Nitish Priyadarshi

Deforestation, or the removal of forests, is a major problem that has devastating effects all over the world. Europeans began clearing forests more than 500 years ago. The invention of modern machinery made the process even easier. By the end of the 19th century, most of the deciduous forest of North America, Australia and New Zealand had been cleared. In the 21st century, tropical forests are being cut and burned at alarming rates in South America and Southeast Asia. Asia as a whole has already lost about 90 percent of its forests.

With forest resources--"the lungs of the Earth"-- under attack in many regions, some have raised concerns about the planet's oxygen supply.

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Patrick Martin

In Iran, the declaration of victory by Ahmadinejad was treated as evidence of a major vote-rigging effort. A similar declaration in Afghanistan is dismissed as insignificant.

Despite the increasing evidence of systematic and massive vote fraud, the Obama administration and the American media are still seeking to sustain the pretense that Afghanistan’s August 20 presidential election was a basically democratic affair.

The Electoral Complaints Commission, a United Nations-backed oversight group, said that it had received more than 800 charges of irregularities, with 50 of them so serious that they could potentially alter the result of the vote.

A half dozen candidates who opposed incumbent president Hamid Karzai, including his leading challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, have charged the government with falsifying the vote. Abdullah’s campaign released video footage Tuesday showing Karzai campaign supporters and election officials marking blank ballots for Karzai and threatening voters at the polls. Another candidate, Mirwais Yasini, produced bags full of ballots he said were cast for him in Kandahar but dumped by election officials and recovered by his campaign.

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Des Moore

Should We Believe (All) Scientists?

Some may say it ill behoves an economist to pass judgement on scientists: after all economists are obviously to blame for the current recession.

But reflecting on 28 years in Treasury (and subsequently), I conclude that many proposals by both economists and scientists do not warrant government intervention to “save” the economy and/or society. Modest expertise helped me, but my most important methodology is common sense questions – such as “how exactly will society (rather than a particular group) benefit if this proposal is implemented?”

I confess to having started with the belief that proposals by scientists should generally be accepted. After all, look at the improved living standards from the innumerable machines and medicines that scientific advances have allowed.

But when in 1972 I wrote a paper at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London on “Limits on the Supply of Resources”, I soon realised that even the best scientists need to be challenged. Worryingly, most pay little regard to either the continued upward trend in beneficial technology, or to the natural propensity for markets to encourage such developments through changes in prices. The combination of science and economics, I concluded, meant that we humans would not run out of resources even for the growing world population.

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Pepe Escobar

As for the sham election, who cares who's the winner - Pashtun President Hamid Karzai, aka "the kebab seller", Tajik Abdullah Abdullah or anyone else? Afghanistan will be ruled by Barack Hussein Obama anyway.

America's convoluted, Alice-in-Wonderland interpretation of this summer's top political show - the "free expression of the people" in the Afghanistan election - reads like an opium dream. In fact, it is actually a pipe dream - as in Pipelineistan. With the added twist that no one's saying a word about the pipe that's delivering the opium dream.

As in an opium dream, delusion reigns. The chances of United States President Barack Obama actually elaborating what his AfPak strategy really is are as likely as having his super-envoy Richard Holbrooke share a pipe with explosive uber-guerrilla warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Obama says "success in Afghanistan" involves "diplomacy, development and good governance" - but all dazed and confused world public opinion sees are packs of extra marines being deployed to "fight the Taliban".

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Chris Floyd

And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains... [Jesus] said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand; and were choked in the sea. – The Gospel of Mark

The "Good War" in Afghanistan -- now in its eighth year with no one even pretending there is light at the end of the tunnel – is about to reach yet another "major milestone" in its blood-stained progress. No, we don't mean this week's presidential election – a chaotic, violent affair that will produce more chaos, more violence, more dissension and repression, whoever is "elected" to head the widely despised and mistrusted American-backed government. We're talking about the "strategy review" now being conducted by the death-squad commander appointed by Barack Obama to lead the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan: General Stanley McChrystal.

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Eric Margolis

This week’s presidential election in Afghanistan will be an elaborate piece of political theater designed to show increasingly uneasy Western voters that progress is being made in the war-torn nation after seven years of US-led occupation.

Most Afghans already believe they know who will win the vote: the candidate chosen by the United States and its NATO allies.

Voting will mostly be held in urban areas, under the guns of US and NATO troops. The countryside, ruled by Taliban, who are often local farmers moonlighting as fighters, is too dangerous for this electoral charade. Over half of Afghanistan is under Taliban influence by day, 75% at night. The entire election and vote-counting election commission are financed and run by the US. So are leading candidates. Ten thousand Afghan mercenaries hired by the US will police the polls and intimidate voters. US-financed Afghan media are busy promoting Washington’s candidates.

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By Irish

Mohammed Khatib

At 3AM on Monday, August 3, the Israeli army raided Bil’in and arrested Mohammad Khatib, along with six other Palestinian community activists and one American human rights observer from the village. This move is an attempt by Israeli authorities to silence a popular resistance movement gaining international attention and inspiring other Palestinian communities. This West Bank agricultural village, known for its weekly protests against the Israeli apartheid wall, has become a symbol for the Palestinian popular resistance to Israel’s ongoing military occupation.

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Sara Robinson

Writing about fascism for an American audience is always a fraught business. Invariably, a third of the readers will dismiss the topic (and your faithful blogger's basic sanity) out of hand. Either they've got their own definition of fascism and whatever's going on doesn't seem to fit it; or else they're firm believers in a variant of Godwin's Law, which says (with some justification) that anyone who invokes the F-word is a de facto alarmist of questionable credibility. I get letters, most of which say something to the effect of, "Calm down. You're overreacting. We're nowhere near there yet."

Another third will pepper me with missives that are every bit as dismissive -- for exactly the opposite reason. To them, anyone who's been paying the barest amount of attention should realize that America has been a fascist state since (choose one 1) 9/11; 2) Reagan; 3) McCarthy; 4) The Civil War; 5) July 4, 1776. For them, my careful analysis and worried warnings are dangerously naive -- clear evidence that I'm simply not seeing the full horror of America as it truly is, and always has been, at least since (insert date here).

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Richard S. Lindzen

A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action.

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat.

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