Month: Jun 2023

By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost Julian Assange’s legal options have nearly run out. He could be extradited to the U.S. this week. Should he be convicted in the U.S., any reporting on the inner workings of power will become a crime. High Court Judge Jonathan Swift — who previously worked for a variety […]

The Imminent Extradition of Julian Assange and the Death of Journalism

El golpe de la sequía en la fauna silvestre: así afecta a ranas, mariposas, aguiluchos, ciervos y otros animales

from thefreeonline on junio 21, 2023 by ELCOMUNISTA.NET

Muchas especies ven reducidas sus poblaciones por la escasez de agua y alimento, sobre todo, insectos, peces y anfibios.

Las aves de humedales sufren especialmente el deterioro de sus hábitats y, al migrar, trasladan la presión a otros ecosistemas.

Las aves son migrantes climáticas por antonomasia. Algunos peces, como la sarda, se adaptaron para vivir en ríos que menguan en el verano. Pero mientras la sequía prolongada ya se extiende por el 35% de la península, la escasez de lluvias golpea de forma silenciosa en la vida silvestre.

“Tiene efecto, sobre todo, en las especies que dependen directamente del agua, como los insectos, los peces y otras especies acuáticas, pero también en los anfibios, que necesitan agua para desarrollar la fase larvaria.

Si no hay agua en las charcas y zonas húmedas, este año directamente no van a criar”, explica a RTVE.es Rafael Seiz, coordinador del Programa de Agua de WWF España, que menciona también el impacto en las especies terrestres.

En años como este, los ciervos y corzos ven cómo el agua para beber y los pastos para comer escasean.

Con todo, algunos animales están mejor adaptados que otros. “En la cornisa cantábrica, donde el clima atlántico es más característico, las especies resisten peor los periodos de falta de recursos, con lo cual puede haber episodios puntuales en los que algunos ejemplares no consigan sobrevivir”, ejemplifica.

El estado de los ecosistemas antes de llegar la emergencia puede, en cualquier caso, marcar la diferencia. 

Seis de cada diez aves amenazadas sufren más las sequías

Las aves sufren especialmente los años secos y esto manifiesta en diferentes planos: “Hay uno más inmediato, que es la necesidad de agua para beber o, incluso, para cosas que a lo mejor son menos intuitivas, como la falta de barro para que las golondrinas y aviones puedan hacer sus nidos”.

El experto que habla es Mario Giménez, delegado de SEO Birdlife en Valencia, quien enlaza con los comentarios de WWF. “Menos insectos y menos producción de semillas es, en definitiva, menos comida y eso viene a significar que las aves estén en peor estado físico.

Ponen menos huevos, sacan adelante menos pollos y esto afecta al tamaño de las poblaciones”, enumera.

Pero Giménez destaca los problemas que surgen para las aves por el cambio en sus hábitats.

 La sequía es un ciclo habitual dentro del clima mediterráneo, pero estas últimas vienen montadas sobre un proceso de cambio climático que ya está influyendo en los patrones de algunas especies migratorias: bandadas que paran cada vez más al norte porque en el sur encuentran demasiado calor y poco alimento o porque los ríos ya no se hielan todo el año como antes, otras que directamente han dejado de migrar.

“Las cigüeñas son un ejemplo clásico de especie que ya no cruza el estrecho, muchas veces se quedan en España”, apunta el experto.

En lo que respecta solo a las sequías, el impacto es más evidente para dos grupos de aves, las ligadas a ecosistemas agrícolas y a los humedales. Con la mala cosecha de secano este año, las primeras han quedado muy expuestas: “Como no tienen sitio donde hacer nidos, porque no han salido los cereales por la sequía, se tienen que ir a sitios peores, donde seguramente tendrán más depredación, tendrán que poner los nidos en el suelo y volvemos al inicio: habrá menos pollos”, afirma Giménez, de Seo BirdLife, sobre especies como el aguilucho cenizo.

Continue reading “El golpe de la sequía en la fauna silvestre: así afecta a ranas, mariposas, aguiluchos, ciervos y otros animales”

The Beast has axed two major interviews with RFK, Jr., along with Dr. Bhakdi’s YouTube channel (with nearly 100 shows)—while popular YouTubers keep on dying, falling gravely ill, or losing loved ones https://open.substack.com/pub/markcrispinmiller/p/google-blacking-out-youtube-misinformation?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=b9xiw

Google blacking out YouTube «misinformation» that could have saved YouTubers’ lives

from thefreeonline on 21st June 2023 by greennews.ie

Ireland is home to a newly designated ‘Hope Spot’ off the Greater Skellig Coast in an area noted to have high conservation value for biodiversity. 

Led by oceanographer and author Dr. Sylvia Earl, Mission Blue now has listed 148 Hope Spots globally. Through designations of special places for conservation it seeks to inspire public awareness and support for a worldwide network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

Hope Spots are scientifically identified as critical to the health of the ocean and designated by the global marine conservation movement Mission Blue. The Greater Skellig Coast stretches from Kenmare Bay in Co Kerry to Loop Head in Co Clare and covers an area of roughly 7,000km2 of Irish coastal waters. 

“This Hope Spot is being announced at a crucial time for Ireland because in 2023, new national Marine Protected Area legislation will be introduced for the first time. 81% of Irish people believe that we need to protect, conserve and restore the ocean. This legislation will help achieve this very desirable protection”, said Dr. Sylvia Earle, Founder of Mission Blue.

The Greater Skellig Coast is one of 16 ‘Areas of Interest’ identified for possible Marine Protected Area designation by Fair Seas, a coalition of environmental non-governmental organisations and networks in Ireland, with the support of Sea Synergy, a marine awareness and activity centre based in Kerry. 

“The Hope Spot designation confirms what we already knew in Co Kerry and Co Clare, that the ocean is critically important. It’s my wish that this designation will help inspire people to take a closer look at what the ocean offers and that we will see more Hope Spots and action to live in harmony with Ireland’s ocean”, said Lucy Hunt, Founder of Sea Synergy. 

“This global recognition is even more critical now as we finalise our own national MPA legislation in Ireland. We have one chance to do this right and we owe it to the next generation to do this well,” said Aoife O’ Mahony, Campaign Manager for Fair Seas.

Fair Seas has been campaigning for Ireland to protect at least 30% of Irish waters as Marine Protected Areas by 2030, in line with a worldwide 30×30 initiative calling for governments to protect 30% of Earth’s land and ocean by 2030.

The General Scheme of Ireland’s new Marine Protected Area (MPA) legislation was published in December 2022 and will head next to committee pre-legislative scrutiny in the Oireachtas.

from thefreeonline on June 20, 2023 by 350.org and Attac.org/en

This week, 350.org and partners are participating in a moderated conversation around intersectional justice alongside the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris. Jun 21, 2023 from 8pm- English here/ Français ici.

Climate: from the North to the South, a global struggle

For the last 6 months, millions of people have taken to the streets in France, following the lead of trade unions, protesting against the pension reform.

Alongside these unions, many other collectives and groups supported the strikes, participated in blockades, actions and processions. Climate justice groups in particular have emphasized that the fight against pension reform shares significant parallels with the fight against climate change.

A live discussion co-hosted by Mediapart, Attac and 350.org, on the evening before the Pact Summit, with special guests from across the global climate movement.…English/ French..

waiting.. Scheduled for Jun 21, 2023 from 8pm

The French stream will be available here and the English stream will be available here.

A united front has thus been built, strengthening existing alliances between trade unions and the climate justice movement.

On the eve of the opening of the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris, it is crucial to state loud and clear that the destruction of all forms of social protection and solidarity organized by the state obeys the same logic as the destruction of ecosystems, the collapse of biodiversity and, of course, climate change.

Climate justice can only emerge from broad alliances: when climate activists, employees fighting for their jobs, frontline communities directly affected by climate impacts, pensioners defending their right to stop working, and others, are organizing together.

We would therefore like to invite you to participate in a public discussion to show our solidarity with the trade union organizations behind the struggle against pension reform and to build links between the climate justice movement and other struggles. 

The goal of this event is to present our vision of a future free of the fossil fuel industry and neoliberalism’s hegemony. If world leaders decided to tax the rich and socialize the profits of major polluters like Total, Exxon, and BP, what could we achieve?

The conversation will be streamed online, both in French and in English, and be loosely moderated. There will be live (simultaneous) translation (English-French).

The French stream will be available here and the English stream will be available here.

Part 1: End of the world, end of the month: how to build alliances?

With: 

• Greta Thunberg, Fridays for Future
• Vanessa Nakate, Rise Up Climate movement 
• Sophie Binet, General Secretary, Confédération Générale du Travail – CGT 
• Clémence Dubois, Associate Director, Global Campaigns, 350.org 
• Benoit Teste, General Secretary, Fédération Syndicale Unitaire –– FSU

Part 2: Reinventing North-South solidarity around climate change

With: 

• Diana Nabiruma, Africa Institute for Energy Governance
• Simon Duteil, Co-délégué général du syndicat Solidaires 
• Youlie Yamamoto, porte-parole ATTAC
• Disha Ravie, Fridays for Future, Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA)
• Luisa Neubauer, Fridays for Future, Germany 
• Benoit Teste, General Secretary, Fédération Syndicale Unitaire –– FSU
• Clémence Dubois, Associate Director, Global Campaigns, 350.org 

from thefreeonline on 19th June 2023 by ABOLITION MEDIA

The Amfissa Judicial Council finally Released Giannis Michailidis with Restrictive Conditions

Comrade Giannis, after a hard struggle where he put his body through a 33-day hunger strike and a 4-day thirst strike, managed to win what he was entitled to and had been demanding since last year: his temporary release on parole.

Something he had been forced to demand before with a 67-day hunger strike last year, which he suspended after verbal promises from officials that his request would be granted, which never happened.

So today, 14/6/23 the Amfissa Judicial Council decided to release Giannis with restrictive conditions.

GIANNI, OUR BEST WISHES   FOR A GOOD RECOVERY ….

AND SEE YOU AGAIN IN THE STREETS!

NOTHING IS FINISHED EVERYTHING  CONTINUES!

Anarchists from the anarchist project Act for freedom now!

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Zara Ali

Putin and What Really Matters on the Chessboard

from on Pepe Escobar at https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/06/15/putin-and-what-really-matters-in-the-chessboard/

It’s fascinating to see how Russian war correspondents are now playing a role similar to the former political commissars in the USSR.

President Putin’s meeting with a group of Russian war correspondents and Telegram bloggers – including Filatov, Poddubny, Pegov from War Gonzo, Podolyaka, Gazdiev from RT – was an extraordinary exercise in freedom of the press.

There were among them seriously independent journalists who can be very critical of the way the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) are conducting what can be alternatively defined as a Special Military Operation (SMO); a counter-terror operation (CTO); or an “almost war” (according to some influential business circles in Moscow).

It’s fascinating to see how these patriotic/independent journalists are now playing a role similar to the former political commissars in the USSR, all of them, in their own way, deeply committed to guiding Russian society towards draining the swamp, slowly but surely.

It’s clear Putin not only understands their role but sometimes, “shock to the system-style”, the system he presides actually implements the journalists’ suggestions. As a foreign correspondent working all over the world for nearly 40 years now, I have been quite impressed by the way Russian journalists may enjoy a degree of freedom unimaginable in most latitudes of the collective West.

The Kremlin transcript of the meeting shows Putin definitely not inclined to beat around the bush.

He admitted there are “operetta Generals” in the Army; that there was a shortage of drones, precision munitions and communication equipment, now being addressed.

He discussed the legality of mercenary outfits; the necessity of sooner or later installing a “buffer zone” to protect Russian citizens from systematic Kiev regime shelling; and he stressed that Russia will not answer Bandera-inspired terrorism with terrorism.

After examining the exchanges, a conclusion is imperative: Russian war media is not staging an offensive even as the collective West attacks Russia 24/7 with its massive NGO/soft power media apparatus. Moscow is not – yet? – fully engaged in the trenches of information warfare; as it stands Russian media is only playing defense.

All the way to Kiev?

Arguably the money quote of the whole encounter is Putin’s concise, chilling evaluation of where we now stand in the chessboard:

“We were forced to try to end the war that the West started in 2014 by force of arms. And Russia will end this war by force of arms, freeing the entire territory of the former Ukraine from the United States and Ukrainian Nazis. There are no other options. The Ukrainian army of the US and NATO will be defeated, no matter what new types of weapons it receives from the West. The more weapons there are, the fewer Ukrainians and what used to be Ukraine will remain. Direct intervention by NATO’s European armies will not change the outcome. But in this case, the fire of war will engulf the whole of Europe. It looks like the US is ready for that too.”

In a nutshell: this will only end on Russia’s terms, and only when Moscow evaluates all its objectives have been met. Anything else is wishful thinking.

Back on the frontlines, as pointed out by the indispensable Andrei Martyanov, first-class war correspondent Marat Kalinin has conclusively laid out how the current Ukrainian metal coffin counter-offensive has not been able to reach even the first Russian line of defense (they are a long – highway to hell – 10 km away). Everything NATO’s top proxy army ever assembled was able to accomplish so far was to get mercilessly slaughtered on an industrial scale.

Meet General Armageddon in action.

Surovikin had eight months to place his footprint in Ukraine and from the beginning he understood exactly how to turn it into a whole new ballgame. Arguably the strategy is to completely destroy the Ukrainian forces between the first line of defense – assuming they ever breach it – and the second line, which is quite substantial. The third line will remain off limits.

Collective West MSM is predictably freaking out, finally starting to show horrendous Ukrainian losses and giving evidence of the utter accumulated incompetence of Kiev goons and their NATO military handlers.

And just in case the going gets tough – for now a remote possibility – Putin himself has delivered the road map. Softly, softly. As in, “Do we need a march on Kiev? If yes, we need a new mobilization, if not, we do not need it. There is no need for mobilization right now.”

The crucial operative words are “right now”.

The end of all your elaborate plans

Meanwhile, away from the battlefield, the Russians are very much aware of the frantic geoeconomic activity.

Moscow and Beijing increasingly trade in yuan and rubles. The ASEAN 10 are going all out for regional currencies, bypassing the US dollar. Indonesia and South Korea are turbo-charging trade in rupiah and won. Pakistan is paying for Russian oil in yuan. The UAE and India are increasing non-oil trade in rupees.

Everyone and his neighbor are making a beeline to join BRICS+ – forcing a desperate Hegemon to start deploying an array of Hybrid War techniques.

It’s been a long way since Putin examined the chessboard in the early 2000s and then unleashed a crash missile program for defensive and offensive missiles.

Over the next 23 years Russia developed hypersonic missiles, advanced ICBMs, and the most advanced defensive missiles on the planet. Russia won the missile race. Period. The Hegemon – obsessed by its own manufactured war against Islam – was completely blindsided and made no material missile advances in nearly two and a half decades.

Now the “strategy” is to invent a Taiwan Question out of nothing, which is configuring the chessboard as the ante-chamber of no holds barred Hybrid War against Russia-China.

The proxy attack – via Kiev hyenas – against Russophone Donbass, egged on by the Straussian neocon psychos in charge of US foreign policy, murdered at least 14,000 men, women and children between 2014 to 2022. That  was also an attack on China. The ultimate aim of this Divide and Rule gambit was to inflict defeat on China’s ally in the Heartland, so Beijing would be isolated.

According to the neocon wet dream, all of the above would have enabled the Hegemon, once it had taken over Russia again as it did with Yeltsin, to blockade China from Russian natural resources using eleven US aircraft carrier task forces plus numerous submarines.

Obviously military science-impaired neocons are oblivious to the fact that Russia is now the strongest military power on the planet.

In Ukraine, the neocons were hoping that a provocation would cause Moscow to deploy other secret weapons apart from hypersonic missiles, so Washington could better prepare for all-out war.

All those elaborate plans may have miserably floundered. But a corollary remains: the Straussian neocons firmly believe they may instrumentalize a few million Europeans – who’s next? Poles? Estonians? Latvians? Lithuanians? And why not Germans? – as cannon fodder as the US did in WWI and WWII, fought over the bodies of Europeans (including Russians) sacrificed to the same old Mackinder Anglo-Saxon power grab.

Hordes of European 5^th columnists make it so much easier to “trust” the US to protect them, while only a few with an IQ over room temperature have understood who really bombed Nord Stream 1 and 2, with the connivance of the Liver Sausage German Chancellor.

The bottom line is that the Hegemon simply cannot accept a sovereign, self-sufficient Europe; only a dependent vassal, hostage to the seas that the US control.

Putin clearly sees how the chessboard has been laid out. And he also sees how “Ukraine” does not even exist anymore.

While no one was paying attention, last month the Kiev gang sold Ukraine to $8.5 trillion-worth BlackRock. Just like that. The deal was sealed between the Government of Ukraine and BlackRock’s VP Philipp Hildebrand.

They are setting up a Ukrainian Development Fund (UDF) for “reconstruction”, focused on energy, infrastructure, agriculture, industry and IT. All remaining valuable assets in what will be a rump Ukraine will be gobbled up by BlackRock: from Metinvest, DTEK (energy) and MJP (agriculture) to Naftogaz, Ukrainian Railways, Ukravtodor and Ukrenergo.

What’s the point in going to Kiev then? High-grade toxic neoliberalism is already partying on the spot.

Pepe Escobar

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