Links August 2014

Environmental news:
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Humanity-May-Face-Choice-By-2040-Conventional-Energy-or-Drinking-Water.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-07-worldwide-shortage.html
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/cant-sue-ucc-for-bhopal-plant-contamination-rules-us-court/
http://www.asianage.com/columnists/fine-print-food-wars-538
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/gardening-augmentation-complexity-intensity-field-intelligent-life.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329802.900-local-people-preserve-the-environment-better-than-governments.html
http://cumberlink.com/news/local/communities/carlisle/department-of-agriculture-cracks-down-on-seed-libraries/article_8b0323f4-18f6-11e4-b4c1-0019bb2963f4.html
http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2014/farmers-environmental-groups-defend-moratorium-of-gmo-crops-on-hawai-i-s-big-island
http://globalnews.ca/news/1490361/tailings-pond-breach-at-mount-polley-mine-near-likely-bc/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/03/toledo-state-emergency-emptied-bottled-water

Economic (economical) news:
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/07/25/putin-and-brics-form-seed-crystal-of-a-new-international-monetary-pole/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/07/argentina-deadline-day-punishment-rejecting-neoliberal-consensus-nearly-complete.html
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/land-grabs-economists-justifications-agricultural-expropriation.html
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/08/analysis-ten-reasons-for-saying-no-to-the-north-over-trade/

Technology news:
http://rt.com/usa/175088-apple-backdoor-ios-hope/
https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/new-technology-renews-old-fears-manipulation-and-control
http://technosociology.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Zeynep-Computational-Politics-and-Engineering-the-Public.pdf

Imperial News:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-holds-the-world-record-of-killings-innocent-civilians/5393789
http://news.yahoo.com/san-francisco-million-dollar-home-sales-hit-record-165605530.html
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/capitalism-and-slavery-an-interview-with-greg-grandin/

Imperial Conquest news:
http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/08/05/corporate-media-profit-israeli-genocide/
http://rt.com/news/177716-us-israel-funding-aggression/
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n16/nathan-thrall/hamass-chances
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/08/idf-sniper-admits-instagram-murdering-13-gaza-children-2/
http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_03_08_2014.pdf
http://www.globalresearch.ca/wiping-out-the-christians-of-syria-and-iraq-to-remap-the-mid-east-prerequisite-to-a-clash-of-civilizations/5394075
http://www.aina.org/news/20140801081012.htm
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/libya-militias-oil-gas-hifter-us-un-uk.html
http://www.aina.org/news/20140729115702.htm
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80956452/
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/25/nsas-new-partner-spying-saudi-arabias-brutal-state-police/
http://www.aina.org/news/20140801120000.htm
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/obama-summons-africa-washington-talk-trade-and-how-cut-out-china
http://www.globalresearch.ca/deleted-bbc-report-ukrainian-fighter-jet-shot-down-mhi7-donetsk-eyewitnesses/5393631
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/27/blaming-russia-as-flat-fact/
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/30/the-media-ignores-the-cia-in-ukraine/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/german-pilot-speaks-out-shocking-analysis-of-the-shooting-down-of-malaysian-mh17/5394111
http://www.globalresearch.ca/support-mh17-truth-osce-monitors-identify-shrapnel-like-holes-indicating-shelling-no-firm-evidence-of-a-missile-attack/5394324
It would not be surprising, if MH17 was shot down because it was mistaken for Putin’s plane.
http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/07/31/natos-global-offensive/
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2014/08/04/aboriginal-title-in-tsilhqotin-a-radical-reading/ I put this into the category Imperial Conquest news because that is what it is.

Armageddon news:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/27/us-doctor-liberia-tests-positive-ebola
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-health-ebola-idUSKBN0FZ2P120140731
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/soldiers-sierra-leone-liberia-ebola
http://rt.com/news/178280-sierra-leone-ebola-outbreak/ The death toll of the ebola epidemic is fast approaching 900.


The link collection is this month more complete than in July, therefore I keep the accompanying text shorter.

The usual rant

It is still amazing, how well controlled and synchronized Western media are. The genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is mentioned (and of course described as justified Israeli self-defense), while Syria, with even higher casualties, is hardly covered. Iraq was in the news for a few days, while Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan seldom share the headlines.

1,600 Afghans were killed by fighting this year alone and for the first time since Vietnam, a US Army general (Major General Harold J. Greene) died in an overseas conflict when an Afghan soldier opened fire on senior American officers at a military training academy.

In the Ukraine, the number of refugees reached 900,000. 700,00 have fled to Russia, some 200,000 are internally displaced.

The terror group IS (Islamic State) is rarely mentioned and the few reports usually underrate numbers and armament. According to Western media the group has between 6,000 and 9.000 members, which is ridiculous considering the vast areas IS controls and the massive military operations is conducts on several fronts at the same time. A more realistic estimation would be 16,000 to 20,000 members.

The huge sums IS is able to spend for equipment and fighters are explained by their criminal activities of extortion and looting, which is ridiculous as well.

Extortion, ransom, jizya tax, looting (Mosul’s central bank), smuggling, and the income from captured oil wells in Syria and Iraq are for sure part of the income but cannot explain the extraordinary big budget of this group. Private donations from the Gulf, especially from Saudi and Kuwaiti citizens are suggested to make up the difference, but both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait carefully monitor their financial sector and can easily prevent any unwanted transfers.

Who will write the sequel to Steve Coll’s book Ghost Wars? 

Everything that is written about IS seems to be disinformation and cover-up. Western journalists know, that IS is huge and that it is in essence a covert US-operation, so they do anything to obscure and blur the facts and confuse their readers.

Not every Western media worker (formerly called journalist) is an evil and cynical opportunist, but the people in the higher echelons of the media corporations for sure are. The younger and unexperienced media workers may be as confused and clueless as their readers or simply desperate to keep their job.

The young journalists and most of their readers are the generation that was raised in front of the TV. This generation grew up embedded into the mickey mouse world of the children’s channel and it advanced to the mickey mouse world of smartphone apps, of Twitter and Facebook.

Young people are used to fast switching from one issue to another, they are used to multitasking, they feel at home in our artificial consumer-oriented and corporate-controlled environment, yet their attention span is minuscule and the understanding of complex issues limited. People are specialized and often very knowledgable in one area but unable to see the whole picture and understand the innumerable interconnections.

Reports from cat land and else

Linda, the youngest member of the family, is the pure joy. She already joined a walk with the cat family in the forest and it seems, that Gandhi Jr. Is becoming her close friend — odd, because initially he was utterly terrified by her appearance. All the other cats are also slowly warming up or at least getting used to her.

Unfortunately, just before I wrote these lines, Linda jumped down from a cupboard and is now limping, her left hind leg seems to be injured. I first even suspected, that she had damaged her spine and was deeply worried. I felt a lump in my throat and my heart was pounding.

Well, its only a little cat.

But she is my dear friend. She purrs into my ears when I fall asleep.

How would I cope with her sudden, unexpected death?

When my mother died I cried a whole day. I was 14 then. When my father died, I cried a few short times, but I was deeply hurt. He regularly appeared in my dreams for many decades and I always had in my mind a very strange sentence which one day arose from nowhere and whose meaning I couldn’t explain for a long time. The sentence was: ”And I still cannot move the stone from my fathers house.”

I don’t know if I could cope with the terror of life in a war zone. Maybe I simply would become insane or drop dead, killed by fear and grief.

The terror of war cannot be easily put into words, though some great authors did a fairly good job. Erich Maria Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front. Ernest Hemmingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms. Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle. Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead. Joseph Heller: Catch-22. Dalton Trumbo: Johnny Got His Gun. Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace.

Considering the work of these giants I cannot contribute anything significant what dramatically shows the insanity of war and makes clear the absolute necessity to achieve peace. But I can join the choir of activists and hope, that our singing will be heard among all the deadly noise from machines and guns.

Before I forget:

Giving love, promoting peace, that is the eminent task of our life.

Nothing else needs to be said.