alanjjohnstone
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/17/scotland-norway-denmark-independent
‘Scotland 2070’ is a glowing prediction of an independent Scotland, rich beyond your dreams. Scotland as Scandinavia
With the Arctic melting and the new east-west sea route that will open up off the northern coasts of Russia, shortening the traditional voyage via Suez between Yokohama and Rotterdam by nearly 5,000 nautical miles.
Orkney’s Scapa Flow could be filled again with shipping as “a container port and transit facility to rival Singapore”
“Within 25 years,” they write, “Scotland will be on the doorstep of a major new global trading passage and a new economic region in the Arctic.”
5bn new trees;
new farming techniques that reduce the atmosphere’s carbon content; exporting renewable energy and technology;
transforming Scottish industry by doubling university spending on research and development.Scotland is portrayed as successful and progressive as Denmark.
Strange when it comes to comparisons, no mention that Denmark was a participant in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and that today anti-immigration policies are being evoked.
Once it was the Celtic Tiger of Dublin, the nationalists wanted to emulate. Now it is the Viking Capitalism
The IMF maintains its sanctions policy against Venezuela
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/4/16/venezuela-shunned-out-of-5b-handout-in-imfs-new-reserves
89 yr old Raul Castro said Friday he is retiring as head of Cuba’s Communist Party, with the sense of having “fulfilled his mission and confident in the future of the fatherland.”
He previously indicated that he favors yielding control to 60-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, who succeeded him as president in 2018 and is the standard bearer of a younger generation of loyalists who have been pushing an economic opening without touching Cuba’s one-party system.
Don’t expect any change from the USA
The media has finally caught up with us on the forum and is now reporting on Biden’s reluctance to amend Trump’s immigration cap.
France passed a security bill to extend police powers
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/15/france-passes-bill-giving-more-powers-to-police
No change
Biden expressed support for a seven-month extension of a Trump-era policy imposing harsher sentences on people caught with synthetic painkillers containing fentanyl.
Grant Smith, deputy director of the Office of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement emphasizing the need to learn from past mistakes:
“we’ve seen how this story plays out, specifically with crack cocaine in the 1980s. Law enforcement-driven, media-perpetuated hysteria results in severe mandatory minimum sentences and extreme racial disparities.”A reminder of the fate that awaits Julian Assange if the extradition goes through.
Assange’s judge agreed with the U.S. on every point that criminalizes journalism.
An interesting article on the USA attempts to encircle China with the pursuit of Vietnam as a potential military partner against China
No change
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/14/biden-administration-to-proceed-with-23b-arms-sales-to-uae
Biden has told Congress it is proceeding with more than $23bn in weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates, including advanced F-35 aircraft, armed drones and other equipment
66 global health, development, and humanitarian groups urged Biden to establish a global vaccine manufacturing program to end the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and prepare for future ones.
https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/Manufacturing-letter-to-Biden.pdf
i’m not optimistic
You can’t take your eye off the ball for a moment
Russia’s defense minister said that the country’s military buildup in the west was part of readiness drills amid threats from NATO. Sergei Shoigu said the maneuvers in western Russia that have worried neighboring Ukraine and brought warnings from NATO would last for another two weeks. Shoigu said the ongoing exercise was a response to what he claimed were continuous efforts by the United States and its NATO allies to beef up their forces near Russia’s borders.
Two U.S. warships would sail to the Black Sea on April 14 and April 15 and stay there until May 4 and May 5. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov denounced the deployment as “openly provocative,”
“They are testing our strength and playing on our nerves,” Ryabkov said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies. “Seeing itself as the Queen of the Seas, the U.S. should realize that the risks of various incidents are very high. We warn the U.S. that it should stay away from Crimea and our Black Sea coast for their own benefit.”
No change
Despite pledges to raise the cap on the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the United States Biden is on track to accept the smallest number of refugees of any administration in American history, a new report by the International Rescue Committee says.
“There has now been an unexplained and unjustified eight-week delay in issuing the revised refugee admissions policy,” IRC said. “As a result, tens of thousands of already-cleared refugees remain barred from resettlement and over 700 resettlement flights have been cancelled, leaving vulnerable refugees in uncertain limbo.”
The delay, IRC said, is “unjustified”
An illuminating essay on the job of the knacker
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/13/the-knacker-the-toughest-job-in-british-farming
“I don’t have a problem killing an animal in distress,” Carswell said, as he drove off. “I really don’t. The quicker it’s done, the better. I don’t want to see things in pain. The times I have a problem, it’s killing healthy animals.
The western USA faces a record breaking drought.
https://countercurrents.org/2021/04/worst-drought-in-modern-history-may-hit-western-u-s/
Shall we expect an exodus of climate refugees, a famine of biblical proportions with starving Americans. Nope
What we can expect is government subsidies to profit-greedy agricultural corporations to continue to grow water-greedy produce in conditions where such farming should never have started.
