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Feb 6, 2019 • 3 tweets • 2 min read
Another devastating response to @sapinker and the junk science in his book Enlightenment Now. This time by @jasonhickel
jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/…
Chapter by chapter, the claims in his book have been comprehensively discredited. Steven Pinker emerges as a charlatan, peddling junk science on issues he doesn't understand and hasn't properly researched:
salon.com/2019/01/26/ste…
opendemocracy.net/transformation…
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
So much for his commitment to the values of the Enlightenment.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 16
Capitalism's broken promises breed humiliation and fury. And this, among some men, has created a movement in which everyone proclaims himself King.
A movement that is as self-destructive as it is incoherent.
My column.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
I've been wondering for a while what some of the really crazy stuff coming my way was about. Then I started researching the "sovereign citizen" movement and began to understand what I was seeing. It's one of the strangest belief systems I've encountered.
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Its adherents believe that, if they recite the right words, verbally or on paper, they can release themselves from the law of the land, from taxes, licences and criminal penalties. It's a magical belief in incantation.
Read 9 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 9
You cannot understand the politics of this country until you grasp the Pollution Paradox:
The most antisocial commercial interests have the greatest incentive to buy political favour, otherwise they would be regulated out of existence. So politics comes to be dominated by them.
What this means is that nothing can really change without a radical reform of political funding (campaign finance). Here (next tweet) is my idea of what it should look like.
Every party would be allowed to charge the same, modest fee for membership (perhaps £50). It would then receive matching funding from the state, as a multiple of its membership receipts.
*There would be no other permissible sources of income*.
Read 4 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 9
It's not green policies that make our homes so expensive to heat - quite the opposite it fact.
It's the power of dirty money, and the governments that champion it.
My column.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
I wonder how many people are aware of just what a rip-off UK policies are. The government is GIVING our assets to fossil fuel companies.
But that's not all. It then grants them a massive "rebate" on the tax they haven't paid.
ie free public money.
We should be taxing fossil fuel extraction out of existence. Instead the government is subsidising some of the richest corporations on Earth, with our money.
Read 8 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 7
The major component of the cost of living crisis is, as it has been for years, the cost of accommodation. The outrageous price of housing is caused by
a. the sale of council houses
b. failure to build new *social* housing
c. the deregulation of rent
d. second homes ...
Thread/
e. empty homes
f. control of land banks by property developers
g. massive and growing inequality in the distribution of purchasing power
h. which fuels a buy-to-let and second home frenzy
i. “Help to Buy” schemes that do the opposite of what they claim to do, by inflating prices
j. as does mortgage credit liberalisation
Read 8 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 7
Our country is now held together with goodwill and sticky tape. As successive Conservative governments have ripped up society with austerity, privatisation, Brexit and disaster capitalism, we survive because
frontline workers and volunteers go way beyond the call of duty.
This week's @PrivateEyeNews provides further evidence of the UK's slide towards total regulatory collapse. The Financial Conduct Authority is so beholden to the government's deregulatory agenda that it's now licensing obvious money-laundering outfits as "fit and proper".
That's what gets me about all this: it's the wilful demolition of a functioning society, enabling spivs, chancers and conmen to take over. It's the same with the destruction of environmental standards, building standards, food standards, employment standards etc.
Read 10 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Feb 7
The Environment Agency's vandalism of the River Tone in Somerset in the name of "flood control" directly contravenes its own advice. But its advice, in a presentation called "River Dredging and Flood Defence", published in 2013, was deleted and censored by the government.
Thread/
I found a copy, and reproduced it here (see the Scribd link halfway down the article). theguardian.com/commentisfree/…. The EA was instructed to ignore the science and take an ideological approach set by the government. It continues to do so to this day.
The minister in charge at the time was Owen Paterson, the worst Environment Secretary we've ever had (and that's saying something). He was reported as saying “the purpose of waterways is to get rid of water”.
Never mind that he is now disgraced. His unscientific views prevail.
Read 6 tweets

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