BREAKING news update: Hurricane Patricia spares cities, roars through rural Mexico. By Reuters reporters and photographers
Hurricane Patricia caused less damage than feared on Mexico’s Pacific coast on Saturday, but little was known about an isolated part of the shoreline dotted with luxury villas and fishing villages, where the storm and its 165 mph (266 kph) winds landed.
Big World, Small Planet: excerpt. By Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum
Big World, Small Planet is a book both alarming and hopeful, a work of science and art that arrives as world leaders prepare — at last? — to address climate change at the summit in Paris. “We need a new way of thinking about our relationship with nature, and how reconnecting with the planet can open up new avenues to world prosperity,” state authors Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum.
The evil of Benjamin Netanyahu, by Tom Regan, Summoning Orenda column
Benjamin Netanyahu’s continued racist and potentially internationally criminal actions have made things so bad in Israel, one really has to question how long the country can survive with him as its leader.
‘There’s Something Happening Here …, by Jim McNiven, Thoughtlines column
Forty-seven years ago in the United States, the Democrats found themselves going into their Presidential nomination process rather at sea. Does this sound familiar? Does it look like a mirror image of today? Today it is the Republicans who are in disarray. And it all has to do with the boomers.
Justin Trudeau’s speech to his kids, by Penney Kome
Canada’s newly-elected prime minister got Penney Kome thinking about George Lakoff’s research on differences between the “conservative” view and the assumption of “progressives” that “the world is basically good and can be made better.”
Justin Trudeau inherits an international freeloader, Jonathan Manthorpe, International Affairs
In many ways, Justin Trudeau and Canada’s newly-elected Liberal government are fortunate coming to office at this time when the whole associated field of Canada’s foreign, defence, trade and development aid policy is a wasteland.
Fishing subsidies are emptying oceans. By Rashid Sumaila
Fish numbers are rapidly dwindling globally, and fishery subsidies are one of the key drivers behind this decline. In 2009, these subsidies totalled about US$35 billion, creating incentives for fishers around the world to increase their catch. But this short-term “race to fish” is jeopardising the long-term environmental, social, and economic security that fisheries offer us all.
The Remaking of Fleetwood Mac: Bob Welch. By Brian Brennan, Brief Encounters (paywall)
Like Stuart Sutcliffe of the early Beatles and Ian Stewart of the early Rolling Stones, Bob Welch was an early member of Fleetwood Mac who left before the band hit the big time … But more than just being an early member of the group, I discovered, Welch was also a significant figure in the artistic evolution of Fleetwood Mac.
Sicario: a movie that haunts. By Sebastian Rosella, ProPublica
I saw the movie “Sicario” the other day. And it reminded me why the border still haunts me. “Sicario” is an important contribution to a cinematic genre that examines the dark realities of the U.S.-Mexico border. The film centers on an FBI agent in Arizona who joins a shadowy, CIA-led task force pursuing a Mexican drug lord. She becomes alarmed by secretive, brutal methods that leave a trail of corpses. She discovers that the unit’s mysterious Colombian “consultant” is an assassin (sicario) unleashed by the U.S. government on the cartels.
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