The wise men of the establishment are again telling us that hopes for lasting peace are a delusion. They declare that human nature makes it impossible, that war is built into our genes. They point to research by evolutionary biologists that indicates our closest genetic relatives, the chimpanzees, make war. Therefore war must be part of our heredity.
"We've always had wars," they claim. "Humans are a warring species. Without a military to defend us, someone will always try to conquer us." These assumptions have become axioms of our culture. They generate despair but also a certain comfort because they relieve us of the responsibility to change.
It's true that in certain situations chimpanzees do raid neighboring colonies and kill other chimps. Those studies on killer apes got enormous publicity because they implied that war is hardwired into human nature. Most scientists didn't draw those conclusions from the evidence, but the establishment media kept reinforcing that message.
Further research, however, led to a key discovery: The chimps who invaded their neighbors were suffering from shrinking territory and food sources. They were struggling for survival. Groups with adequate resources didn't raid other colonies. The aggression wasn't a behavioral constant but was caused by the stress they were under. Their genes gave them the capacity for violence, but the stress factor had to be there to trigger it into combat.
Jiang Zemin, who died in late November, was arguably the most consequential Chinese leader of the post-Mao era. And at what feels like a pivotal moment for the People's Republic, it is worth considering why so many Chinese are looking back fondly on the Jiang era. And also what his rise and rule can reveal about power politics in China.
Michael Haines has spent over 50 years working at senior levels across construction, manufacturing, and logistics. In 2011, he set up a not-for-profit to work with major companies across the property, construction, and facilities management sector, along with global technology providers, to develop a governance framework for the emerging Digital Built Environment. Its purpose is to reduce complexity, while maintaining privacy and security, to deliver better outcomes more quickly, at less cost, and with less risk. 
Reading the 2000 edition of James Lovelock’s book "Gaia, the practical science of planetary medicine" (Lovelock, 2000) one find they adopt and retain many of Lovelock's perspectives. The term "Gaia" is emotively loaded, and Lovelock had received some very biased coverage on when interviewed and when he was advocating for nuclear energy. The term "Gaia" itself can inspire mistaken impressions in many - myself included initially - as they might envisage a Greek goddess from which the name comes and dismiss it as a "New Age" delusion but it is not. Lovelock's Gaia is the most utilitarian description of our dynamic living Earth from a top-down perspective, a biogeophysical self-regulating super organism, not necessarily sentient or intelligent but the same could be said for the deluded species destroying it. "Delusion" is the nicest explanations for our idiotic (Parker, 2005) ecocidal actions. 
Every day in the past months it has become increasingly clear that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is being reversed. Those who are attentive will see a familiar pattern; extensive and ill-directed Russian shelling across the frontline, numerous piecemeal incursions by Russia, especially along their western front, all of which are invariably repelled, followed up with Ukraine recapturing villages and townships with occasional well-directed counter-shelling. Recent weeks have witnessed Ukrainian forces take centres like Kupiansk, Lyman, and Borova in the north along with a large number of territories and settlements near Kherson. Russia's responses - a confusing partial mobilisation, sabre-rattling on the potential use of nuclear weapons, and a stage-managed referendum with implausible results - have not changed the reality on the ground that they are losing this war.
Many economic reformers have proposed replacing many taxes by broad-based taxes on land ownership, specifically the 'unimproved' value of land (commonly called a Land Value Tax or LVT). Advocacy for an LVT goes back to 18th century economist David Ricardo1 and 19th century populist reformer Henry George.2 While usually considered a 'progressive' proposal, it has adherents on both the left and right of politics.3 In Australia, the case for an LVT was most recently made in the 2010 Australia's Future Tax System Review ('the Henry review').4
Water conservation consists of activities and policies that are designed to manage a necessary and natural resource in a manner that meets human needs. It is a challenge that crosses multiple disciplines, including environmental science and climatology, geography and demographics, engineering, behavioural and resource economics, and social psychology. For the purposes of this inquiry, an emphasis is placed on social learning biases and the mechanisms of cooperation to design a feasible intervention from the perspective of the Auckland Council. Other disciplines will be allocated emphasis according to their approriateness to this central task. For example, as fascinating as various engineering contributions to water conservation might be, they are largely mentioned in this context in reference to human behaviour.
Many are saddened and angry at the decision of the US Supreme Court to 
It is almost extraordinary to think that, in the context of the Australian election where 
Posted on streetlamps all over Germany are stickers showing fleeing silhouettes with the caption, "Refugees welcome - bring your families". Some have been blacked out with felt markers or ripped partially away. The Germans have mixed feelings about refugees, as demonstrated in the earlier waves from the Mideast and the current one from Ukraine. Germany took in over two million refugees from the Mideast wars, far more than any other country. The equivalent for the US population would be eight million.