Today in Focus: What oil companies knew: the great climate cover-up

Before 1988, climate change was a subject confined to the realm of academic journals. That all changed when the scientist James Hansen told Congress that global heating was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as a result of the burning of fossil fuels.

That moment caught the imagination of the journalist Bill McKibben, who has written and campaigned on climate breakdown ever since. And it has been reported that fossil fuel companies, such as ExxonMobil, were making links between the burning of oil and rising sea levels as early as the 1970s. But instead of making their findings public, the industry colluded to cast doubt over the science.

Also today: John Stewart on his campaign to prevent a third runway at Heathrow airport as plans are released for the first time. They show detailed proposals to lower the M25, reroute rivers, replace utilities and build parking areas for nearly 50,000 cars.

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The Guardian: The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism

There is a dawning recognition that a new kind of economy is needed: fairer, more inclusive, less exploitative, less destructive of society and the planet. “We’re in a time when people are much more open to radical economic ideas,” says Michael Jacobs, a former prime ministerial adviser to Gordon Brown. “The voters have revolted against neoliberalism. The international economic institutions – the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund – are recognising its downsides.” Meanwhile, the 2008 financial crisis and the previously unthinkable government interventions that halted it have discredited two central neoliberal orthodoxies: that capitalism cannot fail, and that governments cannot step in to change how the economy works. [...]

The new leftwing economics wants to see the redistribution of economic power, so that it is held by everyone – just as political power is held by everyone in a healthy democracy. This redistribution of power could involve employees taking ownership of part of every company; or local politicians reshaping their city’s economy to favour local, ethical businesses over large corporations; or national politicians making co-operatives a capitalist norm. [...]

And yet, outside McDonnell’s circle and the transatlantic radical left, the new economics has gone largely unnoticed – or been casually derided. The black holes of Brexit and the Tory leadership contest are partly responsible, sucking attention away from everything else. But so is the radical nature of the new economics itself. Transforming or ending capitalism as we know it – the new economists differ as to which is the goal – is a difficult idea for most British politicians and journalists to take on board. After half a century accepting the economic status quo, they associate any leftwing alternatives to it either with out-of-date postwar social democracy – aka “the 70s” – or with leftwing authoritarianism, with present-day Venezuela or the Soviet Union. [...]

Contrary to his usual portrayal as a statist ogre, McDonnell believes there are limits to how far the left can increase taxes and government spending. In his view, many voters are unwilling, or simply unable, to pay much more tax – especially when living standards are squeezed, as now. He also believes that central government has lost authority: it is seen as simultaneously too weak, short of money thanks to austerity; and too strong – too intrusive and domineering towards citizens. Instead of relying on the state to create a better society, one of McDonnell’s close allies argues, leftwing governments, at both the municipal and national level, “have to get into changing how capitalism works”. [...]

Yet the problem for the left with settling for “a different capitalism”, however temporarily, is that it may simply enable capitalism to regroup, and then resume its Darwinian progress. Arguably this is exactly what happened in Britain during the last century. After the politically explosive economic slump of the 1930s – the precursor to today’s crisis of capitalism – during the postwar years many business leaders seemed to accept the need for a more egalitarian economy, and developed close relationships with Labour politicians. But once the economy and society had been stabilised, and rightwingers such as Thatcher started making a seductive case for a return to raw capitalism, the businessmen switched sides.

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The Atlantic: Republicans Don't Understand Democrats—And Democrats Don't Understand Republicans

Americans often lament the rise of “extreme partisanship,” but this is a poor description of political reality: Far from increasing, Americans’ attachment to their political parties has considerably weakened over the past years. Liberals no longer strongly identify with the Democratic Party and conservatives no longer strongly identify with the Republican Party.

What is corroding American politics is, specifically, negative partisanship: Although most liberals feel conflicted about the Democratic Party, they really hate the Republican Party. And even though most conservatives feel conflicted about the Republican Party, they really hate the Democratic Party.[...]

Unfortunately, the Perception Gap study suggests that neither the media nor the universities are likely to remedy Americans’ inability to hear each other: It found that the best educated and most politically interested Americans are more likely to vilify their political adversaries than their less educated, less tuned-in peers.

Americans who rarely or never follow the news are surprisingly good at estimating the views of people with whom they disagree. On average, they misjudge the preferences of political adversaries by less than ten percent. Those who follow the news most of the time, by contrast, are terrible at understanding their adversaries. On average, they believe that the share of their political adversaries who endorse extreme views is about 30 percent higher than it is in reality.

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Philosophy Tube: Are Rules Made to Be Broken?

Are the laws of the land made to be broken? How does philosophy, and activists like Rosa Parks, tell us what good and bad laws are?

Aeon: Why millions of children are left to raise themselves in the Chinese countryside

While industrialisation has prompted unprecedented economic growth and allowed for the rise of a new middle class in China, urbanisation has also left some 9 million children in the countryside alone or in the care of relatives as their parents work in cities far from home. Down from the Mountains chronicles the lives of three children, the oldest of whom is 14, who when not in school live often unattended on a farm in Liangshan, an autonomous region for the Yi ethnic group. With their parents working in the distant city of Huizhou, where they make headphones for $15 per day, only their grandmother, who lives a 40-minute walk away, is able to supervise them and help with farm work on occasion. The UK-born director Max Duncan’s short film brings us into the lives of this fractured family as Jiajia, the mother, considers a permanent return home.

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Los Angeles Times: How will Turkey’s authoritarian president react to opposition’s big win in Istanbul mayoral race?

Ekrem Imamoglu of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, won 54% of the vote, soundly beating the AKP’s Binali Yildrim, who took 45%. It was a far wider margin of victory than Imamoglu achieved in the original March 31 vote.

Turnout was very high — 85% — in part reflecting public unhappiness over the recount that was ordered on technical grounds by the country’s highest electoral body, widely suspected of acting at the president’s behest.

Erdogan offered congratulations to Imamoglu, and Yildrim conceded graciously even before the votes had all been tallied. But in a sign some read as ominous, Monday-morning headlines in pro-government newspapers made no reference to the opposition victory, instead merely noting that the vote had taken place. [...]

The central government could take steps to sap Imamoglu’s administrative powers, or even invent a reason to charge him personally with a criminal offense of some kind, a fate that has befallen many of the president’s foes. [...]

Criticism of the president, once rare, burst into the open. Mustafa Yeneroglu, an AKP parliament member from Istanbul, tweeted: “We lost Istanbul because we lost moral superiority.”

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The Guardian: Erdoğan’s loss in Istanbul could transform Turkish politics

First the established opposition parties will be emboldened by his win. The opposition is now in control of cities accounting for almost 70% of Turkey’s GDP. Nine out of the 10 biggest urban areas in the country will be ruled for the next five years by a mayor linked to the opposition, the exception being the industrial province of Bursa. The opposition will have the opportunity to dismantle and then restructure the patronage networks that have helped the AKP to establish itself so successfully at the helm of Turkish politics. [...]

More importantly, Sunday’s result is likely to lead to a rethink by the AKP leadership. The shock must be momentous. It is surely the most severe interruption in Erdoğan’s electoral winning electoral streak. The future of Turkish politics will depend on how this result will be interpreted by Erdoğan himself and the lessons that this experienced and able politician will draw from this reversal of his political fortunes.

At stake may be the future of the AKP’s alliance with the Nationalist Movement party (MHP). One conclusion could be that this coalition has become too constraining for Erdoğan. For instance, the overhyped nationalism influencing the conduct of Turkish foreign policy is a byproduct of this political arrangement and so is the hardline approach to the Kurdish question both domestically and in Syria. Even more importantly, the political leadership may be compelled to question the benefit of the extreme centralisation of power ushered in by the transition to a presidential system a year ago. For a majority of the Turkish population, the presidential system does not seem to be functioning as advertised.

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The Guardian: Anti-immigrant militia member charged with impersonating US border patrol

In recent years, there have been growing reports of paramilitary groups and xenophobic activists surveilling the US border with Mexico, working to intercept undocumented people trying to cross into the United States. The groups in New Mexico have previously presented themselves as “volunteers” aiding border patrol and and supporting Donald Trump.[...]

Several livestream videos posted by Benvie to Facebook in April documented some of the actions of the Guardian Patriots in New Mexico. One video appeared to show the militia ordering around a large group of migrants, including many children, and telling them to sit on the ground. As he filmed the migrants kneeling in the dirt, Benvie narrated: “There’s no border patrol here. This is us.”[...]

Stephanie Corte, an immigrant rights campaign strategist with the ACLU in New Mexico, told the Guardian on Monday that the video evidence was clear and she was glad officials finally responded: “I feel relieved for any of the migrants who might be coming through right now … These vigilante groups are very, very dangerous. They don’t care for the constitutional rights and basic human rights of migrants.” [...]

The ACLU in New Mexico described the group as “an armed fascist militia organization” made up of “vigilantes”, saying they were working to “kidnap and detain people seeking asylum” and had directly made illegal arrests and held migrants at gunpoint.

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Esquire: The Insanity in Oregon Is a Glimpse of Our Very Dark Future

Now this is not an unusual tactic. Not long ago, Democratic lawmakers in Texas and in Wisconsin blew town for the same purpose—to throw sand in the gears of a legislative act of which they did not approve and could not stop by conventional means. In Wisconsin, it was to slow down an anti-union measure. In Texas, it was about a redistricting map that gerrymandered the Texas legislature into a farce. The legislative lamsters all had a good time, taking goofy videos in what appeared to be Holiday Inn lobbies while Republicans back home fumed. (The Texans, it should be noted, won a temporary victory.) What makes Oregon different is what the fugitive Republican senators did.

The Republican senators—with the full support of the Oregon Republican Party—made common cause with armed domestic terror groups. (Calling them a militia is a misnomer, regardless of what they may think of themselves.) When a Republican state senator named Brian Boquist heard that Brown was sending the Oregon state police after them, he told a local television station: Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple. [...]

People with guns have involved themselves in a legislative dispute while the officials of one of the political parties was rooting them on, and one session of a state legislature was cancelled because of it. Roll that around in your head for a while and see where you end up. Something is building in our politics and now I wish I hadn't watched that series about Chernobyl. We may be exceeding the tolerances of all our systems.

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