The unconscionable slaughter of elephants

There is something truly majestic about big animals. In theory, there is nothing worse about gratuitously killing a whale or rhino or elephant than killing any other animal. But I know that I at least feel genuine anger at those who kill these magnificent animals either for sport or to get a small part of them to make trinkets and ornaments (in the case of ivory from elephant tusks) or for superstitious and trivial reasons (the belief that rhino horns contain aphrodisiacs).
[Read more…]

There is genuine excitement over a Hillary Clinton presidential run

As regular readers know, while I have little hope that the Democratic party will do anything at all to challenge the power and greed of the oligarchy, I dread the thought of Hillary Clinton becoming the party’s nominee as that would make the oligarchy’s task that much easier. But Glenn Greenwald says that there is actually plenty of genuine enthusiasm for her candidacy. You just have to know where to look.
[Read more…]

Review: The Day Israel Attacked America

Thanks to reader boadinum, I learned that the Al Jazeera program with the above title about the attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967 was freely available on YouTube (see the embedded link at the end of this post) and I watched it yesterday. It was a fascinating program that had a lot of new information that was not made public before. The producers had correspondence, tape recordings, and interviews with survivors and government officials that reveal the sequence of events and what the discussions were prior to and after the attack.
[Read more…]

Why don’t people vote?

When commenting on the election results, I noted the low turnout of around 36%, the lowest since during World War II ,and said that I was curious as to the reasons why. It turns out that the Pew research organization has conducted a post-election survey to gauge the opinions of people on a range of issues concerning the election and one was the reasons they gave for not voting.
[Read more…]

Safe driving in winter

Last night we had the first major snowfall of the season and I woke up this morning to find several inches of snow on the ground. I turned on the radio and heard what I expected to hear: traffic reports saying that there were accidents all over the place and urging drivers to exercise caution and leave more time to get to their destinations. In other words slow down!
[Read more…]

This should not be a surprise

The Hill reports with surprise something that could have been easily predicted. Under the headline “Obama veers left after red wave”, it says:

President Obama has taken significant steps to the left since his party’s devastating losses in the midterm elections.

In a surprise, he announced a major deal on climate change with China during a trip to Beijing Tuesday. That followed another unanticipated move — a Monday statement pressuring the Federal Communications Commission to adopt new net neutrality rules for the Internet.

The moves are helping to rally a dispirited Democratic base while re-establishing Obama’s political leadership after he was sidelined during the midterms.

[Read more…]

The next big scare?

So the great freak-out about Ebola in the US has now subsided with the last person who had the disease, the doctor in New York, being cleared and released from hospital. There are a few encouraging signs that the rate of spread of the infection in West Africa, at least in Liberia, is slowing down and that containment of this deadly disease may be on the horizon though it must be emphasized that the dangers are still very real and Sierra Leone in particular still faces major problems.
[Read more…]