Category Archives: Viva!

CIA gave details of 9/11 suspect’s secret torture to film-makers, lawyers say

wtf

Ammar al-Baluchi’s defense team said they were stunned to see portrayal of his torture, including beatings, in Zero Dark Thirty

The makers of the film Zero Dark Thirty were given detailed information about the torture of an inmate at a CIA “black site” that had been denied to the prisoner’s own defence counsel at his trial in Guantánamo Bay, his lawyers claim.

Related: ‘Why can’t we get this over?’: 9/11 hearings drag on at Guantánamo

Related: The Trial: inside Guantanamo with 9/11 suspect Ammar al-Baluchi

Continue reading…

Threat of Fascism in Russia is ‘More than Real,’ Shevchenko Says

via aleksey godin

Paul Goble
            Staunton, February 16 – Ever more signs indicate that Vladimir Putin is moving along the same path that Mussolini and Hitler trod and threatening to establish a fascist state in Russia, Maksim Shevchenko says, adding that only the communists and the left more generally have any chance of stopping this march. 
            Not only does it appear that Putin may use Donbass veterans to be the core of this movement, the Russian commentator says, but Vladislav Surkov’s latest article represents an appeal “to Putin and cosmopolitan capital standing behind Putin and Putinism to use artificially created veterans of artificially created wars to change the political paradigm and rearrange the political elite” (echo.msk.ru/blog/shevchenkomax/2372351-echo/).
            “All of this was planned long ago,”” the leftist journalist says, on the model of Mussolini’s march on Rome and Hitler’s positioning himself as the head of “the political party of ‘the German World.’” The Italian variant looks more likely, with Prilepin in the role of Toscanini in Fiume and Surkov in that of the ideologist D’Annuncio.”
                Indeed, Shevchenko continues, this has been clear at least since 2014 when Putin loyalist Andrannik Migranyan declared that “Hitler did everything correctly” until he went off the rails because of anti-Semitism.
            “Deep Putinism is the direct rule of cosmopolitan capital with the assistance of a dictatorship” which relies on “zombified militants the brains of which are soaked in a sauce of Nietzsche, Zombart, Gumilyev, Howard and various kinds of heroic fantasies.”
            Such people want to do away with parties and the institutions of Western democracy, they want to dispense with social and judicial institutions, and they will suppress all left or neo-socialist ideas, Shevchenko says.  They will dispense with federalism and declare that “the nationality question has been solved.”
            “The dream of major cosmopolitan speculative capital about decisive, cruel, and primitive storm troopers” who will operate with the assistance of “cynical technologists” and destroy “the public social and democratic agenda” in order that there will be no obstacles to capitalism “is close to that which coming into view.”
            The rise of fascism in Russia should be opposed by communist and leftist forces, he argues; but just as in Italy and Germany some of them are falling victim to “national-state demagoguery as was the case in Italy and in Germany.” But despite that problem, these leftist forces remain the only obstacle to the rise of fascism in Russia.
            “Only the left has a vision of the people as a historic community and consistently fights for the institutions of development and social rights both of the individual and of society as a whole,” Shevchenko says.  But to succeed, they must have Stalin’s penetrating vision and Lenin’s decisiveness.
            “The threat of fascism is more than real: Only the blind and the deaf (in the political sense or the hidden accomplices of fascism are incapable of not seeing this.”
            Shevchenko’s remarks reflect three important things: the continuing importance of Marxist views on fascism among many in Russia, the real dangers that Putin’s behavior represents of transforming Russia into a fascist state, and the despair many on the left feel about the unwillingness of the KPRF and the left more generally of fighting him more directly.

The Proper Response to Insanity: Ethics in an Era of Trumpism and the Difficult, yet Profoundly Fruitful, Task of Loving Your Dragons | Culture War, Class War

The Proper Response to Insanity: Ethics in an Era of Trumpism and the Difficult, yet Profoundly Fruitful, Task of Loving Your Dragons   — Which is Chapter 56 of *Psychology of Apocalypse* by M…

Source: The Proper Response to Insanity: Ethics in an Era of Trumpism and the Difficult, yet Profoundly Fruitful, Task of Loving Your Dragons | Culture War, Class War

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is pouring cash into military sports and historical reenactments to boost patriotism

proto-fascist moves!

Man shooting an arrow with a bow.

Historical re-enactors in Budapest in 2016. Photo courtesy of kormany.hu, the website of the Hungarian Government.

The Hungarian Ministry of Defense is funneling thousands of euros to sports associations and history re-enacting groups to inculcate a sense of patriotism in young people, a story by Atlatszo.hu, an independent investigative outlet, has revealed.

The Ministry’s allocated budget to NGOs increased from 760,000 in 2014 to 5,6 million euros in 2018 (860,000 and 6,4 million US dollars, respectively). But while funds for trade unions, veterans, cultural programs, and historical societies remained stable, sports associations’ budgets have risen over tenfold in that period.

The Military Sports Association, an umbrella organization of groups that teach, among other things, self-defense and sports shooting, received alone 3,46 million euros (3,92 million US dollars) since its creation in 2017. The Association’s website says its primary goal is to teach skills to children that are useful in the “defense of the homeland.”

Historical re-enactment societies, memorial organizations, and military history research groups have also received public grants — a total of 125,000 euros (142,000 US dollars) in 2018, and 692,000 euros (784,000 US dollars) over the past five years.

The Ministry of Defense’s approach matches the broader education strategy by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose government has rewritten the national curriculum multiple times over the years to include military training and military history.

Recently, Orbán appointed former Minister of Defense István Simicskó as the Government Commissioner for Patriotic Education, who will be in charge of revising the curriculum to instill, in his own words, a “healthy national identity” in school kids.

In 2016, the government announced they would build 197 shooting ranges around the country that will cost 81 million euros. Critics at that time said Orbán was creating a “massive paramilitary force”.

Titled “Hungary: A smooth way to better patriotism,” the story by Anita Kőműves is part of a broader investigation by Vsquare.org’s on the militarization of patriotism in the Visegrad countries (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic). Kőműves’ story is based on data obtained directly with the Ministry of Defense of Hungary.

Written by Filip Stojanovski · comments (0)
Donate
· Share this: twitter facebook reddit googleplus

The decline of insects and what it means

Monarch butterfly insects



The news over the past few weeks has been riddled with headlines like “Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature’,” “Monarch butterflies are going extinct,” and “The insect apocalypse is here.” If it sounds bad, that’s because it is.

You probably know that bees and other pollinators are in trouble for several reasons — including increased overall pathogen loads, poor nutrition, habitat loss and pesticide exposure.

But these alarm bells over the broader state of emergency that insects are facing underscore the fact that yes, bees and other pollinators are in trouble. But they aren’t the only insects crucial to keeping an ecological balance, nor are they the only insects at risk.

The decline of the monarch

While honey bees are the most commonly discussed pollinator endangered by pesticide exposure, there is a very wide range of pollinators beyond honey bees — including about 4,000 types of bees, butterflies, bats and birds — that can be impacted by agricultural chemicals.

This year, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation reported that California’s monarch butterfly numbers are at an all-time low, declining more than 85 percent from 2017. And this massive drop comes after years of decline; 97 percent of monarch butterflies have already disappeared since the 1980s.

Scientists say the monarchs are threatened by pesticides, herbicides, and the destruction of butterflies’ milkweed habitat along their migratory route. Climate change is also a factor, with carbon dioxide from car and factory exhaust reducing a natural toxin in milkweed that feeding caterpillars use to fight parasites.

Where are the bugs?

Beyond the monarch news, another recent study has warned that insect populations are declining worldwide due to pesticide use and other factors, with a potentially catastrophic effect on the planet. The study warns that more than 40% of insect species could become extinct in the next few decades.

While insects are routinely depicted as mildly annoying at best and a downright plague at worst, they make up around 70% of all animal species and serve as the structural and functional base of many of the world’s ecosystems. Until now, the broad conversation around endangered species has largely focused on vertebrate species, but entomologist Don Sands shares that insects are “the small creatures that run the world.”

The decline of even one species of insect could have dire consequences for food and farming: “If we don’t have insects as moderators of other pest populations, we have insect populations that flare up and ruin crops and make them difficult to grow.”

Immediate action needed

Experts recommend taking radical and immediate action to prevent large scale insect extinction. These include overhauling existing agricultural methods. In particular, we need a serious reduction in pesticide use replaced with more sustainable, ecologically-based practices.

Integrated pest management is one such approach to sustainably managing insects, as it focuses on prevention rather than treatment, and uses environmentally friendly options to safeguard crops. The goal is not to eliminate insect pests entirely, but to keep their numbers at a point to which they no longer cause a problem.

Unless we change how we produce food, and move away from chemical pest management more broadly, we’ll be in big trouble. This shift in conversation around the importance of insects is an important first step.

Share this post: