In June 2008 the Community Climate Change Consortium for Ireland (C4I) produced a 118 page report entitled “Ireland in a Warmer World: Scientific Predictions of the Irish Climate in the Twenty-First Century” (supported and co-funded by Environmental Protection Agency, Sustainable Energy Ireland and the Higher Education Authority) which forecast “an increase in the frequency of very intense cyclones, and also increases in the extreme values of wind and precipitation associated with them. This implies an increased risk of storm damage and flooding in vulnerable Irish coastal areas.” The report also suggested that the “[d]emand for heating energy is likely …
I do not think we will have another war. Why would someone go to war? Thousands died, and are their descendants living better now?
— Milorad Dodik, Feb 19, 2015
The whole basis for Republika Srpska being an autonomous entity of its own accord was always going to be problematic. It was a child born of secessionist misfortune, and misfortune, as a mother, tends to give birth to many problematic children. The President of the Serb dominated entity, Milorad Dodik, is a creature of that tendency, a product of extremes, and behaves accordingly. Enlightenment is deemed a weakness, and …
The first paragraph stated, “Shares and stocks are tumbling around the world, with investors worried that the next global crisis has already begun. There is considerable uncertainty and nervousness amongst economists and trend forecasters. Government’s sooth jittery markets with misinformation in the hope that confidence does not evaporate and their legitimacy with it.”
On the first day of 2016 all banks located within …
The single most important myth about Toryism — that the Tories are the best managers of the economy — needs to be confronted, and destroyed. The Tory party is best identified by its support for an economic system called capitalism, an ancient belief that concentrates wealth, and political power, in the hands of a tiny minority.
Britain’s best-known economists were Adam Smith and JM Keynes. Smith made the following observation about the capitalist model that ruled the world throughout modern history:
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim …
The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed…don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.
— John Yossarian from Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
For those of us here in the belly of the beast who were weaned, raised, and educated on her toxic mix of capitalism and propaganda, the word “revolution” automatically conjures up images of The American Revolutionary War. But as Dmitry Orlov points out; “The American Revolution wasn’t a revolution at all because the slave-owning, genocidal sponsors of international piracy remained in power under the new administration.” In the end, after all the bodies had …
On 8 December 2015, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau told gathered First Nations leaders: “It is time for a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations peoples, one that understands that the constitutionally guaranteed rights of First Nations in Canada are not an inconvenience but rather a sacred obligation.” ((“Remarks by Justin Trudeau at the Assembly of First Nations 36th Annual General Assembly.”))
These words, and many other lofty sounding promises come on the heels of approval of an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for Northcliff Resources’ Sisson Brook Mine project, albeit with 40 attached conditions, in the province of …
Several organisations in the UK that support Palestinians in their struggle for freedom are reported to have had their accounts frozen or closed by the Co-op Bank or been threatened with the chop.
The bank until recently was part of the well-regarded Co-operative movement and famed for its business ethics. After running into financial difficulties it was rescued in 2013/4 by, among others, US hedge fund outfit Perry Capital which now has a seat on the board. According to Wikipedia billionaire Richard C. Perry has served as a director of the Israel Project.
On Sunday, January 3, two passengers who had paid their fares, had passed security checks, boarded the Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Tel Aviv and found themselves at the centre of a racist onslaught by belligerent Jewish-Israeli passengers. The Jewish-Israeli passengers accused the two other passengers of being ‘terrorists’ and demanding their removal from the plane.
The victims were attacked for one reason only — they are Palestinian, even though one carried an Israeli passport and the other an Israeli residence permit.
For almost 2 hours, the Palestinians made a stand on their rights to stay on the plane. But as …
Somehow the watercourse is to dry country what the face is to human beauty. Mutilate it and the whole is gone.
— Aldo Leopold, Conservationist in Mexico, 1937
… these subsidized water projects, they’re not really intended to serve growth, or to meet growth, they’re intended to create it.
— interview with M.H. “Dutch” Salmon, author of ¡Gila Libre!, August 2015
New Mexico’s Gila is not a big river. At least, once it has left the state, along its lower reaches, it’s not a big river anymore: Once it wends its dammed and diverted way through Arizona, it becomes a dry, sandy-bottomed reminder of …
Cultural survival means resurrecting tribal thinking and the way humans thought a million years ago up to the Great Forgetting
by Paul Haeder / January 9th, 2016
There’s a real sense that we are past staying this mono-cultural collapse, and a book that came out 20 years ago, enlightens now more than ever, with the multiple forces of environmental, economic and societal collapses occurring under the weight of an elite and the barbarity of capitalism and extreme ecosystems and social systems exploitation.
This concept is what the subtitle suggests – An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. A book that ties into an earlier one, Ishmael, where writer Daniel Quinn gives us a gorilla with the power of human history locked up inside his brain, whereupon he …
A shadow of fear and panic is creeping through villages in North Eastern, central and Southern Ethiopia, where once again famine stalks the land. The seasonal rains that usually fall between June and September did not arrive, and now, with the ‘dry season’ here the already severe situation can only deteriorate.
According to the UN, Ethiopia “is experiencing its worst drought in 30 years.” In some areas the poorest, most vulnerable infants are already dying at a rate of two per day.
Around “350,000 children are in need of treatment for severe acute malnutrition,” UNICEF relates, and up to 8.2 …
Netanyahu slammed for exploiting killings in Tel Aviv to vilify entire Palestinian community in Israel
by Jonathan Cook / January 8th, 2016
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of exploiting a shooting attack in Tel Aviv on New Year’s Day to intensify a campaign of incitement against the country’s large minority of Palestinian citizens.Palestinian leaders in Israel have also harshly criticised the police for making sweeping arrests of Nashat Melhem’s relatives in what they believe is an attempt to pressure him into turning himself in.
Melhem, aged 29, is reported to have been on the run since two Israeli Jews were gunned down in a bar in central Tel Aviv last Friday. He is also suspected of killing a taxi driver …
According to Friday’s (January 8) payroll jobs numbers, almost 300,000 new jobs were created in December. Additionally, the previous two months were revised upward by 50,000 jobs. Apparently, the equity market did not believe the report, with the averages moving down today.
As I have pointed out almost monthly for what I think could be approaching two decades, the alleged job growth always takes place in nontradable domestic services, that is, in areas that do not produce exports and have no competition from imports. This is the job profile of a Third World country.
Can one person truly make a difference in the world?
Far too many people think not, and thus they sell themselves far too short. A wave of pessimism leads capable people to underestimate the power of their voice and the strength of their ideals. The truth is this: it is the initiatives of deeply caring people that provide the firmament for our democracy.
Take a sweeping look at history and you will discover that almost all movements that mattered started with just one or two people—from the fight to abolish slavery, to the creations of the environmental, trade union, consumer protection and civil …
For now, Argentina is lost and Venezuela is deeply wounded, divided and frustrated. Virtually everywhere in socialist Latin America, well-orchestrated and angry protests are taking place, accusing our left-wing governments of mismanagement and corruption.
What was gained during those years of hard work and sacrifices is suddenly evaporating in front of our eyes. And there seems to be no way to stop the trend in the foreseeable future. Whatever magnificent work our governments have done have been smeared. Western propaganda and its local serfs belittle the achievements of our people. In several countries, revolutionary zeal has almost entirely vanished.
*****
It …
Far too many people were knocked sideways, waking up the morning after Britain’s general election last May, hearing that the Tories had ‘won’ the election? That the majority was small and that they had done it on the support of less than 25% of the electorate was no comfort. What hurt was that the country faced five years of unchecked Tory ideology, favouring the rich by hitting the rest.
It was like being kicked in the gut. At least we were not alone in our despair, our inability to watch any news on television, hear it on radio or read it …
I stayed up about two hours past my usual bedtime to watch the New Years Eve celebration in Times Square.
For one reason only.
To see happy people.
A year like 2015 can do that to you.
The sight of many thousands of young people standing in the cold for hours, hugging and kissing, screaming and laughing, was very precious.
Also a bit unnerving. What’s wrong with them? Don’t they know what kind of world they’re living in? Don’t they know that their celebration is a prime target for terrorists?
Well … nothing happened … thank you God that I don’t believe in …
Previously, we asked, why is Russia concerned about US-promoted violence in Syria?
In a news dispatch, “Why Russia is standing by Syria’s Assad,” BBC, the voice of British imperialism, answers our question with these words, “By standing up for Damascus, the Kremlin is telling the world that neither the UN, nor any other body or group of countries has the right to decide who should or should not govern a sovereign state.” The writers agree with the expressed sentiment; however, Russia’s position on the Syrian conflict should be looked at from a …
The Islamic State (IS) has become a magnet for international brigades, drawing over 30,000 fighters from 5 continents and 86 countries to their war in Iraq and Syria.
While the international brigades are part of a global movement, most of the volunteers come from two-dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East, Maghreb, Western Europe, Russia and Central Asia.
Most Islamist internationalists are paid a salary to fight and engage in police functions within IS-occupied regions.
In Part 1 I asserted that there is a new globalised Fascist movement that has gradually, in fits and starts, insinuated itself as a new normal in Western regimes and in many “developing” regimes. A central claim of the article is that the differences between old Fascism and new Fascism are almost entirely due to the fact that the original Fascism was a nationalistic creed with imperialist ambitions, while the new Fascism is an imperialist ideology and mode of governance.
I also distinguish between the banal Fascism of governance and the dramatic Fascism of rhetoric. Fascists …
Enabling Saudi militancy is an irrational US policy
The Saudi mass beheadings on January 2 proved nothing new to a world that well knows Saudi Arabia is still a tribal police state with a moral code of medieval barbarity. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-Muslim country that executes people for witchcraft, adultery, apostasy, and homosexuality (among other things). And the Saudi regime is perfectly willing to torture and kill a Shi’a-Muslim cleric for the crime of speaking truth to power, knowing that that judicial murder will inflame his followers and drive the …
by Kim Petersen and B.J. Sabri / January 7th, 2016
I cannot help asking those who have forced that situation: Do you realize what you have done?
— Russian President Vladimir Putin pointing to the US policy in the Middle East, address to the United Nations General Assembly, 2015, excerpts on CNBC.
Is it best for the world to remain on the sidelines or engage in nugatory “peace” negotiations while the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Israel, and their terrorist groups destroy Syria with fire and violence? How would the entry of Russia at the side of …
As the American Historical Association (AHA) prepares to vote this week on a symbolic resolution that affirms support for the right to education in the occupied Palestinian territories, apologists for the Israeli regime’s policies against Palestinians are putting forward nonsensical rationalizations for their opposition to the measure. Writing in History News Network, University of Maryland History Professor Jeffrey Herf essentially argues that his profession has no practical value: “as historians we have neither the knowledge nor expertise to evaluate conflicting factual assertions about events in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.”
If historians should not evaluate the veracity of …
The Martian is a very expensive piece of Hollywood trash, in short an international blockbuster. But it has one revealing and interesting brief segment. For those fortunate enough to have missed the movie, it recounts the survival and rescue of an American astronaut abandoned by accident on a mission to Mars. It is an altogether predictable story of Yankee ingenuity and derring-do with nary a trace of the character development or the superb photography of its predecessor and inspiration, Gravity.
As the rescue operation proceeds the Americans find themselves short a rocket booster. The obvious …
Kevin Zeese has long amazed me because of the number of things he does to make a better world. Mondays he does a radio program with Margaret Flowers called Clearing the FOG, which is one of the best alternative programs in the world, informing people of what is happening beyond the narrow scope of the corporate media.
Months before the Occupy Movement began, he was organizing activists in the City of Washington to occupy Freedom Plaza there.
Daily he puts out Popular Resistance, informing people of the latest news around the corporate media and organizing activists across the nation.
Although intended to inspire his Fatah Party followers, a televised speech by Mahmoud Abbas on the 51st Anniversary of the group’s launch highlighted, instead, the unprecedented crisis that continues to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people. Not only did Abbas sound defensive and lacking in any serious or new initiatives, but his ultimate intention appeared as if it was about his political survival, and nothing else.
In his speech on December 31, he tossed in many of the old clichés, chastising Israel at times, although in carefully-worded language, and insisted that any vital decisions concerned with “the future of …
The armed militia members occupying a federally owned wildlife outpost in eastern Oregon have demanded that the land be “returned” to them. But who really has claim to this forest? We speak with Jacqueline Keeler, a writer and activist of Dineh and Yankton Dakota heritage who wrote about the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff for The Nation and is now working on a new piece which in part examines the history of the Paiute tribe’s treaty rights to the forest currently occupied by the nearly all-white militia.
There is more confusion about Social Security today than ever before. We are hearing contradictory claims from individuals, organizations, and government, and nobody knows who to believe.
There is no official watchdog agency to monitor the Social Security system and provide objective information to the public. Many people think that the Social Security trustees are a nonpartisan group of fair-minded public servants who can be trusted to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; But the trustees are political appointees, subject to dismissal, and they don’t always tell the whole …
My work documenting how the law was lost began about a quarter of a century ago. A close friend and distinguished attorney, Dean Booth, first brought to my attention the erosion of the legal principles on which rests the rule of law in the United States. My columns on the subject got the attention of an educational institution that invited me to give a lecture on the subject. Subsequently, I was invited to give a lecture on “How The Law Was Lost” at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
With New Year celebrations barely in the rear view mirror, foreboding storm clouds are once again forming along the horizon. The blackening skies are casting a dour mood over 2016, which in its mere infancy seems all but assured to see deepening global tumult, conflict, and crisis.
At the root of this palpable disquiet lies the still fragile state of the global economy, coming up on eight years after the financial collapse of 2008.
Writing in the German newspaper Handelsblatt last week, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde pointed to “rising interest rates in the United States and an economic …
