Category Archives: Analysis

ISIS and the armchair Islamist: How execution videos sell a fantasy of masculinity

Roxanne L. Euben writes: Retaliatory humiliation has a particular meaning in contemporary radical Islamist rhetoric and writing: it derives from a definition of humiliation as the unjust imposition of impotence on Islam and Muslims. This definition of humiliation equates political and economic powerlessness with the imperilment of a certain kind of masculine agency — a dominant masculinity understood as the ability to protect, provide and control.

This sense of powerlessness has many different sources. High unemployment in many Muslim-majority countries has jeopardized men’s ability to marry, engage in sanctioned sexual relations, and provide for their families. Then there’s the challenge to conventional gender roles posed by the entry of women into the workforce, along with women’s visible political activism and increased access to higher education. The brutal suppression of domestic dissent or opposition by authoritarian regimes has long produced experiences of political impotence, and the disappointing outcomes of the revolutions associated with the “Arab Spring” have only deepened many of these frustrations.

Finally, the legacies of colonialism, longstanding Euro-American support for these authoritarian regimes, drone strikes, Israeli occupation and the dynamics of globalization combine to intensify perceptions of Muslim impotence relative to America and Europe. This perception is continually revivified by the flow of images of bloodied Muslim bodies delivered by a burgeoning array of video, satellite and digital media.

By extension, then, retaliatory humiliation means imposing impotence upon those who have humiliated Islam. Doing so enacts a masculine agency seen as necessary to defend Islam and restore strength and greatness to the Muslim community.

Consider the shorn heads of the captured men, wearing bright orange clothing akin to the jumpsuits worn by inmates at Guantánamo Bay prison. They kneel in postures of submission at the feet of their executioner, who stands over them, legs apart, masked, clothed in black from head to toe. The hostages are forced to use their last breath on earth to speak the words of their murderers; only their eyes visibly hint at what must have already been done to get each man to follow this script, to play the designated role in the spectacle of his own murder. [Continue reading…]

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How America failed Afghan women

Musa al-Gharbi writes: The U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan was justified in large part by highlighting the plight of women under Taliban governance. Within the first weeks of the campaign, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Cherie Blair helped spearhead a highly-effective propaganda effort to convince the public that the U.S. and the U.K. were engaged in a moral war — one which was fundamentally about human rights rather than merely advancing geopolitical or security interests — thereby necessitating a massive ground invasion and state-building enterprise to transform Afghan society, rather than a more limited venture to dislodge and degrade the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Of course, the U.S. bore significant moral responsibility for the plight of Afghan women, given the central role that the CIA played in sponsoring mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Cold War — before, during, and after the Russian occupation. Leaders trained in these programs would go on to found the Taliban, the Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda — groups which were not only responsible for the widespread oppression of the Afghan people, but also for planning and executing the suicide bombings of September 11, 2001.

And so, the moral implications of the war were extraordinary: had Operation Enduring Freedom been successful, it would have not only liberated Afghan women, but avenged 9/11—and in the process, helped to rectify a particularly dark chapter in U.S. foreign policy. And this, it was held, would go a long way towards winning the “hearts and minds” of people around the world. [Continue reading…]

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Michael Klare: Big Oil in retreat

On July 14, 2011, at TomDispatch, Bill McKibben wrote that he and a few other “veteran environmentalists” had issued a call for activists to descend on the White House and “risk arrest to demand something simple and concrete from President Obama: that he refuse to grant a license for Keystone XL, a new pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico that would vastly increase the flow of tar sands oil through the U.S., ensuring that the exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands will only increase.” It must have seemed like a long shot at the time, but McKibben urged the prospective demonstrators on, pointing out that “Alberta’s tar sands are the continent’s biggest carbon bomb,” especially “dirty” to produce and burn in terms of the release of carbon dioxide and so the heating of the planet.

Just over four years later, the president, whose administration recently green-lighted Shell to do test-drilling in the dangerous waters of the American Arctic, opened the South Atlantic to new energy exploration and drilling earlier this year, and oversaw the expansion of the fracking fields of the American West, has yet to make, or at least announce, a final decision on that pipeline. Can anyone doubt that, if there had been no demonstrations against it, if it hadn’t become a major issue for his “environmental base,” the Keystone XL would have been approved without a second thought years ago? Now, it may be too late for a variety of reasons.

The company that plans to build the pipeline, TransCanada Corporation, already fears the worst — a presidential rejection that indeed may soon be in the cards. After all, we’ve finally hit the “legacy” part of the Obama era. In the case of war, the president oversaw the escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan soon after taking office, sent in the bombers and drones, and a year ago plunged the country back into its third war in Iraq and first in Syria.  Only late in his second term has he finally overseen an initiative worthy of a less warlike legacy: the embattled Iran nuclear deal. Similarly, the man who headed an “all of the above” administration on energy policy in an era in which the U.S. became “Saudi America” has only now launched a legacy-shaping climate change initiative that could matter, aimed at cutting back carbon dioxide emissions from coal-powered plants. So maybe in this legacy era, the Keystone XL will be next to fall. Or maybe Obama will let his final year and a half play out without a decision on whether or not to build it and turn the issue over to Hillary Clinton, who refuses to commit on the matter, or one of 17 Republicans, all of whom would build a pipeline to anywhere carrying anything rather than enact a single climate change initiative, no matter how mild.

Another factor has, however, entered the picture.  As Michael Klare, TomDispatch’s resident energy expert and the author of The Race for What’s Left, explains, the dynamics of the energy industry may be changing in a way that could sink Canada’s vast tar sands enterprise in a sea of red ink.  If so, the tar sands industry, already hit hard by the plunge in oil prices last year, may face an even more rugged future.

“If you build it, he will come” is the classic tag line from the movie Field of Dreams. For the Keystone XL pipeline, however, that might someday have to be rewritten as: “If you build it, it won’t come.”  Even if built, it might prove to be a pipeline to nowhere. Let Klare explain why. Tom Engelhardt

Double-dip oil rout
Why an oil glut may lead to a new world of energy
By Michael T. Klare

The plunge of global oil prices began in June 2014, when benchmark Brent crude was selling at $114 per barrel. It hit bottom at $46 this January, a near-collapse widely viewed as a major but temporary calamity for the energy industry.  Such low prices were expected to force many high-cost operators, especially American shale oil producers, out of the market, while stoking fresh demand and so pushing those numbers back up again.  When Brent rose to $66 per barrel this May, many oil industry executives breathed a sigh of relief.  The worst was over.  The price had “reached a bottom” and it “doesn’t look like it is going back,” a senior Saudi official observed at the time.

Skip ahead three months and that springtime of optimism has evaporated.  Major producers continue to pump out record levels of crude and world demand remains essentially flat. The result: a global oil glut that is again driving prices toward the energy subbasement.  In the first week of August, Brent fell to $49, and West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for U.S. crude, sank to $45. On top of last winter’s rout, this second round of price declines has played havoc with the profits of the major oil companies, put tens of thousands of people out of work, and obliterated billions of dollars of investments in future projects. While most oil-company executives continue to insist that a turnaround is sure to occur in the near future, some analysts are beginning to wonder if what’s underway doesn’t actually signal a fundamental transformation of the industry.

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California pension funds lose $5 billion on fossil fuels

San Francisco Chronicle reports: California’s huge public pension funds, CalPERS and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, have lost more than $5 billion on their fossil fuel investments at a time when some legislators are urging the funds to dump their coal company stocks.

An analysis from the environmental group 350.org found that the two pension funds lost $5.2 billion from June 2014 through June of this year on companies that produce coal, oil and natural gas. And many of those stocks have plunged even further since then, driven down by sinking oil and coal prices.

“It’s important to see that fossil fuels in general, and coal in particular, are risky bets for the pension system,” said Brett Fleishman, senior analyst with 350.org, which promotes fossil fuel divestment as a way to fight climate change. “When folks are saying divestment is risky, we can say, ‘Well, not divesting is risky.’” [Continue reading…]

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Will Iraq’s reforms help it avoid Lebanon’s sectarian fate?

Faisal Al Yafai writes: On Monday afternoon, Iraq’s parliament approved some of the most significant changes to the country’s political system since the 2003 invasion.

Most analysts have focused on the proposals of prime minister Haider Al Abadi that tackle corruption. But the reforms also have another aspect, one that has the potential to fundamentally change how democratic politics is done in Iraq. Whether that change will be for the better is as yet unknown.

Mr Al Abadi proposed removing the positions of the two vice-presidents and three deputy prime ministers. The two vice-presidents were meant to be shared between the Sunni and Shia communities (one and two respectively), and the three deputy prime ministers divided among Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities. When it was first proposed, in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, it was an inelegant solution to a problem of representation.

Mr Al Abadi has also banned a quota system across ministries, which, again, had a sectarian element meant to placate various communities. He has replaced it with a committee to oversee appointments – chosen by him.

If the old system of allocating political positions based on religion sounds familiar, that is because it has been tried before, in Lebanon. [Continue reading…]

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In Saudi Arabia, social media is helping reveal the harassment of women

Huffington Post reports: In recent years, an increasing number of women in Saudi Arabia have used social media as a resource to document and confront the ongoing problem of harassment. As Noura bint Afeich wrote in Al-Monitor last year, “Posting photos and videos documenting certain events has shed light on sensitive topics that the kingdom wishes to avoid dealing with.”

Women are harassed at workplaces, in malls and on city streets. Yet in Saudi Arabia’s conservative society, instances of physical harassment are rarely reported to authorities, for fear it will bring shame or embarrassment. In a national survey conducted in 2014 by the Riyadh-based King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue, 80 percent of participants attributed sexual harassment in Saudi Arabia to women’s “deliberate flirtatious behavior.”

Amid this climate of shame and underreporting, the data reveal a pressing problem. Six sexual harassment cases are reported every day, as statistics published by the country’s Ministry of Justice have shown. In 2013 and 2014, a total of 3,982 harassment cases made it to Saudi courts, with the largest share of offenses taking place in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

But the growing outrage throughout the country — prompted in large part by social media — has had an effect, leading the very conservative kingdom to consider legal measures to combat the problem. [Continue reading…]

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Octopus genome holds clues to uncanny intelligence

Nature reports: Researchers want to understand how the cephalopods, a class of free-floating molluscs, produced a creature that is clever enough to navigate highly complex mazes and open jars filled with tasty crabs.

Surprisingly, the octopus genome turned out to be almost as large as a human’s and to contain a greater number of protein-coding genes — some 33,000, compared with fewer than 25,000 in Homo sapiens.

This excess results mostly from the expansion of a few specific gene families, [neurobiologist Clifton] Ragsdale says. One of the most remarkable gene groups is the protocadherins, which regulate the development of neurons and the short-range interactions between them. The octopus has 168 of these genes — more than twice as many as mammals. This resonates with the creature’s unusually large brain and the organ’s even-stranger anatomy. Of the octopus’s half a billion neurons — six times the number in a mouse — two-thirds spill out from its head through its arms, without the involvement of long-range fibres such as those in vertebrate spinal cords. The independent computing power of the arms, which can execute cognitive tasks even when dismembered, have made octopuses an object of study for neurobiologists such as Hochner and for roboticists who are collaborating on the development of soft, flexible robots.

A gene family that is involved in development, the zinc-finger transcription factors, is also highly expanded in octopuses. At around 1,800 genes, it is the second-largest gene family to be discovered in an animal, after the elephant’s 2,000 olfactory-receptor genes. [Continue reading…]

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Your gut bacteria don’t like junk food – even if you do

By Tim Spector, King’s College London

When Morgan Spurlock famously spent a month eating large portions of McDonalds for the purposes of his documentary Supersize Me, he gained weight, damaged his liver and claimed to have suffered addictive withdrawal symptoms. This was popularly attributed to the toxic mix of carbs and fat plus the added chemicals and preservatives in junk foods. But could there be another explanation?

We may have forgotten others who really don’t enjoy fast food. These are the poor creatures that live in the dark in our guts. These are the hundred trillion microbes that outnumber our total human cells ten to one and digest our food, provide many vitamins and nutrients and keep us healthy. Until recently we have viewed them as harmful – but those (like salmonella) are a tiny minority and most are essential for us.

Studies in lab mice have shown that when fed an intensive high fat diet their microbes change dramatically and for the worse. This can be partly prevented by using probiotics; but there are obvious differences between us and lab mice, as well as our natural microbes.

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Defeating ISIS in Syria is essential to prevent catastrophe

Frederic C Hof writes: Islamic State (Isis) is the catastrophic consequence of political illegitimacy in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq, the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, created a governance vacuum. With the unflagging support of Iran, he disenfranchised and alienated Sunni Arabs through narrow, partisan and utterly sectarian policies. In Syria the vacuum’s creator is Bashar al-Assad – with the enthusiastic backing of Iran, he pursues a political survival strategy of collective punishment, featuring mass homicide focused on civilians. Legitimate governance in both places may be a long way off. But keeping Isis from sinking roots in Syria is an urgent priority, which, if unmet, will enable this criminal band to sustain its combat operations in Iraq from a secure rear area where it will also menace Turkey and Jordan.

Political legitimacy – a condition in which the citizenry agrees on the rules of the political game – is a tall order for the two countries in question. Can Iraq survive as a state, even as a confederation? Is there a future for Syria within borders drawn during the colonial era? Surely a stable, peaceful and confederated Iraq is not right around the corner. And for Syria, reconstruction, reform, and reconciliation may be generational undertakings.

No doubt the process of overcoming the conditions that made large swaths of Iraq and Syria safe for Isis will be a long one. The hardships associated with this process will be borne in large measure by Syrians and Iraqis. Yet to admit that the struggle for political legitimacy will be extended is not to say that the battle against Isis must be a multi-year engagement. Indeed, in Syria it must not be, as this deadly combination of al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein loyalists seeks to establish itself in a country where it has no natural constituency. [Continue reading…]

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New diplomacy seen on U.S.-Russian efforts to end Syrian civil war

The New York Times reports: With President Bashar al-Assad of Syria facing battlefield setbacks, diplomats from Russia, the United States and several Middle Eastern powers are engaged in a burst of diplomatic activity, trying to head off a deeper collapse of the country that could further strengthen the militant group Islamic State.

Russia, Mr. Assad’s most powerful backer, has built new ties with Saudi Arabia, a fervent opponent, and even brokered a meeting between high-ranking Saudi and Syrian intelligence officials. On Tuesday, the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, met with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in Moscow, wrangling over the fate of Mr. Assad.

Unusual meetings have come in quick succession. Last week, the top Russian, American and Saudi envoys held their first three-way meeting on Syria; Russian officials briefed Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem. He then met officials in Oman, whose ties to both Saudi Arabia and Iran raised the prospect of talks between those archrivals. Russia stopped blocking an international inquiry into who has used chemical weapons in Syria, a longstanding American priority. [Continue reading…]

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Ordinary Iranians unafraid to criticize their own government

Larry Cohler-Esses (from The Forward), “the first journalist from a Jewish, pro-Israel (if not always pro-Israel government) publication to be granted a journalist’s visa since the 1979 Revolution,” writes: Ordinary Iranians with whom I spoke have no interest at all in attacking Israel; their concern is with their own sense of isolation and economic struggle. Official government statistics estimate the unemployment in Iran at around 10%. But unofficial sources estimate it as twice that — and this in a context in which only 36% of the population participates in the workforce. An estimated 150,000 Iranians with college educations leave the country yearly.

But among ordinary Iranians the sense that something is now opening up in the country is pervasive. It began with the election of the reformist presidential candidate Rouhani in 2012, long before the recently negotiated nuclear agreement introduced the prospect of crippling sanctions being lifted. And the impact of this mood on people’s willingness to speak out is clear.

In Iran today, freedom of the press remains a dream. But freedom of tongue has been set loose. I was repeatedly struck by the willingness of Iranians to offer sharp, even withering criticisms of their government on the record, sometimes even happy to be filmed doing so.

“The people of Iran want in some way to show the world that what’s going on in the last years is not the will of the Iranian people but of the Iranian government,” Nader Qaderi told me as I filmed him with my phone outside his butcher shop in North Tehran’s Tajrish Market. A small crowd looked on as we talked. “We have no hostility against Israel,” he stressed.

Asked about prospects for the international nuclear agreement, which is coming under angry fire in Iran no less than in the United States, Qaderi told me: “I think it will be implemented. But there will be no improvement for the Iranian people. Our main concern now is freedom! I think what we need most of all now is political intelligence. People have no clear idea of what they want. This is the real struggle.” [Continue reading…]

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Iran deal furor reveals a split among Jewish Americans

Lisa Goldman reports: The frenzied lobbying in Washington over the international deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program has drawn attention to two unprecedented ruptures — both of which potentially have significant long-term consequences for Israel’s place in U.S. domestic politics.

For decades, unconditional support for Israel had been a point of unshakable bipartisan consensus inside the Beltway, even as bipartisanship on most other issues became a distant memory. A majority of Jewish voters continue to choose the Democrats; deep-pocketed Jewish donors remain vital to the electoral prospects of candidates from both parties, but partisan distinctions meant little when it came to Israel. And the pro-Israel lobbying establishment, first and foremost the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has always worked hard to span the aisle on Capitol Hill, while political leaders from both parties routinely pay tribute to the lobbying group at its annual convention.

The Iran nuclear deal has thrown that consensus into crisis, leaving Jewish Americans divided between a Democratic-voting majority that polls show support the Iran deal (in numbers proportionally larger than the wider U.S. population) and a conservative minority that includes some very powerful donors, and supports the GOP-led opposition to the deal. And AIPAC’s leading role in campaigning against the deal has prompted President Barack Obama to publicly challenge the group in a manner unprecedented for a U.S. leader over the past two decades. [Continue reading…]

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Images of Iranian parking lot reveal evidence of cars, parked

Bloomberg reports: An Iranian parking lot labeled as a site of “intense concern” by an influential Washington research group hasn’t shown any signs of change for at least five years, according to satellite imagery and analysts.

The Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, said in an Aug. 7 research note that Iran’s decision to park 20 vehicles at the Parchin military complex facility was provocative. However, according to 36 satellite images spanning five years, there has always been an average of about 20 automobiles parked at the site since concern over the Parchin complex grew in 2011.

“The ‘parking lot of death’ has been imaged dozens of times and there are clear patterns of passenger cars parked there,” said Robert Kelley, an intelligence analyst and former U.S. nuclear-weapons scientist. “There have been no indicators of a change in Iranian activities of any significance — no earth moving or sanitization whatsoever.”

With debate flaring in Washington over the July 14 agreement between Iran and world powers, some analysts and politicians say activities at Parchin underline the risks of entering into a deal with the Islamic Republic. In a statement on Saturday, Iran said analysts had confused normal roadwork with malicious intentions at the 50 square-kilometer (31 square-mile) complex.

“Parchin is an active site and movement is inevitable,” Paul Ingram, executive director of the British American Security Information Council, said in an e-mailed reply to questions. “Attempting an impossible cleanup in full view of satellites and just before Congressional votes would be stretching conspiracy theories beyond breaking point.” [Continue reading…]

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Inside the secret U.S.-Iran diplomacy that sealed nuke deal

Laura Rozen reports: When Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s president in June 2013 on a campaign platform of engaging with the West to reach a nuclear deal and improve Iran’s economy, he apparently didn’t know that Iran and the United States had already opened a secret diplomatic channel and held bilateral talks in Oman on the nuclear issue in March 2013.

“The first time I informed Rouhani of the secret negotiations with the United States was after his election to office,” former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview Aug. 4 with Iran Daily, adding that the incoming president and former Iranian nuclear negotiator was shocked when Salehi briefed him on the consultations ahead of his inauguration: “Rouhani was in disbelief.”

That is among the revelations that have emerged from interviews with senior Iranian and US officials in the wake of reaching of a final Iran nuclear accord by Iran and six world powers on July 14. The final deal — formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — is currently under a 60-day review by the US Congress. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some pro-Israel lobby groups are pressing members of Congress to kill the deal by voting next month on a resolution of disapproval that seeks to block President Barack Obama from providing the US sanctions relief promised in the accord in exchange for significant steps Iran agreed to take to limit its nuclear program. Obama has vowed to veto any such resolution, and Democrats currently believe they have enough support to sustain his veto, if required. [Continue reading…]

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Iraqi political reforms risk further marginalization of Sunnis

The New York Times reports: Iraq’s Parliament unanimously passed measures on Tuesday that are meant to transform the country’s corrupt political system. Yet by eliminating several high-level positions and doing away with sectarian quotas in political appointments, the measures risk further alienating the country’s Sunni minority while the government is struggling to defeat the Sunni militants of the Islamic State.

The measures, put forward on Sunday by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, are wide-ranging. They promise to save money and fight corruption by cutting expensive perks for officials. Most notably, they eliminate three deputy prime minister posts and three vice presidencies, including the one held by former Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who was a rival of Mr. Abadi.

The passage of the measures was never really in doubt. They were backed by the country’s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who holds great sway over the country’s Shiite majority. And a sense of public grievance at the current system has been swelling in the streets, culminating in widespread protests. [Continue reading…]

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Jewish terrorism targeting Palestinians is nothing new

The Daily Beast reports: Raphael Morris, a 20-year-old religious settler from the outpost of Ahiya, has for years engaged in a “holy war,” he tells The Daily Beast. He’s battling to rid Israel of its non-Jewish elements and expand the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria—the biblical term for the land on the West Bank of the Jordan River that once belonged to the ancient kingdom of Israel.

Six years ago, Morris arrived at a nearby outpost with 10 other teenagers and learned to work the vineyard, build houses, and “in a number of instances” created a line of defense against the surrounding Palestinian villages. “The Arabs knew not to mess with us,” he says.

This area of the West Bank is home to dozens of outposts initiated in defiance of the Israeli government by mainly Orthodox teenagers and young families known as “hilltop youth.” But these communities are also breeding a zealous culture of Jewish militancy that has led to intensifying attacks on Palestinian towns.

Ahiya is only a short distance from the village of Duma, where on July 31 Jewish extremists firebombed two Arab homes in the dead of night.

One of the houses was empty, but in the other four members of the same family were sleeping in one bedroom. Eighteen-month-old Ali Saad Dawabshah was immediately burned to death, and his father, Saad Dawabshah, succumbed two weeks later to the third-degree burns that covered more than 80 percent of his body. The mother, Reham, and her four-year-old son, Ahmad, remain in critical condition in an Israeli hospital and few family members expect them to survive.

On the walls of the house the arsonists left graffiti reading “Revenge!” and “Long Live the Messiah” next to a Star of David.

The brutal attacks have shocked Israel, prompting nation-wide “soul searching” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians condemn the act as “Jewish terror.” But such incidents are neither so new nor so isolated as these denunciations would make them seem. [Continue reading…]

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Republican hopefuls reap $62m in support from donors with fossil fuel ties

The Guardian reports: Republican presidential candidates have banked millions of dollars in donations from a small number of mega-rich individuals and corporations with close ties to the fossil fuel industries that stand to lose the most from the fight against climate change.

Eight out of the 17 GOP figures currently jostling for their party’s presidential nomination have between them attracted a bonanza of at least $62m so far this year from sources either directly involved in polluting industries or with close financial ties to them. Three Republican contenders stand out as recipients of this fossil fuel largesse: the Republican climate change denier-in-chief, Ted Cruz; the party establishment favorite Jeb Bush; and the former governor of Texas, Rick Perry.

The funds have come from just 17 billionaires or businesses that have pumped enormous sums – in one case $15m for a single candidate – into the support groups or Super Pacs that work alongside the official campaigns yet are free to attract unlimited contributions. The $62m forms a substantial chunk of almost $400m that has been given to presidential contenders from both main parties in 2015, raising questions about the leverage that fossil fuel interests might seek to exert over the next occupant of the White House at a critical time for the battle against climate change. [Continue reading…]

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Not just the editorial page — WSJ reporting on climate change also skewed

Media Matters reports: When it comes to covering climate change, it’s not just The Wall Street Journal’s editorial section that is problematic in the Rupert Murdoch era — a new study shows the paper’s newsroom has misinformed readers on the issue, too.

A new joint study from researchers at Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oslo appearing in the journal Public Understanding of Science (PUS) found major differences between the climate change reporting of The Wall Street Journal and other major U.S. newspapers. The July 30 study, titled “Polarizing news? Representations of threat and efficacy in leading US newspapers’ coverage of climate change,” examined non-opinion-based climate change articles in The Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post from 2006 to 2011.

The study found some disturbing trends in The Wall Street Journal’s news reporting on climate change, including that the Journal was less likely than the other newspapers to discuss the threats or impacts of climate change and more likely to frame climate action as ineffective or even harmful. The authors of the study concluded that, given the Journal’s conservative readership, the negative nature of its climate reporting “could exacerbate ideological polarization on climate change.” [Continue reading…]

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