Author: nick

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Why Taming the Power of Capital is Needed for Environmental Resolution In 2017 I wrote an article arguing that neoliberal climate policies were wholly inadequate to address the scale of environmental problems and that there existed a brief window before capital reasserted itself to end the entire effort. Noam Chomsky took the other side of the argument— which was still allowed back then, claiming that an economist at UMASS-Amherst had a detailed solution to climate change that only required a few small tweaks to solve it. The economist— Robert Pollin, was elevated to be Joe…

Churchill testifying in the civil trial of Ward Churchill v. University of Colorado – Public Domain I write in remembrance of Ward Churchill, who died on August 11, 2026. I was a member of Ward’s defense team, headed by the civil rights attorney David Lane, both at hearings at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2007 and in state court in Denver in 2009, when he sued the university for his firing for charges of “research misconduct” and “plagiarism,” both of which I analyzed thoroughly in a 2008-09 edition of the journal “Works & Days.” The title of my…

In England, former Merseyside police officer Daniel Hughes was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, after being convicted of eight counts of unauthorized access to computer material and three counts of knowingly disclosing personal data without consent. Between 2016 and 2019, Hughes repeatedly used police computer systems to look up information about his friends who were involved in organized crime. Then, between 2019 and 2021, he shared sensitive details about ongoing police investigations with them, all while never disclosing to the department his long-term friendships with suspected criminals. Source link

Governments knew what was coming, but they shrank from taking on the corporate sector, which is now more powerful than ever. The glow of the wildfire in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park as seen from Aviemore on July 25, 2026. (Tarhataz /Wikimedia Commons /CC0) By Jonathan CookJonathan-Cook.net More than 150 years ago, scientists discovered what they termed a “greenhouse effect” demonstrating for the first time that water vapour and carbon dioxide trapped heat. Theoretical concerns were soon raised that we might, through the practice of burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon, have inadvertently been altering our climate since the start of…

Musk on 20 January 2025, at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons. What should be done about the world’s richest man, and all that he represents? Here in South Africa, it is tempting to contrast Elon Musk to our other most famous recent personality, Nelson Mandela, a symbol of freedom, justice and political equality for all. Mandela led one of the last century’s greatest human achievements – ending Apartheid, a crime against humanity – by invoking the decency of people across the world, in unity with the oppressed in Black South African society. The result in 1994…

Hope your weekend was as fun as mine – now let’s get into the Monday Grail news briefs! Centuries before the Aztec and Inca empires existed, locals built something incredible in the Colombian jungle. The strangest mushroom on Earth keeps making people see the same tiny elves. New analysis shows that satellite constellations could create unstable, runaway amounts of space debris. Related: Could the Kessler Syndrome explain why we haven’t heard from aliens? Illegal mummy trafficking may curse buyers with mold, not magic. New research finds that dolphins can use seashells to help them catch fish – and they might…

Grocery prices are insane. They’re still rising. Addressing this problem should be the number one priority of every elected leader. End the stupid foreign wars and focus on this issue. It’s one of the main reasons socialists are gaining power. — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 3, 2026 If you want to know why the youth is suddenly so enamored with socialism, look how the self-proclaimed defenders of the free market have been lying to Zoomers with their preaching of what I’ve labeled the “libertarian prosperity gospel.”  While the “democratic socialists” are winning Democratic primaries across the nation while saying they…

Jason Arday, Wikimedia Commons. CC0. I am sickened and deeply saddened by the death of Jason Arday. He was only 41, a young man whose life was cut short following a period of intense public controversy and scrutiny, much of it shaped by pressures and forces far larger than any one individual should have to bear. His death is first and foremost a profound human tragedy. But mourning him also requires that we look beyond the immediate circumstances of this tragedy and ask difficult questions about the society and institutions that created the wider conditions in which his ordeal unfolded.…

Cali, not Bogotá, hosted Colombia’s August 7, 2026 presidential inauguration. Abelardo de la Espriella gave his first address as Colombia’s president from a military garrison and set the terms of his next four years. “I reaffirm my intention to defeat without truce narcoterrorism—the criminal organizations that threaten Colombia’s freedom,” he said. He then sent the armed forces after criminal structures and closed his predecessor’s negotiations, telling the country that “the option of dialogue is completely exhausted.” That vocabulary was not new here. Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa proclaimed an internal armed conflict on January 9, 2024, designated twenty-two gangs terrorist organizations, and…

Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk Nothing inspires confidence in the silliness of the human species than its efforts to understand the workings of others.  This, at least, makes an improvement from wanting to biblically subjugate, enslave and eat members of the animal kingdom.  But when efforts are made to understand what the domestic cat (surely an oxymoronic category) is up to, humankind is bound to come up short. The issue of imposing curfews upon cats as if they were disobedient, wandering children is one such symptom.  While the feral cat is an apparatus of mass killing when it comes to wildlife, Felix catus, that oddly…