alanjjohnstone
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If that is so, we can expect the media campaign against Russia to be stepped up even more so. More atrocity stories. More fear-mongering of the Russian threat to other countries. Such as the risk to Ukraine’s nuclear power stations.
Such as this BBC story glorifying a British volunreer
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-62594325I did read that due to the cost of living crisis, those families that host Ukrainian refugees are now regretting the extra expense incurred
But we know that unless it is election time, politicians take scant notice of what ordinary people think such as the present Tory case for tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity for the rest of us.
Still no sign of an organised anti-war, stop the arms, protest movement as we saw in 2003. Sympathy is still with the Ukrainian national defence narrative.
There are more than 1,000 US-style mega-farms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including some holding as many as a million animals.
the UK slaughters 1 billion chickens, 10 million pigs and 2.6 million cattle a year
Not mature enough to decide to have an abortion but old enough to carry and bring up an unwanted child.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/17/florida-pregnant-teenager-abortion-court
George Monbiot casts his eye over freeports
“…this was never about improving our lives. On the contrary, it’s about subordinating our needs to those of favoured capital…”
Anti-vaxxer cults in Zimbabwe
157 children dead from measles
https://www.dw.com/en/zimbabwe-measles-outbreak-leaves-more-than-150-children-dead/a-62829593
George Monbiot critique of livestock farming practices
Arable crops, some of which are fed to farm animals, occupy 12% of the planet’s land surface. But far more land (28%) is used for grazing: in other words, for pasture-fed meat and milk. Yet, across this vast area, farm animals that are entirely pasture-fed produce just 1% of the world’s protein.
In the UK, my estimates suggest that some 4m hectares of hill and mountain are used for sheep farming. Almost all this land, much of which would otherwise support temperate rainforest, is treeless, as tree seedlings are highly nutritious and selectively eaten by sheep. There are more trees for each hectare in some parts of inner London than there are in the “wild” British hills where sheep graze. The remaining vegetation is badly degraded.
Four million hectares is 22% of the entire farmed area. It’s roughly equivalent to all the land used to grow grain in this country , and 23 times the area used for growing fruit and vegetables. But, in terms of calories, lamb and mutton supply just over 1% of the UK’s food.
China will discourage abortions as part of efforts to boost its low birth rates,
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-discourage-abortions-boost-low-birth-rate-2022-08-16/
Israel originally blamed the deaths of civilians on Jihad missiles falling short which was widely reported in the media.
Now the truth has emerged.
An army inquiry into the August 7 attack concluded the five children were killed by an Israeli air attack.
Not as widely reported
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/16/israel-behind-gaza-strike-that-killed-children-report
TM, to add to your woes and worries, a study published in the journal Nature Food projects that a full-scale nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia would spark a catastrophic global famine, with potentially as many as five billion people dying of starvation in the years immediately after the war
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-nuclear-war-global-famine-billions.html
It is called the Inflation Reduction Act.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded this month that the changes would have a “negligible” impact on inflation this year and next. And the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model concluded that, over the next decade, “the impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
China’s decision to fire missiles over Taiwan must be contested, a top US military commander has said.
Also it may originate from Engels Peasant Wars
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/peasant-war-germany/ch06.htm#6.1
“The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply… In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost…”
Afro-Colombians helped install a new government in Bogotá. Will it address their needs?
Still it is nothing on the scale that the alleged anti-semitism of Corbyn and the Labour Party faced from the media.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/15/liz-truss-woke-jew-jewish-community
Cats and the bird holocaust
Apologies for my continued criticism of pet ownership
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kill-birds-wildlife-keep-indoors
Researchers estimate this is about 23% of their actual kills, which makes it about 22 kills a year. Multiplied by the number of pet cats, it is clearly a huge number of lives lost. If you compare this with the collective population of native wild predators such as stoats and pine martens, Pirie says, cats “outnumber them something like fivefold”.
A large 2019 study found that the number of garden birds killed by cats in France and Belgium has increased by more than 50% in 15 years,
The article does present counter-evidence that cats kill only the weak and sick birdlife.
