In South East London yesterday, when Ingrid Loyau-Kennett approached Michael Adebolajo who in his blood-drenched hands held a knife and a meat cleaver after having just murdered a British soldier, she displayed exceptional courage. But she also showed there is an alternative to trying to crush violence with greater violence: diffuse the violence by creating a space within which anger can be translated into words.
Behind most acts of political violence there are statements that the perpetrators imagine can be heard by no other means. Sometimes, all that de-escalation requires is simply to listen to whatever they have to say.
Politicians and some security experts often argue that to listen to terrorists is to capitulate to terrorism — that it is akin to being manipulated by a child’s tantrum and will “reward” terrorism.
The opposite — that refusing to listen, merely closes off alternatives to violence — can just as persuasively argued.
Indeed counter-terrorism seems as much as anything to be driven by its own counterproductive emotional logic. Terrorism emasculates the powers of the state. It makes those who struggle to prevent such violence appear impotent and thus provokes what in some ways are ritualistic displays of counter-violence.
In these displays, paradoxically, the power of the enemy has to be simultaneously inflated and thwarted. Events that are in many ways isolated and involve tiny numbers of people, get woven together into a global phenomenon: the multi-headed hydra of terrorism.
A small bomb goes off in Boston or a man is brutally cut down in London, and governments respond as though the first shot had been fired in the run up to an invasion. The more the threat is inflated, the easier it becomes to justify what objectively often constitutes a massive over-reaction.
Terrorism is political and psychological and requires a political and psychological response — a response that reflects a realistic assessment of the actual magnitude and diverse nature of the threat and a recognition that those who choose to speak with violence generally regard such violence as a means to an end.
Even if their methods have no moral justification, the issues that trigger acts of terrorism will retain the power to inspire further bloodshed for as long as governments insist that security alone must be their preeminent concern.
As Ingrid Loyau-Kennett demonstrated, there are times when it actually requires more courage to listen than it does to fight back.
Terracide and the terrarists: Destroying the planet for record profits By Tom Engelhardt
We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night. A possibility might be “terracide” from the Latin word for earth. It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist.
The truth is, whatever we call them, it’s time to talk bluntly about the terrarists of our world. Yes, I know, 9/11 was horrific. Almost 3,000 dead, massive towers down, apocalyptic scenes. And yes, when it comes to terror attacks, the Boston Marathon bombings weren’t pretty either. But in both cases, those who committed the acts paid for or will pay for their crimes.
In the case of the terrarists — and here I’m referring in particular to the men who run what may be the most profitablecorporations on the planet, giant energy companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell – you’re the one who’s going to pay, especially your children and grandchildren. You can take one thing for granted: not a single terrarist will ever go to jail, and yet they certainly knew what they were doing.
It wasn’t that complicated. In recent years, the companies they run have been extracting fossil fuels from the Earth in ever more frenetic and ingenious ways. The burning of those fossil fuels, in turn, has put record amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Only this month, the CO2 level reached 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. A consensus of scientists has long concluded that the process was warming the world and that, if the average planetary temperature rose more than two degrees Celsius, all sorts of dangers could ensue, including seas rising high enough to inundate coastal cities, increasingly intenseheat waves, droughts, floods, ever more extreme storm systems, and so on.
How to Make Staggering Amounts of Money and Do In the Planet
None of this was exactly a mystery. It’s in the scientific literature. NASA scientist James Hansen first publicized the reality of global warming to Congress in 1988. It took a while — thanks in part to the terrarists — but the news of what was happening increasingly made it into the mainstream. Anybody could learn about it.
Those who run the giant energy corporations knew perfectly well what was going on and could, of course, have read about it in the papers like the rest of us. And what did they do? They put their money into fundingthink tanks, politicians, foundations, and activists intent on emphasizing “doubts” about the science (since it couldn’t actually be refuted); they and their allies energetically promoted what came to be known as climate denialism. Then they sent their agents and lobbyists and money into the political system to ensure that their plundering ways would not be interfered with. And in the meantime, they redoubled their effortsto get ever tougher and sometimes “dirtier” energy out of the ground in ever tougher and dirtier ways.
The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, has also reacted to the killing with provocative tweets calling for a protest in Woolwich and claiming the crime is the result of “mass immigration”.
Farooq Murad of the Muslim Council of Britain said the EDL’s rally in London on Wednesday night was cause for concern.
“When attacks like these happen there’s always the danger of far-right extremism also raising its head,” he told the BBC.
“I think any form of extremism, any form of encouragement or incitement to violence, is something we stand firmly against.”
The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, stressed that the murder should not be viewed as a religiously motivated crime, saying: “I want to make one obvious point that is that it is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam and it is also equally wrong to link this murder to the actions of British foreign policy.” [Continue reading...]
The Independent reports: One of the two men involved in the Woolwich terror attack was known to a banned Islamist organisation and went by the name of Mujahid, The Independent has learned.
Anjem Choudary, the former leader of the group, Al Muhajiroun, confirmed that he had known the man who was seen on video in the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s horrific killing waving a cleaver with bloodied hands and making political statements.
Details began to emerge as Prime Minister David Cameron chaired a meeting of the Government emergency committee Cobra at 10 Downing Street.
Mr Choudary said Mujahid, who he said had converted to Islam in 2003 and was a British-born Nigerian, had stopped attending meetings of Al Muhajiroun and its successor organisations two years ago. The former solicitor said he had also known “Mujahid” as Michael.
Sources today named one of the suspects as 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo.
He told The Independent: “I knew him as Mujahid. He attended our meetings and my lectures. I wouldn’t describe him as a member [of Al Muhajiroun]. There were lots of people who came to our activities who weren’t necessarily members.
“He was a pleasant, quiet guy. He reverted to Islam in about 2003. He was just a completely normal guy. He was interested in Islam, in memorising the Koran. He disappeared about two years ago. I don’t know what influences he has been under since then.”
Founded in 1983 by Islamist Omar Bakri Muhammad, Al Muhajiroun became notorious for attempting to justify the 9/11 attacks and fomenting Islamist rhetoric in Britain.
Mr Choudary, who has long been a controversial figures in Britain’s Islamist circles, has been an outspoken critic of British military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But he insisted that he had never preached that attacks on British troops or security personnel in Britain were justified.
Mr Choudary said: “My position is clear. There is a covenant which says that in return for Muslims being allowed to live peacefully and practice their faith in Britain, then it is forbidden to attack the British authorities, soldiers, in the UK.
“When people go abroad then the inhabitants of those countries have a right to defend themselves. The biggest aggravating factor we have today is British foreign policy.” [Continue reading...]
The Guardian reports: The UK’s support for the CIA’s global rendition programme after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US was far more substantial than has previously been recognised, according to a new research project that draws on a vast number of publicly available data and documentation.
Evidence gathered by The Rendition Project – an interactive website that maps thousands of rendition flights – highlight 1,622 flights in and out of the UK by aircraft now known to have been involved in the agency’s secret kidnap and detention programme.
While many of those flights may not have been involved in rendition operations, the researchers behind the project have drawn on testimony from detainees, Red Cross reports, courtroom evidence, flight records and invoices to show that at least 144 were entering the UK while suspected of being engaged in rendition operations. [Continue reading...]
The Washington Post reports: Iran’s conservatives, who on Tuesday saw the two main moderate threats to their dominance barred from running in next month’s presidential election, face a new challenge: persuading shocked and skeptical Iranians to turn out to vote.
With the field of hopefuls clear, the mostly conservative nominees whose candidacies were approved by Iran’s Guardian Council officially launched their campaigns Wednesday, apparently free from the challenges of the most talked-about candidates, two-time former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the top aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.
Of the eight approved candidates, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who is a close adviser to the country’s supreme leader, appears to have mounting support among conservative politicians. But he cannot credibly claim popular backing, never having won an election, and his platform of “resistance” is unlikely to win votes from a populace eager for relief from the international economic sanctions imposed on Iran because of its nuclear activities.
Many Iranians seemed more interested in the fates of the two big names who were rejected than in those who were cleared to run, and it remained uncertain Wednesday how Iran’s leaders intend to try to revive the interest sparked by the surprise candidacies of Rafsanjani and Mashaei.
“I swear that every passenger who sat in this car in the past week said they would only vote for the old lion, Rafsanjani,” said a Tehran taxi driver who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal. “I don’t think any of them will vote now.” [Continue reading...]
Clyde Haberman, a columnist for the New York Times, seems to have more interest in telling readers what he ate for lunch, than in attempting to imagine or convey what it might be like to be force-fed — even when the ongoing hunger strike at Guantánamo features prominently in his most recent piece.
Maybe he felt like there was some delicious irony in having a conversation about America’s political prisoners — who having been offered no due process are now driven to the ultimate act of desperation — while enjoying a meal at a trendy Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village.
Haberman had invited Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s law school, for lunch at Morandi.
Ms. Greenberg, who said she was but an occasional visitor to the restaurant, selected the insalata di farro, or spelt salad. Her tablemate had cavatappi alla Norma, a corkscrew-shaped pasta with tomatoes, roasted eggplant and mozzarella. The main event lay ahead, though. “I only eat so that I can have dessert,” said Ms. Greenberg, a slender woman of 57. She chose the torta di ricotta with sliced strawberries, which she happily shared over coffees.
Are these the observations of a journalist who offers a richer view of the world by tossing in seemingly accidental details that add color to his reporting, or someone so steeped in the Times’ genteel culture that he hasn’t a clue when he’s portraying himself as an asshole? (That’s a rhetorical question.)
Turning to the topic at hand — the ability of America’s legal system to meet the challenge from terrorism — we learn:
Ms. Greenberg (who is not a lawyer) sides with President Obama and others who believe that by holding prisoners indefinitely at Guantánamo, this country has, as she put it, “turned its legal premises upside down.” To be practical about it, she notes that 509 terror-related cases have been settled in federal courts since Sept. 11, 2001, with a conviction rate of 89 percent, while military commissions have produced a mere seven convictions.
“Yes, I understand that self-defense is an extremely important issue,” she said. “But self-defense with a measure of wisdom would be a lot better than self-defense that screams fear and a lack of confidence in your ability to keep yourself safe.”
Her vexation extends to fearful politicians, the ones who recoiled at the Obama administration’s original plan to hold a trial in Lower Manhattan — in the shadow of the vanished towers, as it were — for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. They ignored how New York has had many terrorism trials, sometimes several at once. Throughout, the city barely blinked.
“We can take in an awful lot,” Ms. Greenberg said. “New Yorkers are tough. They’re savvy. And so are New York juries.”
There is a disquieting question that one always hesitates to ask. But it found its way unavoidably into the discussion: How is it that we have dodged suicide attacks on seemingly soft targets? A New York bus, for instance. Or, say, a supermarket, in another part of the country.
Vigilant law enforcement is a factor, Ms. Greenberg said, but something else is at work: Killing other people, not to mention oneself, is “hard to do, and hard to want to do, and hard to want to go through with it.” For the most part, she said, “human beings are constructed to stay on this side of civilized society.”
As for striking an out-of-the-way target, “it’s not really Al Qaeda’s message that you’re not safe anywhere,” she said. “Al Qaeda’s message is, ‘The United States needs to be taught a lesson.’ It’s very much focused on New York. Mayor Bloomberg’s right when he says every terrorist has a map of New York City in their pocket. It’s about the spectacle.”
In the counter-terrorism narrative with which Americans have been indoctrinated for over a decade, a massive security apparatus has been constructed which tirelessly thwarts threats, seemingly coming from every direction. The absence of another 9/11 scale attack has led many of America’s leaders to claim or accept credit for qualified success in “keeping America safe.”
Absent their efforts, had there been no war on terrorism, no massive expansion of intelligence agencies, and no hyper-focusing on asymmetric threats, could America have survived? Would its imperial power have suffered a fatal blow? I think not — and I’m reminded of a scene from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall:
Have you ever swerved out of the way as an oncoming driver who seemed intent on causing a suicidal head-on collision? No? Me neither. But it’s the kind of thing that’s very easy to imagine. And that’s what the imagination does: conjures up a million and one possibilities of events that rarely or never happen.
There are all sorts of things that are possible, but which we should never allow to govern our lives. More Americans get killed by lightening than killed by terrorism, yet that risk has not prompted an effort to protect this country with a lightening-proof dome.
So why has the terrorism threat been such an easy sell?
Rarely fatal lightening strikes, much more commonly deadly tornadoes, devastating hurricanes, and occasional earthquakes are all viewed as dangers that Americans will always face. But terrorism is the great other which taps into this nation’s pervasive xenophobia and fosters a sense of America’s inner light by placing darkness on the outside. Terrorism makes Americans feel good as they tell themselves the greatest forces of evil all emanate from elsewhere.
Keep fear on a slow simmer and then we can all be reassured that our money’s being well spent, keeping us safe.
Rami G Khouri writes: The most fascinating aspect of the war in Syria this month – and perhaps also the most significant in terms of long-term regional geopolitics – is the direct involvement of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite party and resistance group that is closely allied to Iran and Syria. The significance of Hezbollah’s participation in the battle for the Syrian town of Qusair comprises several distinct elements – its reputation as a fighting force, its political wisdom, its perception among Lebanese, its independence from Iran, and its standing in the region and globally as it identifies more closely with the Syrian regime that has been increasingly isolated and sanctioned.
Together, these factors make this a potential turning point for the organization whose history since its establishment in the early 1980s has been one of the most remarkable achievements in modern Arab political life. It can be credibly argued that Hezbollah is the single most successful political party or organization in modern Arab history, given its many accomplishments: It has transformed Lebanese Shiites from a downtrodden and subjugated community to the most powerful single group in Lebanon; it has forced Israel to end its occupation of southern Lebanon, and it has helped shape a regional “resistance and deterrence front” with Syria and Iran that defines many regional policies and confrontations.
These achievements have been countered by its single biggest weakness to date, which is inherent in all such resistance or revolutionary movements: difficulty in making the transition from liberation hero to governance maestro. The multiple strengths that have defined Hezbollah’s many successes in community empowerment and military resistance – secrecy, external support from Syria and Iran, anchorage in a powerful form of theocratic nationalism, independence from state controls or public accountability – have all proven to be weaknesses in its slow and imprecise move into the political arena in Lebanon. [Continue reading...]
The New York Times reports: Syrian government forces backed by Lebanese fighters from the militant group Hezbollah pushed Sunday into parts of Qusayr, a strategic city long held by rebels, according to an antigovernment activist and pro-government news channels. If the advance holds, it would be a serious setback for opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.
Both sides called it one of the war’s most intense ground battles. The fight seemed likely to inflame regional tensions as Hezbollah plunges more deeply into the conflict in Syria, increasing fears of a regional conflagration.
The Syrian military hammered Qusayr, on the Lebanon border, with airstrikes and artillery, killing at least 52 people and wounding hundreds as civilians cowered, unable to flee the city, activists said. By day’s end about 60 percent of the city, including the municipal office building, was under the army’s control for the first time in months, one activist said. Residents said rebels kept fighting into the night in Qusayr, killing a number of Hezbollah and government fighters.
Syrian state television said the army had “tightened the noose on the terrorists,” the government’s term for its armed opponents, by attacking from several directions. State news media said the army had “restored security and stability” to most of the city, killing many rebel fighters and capturing others.
The battle for the city, in heavily contested Homs Province, is viewed by both loyalists and government opponents as a turning point that could, in the words of one activist in Qusayr, “decide the fate of the regime and the revolution.” [Continue reading...]
Serious crimes have been committed. The evidence is public knowledge. They include launching a war of aggression, conspiracy to defraud Congress, and conspiracy to commit torture. And yet, today, none of the high government officials responsible for committing these crimes have been prosecuted. AlternateFocus investigates why.
Imad Musa, the head of Al Jazeera English Online, also posted a statement on the Editor’s Blog denying that Al Jazeera had “succumbed to various pressures, and censored its own pages” when it removed the article.
The about-face follows a growing uproar inside and outside Al Jazeera over the article’s removal, amid fears for editorial independence and freedom of speech as the Qatar-based network prepares to launch Al Jazeera America.
Musa’s statement claims that “After publication, many questions arose about the article’s content. In addition, the article was deemed to be similar in argument to Massad’s previous column, ‘Zionism, anti-Semitism and colonialism,’ published on these pages in December.”
However, Musa acknowledges that “We should have handled this better, and we have learned lessons that will enable us to maintain the highest standards of journalistic integrity.”
PR Newswire: Today the ACLU sued the FBI in a freedom of the press lawsuit on behalf of two editors at a libertarian online magazine. After learning that their Bay Area-based site, Antiwar.com, was the subject of FBI surveillance, Eric Garris and Justin Raimondo sought the documents the government had compiled on both them and the site. After a year, the FBI has failed to produce any documents, so Garris and Raimondo do not know the full extent of the surveillance and whether it is ongoing. The editors are asking the FBI to turn over relevant documents, and to stop collecting records of their constitutionally protected speech.
“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy, whether it’s the Associated Press or Antiwar.com,” said Julia Mass, staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “Government surveillance of news organizations interferes with journalists’ ability to do their jobs.”
Garris and Raimondo discovered FBI documents [details in question begin at page 62] that showed a record of surveillance of the online magazine. In these documents an FBI analyst recognized that Antiwar.com’s content is constitutionally protected speech, but still recommended opening an investigation and continued FBI monitoring of the site. [Continue reading...]
Antiwar.com says this is one more example of post-9/11 government overreach, and a stark reminder that the First Amendment has been treated as little more than a speed bump on the road to a government surveillance state. The lawsuit is particularly timely, considering recent scandals in which the Department of Justice secretly seized months of journalists’ phone records at the Associated Press, and did the same and more to a FOX News reporter, while the IRS is acknowledging it singled out conservative groups that criticize the government for extra scrutiny.
Suddenly, the press is more aware than ever that the state has the ability to secretly monitor its activities, heretofore thought of as constitutionally protected from government interference and intimidation.
“Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy, whether it’s AP or Antiwar.com,” said Julia Harumi Mass, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which is representing Antiwar.com in the case. “FBI surveillance of news organizations interferes with journalists’ ability to do their jobs as watchdogs that hold the government accountable.”
The Los Angeles Times reports: The FBI obtained a sealed search warrant to read a Fox News reporter’s personal emails from two days in 2010 after arguing there was probable cause he had violated espionage laws by soliciting classified information from a government official, court papers show.
In an affidavit, an FBI agent told a federal magistrate that the reporter had committed a crime when he asked a State Department security contractor, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, to share secret material about North Korea in June 2009.
The affidavit did not name the reporter, but Fox News identified him as its chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen. He was not charged, but Kim was indicted on espionage charges in August 2010 and is awaiting trial. He has denied leaking classified information.
The case marks the first time the government has gone to court to portray news gathering as espionage, and Fox News officials and 1st Amendment advocates reacted angrily Monday after the secret warrant was reported by the Washington Post.
“We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter,” said Michael Clemente, Fox News executive vice president of news. “In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.” [Continue reading...]
Eugene Robinson writes: In both instances [with the AP and Fox News], prosecutors were trying to build criminal cases under the 1917 Espionage Act against federal employees suspected of leaking classified information. Before President Obama took office, the Espionage Act had been used to prosecute leakers a grand total of three times, including the 1971 case of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Obama’s Justice Department has used the actsix times. And counting.
Obviously, the government has a duty to protect genuine secrets. But the problem is that every administration, without exception, tends to misuse the “top secret” stamp — sometimes from an overabundance of caution, sometimes to keep inconvenient or embarrassing information from coming to light.
That’s where journalists come in. Our job, simply, is to find out what the government doesn’t want you to know. [Continue reading...]
Glenn Greenwald writes: Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ — that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for “soliciting” the disclosure of classified information — is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself. These latest revelations show that this is not just a theory but one put into practice, as the Obama DOJ submitted court documents accusing a journalist of committing crimes by doing this.
That same “solicitation” theory, as the New York Times reported back in 2011, is the one the Obama DOJ has been using to justify its ongoing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: that because Assange solicited or encouraged Manning to leak classified information, the US government can “charge [Assange] as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.” When that theory was first disclosed, I wrote that it would enable the criminalization of investigative journalism generally:
“Very rarely do investigative journalists merely act as passive recipients of classified information; secret government programs aren’t typically reported because leaks just suddenly show up one day in the email box of a passive reporter. Journalists virtually always take affirmative steps to encourage its dissemination. They try to cajole leakers to turn over documents to verify their claims and consent to their publication. They call other sources to obtain confirmation and elaboration in the form of further leaks and documents. Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau described how they granted anonymity to ‘nearly a dozen current and former officials’ to induce them to reveal information about Bush’s NSA eavesdropping program. Dana Priest contacted numerous ‘U.S. and foreign officials’ to reveal the details of the CIA’s ‘black site’ program. Both stories won Pulitzer Prizes and entailed numerous, active steps to cajole sources to reveal classified information for publication.
“In sum, investigative journalists routinely — really, by definition — do exactly that which the DOJ’s new theory would seek to prove WikiLeaks did. To indict someone as a criminal ‘conspirator’ in a leak on the ground that they took steps to encourage the disclosures would be to criminalize investigative journalism every bit as much as charging Assange with ‘espionage’ for publishing classified information.”
That’s what always made the establishment media’s silence (or even support) in the face of the criminal investigation of WikiLeaks so remarkable: it was so obvious from the start that the theories used there could easily be exploited to criminalize the acts of mainstream journalists. [Continue reading...]
“So many foreign fighters have joined the Syrian insurgency that one wonders if their [sic] is role left for any indigenous Syrian insurgent,” writes “Bernhard” at Moon of Alabama today. To back up this “observation”, he cites nine news reports each referring to the presence of several hundred (or less) foreigners fighting in Syria. A [...]
Reuters reports: Syria said its troops destroyed an Israeli vehicle that crossed into its territory from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday and warned that any attempt to violate its sovereignty would meet “immediate and firm retaliation”. Israel said the incident took place on its side of the Golan ceasefire line, that the vehicle was [...]
Pankaj Mishra writes: Modern history is the story of how liberal democracy, originating in the U.K. and America, spread around the world. This may sound like an absurd fantasy. In actuality, this Whiggish narrative of progress underpins most newspaper editorials, political commentary and speeches in the West, and frames larger views of political developments in [...]
Three days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed a joint resolution called an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). You might remember it. In layman’s terms, it was a carte blanche for the Bush administration to go to war wherever it wanted, whenever it wanted, however it wanted, under the guise of [...]
In State of the Union: Nation Essays 1958-2005, Gore Vidal writes: On September 16, 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died. The empire was seventy-one years old and had been in ill health since 1968. Like most modern empires, ours rested not so [...]
Thomas Jones writes: The greenhouse effect was first hypothesised in 1824 by Joseph Fourier – though his analogy was the bell jar rather than the greenhouse – and proved experimentally by John Tyndall in 1859. In the 19th century it could be seen as unambiguously a good thing: if carbon dioxide and other trace gases [...]
Before visiting Matamata, a lost-in-the-bush village of 25 or so people in Australia’s Northern Territory, Michael Finkel needed permission from the village’s matriarch, Phyllis Batumbil. She agreed and asked him to bring dinner for everyone: I unloaded two duffels of personal effects and a dozen bags of groceries. Dinner for 25, I mentioned, is quite [...]
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Forests, trees on farms and agroforestry are critical in the fight against hunger and should be better integrated into food security and land use policies, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today at the International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition in Rome (13-15 [...]
