US and UN humanitarian aid is a grain of sand in the desert they created. With just 1% of US military spending Africa could have a free health and welfare system- and that money would be just invented cash from Dollar hegemony
A group of women and their children rush towards an emergency feeding centre in Niger
African states were mostly just lines on the map of colonial conquests, and the colonizers often kept ownership of land and resources.
Local allegiance is usually more to ancient smaller tribal cultures, so it was easy to pick strong men, lend them dollars and set up eternal debt cow interest payments, milking penniless artificially created states forever in total poverty.
Niger for instance, while supplying France with 30% of its nuclear power has less than 20% of its own people with electricity, in rural areas just 9% and FALLING RAPIDLY. worldbank.org. And that electricity has to be imported at a premium.
Zero Hedge The core problems of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) have been addressed many times here, but it may bear repeating these two facts – First, in a cashless society all privacy in trade is lost, and second, banks and governments will control access to all of your money. If such a system is […]
People gathered to pay tribute during the funeral procession of Sinead O’Connor in Bray, Ireland, August 8
The legendary singer was laid to rest on Tuesday
Crowds lined the streets of Bray in Ireland on Tuesday to pay their final respects to Sinead O’Connor, the iconic and controversial singer who passed away last month aged 56. Among the mourners were Ireland’s president and prime minister, U2 star Bono, and Dublin singer Bob Geldof.
O’Connor’s funeral cortege passed her former seaside house in Bray en route to a private burial, where Muslim funeral prayers were led by Shaykh Umar Al-Qadri of the Islamic Centre of Ireland.
Nobody ever has to ask if Sinead O’Connor was loved. The air is filled with sadness and heartfelt love in equal measures. #SineadOConnorpic.twitter.com/wuAy2VuaSc
“Sinead never stopped her search to know God fully, exemplifying a life marked with a deep communion with God,” Al-Qadri said. “I know that peoples of all faiths throughout the world will be praying for this beloved daughter of Ireland, among them will be countless Muslims praying for their sister in faith and humanity.”
O’Connor shot to fame with her cover of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ in 1990, and went on to become one of the most prolific entertainers of the 1990s. Unafraid of courting controversy, O’Connor infamously tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II during an appearance on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in 1992..
The stunt generated a wave of condemnation from her fellow celebrities, but O’Connor continued speaking out against the Catholic Church and promoting feminist causes.
After a brief spell as a priestess of the breakaway Latin Tridentine Church, O’Connor converted to Islam in 2018. Beset by mental health issues and anguished by the death of her son by suicide last year, O’Connor was found dead in her London home last month. Police did not reveal a cause of death.
As O’Connor’s coffin passed through Bray, speakers played a collection of her most famous work, including her rendition of the traditional Irish ballad ‘The Foggy Dew’. Flags and placards hung outside her house honored the causes that she supported: Palestinian liberation, gay rights, and justice for victims of clerical sex abuse.
“The outpouring of grief and appreciation of the life and work of Sinead O’Connor demonstrates the profound impact which she had on the Irish people,” President Michael D. Higgins said in a statement. “The unique contribution of Sinead involved the experience of a great vulnerability combined with a superb, exceptional level of creativity that she chose to deliver through her voice, her music and her songs.”
From the start, women were at the center of the demonstrations that swept Iran last year. Schoolgirls emerged as an unexpected source of defiant energy. By Azadeh Moaveni One morning this past winter, the students at a girls’ high school in Tehran were told that education officials would arrive that week to inspect their classrooms and […]
Much of this is just media conflating weather with climate, but behind the hype, on a longer scale, the ongoing climate and biosphere collapse is crystal clear
And as concerning as these developments are, scientists have long worried about even more dramatic, looming and irreversible changes to the planet that could happen quickly. Even in the past year, there’s evidence some of these scenarios are becoming more likely.
A paper in the journal Science in 2022 looked at several climate “tipping points” – conditions beyond which changes become self-perpetuating and difficult or impossible to undo. While the concept raised the hackles of some scientists, who suggested it was overly simplistic, the paper suggested even the possibility of such no-going-back points provided compelling reasons to limit warming as much as possible.
The Free 