Pages: << 1 ... 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 ... 1327 >>
Eric Zuesse
The chief reason why the USA is no longer a democracy (if it ever was) is that its mega-criminals have impunity, just like kings and other dictators in countries that make little pretense to being a ‘democracy.’
Any country where someone stands above the law is a dictatorship, by those people, against the public — against everyone who is punishable by that nation’s executive, legal, and judicial, process, if they violate that country’s laws.
Any country where there are two classes of people, one class who are above the law, and another class who are subject to the law, is, by definition, a dictatorship, by the former group, over and against the latter mass. That’s what a dictatorship is — that’s what it consists of: an aristocracy and its agents, on the one hand; and the public on the other.
Oil Spill Response Plans Worldwide Heading For A Sea Change
SOTN Editor’s Note:
The following article represents the greatest hope for the world’s future where it concerns truly safe and non-toxic, cost-effective and successful oil spill response. It is a touching story about a brilliant teenager who wanted to make a difference. And, boy, what a difference she has made already!
As you will soon read, Alana Tessman has accomplished in just a couple of months what oil spill remediation companies, research institutions, large universities and environmental groups have yet to achieve. She designed an exceptionally sound and efficacious protocol for cleaning up the wildlife that inevitably suffers in the wake of any oil spill.
There are several takeaways from this quite moving account. However, one question emerges above all others: Why hasn’t the Unified Command for the Refugio oil spill response been using these protocols during the past two months of cleanup? We also wonder why environmental groups have not been trumpeting this “enviro success story of the millennium”, especially where it concerns oil spills in U.S territorial waters.
Clearly, every health advocacy group and environmental activist organization — in the world — would want to be aware of the simple process and inexpensive procedure that Alana has formulated for saving any animals from the ravages of an oil spill. Perhaps it’s time for the adults to sit and listen to the youth. Otherwise, the planet, and the life-giving biosphere, will continue to degenerate beyond a point of no return.
13 Year Old Scientist Shows the Experts How Bioremediation Can Clean Up Oil Spills and Save Wildlife
Alana Tessman collaborates with the Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization (LAEO) to formulate an effective and nontoxic oil spill response plan for oiled birds and marine life.
By Diane Wagenbrenner
Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization
Montrose, CA (SOTN) — Alana Tessman of the Kern River Valley is no stranger to oil spills. Alana lived in New Orleans during the BP Gulf oil spill disaster and saw first hand the devastating effects the oil had on the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), the marine life, as well as the surrounding communities. For the past two years she has been doing something about it.
Dr. Glen Barry
The global environment collapses as in the pursuit of short-term growth, humanity overruns natural ecosystems including the atmosphere that make Earth habitable. Together we urgently address inequity, climate change, overpopulation and natural ecosystem loss or alone we each face the horrors of economic, social, and ecological collapse.
"Horrendous inequity whereby 200 people possess half of Earth’s wealth as more than one billion live on less than $1.50/day is evil incarnate and will kill us all.” – Dr. Glen Barry
Newspapers are full of disastrous warnings if economic growth does not return to Greece, or if it drops a couple points in China. Rarely in human history have so many been so fundamentally wrong about a matter of such importance as the desirability, and even the possibility, of perpetual economic growth. The real threat to human well-being is not that there is too little economic growth. Rather, it is that there is too much, and that we have overshot how much growth can occur without collapsing our shared environment.
by Stephen Lendman
Israel is a fascist police state - a racist apartheid one run by criminals masquerading as democrats.
Netanyahu is a world class thug - exceeding the worst of Sharonian evil. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy once admitted he "can't stand him." Obama replied to his comment saying "I have to deal with him every day."
He's adamant against Palestinian statehood. He once called the peace process a waste of time. He wants continued conflict and instability.
Peace defeats his agenda. It includes brutalizing Palestinian children - some too young to understand what's happening and why.
Israel criminalizes Muslims for praying to the wrong God the way Nazis persecuted Jews. Instead of death camps, its policy is slow-motion genocide - unrelenting, ongoing for decades.
The late Edward Said called Palestine an isolated prison, an entire population suffocated for not being Jewish - impoverished, starved and slaughtered with impunity, a wasteland of human misery through an endless "cycle of violence (and) slow death."
Eric Zuesse
The plunging economy of Ukraine has evidently become so bad that Ukrainians now can even feel safe to call publicly for stopping the war against the separatist Donbass region of the country, and for reallocationg those military expenditures so that Ukrainians in the non-rebelling part of the country won’t starve to death.
On July 23rd, Dmitriy Gordon, a leading Ukrainian journalist, is thus, for the first time, publicly urging that the separatist region, Donbass (consisting of the Donetsk and Luhansk districts), be officially acknowledged to be no longer part of Ukraine. He says that "It is better to dissociate Ukraine from the occupied territories of Donbass, to spend that money on housing and financial aid for immigrants [refugees from Donbass] than to keep the people [the vast majority of residents in Donbass] who hate Ukraine [though they actually didn’t hate Ukraine until Ukraine’s government was violently overthrown in February 2014 and the new government bombed them for not accepting that new government]. … I will tell an unfashionable view. Many people think it, but not everyone will dare to say it out loud. Ukraine does not need Donbass. It shackles the country. … It is like a lizard that lays aside its tail. … We need to get away from Donbass, and move into Europe without this tail.”
by Stephen Lendman
Its Shanghai-based New Development Bank (NDB) represents the beginning of a significant challenge to predatory Western financial institutions - the IMF, World Bank and other loan shark lenders of last resort.
The IMF was established to stabilize exchange rates linked to the dollar and bridge temporary payment imbalances. The World Bank's mandate was to provide credit to war-torn developing countries. Both bodies proved hugely exploitive - using debt entrapment to transfer public wealth to Western bankers and other major creditors.
by Stephen Lendman
In 2011, corporate shill Christine Lagarde replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn as IMF managing director - forced from office by spurious rape charges later dropped.
He was targeted for being France's most popular potential left wing presidential candidate (he still is) and for supporting more responsible IMF policies - ones monied interests don't tolerate.
Lagarde straightaway showed why she was selected - supporting harsh austerity measures bankers demand, including debt entrapment, predatory capital rules and social injustice. In an open letter "To my German Friends," Strauss-Kahn called Troika Greek bailout terms "profoundly damaging…a "crippling situation."
by Stephen Lendman
Post-9/11 repressive laws transformed America into a police state. US prisons already overflow with political and other unjustly incarcerated victims.
It's a short leap to filling concentration camps with dissidents - anyone publicly opposing America run by monied interests and warlords, governed lawlessly, waging endless wars of aggression abroad, persecuting its own people, leaving anyone potentially vulnerable to abuse.
FEMA detention camps were established years ago. Perhaps many more are planned. They're used to incarcerate undocumented immigrants before deportations to countries of origin. In 2002, Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft called for Americans designated "enemy combatants" to be detained indefinitely - extrajudicially, uncharged and untried unless ordered otherwise.
by Stephen Lendman
US streets in minority communities are battlegrounds. The good news is more police killings make headlines though nowhere near as many warranted. Justifiable public anger is noticeably more visible.
The bad news is cops in America kill innocent (mostly Black) victims hundreds of times annually with impunity.
Activist police brutality critic Sandra Bland was lawlessly arrested after being stopped for a dubious traffic violation. Waller County, TX police lied claiming she assaulted arresting state trooper Brian Encinia. Video evidence showed him harassing, threatening and abusing her. He opened her car door, aggressively demanded she "(s)tep out of the car." She justifiably hesitated saying "(y)ou do not have the right to do that. Don't touch me. I'm not under arrest."
Encinia threatened her with his taser, saying "(g)et out of the car. I will light you up. Get out. Now. Get out of the car." Bland was pinned to the ground, assaulted, handcuffed, arrested and jailed. She was found hanged to death in her cell.
By David Swanson
Jon Stewart interviewed President Obama for the last time and told jokes instead of asking questions.
If Stewart retires, where will we find someone willing to let Obama spew nonsense at such length unchallenged?
I discussed Obama's interview on RT on Wednesday, and someone asked me to post the Youtube, but RT has to do that, not me. So here's the gist of what I think.
Stewart said to Obama: you've tried bombing and overthrowing leaders and arming rebels and ... what's that new thing ... oh yeah, diplomacy.
<< 1 ... 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 ... 1327 >>