Since the brutal murder of Saudi dissident and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi last October, Congress has increasingly pressured the Trump administration to stop backing the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen and halt U.S. arms sales to Riyadh. In response, President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that if the U.S. does not sell weapons to the Saudis, they will turn to U.S. adversaries to supply their arsenals.
“I don’t like the concept of stopping an investment of $110 billion into the United States,” Trump told reporters in October, referring to a collection of intent letters signed with the Saudis in the early months of his presidency. “You know what they are going to do? They’re going to take that money and spend it in Russia or China or someplace else.”
But a highly classified document produced by the French Directorate of Military Intelligence shows that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are overwhelmingly dependent on Western-produced weapon systems to wage their devastating war in Yemen. Many of the systems listed are only compatible with munitions, spare parts, and communications […]
Juha Jaervinen, a participant in Finland’s basic income experiment.
Credit: Gregor Fischer/picture alliance/Getty
Finland’s landmark experiment with basic income — the idea that the government should give citizens a regular infusion of free cash with no strings attached — is showing promising results.
After the government chose 2,000 unemployed citizens at random and gave them a check of 560 euros ($635) every month for two years ending last December, the recipients reported less stress than the control group. That was true even for recipients who felt they were still struggling to make ends meet, according to new findings released by Kela, a Finnish government agency.
The recipients also reported that they felt more trust toward other people and social institutions — from political parties to the police to the courts — than they did before getting a basic income.
The new findings add to initial results released in February that showed receiving free money made recipients happier without making them any less likely to join the workforce. Although this wasn’t everything […]
For many people, solar power is seen as a threat to farming communities. That’s because they believe farmers must choose between raising crops or livestock and installing solar panels on their land. The Fraunhofer Institute has been conducting experiments in what it calls agrophotovoltaics for two years near Lake Constance, Germany. In the first year, it found the combination of solar and agriculture made the land 160% more productive than if it had been devoted exclusively to one or the other.
Agrophotovoltaics & Hot Weather
2108 was one of the hottest years yet in Europe, with the high temperatures having a negative affect on the yield from many farms. Yet Fraunhofer’s Lake Constance experimental farm thrived. The shading provide by the solar panels actually increased the harvest and the extra sunshine boosted electricity output as well. “Based on the 2018 potato yield, the land use efficiency rose to 186% per hectare with the agrophotovoltaic system,” says Stephan Schindele of Fraunhofer ISE in a press release.
The Lake Constance farm mounts its solar panels 5 meters above the ground, leaving room for livestock and plants […]
An F-35 Lightning II sits on stage during the United Kingdom F-35 delivery ceremony on July 19, 2012, at Lockheed Martin Corporation in Fort Worth, Texas.
Credit: Tom Pennington/Getty
U.S. taxpayers are no strangers to getting saddled with monstrously expensive weapons programs at the expense of basic needs like food, shelter and education. The Pentagon paid $44 billion for 21 very fragile B-2 stealth bombers, few of which still fly in combat roles. The F-22 fighter, coming in at more than $350 million per plane, was built to combat Cold War adversaries who ceased to exist six years before the first jet rolled off the production line. The sticker price for Ronald Reagan’s harebrained “Star Wars” missile defense program stands at around $60 billion.
Alas, there always seems to be more room at the Pentagon trough. Enter the F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft.
“Japan Air Self Defense Force Stands Up First F-35A Lightning II Fighter Squadron,” announced the April 1 headline in The Diplomat, a publication focusing on Asia-Pacific news. “This […]
Tucker Carlson
Credit: Sarah Wasko/Media Matters
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is under fire this week for racist, sexist, and homophobic comments he made while chatting on “Bubba the Love Sponge” a shock jock radio show between 2006-2011. Groups are scrutinizing Fox’s advertisers and demanding that they drop the show.
But Carlson also publishes The Daily Caller, a controversial online media outlet with ties to white nationalists that has infamously peddled everything from climate denial and anti-Islamic tropes to false prostitution charges and violence against protesters.
Carlson’s moonlighting as an extremist at The Daily Caller is heavily bankrolled by – you guessed it – the Koch brothers. An investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) finds that the Charles Koch Foundation has poured more than $2.7 million into the Daily Caller’s non-profit “charity” since 2012, which generates the lion’s share of the “news” that the Caller publishes.
Indeed, in 2016, Koch cash accounted for 83 percent of the The Daily Caller News Foundation’s $1.1 million in revenues.
Carlson under fire
As if catering to […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
