The climate crisis is our third world war. It needs a bold response

Date: 10-06-2019
Source: The Guardian by Joseph Stiglitz

Critics of the Green New Deal ask if we can afford it.
But we can’t afford not to: our civilisation is at stake

‘The war on the climate emergency, if correctly waged, would actually be good for the economy’

Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with the climate crisis and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States government to the Great Depression. An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II.

Critics ask, “Can we afford it?” and complain that Green New Deal proponents confound the fight to preserve the planet, to which all right-minded individuals should agree, with a more controversial agenda for societal transformation. On both accounts the critics are wrong.

Yes, we can afford it, with the right fiscal policies and collective will. But more importantly, we must afford it. The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the second world war.

Boris Johnson threatens to hold back Brexit ‘divorce’ payment to force a deal

Date: 09-06-2019
Source: The Guardian

Pledge comes as James Brokenshire backs former foreign secretary, while Ruth Davidson endorses Sajid Javid

Boris Johnson claims only he, as Tory leader, could defeat both Labour and the Brexit party.

Boris Johnson has vowed to withhold Britain’s £39bn Brexit “divorce” payment until the EU agrees better terms for the UK to leave.

Withholding the cash, scrapping the Northern Ireland backstop, guaranteeing the rights of all EU citizens in Britain while stepping up preparations for a No Deal “disruption” in the wake of no deal are among measures the government would carry out if he was elected leader of the Conservative party, he said.

Failure to deliver Brexit, with or without a deal, by the October 31 deadline threatened the Tory party’s very survival, he warned. He said he thought it “extraordinary” the UK agreed to write the so-called divorce cheque before having the final deal signed.

“I think our friends and partners need to understand that the money is going to be retained until such time as we have greater clarity about the way forward,” he said in an interview with the Sunday Times newspaper. The money, he said, was a “great solvent and a great lubricant” in getting a good deal.

Johnson is an early favourite to win the Conservative Party leadership race. An opinion poll of grass roots party members by the ConservativeHome website on Saturday put Johnson in the clear lead at 43 per cent with Michael Gove second on 12 per cent.

‘Socialism for the rich’: the evils of bad economics

Date: 08-06-2019
Source: The Guardian By Jonathan Aldred

The economic arguments adopted by Britain and the US in the 1980s led to vastly increased inequality – and gave the false impression that this outcome was not only inevitable, but good.

In most rich countries, inequality is rising, and has been rising for some time. Many people believe this is a problem, but, equally, many think there’s not much we can do about it. After all, the argument goes, globalisation and new technology have created an economy in which those with highly valued skills or talents can earn huge rewards. Inequality inevitably rises. Attempting to reduce inequality via redistributive taxation is likely to fail because the global elite can easily hide their money in tax havens. Insofar as increased taxation does hit the rich, it will deter wealth creation, so we all end up poorer.

One strange thing about these arguments, whatever their merits, is how they stand in stark contrast to the economic orthodoxy that existed from roughly 1945 until 1980, which held that rising inequality was not inevitable, and that various government policies could reduce it. What’s more, these policies appear to have been successful. Inequality fell in most countries from the 1940s to the 1970s. The inequality we see today is largely due to changes since 1980.

Why we must not let Europe break apart

Date: 11-05-2019
Source: The Guardian By Timothy Garton Ash

The European project is in big trouble – but it’s worth defending.

It’s time to sound the alarm. Seven decades after the end of the second world war on European soil, the Europe we have built since then is under attack. As the cathedral of Notre Dame burned, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National was polling neck and neck with Emmanuel Macron’s movement for what he calls a “European renaissance”. In Spain, a far-right party called Vox, promoting the kind of reactionary nationalist ideas against which Spain’s post-Franco democracy was supposedly immunised, has won the favour of one in 10 voters in a national election. Nationalist populists rule Italy, where a great-grandson of Benito Mussolini is running for the European parliament on the list of the so-called Brothers of Italy. A rightwing populist party called The Finns, formerly the True Finns (to distinguish them from “false” Finns of different colour or religion), garnered almost as many votes as Finland’s Social Democrats in last month’s general election. In Britain, the European elections on 23 May can be seen as another referendum on Brexit, but the underlying struggle is the same as that of our fellow Europeans. Nigel Farage is a Le Pen in Wellington boots, a True Finn in a Barbour jacket.

Brexit: Labour braced forshowdown over second referendum

MPs call on party to support European election manifesto that campaigns for second vote on any Brexit deal

Jessica Elgot and Rajeev Syal

Mon 29 Apr 2019 19.51 BST First published on Mon 29 Apr 2019 11.36 BST

Labour is braced for a showdown over whether to back a referendum on any Brexit deal when the party’s governing body meets to agree its draft European elections manifesto on Tuesday.

Party sources suggested Labour was likely to agree a compromise option where it would support a referendum in order to prevent Theresa May’s Brexit deal or leaving without a deal, describing that wording as “the path of least resistance”.

However, a public drive for a stronger line has been led by the party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, who has urged remain-supporting members to write to the national executive committee’s members, including Jeremy Corbyn.

More than 100 Labour MPs have written to NEC members to argue that Labour should use the election to campaign for a second referendum in any circumstances and more than 20 Labour MEP candidates have pledged to back a referendum and then campaign to remain in the EU.

A bright future by Paul Mason

Date: 28-04-2019
Source: The Guardian
Subject: Clear Bright Future by Paul Mason review – in the midst of crisis, a work of radical optimism

The current chaos contains the seeds of revolutionary change, argues the author of PostCapitalism. We need to challenge markets, take control of technology and consider what it means to be human

Tour de force … Paul Mason.

In a classic Little Britain sketch, David Walliams, playing a bank clerk named Carol, flatly refuses applicants for a loan – however reasonable, hopeful or desperate – with the robotic “Computer says no”. As this catchphrase illustrates, the everyday consequences of our surrender to machines are by now maddeningly familiar. Less evident is the political and intellectual work that has gone into legitimising it. In his latest tour de force, the former TV economics editor turned activist and author Paul Mason traces how an alliance of popular science gurus and Silicon Valley tycoons has led us to belittle our unique capacities as human beings, preparing the ground for the approaching supremacy of AIs.

As with machines, so with markets, whose worship has reduced relationships to competitive transactions, and individuals to homo economicus – a crass fictional construct programmed to maximise financial advantage at all times. Mason also chides the newer discipline of behavioural economics for framing us as flawed decision-makers who need to be “nudged”.

We have forfeited faith in our own capabilities, Mason argues, just when we need to strategise our way out of multiple political and environmental crises. The good news is that the current chaos contains the seeds of revolutionary change: the “clear bright future” of the title is from Leon Trotsky. We can uncancel this future, Mason insists, but only by rediscovering a quality that has become curiously unfashionable – humanity – and seizing control of technology. The socialisation of knowledge will enable us to overthrow capitalism, and automation will abolish our need to work.

Date: 07-04-2019
Source: The Guardian
Subject: Brexit: furious Tories will try to oust May if UK fights Euro elections

PM says Brexit could ‘slip through our fingers’ as Conservatives fear taking part in EU election would boost far right

Theresa May is facing growing pressure from Tory backbenchers over the prospect that the UK will have to take part in EU elections in May.

Theresa May’s mutinous MPs are warning her that they will move to oust her within weeks if the UK is forced to take part in European elections next month and extend its EU membership beyond the end of June.

Tory MPs are increasingly angry at the prospect of voters being asked to go to the polls to elect MEPs three years after the Brexit referendum, in an election they fear will be boycotted by many Conservatives and be a gift to the far right and Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party. Senior Tories said one silver lining of a long extension would be that it would allow them to move quickly to force May out, and hold a leadership election starting as soon as this month.

European demolishers meet…..

Date: 04-04-2019
Source: The Guardian
Subject: Salvini aims to forge far-right alliance ahead of European elections

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Italian deputy PM holding gathering of far-right parties including Germany’s AfD next week as he seeks to create bloc of populists

Shaun Walker in Budapest, Angela Giuffrida in Rome and Jon Henley in Paris

Italy’s deputy PM, Matteo Salvini, is hosting a gathering of European far-right parties in Milan next week.

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and leader of its far-right League party, will host a gathering of European far-right parties in Milan next week aimed at building an alliance before elections in May.

Salvini is attempting to position himself as the informal leader of Eurosceptic, populist forces in Europe, but it remains unclear whether any kind of formal coalition will work, given policy differences between parties and the tangled web of alliances already at play inside the European parliament.

Europe’s rightwing populists are in power in Italy, Hungary, Austria and Poland and are riding high in several countries including France and the Netherlands, and, according to polls, will make significant advances in May’s elections. However, they are not predicted to form a majority and most analysts believe they will struggle to present a united front.

EU cannot betray ‚increasing majority‘ who want UK to remain, says Tusk

Date: 27-03-2019
Source: The Guardian

EC president hails those who marched against Brexit and millions who petitioned to revoke article 50

Donald Tusk: ‘They must feel that they are represented by you in this chamber. Because they are Europeans.’

Donald Tusk has issued a rallying call to the “increasing majority” of British people who want to cancel Brexit and stay in the European Union.

In a stirring intervention, the European council president hailed those who marched on the streets of London and the millions who are petitioning the government to revoke article 50.

Speaking to the European parliament, Tusk reprimanded those who voiced concerns about a potential lengthy extension to article 50 in the event of the Commons rejecting the withdrawal agreement again this week.

Tusk said: “Let me make one personal remark to the members of this parliament. Before the European council, I said that we should be open to a long extension if the UK wishes to rethink its Brexit strategy, which would of course mean the UK’s participation in the European parliament elections. And then there were voices saying that this would be harmful or inconvenient to some of you.

“Let me be clear: such thinking is unacceptable. You cannot betray the 6 million people who signed the petition to revoke article 50, the 1 million people who marched for a people’s vote, or the increasing majority of people who want to remain in the European Union”

Dirty lies: how the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions

Date: 23-03-2019
Source: The Guardian By Beth Gardiner

The ‘Dieselgate’ scandal was suppressed for years – while we should have been driving electric cars.

John German had not been looking to make a splash when he commissioned an examination of pollution from diesel cars back in 2013. The exam compared what came out of their exhaust pipes, during the lab tests that were required by law, with emissions on the road under real driving conditions. German and his colleagues at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) in the US just wanted to tie up the last loose ends in a big report, and thought the research would give them something positive to say about diesel. They might even be able to offer tips to Europe from the US’s experience in getting the dirty fuel to run a little cleaner.

But that was not how it turned out. They chose a Volkswagen Jetta as their first test subject, and a VW Passat next. Regulators in California agreed to do the routine certification test for them, and the council hired researchers from West Virginia University to then drive the same cars through cities, along highways and into the mountains, using equipment that tests emissions straight from the cars’ exhausts.