Last Straw

Sharp decline in public’s belief in climate threat, British poll reveals:

The proportion of adults who believe climate change is “definitely” a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%, in the latest survey by Ipsos Mori.

What I don’t understand is that we’ve been here so often before. Why do people listen to the propaganda of oil companies and the like over scientific evidence? How many times do you have to have the wool pulled over your eyes by propagandists denying that smoking causes cancer, denying that CFCs lead to ozone depletion, denying that certain pollutants cause acid rain or denying that climate change is manmade (or, originally, that it even existed)?

This is a great time to be born, a great time to be alive. This generation gets to completely change the world we live in. We have a chance here to reimagine every single thing we do. But, no, perhaps we’d rather go down with the ship and listen to rich old men trying to squeeze every last dollar, euro and yen from their investments in outdated industries.

Back in 2003 and 2004 over 70% of American’s polled were telling pollsters not only that they believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs but that he was personally involved in the attack on the World Trade Centre.

Now they’re at it again, with over 70% telling pollsters that they think Iran has nuclear weapons.

Should this country really be allowed to deal in international politics?

How to defend the Enlightenment:

On the publication of his new book In Defence of the Enlightenment, Tzvetan Todorov tells British philosopher AC Grayling why the Enlightenment must be separated from scientism and cultural chauvinism.

Nicholas D. Kristoff, writing for the New York Times:

Researchers have found, for example, that some humans are particularly alert to threats, particularly primed to feel vulnerable and perceive danger. Those people are more likely to be conservatives.

Freedom of speech is on the offensive.

What an idea, a new business model for Iceland:

On Tuesday, the Icelandic parliament is expected to introduce a measure aimed at making the country an international center for investigative journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world.

Supporters of the proposal say the move would make Iceland an “offshore publishing center” for free speech, analogous to the offshore financial havens that allow corporations to hide capital from authorities. Could global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?

“This is a legislative package to create a haven for freedom of expression,” Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir confirmed to me, saying that a proposal for comprehensive media law reform will be filed in parliament on Tuesday, and that whistle-blowing specialists Wikileaks has been involved in drafting it.

Professor Colin Blakemore assesses the intriguing implications of advances in neuroscience that have made it possible to communicate with those in a vegetative state:

Astronomy, from Copernicus on, has transformed our view of the place of the earth in the heavens. Darwin changed forever our view of the status of humanity. Neuroscience is likely to challenge our very understanding of what it is to be a person.

There’s a campaign under way in the U.S. to “restore the First Amendment to its original purpose: to protect people, not corporations.” They need to hurry. The U.S. has long taken the road to corporatocracy. The longer this goes on the less likely they’ll ever be able to turn back.

Press TV:

Iraq’s Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.

According to Iraqi experts, the U.S. and Britain, being the lovers of freedom and democracy that they are:

… bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war. Atomic radiation has increased the number of babies born with defects in the southern provinces of Iraq.

Finally. Let’s hope this guy is good.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett writing for The Guardian:

The evidence shows that almost all the problems that occur most often in the poorest neighbourhoods—including those that make us a broken society—are systematically more common in more unequal societies. Rates are not just a little higher, but between two and eight times higher. Wider income gaps make societies socially dysfunctional across the board.

Last October Cameron rounded on Labour, saying: “Who made inequality greater? No, not the wicked Tories. You, Labour. You’re the ones that did this to our society. So don’t you dare lecture us about poverty. You have failed and it falls to us, the modern Conservative party, to fight for the poorest who you have let down.”

But the truth is that we are suffering the impact of the massive increases in income inequality under Thatcher, which Blair and Brown have since failed to reverse. In the 1980s the gulf between the top and bottom 20% widened by a full 60%—much the most dramatic widening of income differences on record.