social conflict and vying interests inherent in the class society. Voting simply offers a legal method of addressing these for the short term.  In a segmented and divided society, in particular a capitalist one, your vote simply hopes to keep the profiteers at bay for the time being.

Then there are County, District and local School elections and propositions.  Even though these are “closer to home” election decisions they are by no means simple choices.  Example: I am supposed to vote for two out of three candidates for the Palm Drive Health Care District board of governors.  Palm Drive is a local public hospital that is funded by bonds issued by the County. County homeowner pay for these bonds through our property taxes.  Palm Drive Hospital that offers important services for low-income residence has been closed down as it cannot pay its bills.  This is not a new phenomena. Palm Drive has been in financial crisis for decades due to mismanagement, everyone seems to agree on that. The question for me is who to vote for and why?  A friend has messaged me on Facebook to vote for two of these candidates although she did not explain why.  They are referred to as “the Doc and the Cop,” a family physician and a retired police officer. What distinguishes them from the “incumbent” who has been in office since July is their total support for the new plan for Palm Drive. The “incumbent” has some reservations about the proposed plan. To know more, I searched the web and found two two-hour-long video interviews with the two sides. I wonder how many people have four hours to listen to these three people to help them decide how to vote! I have talked to people who have gone to general assemblies to discuss the crisis and the plan. But they did not seem to know what the plan is about and how it can fix a decades old mismanagement problem.

The other two measures are easier to deal with. They are about issuing bonds to expand job training and education at Santa Rosa Junior College and expand library hours in the County both cut back in the past several years due to the Great Recession and cuts in social spending that dates back decades. 

I hope I have now explained with specific examples how American democratic system operates.  I have not talked about the role of corporate money in elections. Instead, I relied on the functionality of the system.  A voter does not have real options outside of the pro-capitalist two party system for the executive and legislative offices. The voter has little knowledge and ability to affect decisions on who is placed in judiciary positions of power.  Even on local and regional levels, the voter often does not know how to vote and who to elect. As for propositions/measures that matter a lot in California politics, what gets on the ballot is really a reflection of power struggle between interest groups almost all of which are beholden to the two-party system. 

In short, I feel I am not really empowered to direct the course of public policy at the national, regional or local levels.  This is the nuts-and-bolts of “representative democracy.”  It is true that some have passed laws to aid voters better understand some election issues. For example, California Secretary of State publishes two booklets that detail each proposition/measure and opinions of those for and against it.  There are interest groups that offer analysis of such issues, etc.  However, it is not practical for an average citizen to read all this and if they try they are often not helpful in reaching a decision.  

Democracy is the basis for transition to a better society. While many governments and ideologues proclaim they have the corner of democracy, the truth is that we are far from having a truly democratic system where public affairs are run for the people by the people as Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. 

*     *    *

Guidelines for authors: Our Place in the World welcomes contributions from authors or recommendations for posts.  Up to this point there was no reason to issue formal guidelines for such contributions as their numbers were relatively small. However, it now seems reasonable to issue simple rules or such submissions. 

1. Authors are urged to submit contributions that aid in the development of ecological socialist theory and practice.  Articles can be informational or they can be theoretical, analytical, historical, etc. In all cases, however, they should be well documented and well-presented.  If there are graphics they should be submitted with the article. 

2. All articles should be submitted in a word processor format (Word, Pages, or other format readable by Pages). Use endnotes not footnotes. Graphics should be submitted either as files or links. 

3. Contributors can submit already published articles provided it is permissible to republish them with due credit. 

4. For any additional questions about contributing to OPITW please write to editor.opitw@gmail.com. 

*     *     *

There has been 99 posts since my last column.  Top topics included climate change (1 posts), Cuba (11 posts), Palestine/Zionism (11 posts) and energy (10 posts).  Posts on socialism, ecological socialism and other emancipatory movements followed 6 and 7 posts respectively). 

Hot links follow:

1500. A Word with the Reader: Frankenstein in the Promised Land

1501. On Israeli War on Palestinians in Gaza Strip: Killing "Snakes" and Self

1502. On Israeli War on Palestinians in Gaza Strip: Outrage

1503. US Sent Latin Youth Undercover in Anti-Cuba Ploy

1504. Massive Texas Wind Farm Experiment Gets Underway

1505. Plants Display an Unexpected Response to Climate Change

1506. Cuba Shifts Energy Focus to Renewables After Offshore Drilling Fails

1507. Socialist Alternative Candidate Speaks on Socialism and Animal Rights

1508. Video: Frans de Waal: Moral Behavior in Non-Human Animals

1509. Join the March for Climate Justice on September 21

1510. Poetry: Running Order (Gaza Strip on My Mind)

1511. Decades of Herbicide Use Yield "Weeds" that Do Not Respond to Herbicides: The Case of Amaranthus Palmeri

1512. Bahman Moayedi 1944-2007 A Political Remembrance

1513. Statement from Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions--Gaza Strip

1514.The Transition Movement: Questions of Diversity, Power and Affluence

1515. The Lancet: An Open Letter On the Behalf of the People of Gaza

1516. Book Review: Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory

1517. Kidneys for Sale

1518. 40 Holocaust Survivors Condemn Gaza Assault and Call for Boycott of Israel

1519. Global Warming: U.N. Draft Report Lists Unchecked Emissions’ Risks

1520. Natural Gas Production Falls Short in China

1521. Book Review: To Change of Reform Capitalism: Addressing the Ecological Crisis

1522. The Evolutionary Roots of Human Altruism

1523. A New American Oil Bonanza

1525. How Will Capitalism End?

1526: The Anthropocene: Chocking Oceans with Plastic

1527. Ecocide: Regulatory Agency Allows Storying Nuclear Waste Above Ground Indefinitely

1528. On the Human Caused Sixth Great Mass Extinction: Have We Learned Anything from the Case of the Passenger Pigeon?

1529. Book Review: Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock

1530. Capital and Nature: An Interview with Paul Burkett

1531. Book Review: Marxism and Ecological Economics: Toward a Red and Green Political Economy

1532. At Multiverse Impasse, a New Theory of Scale

1533. China Plans a Market for Carbon Permits

1534. Infrastructure Cracks as Los Angeles Defers Repairs

1535. A Summary of 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next 40 Years

1536. Book Review: 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years

1537. Indigenous Anarchist Critique of Bolivia's 'Indigenous State': Interview with Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

1538. Degrowth and the Carbon Budget: Powerdown Strategies for Climate Stability

1539. Great Ideas Sometimes Get Funding Too, with Strings Attached: Big History and Bill Gates

1540. Market Reforms Widen Racial Gap in Cuba

1541. Israel: The Strangler Fig Nation

1542. A New Food Movement: Killing It

1543. Climate Change Will Disrupt Half of North America’s Bird Species, Study Says

1544. Rosa Luxemburg on “the Socialist Civic Virtues”

1545. No Glass Ceiling for Worker Bees

1546. Interview: How the Current Mass Extinction of Animals Threatens Humans

1547. Mass Extinctions: What Causes Species Die Off?

1548. Cuba to Commit Large Health Corps to Ebola Fight

1549. Veterans of Elite Israeli Unit Refuse Reserve Duty, Citing Mistreatment of Palestinians

1550. 34 Cuban-Trained Belizean Doctors Return Home

1551. Climate Change: Errors and Emissions

1552. We Can Save the Caribbean’s Coral Reefs

1553. Climate Change: On Krugman's Errors and Omissions

1554. U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms

1555. Global Heat Records Set for Month and Season

1557. Dengue Fever and Malaria Reach the Himalayas

1558. How Israel Silences Jewish Dissent

1559. Cuba’s Sugar Industry to Use Bagasse for Bioenergy

1560. When Cuba Sends Patients Abroad

1561. Building an Ark for the Anthropocene

1562. State of the Oceans: Swimming Through Garbage

1563. The Benefits of Easing Climate Change: An Economic View

1564. Scientists Trace Extreme Heat in Australia to Climate Change

1568. The Hypocrisy Behind the Big Business Climate Change Battle

1569. Life in a ‘Degrowth’ Economy, and Why You Might Actually Enjoy It

1570. Evolution: Survival of the Fittest Group in Spiders Observed in Nature

1571. Half the World Non-Human Animals Have Been Killed Since 1970

1572. Cuba Has the Best Education System in Latin America and the Caribbean, World Bank Reports

1573. In the Medical Response to Ebola, Cuba Leads the World GovernmentsCuban health workers

1574. The Real Reason It's Nearly Impossible to End the Cuba Embargo

1575. How the Re-Introduction of Wolves Improved the Ecosystem in Yellowstone National Park

1576. On Bayesian and Classical Statistics

1577. New Book Unveils Diplomatic Exchange Between Castro and Obama

1578. E.U. Approves Plan for New Nuclear Power Station in Britain

1579. U.S. Becoming a Net Exporter of Oil

1580. Decline and Fall: The US SWP’s Final Embrace of Zionism

1581. Killer Whales Learn to Communicate Like Dolphins

1582. Birds: Caw vs. Croak: Inside the Calls of Crows and Ravens

1586. Former Legal Adviser to President Abbas Believes "Two-State Solution" Is Dead

1587. Book Review: The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis

1588. Food: How Meat Advocates Skewer Science

1589. Amy Goodman Interviews Seattle Socialist City Council Member Kshama Sawant

1590. The Real Christopher Columbus

1591. Essay: The Feral Cat Colony on Darby Road, Part 2: Lulu, Calico, Smokey and Sunny

1592. Book Review: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

1593. Oil Prices: A Pump Fight?

1594. Oil Prices: Some Saudis Contest Cheap Oil Policy

1595. Cuba to the Rescue: Ebola-Stricken Countries Welcome Cuban Doctors

1596. The American Way: Is the Market the Only Way to Value Water?

1597. Paul Farmer on Ebola: “This Isn’t a Natural Disaster, This Is the Terrorism of Poverty”

1598. The Evolving Political Economy of the Palestinian Liberation Organization

1599. Mapping Climate Justice

FAIR USE NOTICE

This web log (blog) contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political, social, economic, foreign policy, human rights, scientific, cultural, educational, health and legal issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . All the materials contained in these pages are properly attributed. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you have to contact the copyright owner.