alanjjohnstone
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Pro-life?
Every year, an estimated 23 million miscarriages occur worldwide. Around 10% of women have lost a baby, with the risk being a lot higher for Black women.
‘You have to lose 3 babies before they speak to you’
https://www.dw.com/en/miscarriage-you-have-to-lose-3-babies-before-they-speak-to-you/a-57398921
Lion breeding is relatively common in the country, with many of the animals later being killed of by trophy hunters.
The South African government announced it would take steps to ban the breeding of lions in captivity. A ban on captive lion breeding would ensure “tourists will not be hunting animals that were taken out of the cage.”
There are an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 lions held in captivity by some 350 farms, according to conservationist groups. Some 3,500 lions live in the wild in South Africa.
https://www.dw.com/en/south-africa-to-crack-down-on-domestic-breeding-of-lions/a-57405928
An article calling for abstention.
To demonstrate their rejection of the status quo, they can just cast invalid ballots that read “neither Fatah, nor Hamas”, “no to a pathetic political regime”, “no to corruption”, or “no to division”. With such no-confidence votes, opposition voices can consolidate in an act of resistance to expose ruling authorities and parties and send a clear message…If a significant number decide to vote “no” to the status quo and cast invalid ballots as a statement of their unequivocal rejection of the current regime, we would arrive at a critical juncture in Palestinian politics.
China is challenging the world order, acting “more repressively” at home and “more aggressively” overseas as it tests its growing influence, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said. “That is a fact,” Blinken said.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/3/us-top-diplomat-china-acting-more-repressively-aggressively
China is “the one country in the world that has the military, economic, diplomatic capacity to undermine or challenge the rules-based order that we care so much about and are determined to defend. Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down; it is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.”
Uh-huh…the USA just want a level playing field and play the game and nothing to do with economic or political domination of spheres of influence. Who is he fooling?
We’ve been here before …power struggles between super-states
While many in developed countries protest lockdowns and restrictions and mask-wearing citing their fictitious civil rights violations, in other countries the government rules are life and death matters and draconian imposition of state-control.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/2/mounting-desperation-in-cambodia-amid-covid-lockdown
And, needless to say, they will close to be last in line for the vaccine long after those young and healthy and least at risk demonstrators have had their jabs.
If they want to be seen on the streets, then let it be to demand the end of patents which is killing patients.
Ironic isn’t it?
The UK accuses Iran of “torture” of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe for using her in “a cat-and-mouse game” for diplomatic leverage.
Yet the treatment of the continual imprisonment of Julian Assange to please the USA is British justice in action.
When the left and the right unite.
We have the Democratic Party progressives describing Biden as moving more towards socialism.
We have the Republican right-wingers describing Biden as moving more towards socialism
I have to confess my ignorance.
I never once heard of Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator for West Virginia, before Biden’s election and who now with his one vote is thwarting the will of the President and rest of the Democratic Party.
He is hardly out of the news these days
Brasil’s experiment with UBI
42,000 That’s the number of people in the Brazilian town of Marica receiving mumbucas – a virtual currency created by the oil-wealthy seaside town prior to the pandemic as a form of universal basic income (UBI).
Pakistan’s neglected solar power potential
https://www.dw.com/en/why-doesnt-pakistan-tap-its-solar-power-potential/a-57392297
Hassan Abbas, an environmentalist, told DW that Pakistan could conceivably generate more than 2,900 gigawatts of solar power capacity. For reference, 1 gigawatt could power 110 million LED lights, according to the US Department of Energy.
“There are influential bureaucrats, policymakers and hydropower lobbies that are against solar energy,” said Abbas.
Ghazala Reza, a Pakistani energy expert, told DW, “Lack of political will and reluctance of government investment dash the hopes of generating electricity through this sustainable method,”
The propaganda war
Falun Gong, Epoch Times and anti-China campaignFrom bad to worse
In the organisation’s worst-case scenario, 48.2 percent of Myanmar’s population, the equivalent of about 26 million people, could be living in poverty by 2022, compared with 24.8 percent in 2017, the UNDP said.
Total global spending on COVID-19 vaccines is projected to reach $157 billion by 2025
Now we know why they are protecting their patents so strongly.
Biden’s tax rises ineffectual
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-capital-gains-tax-wealthy/
Wealthy Americans will avoid paying 90% of the estimated $1 trillion increase in investment taxes that President Joe Biden is proposing this week, according to new study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School.
“We don’t think that the proposal has a lot of teeth,” said John Ricco, director of policy analysis at the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a non-partisan fiscal policy research group at the business school.
Wharton’s researchers, however, believe that once an increase in the capital gains rate is passed, wealthy Americans would simply avoid selling stocks and other investments. The wealthy could also minimize their taxes by paring gains in years when they have losses elsewhere in their portfolio, effectively lowering their taxable net gains for the year. Another strategy could be to sell off investments slowly over time to minimize the amount of tax owed in any one year.
“Capital gains is a discretionary tax,” Ricco said. “It is not like taxes you pay on income. You get to decide when you sell your investments, and therefore when you pay taxes or not.”
Penn Wharton researchers concluded that wealthy Americans would end up paying only an additional $113 billion in taxes over the next decade. Penn Wharton concluded that Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax, which the richest Americans would pay every year on all of their assets no matter whether they sold their investments or not, would generate $3 trillion in new tax revenue over the next decade.
Mark Curtis exposes the Guardian’s hypocrisy and double-standards
