The contents of your fridge and dining table directly impacts the future of rare rainforest and ocean animals. That’s because industrial agriculture and aquaculture for commodities like meat, dairy, fish and palm oil is driving animals in the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet closer towards extinction.
However, reducing the biodiversity footprint of global food consumption requires more than just consumer intervention. It requires immediate and widespread action from government policy-makers and law-makers as well, writes Ecologist Dr Quentin Read of North Carolina State University for 360info
Why vote? Look at the person you are thinking of voting for, what makes them not look sound, or feel like any politician you’ve ever seen strutting and lying on our TV screens?
What makes them so excel in virtues you don’t have that you should hand your power and autonomy over to them?
Would you hand the contents of your home so easily over to a burglar, or your family without a murmur to a kidnapper? Of course not! That would be ridiculous, yet it’s the same principle they don’t want us to see in the carnival of election time.
The idea that we willingly handover all agency over our neighbourhoods, our welfare and our futures to professionals who excel in some of the worst human arts of manipulation, deceit, lies and corruption is the stuff of nightmares and dark graphic novels. That they want to have power in the first place should be clue enough.
For all the lies that pervade election times, perhaps the biggest is that the ballot box makes us equal, that Rishi with his million-pound swimming pool and the shop worker with a paddling pool have the same rights and responsibilities as each other. Except that what we give Starmer or Rishi is theirs to loot for the duration, while we wait for our right to place an X in five years-time on another piece of paper.
And how precious that X is made to feel given that you probably only have 10 of them to use in your lifetime. 10 moments of feeling equal is your lifetime ration of influence or participation.
In the process, its dull familiarity creates the attitude in most of us summed up as “I don’t believe in politics” or “what has politics got to do with me?” And that is exactly what they want us to feel. Distanced and docile.
However, always pushing back against this is our innate humanity and our struggle for a dignified existence. Our own lives are social, economic, and emotional all of which combine to make our existence deeply political.
We care massively about our friends, our loved ones, our neighbourhoods and environment, our welfare, and our futures.
On a day-to-day level we demonstrate this actively with our colleagues, communities, and the kinds of social family we consciously choose to construct.
We come together all the time in free, and yes, political association.
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – May 31, 2024 The West has misinterpreted Russia’s openness to dialogue on Ukraine as a sign of weakness and is now pushing the world to the edge of a disastrous all-out nuclear exchange, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik. US President Joe Biden has authorized […]
After the US and Brits massacred up to 58 Yemenis for opposing their Genocide the ‘Houthi Heroes’ finally hit the USS Eisenhower parked in the Red Seawith what may have been a Hypersonic Missile
(Illustration)The US aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (File photo)
Yemen’s military spokesman says the country’s armed forces have targeted US aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea in response to deadly overnight attacks by America on the Arab country.
“The missile force and the naval force of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a joint military operation targeting the American aircraft carrier ‘Eisenhower’ in the Red Sea,” said Yahya Saree in a televised statement.
“The operation was carried out with a number of winged and ballistic missiles, the hit was accurate and direct, thanks to Allah,” he added.
Saree said this was a response to aerial strikes by the US and UK on several targets across the Arab country, which he said targeted civilians in a “blatant violation of all international laws and a full-fledged war crime.”
The American and British warplanes attacked the Yemeni capital Sana’a as well as the governorates of Hodeidah and Taiz.
Yemeni officials say the attacks on Hodeidah targeted the Radio building and the Coast Guard facility and several commercial ships, killing at least 16 people and injuring 41 others.
The Yemeni spokesman vowed the country will not hesitate to respond directly to every new aggression on Yemeni territories, and that it will target all hostile American and British targets in the Red and Arabian seas.
The Yemeni Armed Forces have staged numerous pro-Palestinian strikes since October 7, when the Israeli regime began the Gaza war.
American and British warships have been carrying out attacks against the Arab Peninsula nation to force Yemen to stop its operations against Israeli vessels or those heading towards the ports lying in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Yemen has responded to those strikes by launching attacks on American and British assets in the Red Sea and other waters near Yemen.
On Thursday, Yemeni leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi vowed Yemeni forces will continue their military operations and escalate them “in quality and quantity” in support of Palestinians.
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The pier took two months and $350m to build, lasted 12 days, and delivered less than 60 trucks’ worth of food (most of which was stolen after it reached Gaza) before it broke and had to be towed away for repairs.
Starvation in Gaza as Israel closes Egypt border and paltry US aid project founders
Think through the process: ships provide a mass delivery mechanism for cargo and the draft of a ship prevents it from getting close to shore hence the need for pier structures for off-loading and the US spends a third of of billion dollars for a temporary structure to facilitate the off-loading.
Weather conditions and sea states are not a mystery and for those keen enough to observe, the facilitators of this disaster had access to all the historical data to know what to do and whether to proceed ahead with the project.
Four U.S. ships supporting the temporary floating pier built by the U.S. military to provide aid to Gaza were damaged in the storm, leaving their moorings, two of which ran aground off the coast of Ashkelon, Israel. Part of the structure of the pier was washed away by wind and waves and drifted into the sea.
And, remember, this is the same US foreign policy that provides military aid, even now, that necessitated the need for the temporary pier in the first place.
This debacle is a demonstration project of the American experience in the Middle East.
Two indictments drafted separately by Turkish prosecutors seek prison sentences of up to 13-and-a-half years for each of 42 people arrested for defying an unconstutional government ban on May Day demonstrations in central İstanbul, the Birgün daily reported.
The crackdown on leftist groups continues following the May Day events.5
Turkish police officers detain a protester as he and others try to march to Taksim Square in the Mecidiyekoy district during a rally to mark International Workers’ Day in İstanbul. (Photo by KEMAL ASLAN / AFP)
Some 200 demonstrators who tried to march from İstanbul’s Saraçhane neighborhood to Taksim Square, which has symbolic importance, to mark International Workers’ Day were detained on May 1.
Demonstrators were also taken into custody in the following days on accusations that they resisted law enforcement to make their way to Taksim.
There are 30 defendants in the first indictment drafted by the İstanbul’s Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, while the second indictment directs charges at 12 other demonstrators.
The proposed prison sentences for the 42 demonstrators currently in pretrial detention is a total of 567 years. They face multiple charges including violating the law on assemblies and demonstrations, resisting a public officer, intentionally causing injury and vandalism.
Dozens detained in İstanbul raids targeting leftist groups following May Day
There are currently 74 May Day protestors in pretrial detention. In the latest wave of detentions following house raids on May 21, 27 of them were detained and subsequently arrested.
The Interior Ministry and the İstanbul Governor’s Office announced before May Day that no demonstrations would be allowed in Taksim due to security concerns, sparking a backlash from opposition parties, labor unions and civil society groups who said the ban was “unconstitutional.”
The government ban on demonstrations in Taksim Square contravenes a Constitutional Court decision last year that found violations of the right to free assembly in the controversial ban.
The symbolic importance of Taksim Square stems from the killing of 34 people by unknown assailants on May Day in 1977. The area has become a subject of tension and confrontation between the government and labor unions in the days leading up to May Day since 2013.
Until 2009, Taksim was off limits to demonstrators following Bloody May Day in 1977. About three decades after the incident, under tight security, Taksim Square became the venue of peaceful demonstrations aside from a few minor incidents in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The area was closed to demonstrations again in 2013 .
The Free 