Category Archives: Analysis

Thomas Edison was right about solar power

Truthout: Famed inventor Thomas Edison brought us electric lights, phonographs, movies and even the first research and development laboratory.

But in 1931, he also was one of the first promoters of renewable energy – especially solar.

That year, he described our approach to energy to two industry magnates of the day: Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone.

He told them, “We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy – sun, wind and tide.”

That was more than 80 years ago and we’re still living the same way.

In 2014, just over 13 percent of US electricity production came from renewables in some form or another.

That’s not terrible, but it means that we’re still getting nearly 90 percent of our electricity production from “chopping down the fence around our house for fuel.” [Continue reading…]

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How music can help relieve chronic pain

By Don Knox, Glasgow Caledonian University

As the 17th-century English playwright William Congreve said: “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.” It is known that listening to music can significantly enhance our health and general feelings of well-being.

An important and growing area of research concerns how music helps to mitigate pain and its negative effects. Music has been shown to reduce anxiety, fear, depression, pain-related distress and blood pressure. It has been found to lower pain-intensity levels and reduce the opioid requirements of patients with post-operative pain.

Music has helped children undergoing numerous medical and dental procedures. And it has been demonstrated to work in a variety of other clinical settings such as palliative care, paediatrics, surgery and anaesthesia.

So what makes music so effective at making us feel better? The research has often drawn on theories around how nerve impulses in the central nervous system are affected by our thought processes and emotions. Anything that distracts us from pain may reduce the extent to which we focus on it, and music may be particularly powerful in this regard. The beauty is that once we understand how music relates to pain, we have the potential to treat ourselves.

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The other immigrants: How the super-rich skirt quotas and closed borders

By John Rennie Short, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The mass media are filled with images of desperate refugees struggling to escape civil unrest. But it is not only the poor and the displaced who are on the move. The rich, especially from countries such as Russia and China, are also leaving their home countries, but they are not faced with fences and rejection but welcomes and encouragement.

A review of these policies highlights the dramatic differences between rich and poor when it comes to immigration. It also reveals the dubious economic benefits of catering to the super-rich.

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Putin moves troops from Ukraine to Syria

Michael Weiss and Ben Nimmo report: Reuters confirmed Wednesday what The Daily Beast first reported last week — not only have Russian troops been deployed to Syria but they are indeed taking part in active combat operations, although against which of the manifold enemies of the Assad regime remains unclear.

U.S. government sources told the news agency that two tank landing ships, aircraft and naval infantry forces have arrived in Syria in the past 24 hours, with the largest buildup occurring in Latakia, the northwest coastal province — ancestral home of the Assad family — which Islamist rebels have been fiercely contesting of late. Russia, Reuters confirmed, is constructing a new airfield in Latakia, which would represents its second military installation in Syria after its decades-old naval supply base in Tartus, also its only warm-water port since the end of the Soviet Union.

One U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast that Moscow likely taken the decision to directly intervene in the four-and-a-half-year civil war following opposition gains, contrary to what Vladimir Putin told reporters last week—that any such talk was “premature.” [Continue reading…]

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50 intelligence analysts says ISIS intelligence is being politically manipulated

The Daily Beast reports: More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.

The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence.

“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official said. [Continue reading…]

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Dick Cheney is still a shameless liar

Peter Beinart writes: Something revealing happened over the weekend on Fox News Sunday. Dick Cheney had stopped by to bash President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal and promote his new book (co-authored with his daughter Liz). But moderator Chris Wallace, to his credit, wanted to ask Cheney about his own failings on Iran. On the Bush administration’s watch, Wallace noted, Iran’s centrifuges for enriching uranium “went from zero to 5,000.” Cheney protested, declaring that, “That happened on Obama’s watch and not on our watch.” But Wallace held his ground. “No, no, no,” he insisted. “By 2009, they were at 5,000.” Cheney paused for an instant, muttered, “right,” and went back to his talking points.

The exchange illustrated why the former vice president is such an effective purveyor of untruths. Even when caught in a falsehood, he displays no discomfort. Unlike Rick Perry, he never ever says “oops.”

Cheney has needed that sangfroid in recent days, because his falsehoods keep piling up. On Fox, he said that in the nuclear negotiations, the Iranians “got everything they asked for.” Really? In a June 24 tweet, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, declared “we do not accept 10, 12 years long-term restrictions.” But under the deal signed a few weeks later, the Iranians accepted restrictions on their uranium enrichment and their plutonium reprocessing that last 15 years. They accepted international inspections of their uranium mines and mills for 25 years. And they agreed to implement the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which gives inspectors the right to see undeclared nuclear sites in perpetuity. Khamenei also demanded “immediate removal of economic, financial and banking sanctions,” adding that, “We do not agree with IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] verification as precondition for the other side to implement its commitments.” But under the agreement, U.S. and European economic, financial, and banking sanctions imposed against Iran’s nuclear program are not immediately removed. They will remain until, you guessed it, “IAEA verification” that Iran has curbed its nuclear program. [Continue reading…]

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Sheldon Adelson is ready to buy the presidency

Jason Zengerle writes: In a few weeks, when the nuclear deal Barack Obama negotiated with Iran comes before Congress, it’s all but certain that not a single Republican will vote in support of it. With the possible exception of Maine’s Susan Collins, who has yet to reveal her position, each of the 246 Republicans in the House and 53 Republicans in the Senate has indicated his or her opposition to the deal. Not that a mere vote could possibly express the intensity of even that unanimous opposition — or the fervid support for Israel that lies behind it. “It is a fundamental betrayal of the security of the United States and of our closest allies, first and foremost Israel,” Texas senator and GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz has said. Cruz’s 16 Republican-primary opponents have denounced the deal in similar terms. One of them, Mike Huckabee, has gone so far as to argue that Obama “will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”

American Jews are not hard-liners on Israel. Obama won 69 percent of Jewish voters in 2012, even as American conservatives accused him of purposefully undermining the country’s security and status in the region. Indeed, according to a 2013 Pew study, only one in three American Jews feel a strong emotional attachment to the Jewish state. But over the past 30 years, and especially in the last decade, the GOP’s attachment to Israel has become remarkably fierce, to an extent that is basically unprecedented in modern American politics. On issue after issue — from military aid to settlement policy — the GOP now offers Israel unconditional and unquestioning support, so much so that some Republicans now liken the country to America’s “51st state.” The person most responsible for this development is the multi­billionaire casino magnate and Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. [Continue reading…]

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The bell tolls for Turkey and the PKK

Aaron Stein and Noah Blaser write: Nearly two months after renewed fighting between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces dashed hopes for an historic ceasefire, a deadly cycle of violence gripped Turkey’s Kurdish southeast, recalling the darkest days of the three-decade-long conflict.

But two deadly attacks by the PKK have recently seen the government pledge to escalate the conflict further, raising alarm before scheduled national elections on November 1.

On Sunday, 16 Turkish soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack – the deadliest strike yet in tit-for-tat violence that has killed 113 security officers and scores of civilians since July. That attack was followed by the death of at least 10 police officers in an improvised explosive device attack near the small town of Igdir on Tuesday.

Riding a wave of national anger that saw attacks on Kurdish businesses and political parties this week, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced the government’s intent to “wipe out” the PKK fighters.

Already, there is fighting inside many Kurdish-majority cities in Turkey’s southeast. On Sunday, Turkey’s pro-government media reported that Turkey’s military would respond to the attacks by deploying 5,000 police and military personnel to each of Turkey’s 20 most restive, pro-PKK towns and cities. [Continue reading…]

AFP reports: An angry crowd on Tuesday attacked the Ankara headquarters of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, in a night of nationalist-tinged violence across the country, reports and officials said.

Dozens of nationalist protesters marched on the the headquarters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Ankara, throwing stones and ripping down the sign outside, pictures broadcast by the CNN-Turk channel showed. [Continue reading…]

Today’s Zaman reports: Cutting short a trip to a number of European Union countries after the news broke that 16 Turkish soldiers had been killed in an attack by the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Dağlıca area of Hakkari province on Sunday afternoon, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş called on Turks and Kurds to join forces to bring an end to the violence in Turkey and said that “peace will win at the end” after arriving at İstanbul Atatürk Airport on Monday.

Speaking to journalists upon his arrival, Demirtaş said the death of the 16 soldiers had saddened millions of people in Turkey and that the country mourns the deaths of all members of the security forces who are killed. Demirtaş also called on all Turkish nationals not to break their brotherhood, saying that peace was the best option for everyone. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, The Independent reports: Growing numbers of young Iraqi Kurds are joining the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), despite the breakdown of the rebel group’s ceasefire with the Turkish government, which has unleashed repeated air strikes against its bases in northern Iraq.

The PKK is considered a terrorist group by the US and the EU as well as by Turkey, but young Kurds say they want to join its fighters in the battle against Isis – partly out of frustration at the perceived failings of their own government in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. Young Kurds appear to be undeterred by the risk of attack by Turkish forces – which sent ground troops into northern Iraq without Kurdish permission for the first time since 2011, in what was described as a “short-term” operation to hunt down Kurdish rebels.

Two battalions from Turkey’s special forces were said by officials to be in “hot pursuit” of those involved in a roadside bomb attack that killed 16 soldiers on Sunday. A further roadside bomb blamed on the PKK killed 14 police officers in eastern Turkey on Tuesday. [Continue reading…]

Burak Kadercan writes: Put simply, ethnic tensions are rising and [Turkey’s President] Erdogan plays an important role in their escalation (or, could have done more to keep a lid on them), but he is not the sole driver of the crisis. We are looking at a multi-player game of chicken where different actors are speeding toward each other with no intention to step on the brakes. Erdogan is driving the largest vehicle, but it takes more than one driver to cause a pileup.

Turkey’s Kurdish question is no longer a domestic affair. In fact, thanks to the rise of the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia and an organic affiliate of PKK, what happens in Syria will have direct implications for the future of the Kurdish question in Turkey. Universally championed as a capable and willing fighting force against ISIL, the YPG is gaining ground not only in Syria, but also in the hearts of many in the international community. [Continue reading…]

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Qassem Soleimani and the Iran-Iraq split

Garrett Khoury writes: Qassem Soleimani has many nicknames, generally containing one or both of the words “shadow” or “dark.” However, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force has been operating in the light since the devastating advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) began in the summer of 2014, but a year later is seeing him begin to wear out his welcome with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Tasked with organizing the defense of the Shi’a holy sites in central Iraq and leading the Shi’a militias called up in the panic following the collapse of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), Soleimani has been seen regularly on the front lines and in Baghdad. With the power of the militias behind him, he has come to be seen as attempting to assert himself as the power behind the government, Iraq’s very own eminence grise.

The past month, though, has seen an ever-wider rift growing between Prime Minister Abadi and Soleimani, one that may threaten the relationship between Iran and Iraq as a whole. Abadi once spoke respectfully about Soleimani and Iran’s role in the country and the fight against ISIS. While perhaps not warmly, it was at least grateful and realistic about the need for Iranian assistance.

That has changed dramatically, though. Luckily, perhaps, for Abadi, events on the streets are working in his favor. The popular protests against corruption and government inefficiency that have spread around Iraq have crossed sectarian lines, but have been particularly aggressive towards Shi’a politicians in the south of the country. [Continue reading…]

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Germany to take half a million refugees as Greek isles overwhelmed

AFP reports: Germany said it could take half a million refugees annually over several years as Greek islands struggled Tuesday to process a huge backlog of migrants desperate to travel to western Europe.

Reflecting deepening concern, the European Union’s president warned the EU faced a years-long refugee crisis, while the UN urged countries worldwide to help tackle the problem.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged greater flexibility in EU migrant quotas as her deputy, Sigmar Gabriel, said Berlin “could surely deal with something in the order of half a million (refugees) for several years.” [Continue reading…]

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Why football embraces migrants

By Simon Chadwick, Coventry University

If the European Union was a football team, right now it would be languishing in the relegation zone. The EU’s disjointed approach to the current influx of migrants and refugees is reminiscent of the rampant individualism displayed in some of Europe’s ego-laden, under-performing football clubs.

But there is an EU team putting together some good passes and scoring important goals – Germany. While other countries have been caught flat-footed, the Germans have been as deft and assured as ever, just like the country’s football teams.

Whether it’s the World Cup, the European Championship or the Champions League, it is normally safe to say that a German team will be in contention for the overall honours. Collective identity and the team’s best interests seemingly always trump individualism and ego.

And, as Germany has opened its borders to people fleeing conflict in the Middle East, so German football has responded in the same way.

Leading from the front, Bayern Munich last week pledged €1m to projects supporting the refugees now entering Germany. Meanwhile FC Schalke invited 100 refugees to their first home game of the season, and the club is organising clothing and toy collections. Other clubs, such as Borussia Dortmund and Werder Bremen are following suit with similar initiatives.

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The ‘kill list’: RAF drones have been hunting UK jihadis for months

The Guardian reports: Unmanned RAF aerial drones armed with Hellfire missiles have been patrolling the skies over Syria for months seeking to target British jihadis on a “kill list” drawn up by senior ministers on the UK National Security Council shortly after the election.

As the defence secretary Michael Fallon said ministers would not hesitate to approve further strikes against jihadis who have their own kill list, Jeremy Corbyn led a cross-party group of MPs who raised doubts about the change in strategy.

Corbyn said: “There has to be a legal basis for what’s going on. This is war without parliamentary approval. And in fact parliament specifically said no to this war in September 2013.”

Senior Liberal Democrats suggested that the RAF drone strike, which led to the killing of two British Islamic State members on 21 August, went beyond anything that would have been approved when Nick Clegg sat on the NSC. “The hawks have been let loose and are trying to test the boundaries of what is possible,” one former Lib Dem coalition source said. [Continue reading…]

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Saudi-led offensive in Yemen faces dangerous new phase

Iona Craig writes: When young garage mechanic Aidaroos Saleh heard the familiar ping of his smartphone, he could never have imagined the journey on which the incoming message would take him. In a matter of weeks, Saleh, 22, went from fixing cars in his adopted country of Saudi Arabia to the battle front of his southern Yemen homeland.

The message was an official communication, a call to arms for Yemenis in Saudi Arabia to join a fighting force that would “defend Aden” — the southern Yemeni city that descended into civil war in mid-March. Four months after he responded to the message in April, the young fighter sat cradling an AK-47 assault rifle between his knees in the scorching heat of Aden.

“They promised us salaries and medical care abroad if we got injured in Yemen,” he said, wearing glasses, sandals and a mawaz, which is like a sarong. He and his cohort received neither.

Those who joined up were sent to the Saudi border town of Sharurah — in the Empty Quarter, the world’s largest sand desert — where they should have received military training to prepare them for deployment in Aden.

This desert camp of some 6,000 Yemeni volunteers was the origin of the kingdom’s Operation Golden Arrow, a ground offensive launched in Yemen in July that now looks set to move in on the capital, Sanaa. This latest phase of operations in Yemen follows consecutive aerial campaigns carried out since March as part of the Saudi-led coalition of nations bid to restore Yemen’s President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi after he fled to Riyadh earlier this year.

But in order to bring Hadi back, the coalition has first set itself the task of removing the Houthis and military units loyal to his predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh, who seized control of the capital almost a year ago. [Continue reading…]

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Europe is parched, in a sign of times to come

The Guardian reports: Europe has undergone a severe drought this summer, the worst in over a decade. Temperatures have been high across the continent, and have combined with low rainfalls. This drought, like the one in 2012 in the United States, are a sign of what our future holds in a warming world.

As humans emit greenhouse gases, the world warms. We already know that. But a warming world is also host to other changes. Among the most important changes are those to the water cycle. Scientists refer to this as the hydrological cycle – basically changes to the storage of water in the soil and underground, the evaporation of water into the atmosphere, and the subsequent rainfall and runoff that occurs.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, as people know through the personal experience of high humidity in warm months. Changes to humidity have been measured over the past decades and confirm our expectations. These changes lead to increased rainfall.

At the same time, higher temperatures accelerate evaporation, which dries out the soil and plants and can create drought conditions. [Continue reading…]

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The web has become a hall of mirrors, filled only with reflections of our data

By mc schraefel @mcphoo, University of Southampton

The “digital assistant” is proliferating, able to combine intelligent natural language processing, voice-operated control over a smartphone’s functions and access to web services. It can set calendar appointments, launch apps, and run requests. But if that sounds very clever – a computerised talking assistant, like HAL9000 from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey – it’s mostly just running search engine queries and processing the results.

Facebook has now joined Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon with the launch of its digital assistant M, part of its Messaging smartphone app. It’s special sauce is that M is powered not just by algorithms but by data serfs: human Facebook employees who are there to ensure that every request that it cannot parse is still fulfilled, and in doing so training M by example. That training works because every interaction with M is recorded – that’s the point, according to David Marcus, Facebook’s vice-president of messaging:

We start capturing all of your intent for the things you want to do. Intent often leads to buying something, or to a transaction, and that’s an opportunity for us to [make money] over time.

Facebook, through M, will capture and facilitate that “intent to buy” and take its cut directly from the subsequent purchase rather than as an ad middleman. It does this by leveraging messaging, which was turned into a separate app of its own so that Facebook could integrate PayPal-style peer-to-peer payments between users. This means Facebook has a log not only of your conversations but also your financial dealings. In an interview with Fortune magazine at the time, Facebook product manager, Steve Davies, said:

People talk about money all the time in Messenger but end up going somewhere else to do the transaction. With this, people can finish the conversation the same place started it.

In a somewhat creepy way, by reading your chats and knowing that you’re “talking about money all the time” – what you’re talking about buying – Facebook can build up a pretty compelling profile of interests and potential purchases. If M can capture our intent it will not be by tracking what sites we visit and targeting relevant ads, as per advert brokers such as Google and Doubleclick. Nor by targeting ads based on the links we share, as Twitter does. Instead it simply reads our messages.

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Cameron’s Syria drone strike ‘revelation’ is a diversion

By Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

Up until mid-afternoon on September 7, it was expected that British prime minister David Cameron would make headlines by announcing that the UK would finally take in a significant number of refugees from Syria’s conflict. What’s more, the chatter in London was that Cameron might try – more than two years after parliament blocked military intervention against the Assad regime – to get authorisation for British air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria.

However, Cameron had a surprise for MPs, the media, and Syria-watchers alike. While saying that Britain would accept 20,000 refugees over five years, his more dramatic announcement was that the Royal Air Force had carried out its first attack inside Syria – a drone strike on August 21, which killed three Islamic State fighters, including two British nationals.

The prime minister declared this an “act of self-defence” to stop terrorism on British soil. But the announcement raises an array of difficult questions.

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Cameron justifies the drone strike in Syria: Is this his WMD moment?

Simon Jenkins writes: It sounded good, but did it sound right? David Cameron’s Commons explanation of the execution of three Britons in Syria eerily recalled Tony Blair on the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” that posed “an imminent threat” to British national security.

Blair killed stone dead the thesis that such assertions by ministers should be taken on trust. The suspicion has to be that British intelligence had a tag on the suspect Britons for some time and got lucky. British planes had been operating over Syria all summer, with orders to disregard parliament’s veto on military action if targets were of sufficient “value”.

As it stands, the visible evidence against them related to events that had already taken place peacefully. The threats appear mere bravado. If not, the more reason for explaining what exactly was the threat, other than “recruitment”.

Cameron’s lawyers were content that action was essential to prevent what international law recognises as an “occurring or imminent” Article-51 threat, notified to the United Nations. That law envisaged an army moving to cross a frontier, not a 21-year-old Cardiff terrorist. [Continue reading…]

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Pakistani military says its drone killed 3 suspected militants

The Washington Post reports: An unmanned Pakistani aircraft killed three suspected terrorists Monday, marking the first time that the country’s military has used drone technology on the battlefield, officials said.

In March, Pakistan’s military declared that it had successfully armed an indigenously produced drone, which it calls the Burraq, with a laser-guided missile. But the weapon had not been used in combat until now, officials said.

Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a spokesman for the military, said in a brief statement that three “high-profile terrorists” were killed in the strike in the Shawal Valley in northwestern Pakistan. Bajwa did not identify them but said details would be forthcoming.

With the announcement, Pakistan appears to have joined a handful of nations that use armed drones as instruments of war. [Continue reading…]

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