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.
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.
Retrouvez notre émission spéciale « #Climat: du nord au sud, un monde en batailles » mercredi 21 juin en direct sur Mediapart en partenariat avec ATTAC et 350.org, avec des figures mondiales de la lutte pour le climat.
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
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 5th 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.
The OCSS demands …Stop the counter-insurgency war in Chiapas,
Yesterday, members of the Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra blocked the Coyuca Bridge, located in the Costa Grande region of Guerrero, in solidarity with the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
Members of the Campesino Organization of the Southern Sierra (OCSS, Organización Campesina de la Sierra del Sur), with headquarters in the community of Tepetixtla, municipality of Coyuca de Benítez, in the Costa Grande region, blocked the Coyuca Bridge yesterday in repudiation of the counterinsurgency war that “the Mexican State and its paramilitary groups continue implementing” against support base communities of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) and indigenous peoples and campesinos in the state of Guerrero.”
In a communique, they denounced “the incarceration of Manuel Gómez (EZLN support base) and the attacks perpetrated since last May 27 on the support base community Moisés y Gandhi by the Regional Organization of Ocosingo Coffee Growers (ORCAO), a paramilitary group that operates under cover of the three levels of government with absolute impunity.”
They reproached “the growing influence of organized crime groups in Chiapas and Guerrero; All this, they added, has the same purpose, which is the destruction and weakening of the autonomies that the peoples have built for decades and that has managed to stop the death and violence of the capitalist system that governs the whole world.
They stated: “Compañeros Zapatistas, we raise our voice telling them that you are not alone and that if they touch one, they touch us all,” and they warned that “with the clear example that you give us, we will defend autonomy.”
They announced their intention to continue “defending the water, mountains, jungles, forests, seas and in general, we will continue defending Mother Earth that, as our Comandante Emiliano Zapata said, belongs to the ones who work it and without it there is no life on this planet.”
“Stop the war against the Zapatista communities.”Photo: La Jornada.
“If they touch one, they touch us all”
The OCSS militants also rejected “neoliberal policies, which only dispossess and murder communities that resist destructive policies that want to disappear” the original peoples “of Mexico and the world.”
They said they joined “the call of the National Indigenous Congress and we take up its demands: that the health of compañero Jorge (López Sántiz, Zapatista support base wounded by ORCAO paramilitaries) be guaranteed and that he be given all the necessary attention and for as long as required.
A little over 80 years ago, in 1941, under the leadership of Germany, Europe invaded the Soviet Union. In June 1942, Ukraine was the rear base of a Nazi offensive toward the Caucasus and Volga river, but in January 1943, the annihilation of Friedrich Paulus’ 6. Armee at Stalingrad reversed the tide of WW2. The last Nazi offensive, in July, triggered around Kursk the largest tank battle in history and a new Soviet victory. The Red Army liberated Kiev in November 1943 and seized Berlin in May 1945
French propaganda poster in 1941
Lviv is in western Ukraine the epicenter of a Nazi legacy since WW2. Late 2013, an economic dispute with the European Union led, in western Ukraine and Kiev, to a pro-Europe uprising against the legal government.
With the help of Nazi political organizations from Lviv and likely, foreign provocative gunmen, NATO achieved a rightist coup in February 2014.
Later, Russian-speaking residents of Crimea and Donbass have rose up against the Russophobia of the new authorities, which called them terrorists and cracked down on them with the loyal members of the armed forces and the same Nazi militants, now legalized as paramilitaries.
That was the outbreak of war in Donbass. NATO countries offered their military support to Ukraine from the beginning.
Galvanized, the successive Ukrainian governments did not seriously negotiate and did not implement the Minsk peace agreements. Former German Kanzlerin, Angela Merkel confessed the ‘Minsk deception’ to der Zeit on December 7, 2022 later confirmed by others.
2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to buy Ukraine time. It has used this time to strengthen itself, as can be seen today
Angela Merkel (left) is introduced at the carnival parade in Düsseldorf on March 3, 2014. The character at right is so shabby that he does not deserve to be named (Martin Meissner / AP)
France and Germany were hypocritical when they sponsored an agreement which was supposed to cease fire and bring peace.
Finally on February 24, 2022, Russia started a special military operation, in order to liberate Donbass, demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.
That is the proxy war that NATO was seeking. Why ? In order to preserve a hegemony on the decline if not already an illusion, against Russia, China and most of the wide world, for a new world order against a multipolar one, the US and their European vassals are regarding that war as an opportunity of strategic victory. Their wet dream is to dismember Russia and subdue China
Humor on May 15, 2022 (Liu Rui / Global Times)
Among other symbolic references to Nazism and German army during WW2, the Ukrainian military vehicles are displaying a white cross since September 2022
(Screenshot)
The Balkenkreuz [bar cross] was the common sign on German Panzer on September 1, 1939, when began the invasion of Poland and WW2. The symbol later evolved and remained until 1945
Russia began enforcing an attrition strategy. The operations became a carnage for the Ukrainian forces. While the Ukrainian artillery is firing around 6,000 shells a day all along the front line, the Russian consumption may rise to 50,000, claimed a senior anonymous NATO official.
In view of the Russian air supremacy and tactical, operational and strategic strikes on military targets, despite the massive involvement of Western intelligence, the Ukrainian casualties are obviously far higher
In the suburb of Bakhmut, a Russian T-80 is collaborating with an observer and his drone, is treating a Ukrainian entrenchment at less than 30 m, in order to ease the advance of infantry (screenshot on December 30, 2022)Ukrainian servicemen complain on line about lack of equipment, flight of officers and terrible casualties. These thirty men, one platoon, are the last able-bodied fighters, maybe 25%, within a whole company of the 25th airborne brigade (screenshot on December 12, 2022)As often in Ukraine, here in Kiev on December 30, 2022, women are demonstrating and demanding news or the corpses of their missing relatives, who are likely dead but nobody has informed the families. For propaganda reason, the authorities are hiding the reality of severe military losses. Moreover, no pension is paid for a missing service member
According to a Russian mathematical model, the Ukrainian military fatalities since February 24 are currently above 150,000. On November 30, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed that the death toll was already above 100,000. The fatalities are not restricted to the Ukrainian cannon fodder, Western mercenaries are also killed in the ranks of that Atlanticist army
(by the start of the Great Offensive Ukrainian military deaths have reached over 300,000 -confirmed by RF Kennedy)
Coffins of Polish and US fighters near Kharkov on December 9, 2022 (social networks)
The stronghold of the Atlanticist defense system in the still occupied part of Donbass, Bakhmut, also called Artemovsk, was a hot spot, where the Ukrainian reserves were sacrificed
Situation map around Bakhmut on January 23, 2023 (RYBAR)
In the hope of turning the tide in 2023, Ukraine received Western armored fighting vehicles (AFV), 59 US infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) Bradley, 40 German IFV Marder and 30 French AMX-10 RC, which are not tanks, despite their 105 mm gun, but old armored recce vehicles
Turkish media early January
On January 11, 2023, Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in Lviv, western Ukraine, his counterparts from Lithuania and Poland, Gitanas Nausėda and Andrzej Duda. Together, they decided to reinforce in Ukraine the defense of the so-called Euro-Atlantic coalition.
Poland would transfer a company of German-made Leopard tanks
(Official)
In the wake, the UK announced the delivery of 14 Challenger tanks. But in matter of Leopards, Poland and the other east European good wills needed that Germany allows their export.
On January 19, der Bundestag debated the delivery of Panzer to Ukraine. Member of parliament Peter Bystron, AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany, right-wing), stated
German Panzer against Russia in Ukraine ? By the way, you already tried that with the Melnyks and Banderas [Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian Nazi leader during WW2] and what is the result ? Unspeakable suffering, millions of dead on both sides and in the end, Russian tanks here in Berlin !
(Screenshot)
He added
The conflict in Ukraine cannot be solved with Panzer, only with diplomacy […] Only the US armaments companies benefit from arms deliveries […] The majority of the German people reject arms deliveries to Ukraine. The traffic light government [red-green] should finally start conducting politics in the interests of the German people
A number of parties were opposing the transfer and the decision was postponed. Meanwhile, the Russian regular forces started attacking in the south, are threatening Orekhovsky, 65 km southeast of Ukrainian-occupied Zaporojie, on the left bank of Dnieper river. If confirmed and successful, such an offensive could lead to the destruction of the Atlanticist forces east of the river
Professor Sergey Karaganov’s “Tough-but-necessary decision” article – which claims that by using its nuclear weapons, Russia could save humanity from a global catastrophe – has provoked plenty of reaction domestically.
Some saw it only as the private opinion of a political scientist. Others pointed out that Karaganov is no stranger to high office: he is aligned with the Security Council of the Russian Federation, among other bodies.
Professor Alexey Makarkin, Vice-President of the Center for Political Technologies:
Karaganov’s article about a nuclear strike is completely unsurprising. Last September he did not rule out “the need to use nuclear weapons” and predicted that the US would not sacrifice Boston for Poznan. The signals were clear. There were just two differences.
First, a nuclear strike has been transformed from a possibility into a concrete short-term goal, if the West doesn’t back off – which is what has raised the profile of the news piece. And, secondly, it concludes that the advent of nuclear weapons is the result of a direct intervention of the Almighty, who has decided through fear to keep the world from new wars.
It seems that even the American apologists for the Cold War never thought of such a theological argument.
The text by Karaganov illustrates the desperation to which deadlocked realpolitik can lead us. Three decades ago, a considerable number of Russian Westernizers dreamed of a kind of new Entente ruling the world – with Moscow’s participation, of course. Russia’s modernization at the time was accompanied by an archaic desire to restore “the Russia we lost” – not the real Russian empire, but an imagined and reconstructed version, including elements of the old Soviet superpower.
But there was a consensus among such Westernizers and anti-Western figures that there would be no recognition of an independent role for the “small countries,” which were perceived only as a playground for the great game of the few great powers.
When the Entente failed, a new Yalta was conceived, not to negotiate with our partners but to impose the rules of the game on our opponents. And now Karaganov’s text testifies to its author’s despair at the fact that the Entente has been rejected and the Yalta scheme has not only failed but cannot be achieved by conventional means.
Sergey Poletaev, co-founder and editor of the Vatfor project:
Professor Karaganov suggests that we should stop hesitating and finally strike. Start with Poland and then see how it goes. And after that [the West] will leave us alone and we will live happily ever after.
If they do, that’ll be great. And if not? Then our actions will very quickly lead to the very destruction of humanity that the professor is trying to avoid. That is the first thing.
Second: Our main achievement since the beginning of the military operation in Ukraine is that most of the world has recognized that we are acting within our our rights: Whether openly, like China, or silently or because they, by and large, do not care [about a conflict in Europe].
This is what gives us a chance not just to live but to even develop and prosper in the face of the new normal.
There is no need to put this achievement in danger by starting a nuclear war, especially as we are doing quite well in a conventional conflict so far. The atomic option should still be retained in case of a NATO conventional attack on the Kaliningrad region, Belarus and so on, and we should not hesitate to use them there.
That said, a public nuclear test would be useful. On Novaya Zemlya [an island in the Arctic], with broadcasts and streaming in 5D. The other nuclear powers would probably follow suit, and the rest of the world would be wondering who’s who in this conflict and where it might all lead.
Philosopher Alexander Dugin:
I think this is an extreme proposal. We are far from having exhausted all the possibilities of victory without nuclear weapons, but I certainly understand, as our president has said, that there will be no peace at all without Russia. That has to be taken seriously. But with our current resources, it is irresponsible to talk in advance about a nuclear apocalypse.
People like Karaganov [are curious]: one day they are glorifying Western civilization, in his case for decades, but the next they become extreme Russian patriots. They go full-on in both personas, and they don’t show consistency. We have not exhausted all the possibilities of talking about nuclear weapons, but we must not forget what use would mean. Everyone should understand that it would be the last resort.
The Free 