Politico: Green wave set to sag ahead of 2019 election

At present, the Greens and their EFA partners (parties pushing for either full political independence or greater sovereignty) make up the fifth biggest group in the Parliament, with 52 lawmakers. Expectations aren’t exactly high of improving on that, especially with six British Green MEPs on their way out the door. [...]

In the European Parliament, the Greens have often collaborated with other left-wing forces, including the Socialists or the far-left GUE-NGL group, to pass legislation. But Green leaders say they will not join any group with the Socialists or Liberals, even in the face of a populist surge across the Continent. [...]

Green parties have done well in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands but they are almost nowhere to be seen in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe. In Germany, their approach to issues like migration has won praise from conservative parts of society, while in other places they are affiliated with traditionally left-wing parties. [...]

The big unknown is France, where Europe Ecologie is still relatively low in the polls. A survey conducted in September by IFOP put the party at just 7.5 percent in the European election — lower than the 9 percent they won in 2014 and much lower than the 16.28 percent their list won in the 2009 European election.

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Jacobin Magazine: A Pale Shade of Green

But the performance spike comes as somewhat of a surprise: the Greens netted a mediocre 8.5 percent in last year’s federal elections, almost unchanged from 2013. The party hasn’t veered much from its centrist path since its failed attempt to form a federal coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU) and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) following the 2017 general election — moves that disgruntled the Greens’ more radical youth wing. But if the party hasn’t changed, what else has?

The answer lies in the performance of Germany’s ruling parties, today joined in a grand coalition. Following multiple cabinet showdowns this summer, each of which brought the gears of government to a halt, discontented voters from all the ruling parties — the CDU/CSU and the social-democratic SPD — seem to be drifting toward the Greens. Just over two-fifths of the Green’s new supporters have migrated from the SPD and a quarter have wandered over from the CDU/CSU, according to a poll published in Die Welt newspaper.[...]

Where a critical stance towards capitalism and the ecological damage wreaked by profit-makers in industrialized societies once featured highly in the Greens’ manifesto, the party now offers centrist solutions palatable to German capital. At one point the Greens stopped saying “the system is broken” and started talking about “capitalism in service of the people.”[...]

More recently, the Greens have set their sights on becoming a Volkspartei, a big-tent party attracting voters from different sections of society. Traditionally, their voter base has been somewhat elitist: highly educated, largely western German, urban and middle class.

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IFLScience: Scientists Believe They Have Finally Discovered What Easter Island's Statues Were For

An 18th-century account of European first contact with the Pacific Islanders detailed natives being able to drink seawater without harm – a feat we all know is impossible today (the human body cannot process high concentrations of seawater, eventually killing a person through dehydration). By 1887, the local population of Easter Island dropped to just 110 largely due to slave trading and disease, decimating any chance of uncovering the people’s oral history. [...]

When it rains, water beneath the ground flows downhill and exits the ground where the rock meets the ocean. When tides are low, this “results in the flow of freshwater directly into the sea.” The fresh and saltwater mix to create a “brackish but potable water along the coastline” that contains low enough levels of salt to be safely consumed by humans, which the researchers think the islanders must have done.

“Although coastal groundwater sources are of poor quality, they were apparently sufficient to support the population and allow them to build magnificent statutes for which Easter Island is famous,” wrote the authors in their study published in Hydrogeology. [...]

However, others argue that small cisterns found on the island could have been used for collecting rainfall. Lipo argues that if collecting rainfall was central to the culture, then the cisterns would have been much larger (they only hold between 2-4 liters of water each). Furthermore, Rapa Nui only receives 1,240 millimeters of rainfall every year. Paired with the rate of water evaporation here, the cisterns would likely have only been a viable source of water for less than one-third of the year.

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Haaretz: American Jews Are Funding the Far-right Dream of Greater Israel. We Have to End This - Now

Unfortunately, funding Canary Mission to silence dissent against Israeli policies is just the tip of the iceberg. A new report released by IfNotNow - "Beyond Talk: The 5 Ways the American Jewish Establishment Supports the Occupation" - shows us how, in word and deed, the entire Jewish communal apparatus defends and deepens injustice in Israel/Palestine. We should not be shocked, but we should be angry.

Jewish establishment organizations fund the dispossession of Palestinians, lobby politicians to empower Israel’s march toward full-blown apartheid, and celebrate the Israeli politicians leading that march. Many Jewish educational institutions erase and deny Palestinian narratives to keep kids ignorant of reality - and punish critical voices.[...]

The American Jewish community’s active participation in injustice goes far further. Unquestioning support for, and defense of, the Netanyahu government has emboldened the Israeli far-right’s war to gradually dominate all of "Greater Israel." The Israeli right knows it can do whatever it wants on either side of the Green Line without so much as a word from American Jews – or, of course, from the Trump White House.

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Al Jazeera: On fake investigations: From Kavanaugh to MBS

The Saudis should have hired what in Hollywood they call a "script supervisor" before they opened their mouth telling the world what happened to Jamal Khashoggi. So far, they have gone from flat denial to having Khashoggi start a fistfight with 15 cutthroat butchers the Saudis had sent to cut him to pieces. Right now, they are shooting a martial art movie with Khashoggi cast as Bruce Lee.

The Saudis know the world is not stupid, but they also know for a fact Jared Kushner is in their pocket. According to Intercept's sources, Mohammed bin Salman bragged that the president's son-in-law and Middle East adviser is "in his pocket" months ago. It is payback time. Trump will try to sell this cover-up by the Saudis the same way he sold the FBI's cursory report on Kavanaugh.[...]

He produced a "fake" FBI investigation - one that simply going through the motions and did not even interview the primary suspect or accuser, and issued a secret report the public could not see, as his Republican accomplices rushed the nomination through a hasty vote cast almost entirely on partisan lines just a few weeks before crucial midterm elections. And Trump and his Republican cohorts won. Professor Ford and countless sexually abused women like her lost.[...]

Like a real estate crook (he is) who refuses to see he has made a bad investment in a building he bought, Kushner is singularly determined to sustain the Saudi-Zionist alliance in a manner that, in his estimations, neutralises and eliminates the Palestinian national aspirations. Kushner sees the key to his ambitious desire to destroy and eliminate the last bastion of Palestinian resistance in this particular Saudi prince.

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