15.05.2019

Links May 2019

This world is full of mysteries and there is so much we don’t know or are unable to understand. Astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson once said: “The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” So, be careful with your assessments and be aware, that truth is what you at this moment believe to be the case or what appears to have happened. Even when the evidence is clear and all data point to one outcome, “it ain’t necessarily so” — and life may have the most surprising twist and turns in store.

It rained. Beautiful, live giving rain. It is cold and uncomfortably wet outside, time to sit down and write a few notions or sing a little, innocent song. Like this one:

Imagine, there’s a state of mind
Where troubles are all left behind
Where one is easy, calm, and kind
Eager to listen, search, and find

Where all is true, nothing’s concealed
And plains are not a battlefield
Where crimes of war have been revealed
No hate, no open wounds, unhealed

No plans of war to be enacted
And calls for peace are not rejected
Sages and saints will be elected
The weak and poor not be neglected

Ditching old habits can be tough
We don’t need more, we have enough
Bright beauty of the stars above
The final, sacred word is: Love
We live in the era of post-truth, a reality confirmed again by mainstream media coverage of the latest events in Venezuela. No meticulous and accurate situation reports, no weighing of evidence, no honest and astute analysis. Instead round the clock fact free propaganda.

Juan Guaido called it the moment for Venezuelans to reclaim their democracy once and for all. But as the hours dragged on, he stood alone on a highway overpass with his friend Leopoldo Lopez (leader of the right-wing Voluntad Popular party) and the same small cadre of 25 military defectors. No other soldiers and no civilians had joint them.

As Guaido’s “Operation Liberty” fizzled, months of insistence, that the people of Venezuela stood with him basically went up in smoke.

The Miami Herald nevertheless insisted, that the “military rebellion” in Venezuela “can be called many things. But don’t call it a coup attempt.”

CBS, Reuters, and CNN chose the word “uprising,” NPR and the New York Times chose “protest,” and Yahoo! News went with the phrase “high-risk gamble.” BBC, the Guardian and Al-Jazeera only used the word “coup” in quotations.

CNN told viewers, that the US must “root for the people” of Venezuela, before explicitly stating, “Rooting for the Venezuelan people means hoping that Maduro will step down” (the people of Venezuela apparently are the white upper class Venezuelans who wholeheartedly agree with the US government). CNN also aired a report claiming, that the forces of “socialist dictator” Maduro were “mowing down citizens in the streets.”

Caitlin Johnstone wrote on her blog, what the main players in the Venezuelan crisis would say, if they were honest:

Juan Guaido: I would like to be regarded as the interim president of Venezuela because the current president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, stands opposed to the interests of the political bodies with which I have aligned myself. Also, he stands opposed to my own personal ambitions of becoming powerful.

Washington, DC: We too would like for Juan Guaido to be regarded as the interim president of Venezuela, because the current President of Venezuela is too cozy in policy and practice with our geopolitical opponents. We would not mind this so much if Venezuela didn’t sit atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves. If we can’t control what happens to those oil reserves, we won’t be as dominant on the world stage.

US allies: We too would like it if Juan Guaido were president instead of Nicolas Maduro, because that’s what the United States wants and it is in our interests to go along with whatever they say. If we go along with Washington’s dictates we are treated favorably, whereas if we don’t we’ll end up getting treated the way the Venezuelan government is being treated currently.

Donald Trump: I’ve been told by the neoconservatives who I have appointed to guide my foreign policy that it would be good for America’s resource control agendas if I apply more sanctions to Venezuela’s economy at this time. This will force the Venezuelan civilians, and more importantly their military, to overthrow Maduro or else see their loved ones die of malnutrition and lack of healthcare.

John Bolton: I too encourage Venezuela’s citizens and military to turn against their government and begin inflicting violence upon it until Nicolas Maduro is either dead or removed from power. If you do this, you won’t have to starve and die because of our steadily increasing sanctions, and we’ll get to control the oil that your country happens to sit on top of. As an added benefit, hurting large numbers of human beings gives me sexual gratification.

CIA [via bullhorn]: Umm, excuse me, Venezuelans? This is the CIA. Will you all please start having a civil war now to overthrow your government? That would make us very happy, thank you.

Mainstream media: The US government, and of course the powerful unelected individuals who run it from behind the scenes without any accountability or oversight from the public, is attempting to topple Venezuela’s only recognized government using starvation sanctions, CIA operations, and an open campaign to delegitimize the sitting president of that nation. They are doing this because controlling as much of the world’s oil supplies as possible helps them to control the world, and controlling the world is what they want to do. These are the things we would be telling you if we weren’t owned by the same plutocratic class which owns the US government.

Wealthier Venezuelans: We would like to see Nicolas Maduro replaced with a government installed by the United States and its allies, because we feel that that would benefit us financially.

Juan Guaido: I am now standing here with Leopoldo Lopez and a handful of military personnel in an attempt to persuade Venezuela’s military to turn against Nicolas Maduro and begin killing anyone who stands in their way. I went to university in the United States of America.

Leopoldo Lopez: I too went to university in the United States of America. Also, I would like to be the regular president of Venezuela when Juan Guaido is done being the interim president of Venezuela.

Venezuelans: This is awful and we hate all of this.

Mike Pompeo: It is good that all of these things are happening. Definitely keep doing all of these things everyone.

Juan Guaido says, he is considering asking the USA to launch a military intervention.

Erik Prince (founder of the once prominent private security firm Blackwater and an ardent supporter of US President Donald Trump) discussed a plan in private meetings with US and European officials of employing 5,000 mercenaries to help topple Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro.

5000 young stuntmen
Will stumble more often
Approaching the brick wall
That will be their last call
This wall has no bypass
And so they will die fast
As dreams turn to dust
And present to past

5000 young widows
Are tapping with their toes
The chorals sound nice
As they are sung twice
The brass band is playing
The preacher is praying
The church bells are ringing
Sweet angels are singing

The dues are all paid now
The memories fade now
The lawsuits are settled
The big fights are battled
A new generation
Will seek recreation
Give in to temptation
And fight for the nation

(Or for money).

A report co-authored by Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs for the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research estimates, that 40,000 Venezuelans died because of Western sanctions, a partly blockade, and other economic warfare measures.

This finding is based on an estimated 80,000 people with HIV who have not had antiretroviral treatment since 2017, 16,000 people who need dialysis, 16,000 people with cancer, and 4 million with diabetes and hypertension (many of whom cannot obtain insulin or cardiovascular medicine).

The sanctions are depriving Venezuelans of lifesaving medicines, medical equipment, food, and other essential imports. This is illegal under US and international law, and violates treaties that the USA has signed.
Question time

How does one detect propaganda? What is propaganda? Are lies, omissions, misinterpretations, euphemisms, fabrications propaganda?

Didn’t state sponsored lies play a crucial ideological role in justifying US / NATO wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, didn’t they legitimate the use of torture under the Bush administration, and cover up crimes of the financial elite in the economic crisis of 2008?

How to distinguish between facts and fiction, knowledge and falsehoods, good and evil?
How to distinguish between cynics, hypocrites, pretenders, and true believers? 
How to distinguish between careerists, media mercenaries (journalists for sale), ideologists, reporters, researchers, analysts, teachers, sages, and prophets?

Can heuristics be helpful? What about intuition? Are mathematical equations the only way to find out, what’s really going on?

Does language serve to depoliticize and infantilize as it offers no way for individuals to translate their private troubles into broader systemic considerations? What is manic consumerism? Magic populism?

Should poetry rhyme? For instance: Privatization, deregulation, militarization, criminalization, financialization. Or: Arrogance and ignorance, audacity, stupidity, depravity, profligacy, indecency, ferocity, atrocity, monstrosity. Or: Education, information, exhortation, obfuscation, defamation, domination, exploitation, isolation, alienation, hibernation.

Do with that, what you want, I for my part go now into the garden to plant some additional blueberry bushes and weed out fig buttercup, ground elder, and creeping buttercup.
Feline news:


Environmental news:

We are all hypocrites, aren’t we? We are all pretenders and fakers: we are all liars — more or less. In this competitive society one can only succeed by lying, faking, and pretending. 

We deceive ourselves, being proud of booking an eco-hotel when the airplane which brings us to our holiday destination burns more fuel than we can save in a lifetime.

We are proud of replacing old appliances with new energy efficient ones, even as the manufacturing of the new devices uses more resources and energy than they can possibly save in a decade.

We buy organic produce from companies who hijacked the “organic” label and devoid it of any meaning instead of buying it from the farmer or growing it by ourselves.

We spend our time and energy working in a useless job for the benefits of parasitic shareholders instead of joining a co-op.
https://ensia.com/notable/1-5-degree-lifestyle-carbon-footprint/ Reducing our carbon footprint by 80 to 93 percent? Which politician dares to demand this?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/22/chernobyls-deadly-effects-estimates-vary/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/bumblebees-decline-pollinators-1.5106260 Bumblebees are one of my favorite fellow species. I often touched them, rescued them when they had fallen into a rain water barrel, I grew lot of echinacea, which they like very much, they were sitting on my hand, resting before continuing to search for food. When one guy told me, that they sting and that it will hurt more than any wasp sting, I was surprised. They never stung me and I don’t expect ever to be stung – they know that I’m their friend.
https://truthout.org/articles/the-world-is-burning-and-those-in-power-are-stoking-the-flames/ The world is burning, the calls for action and for a change of direction become more desperate, the broad public remains unmoved and tries to look and listen away. Collective suicide of the incorrigible and irredeemable, collective murder of the lucid and rational minority, of the ones who unsuccessfully warned and tried to convince.
https://dgrnewsservice.org/resistance/direct-action/property-destruction/a-modern-eco-sabotage-manifesto/
https://truthout.org/articles/a-lethal-industrial-farm-fungus-is-spreading-among-us/
https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/trees-dont-grow-on-money-or-why-you-dont-get-to-rebel-against-extinction/ Environmental movements frequently get hijacked by industry and financial establishment. Therefore: Camouflage, move at night, coordinate via informal communication channels, be creative and surprise them (everything else what needs to be done and how it has to be done you have to imagine by yourself).
https://www.globalresearch.ca/glyphosate-worse/5674472 The poisoning of everything.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/28/if-we-care-about-plastic-waste-why-wont-we-stop-drinking-bottled-water
https://truthout.org/articles/hydroponically-grown-produce-threatens-real-organic-agriculture/ It’s a fraud, everything is a fraud. That’s the way Western consumer economies work.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/opinion/flying-into-climate-crisis/ Vastly expanding (flyaway) air travel contributes to runaway climate change. And hypocrites in the need of self-promotion fly to environmental congresses and demos.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190430121755.htm Rapid permafrost thaw.
https://www.politico.eu/article/why-we-dont-know-if-plastics-are-safe/
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/the-problem-with-putting-a-price-on-nature/ Important, please read.
https://www.ehn.org/benefits-of-free-flowing-rivers-2636604106.html
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190507-weeds-a-surprising-way-to-fight-climate-change 
Economic news:

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-trend-is-not-your-friend/  The collapse of US-Chinese trade negotiations may be marked by historians as the day that globalization died.
https://truthout.org/articles/explosion-of-interest-in-worker-cooperatives-drives-economic-changes/
https://truthout.org/articles/the-public-banking-revolution-is-upon-us/
https://truthout.org/articles/new-report-shows-how-world-bank-enables-corporate-land-grabs/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/04/27/land-a27.html Only 8.5 percent of Britain’s land is owned by the public, everything else is owned by aristocrats, corporations, and oligarchs.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/04/opinion/bri-brings-a-competitive-advantages-in-infrastructure-financing/
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3007906/weaponisation-us-dollar-end-its-economic-ascendancy-asia-chinas
http://evonomics.com/how-to-destroy-neoliberalism-kill-homo-economicus/Nick Hanuer, winner of the MIT Humanist of the Year award, paints a much too rosy picture of capitalisms potential to benefit humanity and be a “force for good,” but he at least addresses some crucial issues.
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/05/09/the-climate-movement-what-next/ Must read!
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Irans-Master-Plan-To-Beat-US-Sanctions.html 
Media and technology news:

https://www.localfutures.org/is-5g-worth-the-risks/ Supporters of wireless technology argue that electromagnetic radiation in the radio frequency band and below, meaning everything below 100 GHZ, is not ionizing and therefor cannot cause DNA damage in cells. They argue further that the radiation intensity is too small to cause any king of effect (thermal or magnetic resonance) in cells.

This is wrong, the amount of ionized atoms indeed diminishes with lower frequencies but there is no point where the ionizing effect completely disappears. About the intensity: The inverse-square law of physic states, that a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. Which means that a radio signal has to be quite strong to be detected by the antenna of a receiver a few kilometers away. The antennas of both mobile phones and cell phone towers don’t send beams of radiation, they emit their radiation evenly in every direction, so the inverse-square law fully applies.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/big-brother-adds-brains-to-eyes/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/googles-sensorvault-can-tell-police-where-youve-been Bury your mobile phone.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3006933/forget-hype-why-5g-about-disappoint-you Fingers crossed, that the author is right.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/5g-the-big-picture/
https://truepublica.org.uk/global/what-you-dont-know-about-5g-but-will-find-out-when-its-too-late/
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/the-dangers-of-5g-to-childrens-health/
https://emfscientist.org/index.php/emf-scientist-appeal
http://www.5gappeal.eu/the-5g-appeal/
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/01/assange-sentenced-50-weeks-for-bogus-bail-charge/ The Passion of Julian Assange.
https://gowans.blog/2019/05/02/jacobin-stabs-venezuela-in-the-front/ About Jacobin magazine and the US “Left.”
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/902-40-000-dead-venezuelans-under-us-sanctions-corporate-media-turn-a-blind-eye.html
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/05/on-venezuela-tucker-airs-anti-trump-ideas-while-maddow-wants-john-bolton-to-be-more-hawkish/
http://johnhelmer.net/reuters-bites-off-tongue-in-us-war-against-venezuela-rosneft-forces-withdrawal-of-news-fabrication/.
https://fair.org/home/distorting-democracy-in-venezuela-coverage/
https://fair.org/home/for-nyt-israel-is-always-nearing-apartheid-but-never-quite-gets-there/ Even more “fair and balanced” than Fox.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/06/big-tech-and-the-rise-of-surveillance-capitalism/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/11/hale-m11.html US indicts drone program whistleblower. 

Imperial news:

“Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment…but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Howard Zinn. This quote appears in the book Speaking of Peace: Quotations to Inspire Action.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-trend-is-not-your-friend/ (Already listed in economic news, but I repeat it here because of its importance).
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/26/death-can-be-a-slow-traveler-peltier-mumia-and-rap-brown/ About US political prisoners.
https://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-vz-embassy-protection-collective.html
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-defence-industry-buys-washington.html Lobbying = corruption, election campaign contributions = corruption.
https://truthout.org/articles/the-us-is-spending-1-25-trillion-annually-on-war/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/09/the-melting-of-the-fortress-of-solitude/ A poetic rant about US culture.
https://truthout.org/audio/how-does-the-us-compensate-the-world-for-the-damage-it-has-done/ 
Imperial conquest news:

Donald Trumps neocon handlers (advisors) want war with Iran, as the blockade and the economic war against Venezuela is apparently not sufficient to satisfy their bloodlust.

The USA and Britain have been meddling in Iran since the 50s, when they installed the conservative dictatorship of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi by overthrowing the democratic government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, which was threatening their monopoly on oil. Then during the Iran-Iraq war 1980 to 1988 the USA supported Iraq and Saddam Hussein who committed war crimes against the Iranians and fought a needless WW1 style trench war which led to a million dead for nothing. The US also shot down an Iranian civilian passenger jet in 1988, killing 290 innocent people, including 66 children.

Until the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, the political climate between the nations remained hostile, but the deal allowed both sides to begin a process of reconciliation. For a short time it appeared that both sides wanted to end the period of sour relations, but then the USA unilaterally pulled out of the agreement despite its European allies and Iran itself wanting the deal to continue.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/22/the-buried-maidan-massacre-and-its-misrepresentation-by-the-west/
https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Politics-of-Culture-in-US-The-Invisible-Hand-of-the-Market-20190415-0012.html
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Venezuelan-Authorities-Identify-5-Electrical-System-Saboteurs-20190423-0025.html
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-economic-terrorism-genocide-people-venezuela/5676366
https://truthout.org/articles/us-led-bombing-campaign-in-syria-killed-1600-civilians-leaving-raqqa-destroyed/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-nato-attack-afghanistan-iraq/5676038
https://truthout.org/articles/six-ways-to-curb-the-uss-military-machine/
https://mideastshuffle.com/2019/05/05/interview-on-the-end-of-the-syrian-war-and-the-post-imperial-middle-east-part-2/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/09/the-militarization-of-empathy/About war propaganda, selective empathy, and US warcrimes.
Armageddon news:

Wow – gasping for air. Perturbed, desperate, wretched, dispirited, shocked, horrified, sickened. The prophets of doom are getting pretty good at presenting their apocalyptic visions. Science is on their side and every new study surpasses the previous already dire and frightening projections.

So – we are done, basically. Maybe we will have another few more or less comfortable or at least bearable years. Have the opioid overdose ready. Don’t forget to euthanize your beloved pets first. Your spouse and children will have to make the decision by themselves when to escape the hell which will be life on this planet in a few years.

The last one to go shall not forget to turn off all lights and appliances. Don’t forget to phone the undertaker before you lose consciousness, so that your body is collected and disposed of in an orderly way.

As if this would matter in the final stages of civilizations collapse. 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/09/imagination-and-nuclear-weapons/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/23/the-coming-ebola-epidemic/
https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/climate-change-book-.nd-of-ice/
https://truthout.org/articles/landmark-un-report-to-show-we-are-in-a-human-induced-extinction-crisis/
https://meta.eeb.org/2019/05/06/environmental-emergency-major-assessment-reveals-humanity-entering-danger-zone-as-1-million-species-risk-extinction/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/03/climate-crisis-is-about-to-put-humanity-at-risk-un-scientists-warn
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48169783
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/killing-nature-while-playing-geopolitics/
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/blb6wq/found_this_thought_it_was_pretty_good_for_people/
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/08/adult-lifestyles-sentence-kids-to-1000-years-of-deadly-heat-waves/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/bill-mckibben-and-elizabeth-kolbert-on-the-un-extinction-report “We’re not playing for stopping climate change. We’re playing maybe for being able to slow it down to the point where it doesn’t make civilizations impossible.”

In case, that you are not a wimp, who falters as troubles mount, in case that you are not an idiot who cannot grasp the severity of the situation, in case that you are not a psychopath who revels in the misery of fellow creatures:

Stem the tide, fight heroically, unhesitating, tenacious till your last breath against the exploitation, the poisoning, the destruction of nature. Become a role model, a teacher, a prophet, a saint. 

Become the savior of life, the irresistible force of kindness and grace, the shining star, the white knight, the guarding angel, the one who unites humanity, who leads the way, who inspires, arouses, awakens human ingenuity, perseverance, and toughness to overcome the deadly dangers and let the forces of evil melt away.

“But I’m just struggling with my own shortcomings, with the burden of anxieties, phobias, blockages, traumatic memories, and miseducation. How can I ever be a role model?”

Don’t worry, you don’t need to be perfect and you will grow with the challenge. You only need to stop being self-centered. Look at the situation as a detached, uninvolved observer. Just do what is needed, do it systematically, stay calm and composed whatever may happen. Take your time, wait for your chance, be fearless. What should you fear? Death? You will die anyway one day or the other.

One last note:

Don’t forget the importance of curbing human population, though this will happen anyway involuntarily if humans don’t address the problem on their own.
Uncategorized news:


News from cat land:

The cats are fine, they are innocent, lovely, adorable, enjoying spring. It is Rita’s first spring and she is completely exited. I just saved a blindworm from her. Blindworms (or slowworms) can live 30 years and longer. I like them, though they are not as cuddly as cats. To be precise, they are not cuddly at all, but just like toads and frogs they are useful to reduce slugs and snails.

Blindworms, toads, frogs, bumblebees, they all are endangered and their populations decline, I’m proud that they have found a home here. Please make your surroundings hospitable for them wherever you are.
Back to the cat family

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21.04.2019

Links April 2019

How shall we use our limited time and energy in this complicated, dangerous, but nevertheless fascinating and beautiful life?

First, we have to enjoy life and make it enjoyable for our fellow beings, a task which unfortunately is not as easy as it sounds, because there are dark clouds on the horizon and the prospects of environmental collapse or nuclear annihilation call for urgent action. 

Books such as David Wallace-Wells’s Uninhabitable Earth paint a picture so frightening that to some it already feels like “game over.” Bill McKibben’s latest book Falter envisions the stop of oxygen production by phyto-plankton, which would make us all suffocate.

A strange new phenomenon is emerging: While mainstream mass media ignores the warnings of experts and the scientific evidence, increasing numbers of people are resonating with those who say it’s now already too late to save civilization. People have switched from denial of the mortal danger straight to accepting it as inescapable, thereby avoiding an uncomfortable discussion about collective lifestyle changes which would be needed to heal nature and achieve peace.

The concept of “Deep Adaptation” is beginning to gain currency, with its proponent Jem Bendell arguing that “we face inevitable near-term societal collapse,” and therefore need to prepare for “civil unrest, lawlessness and a breakdown in normal life.”

So, is becoming an Organic Prepper the only option left? Or what else could one do?

Writing flaming appeals for civil disobedience in protest of government inactivity, while the environmental catastrophes of ecosystem collapse, mass extinction, climate change, and chemical contamination are unfolding and tipping points (points of no return) are approached or maybe have been already surpassed?

Joining protests, getting arrested, and spending a few days in holding cells as an environmental hero?

Joining a deep green guerrilla and sabotage industry, industrial agriculture, and consumer society installations? (Spending a few years in prison or getting shot dead is an occupational risk one has to consider).

Trying to keep a small eco-enclave alive by weeding, planting, irrigating in one’s own natural garden?

If I would sit in a cell or serve a longtime sentence or work hour after hour on the computer, the weeds would overgrow the herbs, strawberries, and young berry bushes, the ideal time for planting would pass, and the plants would dry and die because at the moment there is no rain, at the moment we have a severe drought.

The cat family would miss me.

I don’t want or need to be a hero.

I will not be an environmental hero, and when the children one day ask me, what I did against the looming catastrophe, I will have to say: “I planted herbs, bushes, and trees, I dug little ponds for the frogs and toads, and I spent most of my time watering and weeding to keep the little environmental enclave which I created alive.” 

The frogs have spawned already and cute little tadpoles are frolicking in the ponds. What would they do without my efforts? There are no other ponds nearby and the nearest creek is one kilometer away.
In Syria it rained a lot in the last time, which is good for agriculture. 

The drought fortunately has ended, but floods submerged many refugee camps in northern Syria and made life of the refugees even more burdensome and perilous.

The US war against Syria goes on unabated. As mentioned in this blog several times, the empire never retreats or compromises, and after the regime change plans didn’t work out, the nation has to be at least wrecked economically.

The SDF, a 60,000-strong, mainly Kurdish US-proxy army, controls about one-third of the country, containing more than 90 percent of Syria’s remaining oil reserves and a significant portion of its viable agricultural land. Washington has no intention of giving this territory back to any government not under its sway. Is that what Apo (Abdullah Oczalan) envisioned? 

Denying Damascus access to the country’s oil and arable land ties in with Western sanctions that have ravaged Syria’s economy for the past 15 years, starting long before the 2011 Islamist uprising. By strangling the economy, the USA is hurting not only Syria, “but its backers in Moscow and Tehran, who are stuck propping up an expensive, economically moribund partner.”

In Aleppo 11 Syrians, including 6 civilians and 2 children, died when terrorists blew up a police car. 10 members of the Al-Quds Brigade died in an ambush by IS in the DeirEz-Zor desert and IS remnants attacked Syrian patrols in the Homs desert, causing severe casualties.

The SDF has brought reinforcements towards Syrian Army’s lines near Albu Kamal and Al-Mayadeen. An attempt to expel the SAA from the area would mean war between the Kurds and the government, making any reconciliation impossible.

Israel airstrike from Lebanese airspace in Masyaf area targeted the Syrian Ministry of Defense’s Faculty of Administrative Affairs. The facility is a school for armed forces officers in logistical fields. Israel conducted past airstrikes on Syria Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) facilities for missile development and chemicals weapons in the Masyaf area in September 2017 and June 2018.

Masyaf is an important city because it is considered headquarters of the Tiger Forces and several other military units. At least one S-300 system has been installed nearby. There are two explanations why the SAA was not able to shoot down Israeli fighter jets: Either the S300 missiles delivered to Syria by Russia are not completely handed over to the Syrian Air Defense by the Russian suppliers, or the 4 decades old S-300 are incapable of spotting and shooting down the Israeli US-made fighter jets.

US sanctions against Iraq’s IRGC have a direct effect in Syria: The government put several deals with IRGC on hold, the most important ones are the Latakia port lease and the T3 pumping station deal. Egypt still prevents oil shipments to Syria Via the Suez Canal.
And yet, despite all bad news, Caitlin Johnstone writes:

I remain optimistic because what the hell else am I going to do? The alternative is to roll over and stop fighting against the depraved sociopaths who are poisoning our world, and fuck that. Optimism and pessimism are choices that you make of your own volition; one means staying in the fight, the other means tapping out and preparing for death. For me it’s a no-brainer.

The other half of optimism is having enough basic humility to understand that there are things you don’t know. It’s easy to look at a bunch of data and trends and conclude that it’s all hopeless, but that’s actually a very arrogant and dishonest thing to do. By saying you know it’s hopeless, you’re pretending to know everything about humankind and its limitations, to know that we’ve got no surprises left. Nobody who’s explored their own inner world with a good amount of sincere effort would ever do that, because looking within reveals that there are vast universes within us which are almost entirely unexplored. There’s no way to know that humanity doesn’t have any surprises lurking in those huge dark caverns, and there are plenty of reasons to believe that it does.

Feline news:
https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/cat-intelligence-and-cognition-are-cats-smarter-than-dogs.html
http://hatchingcatnyc.com/2019/03/24/too-many-cats-yorkville-police-court/
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-04-02/usda-ends-program-that-led-to-deaths-of-thousands-of-cats I’m speechless.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47721807 Kill them all, because killing living things is our true passion. “Feral cats can kill wildlife,” but humans can kill even more wildlife. Why are scientists not calling for a widespread cull of humans instead of feral cats? This not only would save most endangered species but solve a lot of other environmental problems too.
http://hatchingcatnyc.com/2019/03/30/anglican-cats-morton-street/
http://hatchingcatnyc.com/2019/04/09/cat-nyc-tenement-house-department/
https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/travel/japan-castle-cat-boosts-tourism-after-disasters 
Environmental news:

A dead whale was found in the Philippines with 88 pounds of plastic bags and other disposable plastic products in its stomach.

A report from the International Energy Agency established that not only are carbon dioxide emissions still increasing, but that the world’s growing thirst for energy has led to higher emissions from coal-fired power plants than ever before.

Energy demand across the globe grew by 2.3 percent over the past year. To meet that demand, largely fueled by a booming economy and growing heating and cooling needs in some regions, countries turned to an array of sources, including renewables.

But nothing filled the void quite like fossil fuels, which met nearly 70 percent of the skyrocketing electricity demand.

The 2018 assessment of global land degradation by IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), tasked with assessing the state of the natural world, says salt it is one of the major factors reducing plant growth and productivity worldwide, affecting around 20 percent of the world’s 300 million hectares of irrigated farmland, increasing poverty and undermining biodiversity.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-at-eight-ongoing-cover-up-of-the-nuclear-hazards-in-japan-and-abroad/5671690
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/03/19/clim-m19.html
https://civileats.com/2019/03/19/the-dangerous-food-additive-thats-not-on-the-label/
https://truthout.org/articles/global-banks-invested-1-9-trillion-in-fossil-fuels-since-paris-climate-pact/
https://www.thenation.com/article/pesticides-farmworkers-agriculture/
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/life-and-public/2019/03/pomor-partisans-fighting-moscow-trash
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/un-environment-plastic-pollution-negotiations/
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2019/03/21/after-china-ban-e-waste-rains-on-malaysian-soil/
https://earther.gizmodo.com/alarming-study-concludes-frogs-are-undergoing-a-catast-1833642045
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/03/amphibian-apocalypse-frogs-salamanders-worst-chytrid-fungus/
https://africasacountry.com/2019/03/the-fragility-of-the-mozambican-state-in-the-face-of-climate-change
https://www.businessinsider.de/exxon-valdez-spill-other-disasters-contaminated-ocean-2019-3?r=US&IR=T
https://meta.eeb.org/2019/04/03/revealed-half-of-checked-chemicals-unsafe-in-current-commercial-use/
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/04/plastic-watch-2-5-trillion-dollar-annual-cost-of-ocean-plastic-pollution.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/08/drinks-bottles-now-biggest-plastic-menace-for-waterways-report
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47820939
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/04/cars-are-weird
https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-green-pledges-will-not-create-the-natural-forests-we-need
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003857/greenpeace-study-shines-light-on-chinas-polluted-soils
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/frog-salamanders-toads-amphibians-extinction-population-fungal-disease-a8879581.html 
Economic news:

China has made itself indispensable to Western consumer societies by manufacturing cheap appliances and gadgets, most of it short life crap or overpriced bling (iPhone), which people in materialist societies of the so called “developed world” love to buy and throw away at an ever increasing pace.

It is a pact with the devil, which has made China not only an economic superpower but also one of the most polluted countries. 

China’s economic success depended on globalization, meaning increased trade, specialization, mass production, and a worldwide finance system. Globalization has certainly increased profits for shareholders (rentiers), it also increased inequality, debt slavery, privatization of public goods, and the commoditization of drinking water or other bare necessities of life.

Globalization went hand in hand with neoliberalism, which brought the disintegration of social bonds and a form of social Darwinism in which misfortune is equated to weakness and where a “war of all against all” replaces any vestiges of shared responsibility and compassion for others.

Media and technology news:

We live in the era of post-truth.

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange has been arrested and faces extradition to the USA. Both Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are in jail now. They revealed US warcrimes and are seen as heroes by the remaining resistance movement, but that doesn’t help them.

The warning is explicit towards journalists. What happened to Assange can happen to anybody reporting, investigating, editing, and publishing in print, TV, radio, and internet.

It is not the first time, whistleblowers and journalists have been put on notice. 

In 1983, a Foreign Office clerk, Sarah Tisdall, leaked British Government documents showing when American cruise nuclear weapons would arrive in Europe. The Guardian published the documents but revealed Tisdall, who was prosecuted and served six months.

Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed Israel’s nuclear program, spent seventeen and a half years in prison, the first eleven of these in solitary confinement. At present, he is appealing a further six-month prison sentence imposed by an Israeli court for having spoken to foreigners and foreign press.

Anat Kamm revealed, that the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) had been engaging in extrajudicial killings. She was convicted of espionage and sentenced to four and a half years in prison, but released after 26 months in January 2014.

John Kiriakou disclosed that the CIA tortured detainees (waterboarding). He was sentenced to 30 month imprisonment.

Edward Snowden released classified material on top-secret NSA programs including the PRISM surveillance program. He was granted asylum in Russia. 

CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who revealed “Operation Merlin”, was convicted of espionage and sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake was only sentenced to a year of probation, after more serious charges had been dropped, but he said to have been “personally and professionally shattered” by the vindictive and malicious prosecution.

A decade ago, the British Ministry of Defense produced a secret document which described the “principal threats” to public order as threefold: Terrorists, Russian spies, and investigative journalists. 

No one is above the law, told Theresa May in regard to Assange. No one is above the law, except the imperial masters of course, who are the law and who make it and break it as they please. They decided that the exposure of US warcrimes is itself a crime. Not a crime against humanity, but a crime against the empire. And they sent out their henchmen to uphold the imperial law and get Assange.

Everything else argued here is a distraction and irrelevant.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague got the message and abandoned an Afghanistan War Crimes Inquiry, after the USA revoked the visa of the court’s chief prosecutor, Ms. Fatou Bensouda. 

Ms. Bensouda’s inquiry would have examined alleged abuses by the CIA and US military personnel at secret detention centers in Afghanistan, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania (black sites). She argued, relying on studies conducted by the Pentagon and Congress (Senate Torture Report), that there was “a reasonable basis to believe that, since May 2003, members of the US armed forces and the CIA committed the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape, and other forms of sexual violence pursuant to a policy approved by the US authorities.”

http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/898-the-destruction-of-freedom-chelsea-manning-julian-assange-and-the-corporate-media.html
https://fair.org/home/bloombergs-armsmaker-funded-columnist-wants-you-to-know-military-spending-is-woke/
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/social-media-is-making-americans-unhappy-but-can-they-ditch-it/
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47708144
https://www.rt.com/news/454782-eu-lawmakers-approve-controversial-copyright/
A new restrictive EU copyright law. 
There should be no copyright at all, because if something new and useful is created or discovered in culture, technology, science, it should be available to anybody without restriction and the creator or researcher should be rewarded by donations, a privileged status, increased merit, and support for further projects.
This would be of course only be possible in an egalitarian society without rentiers and class distinctions, in a society where profit making and wealth accumulation would not be the superior goal.
Who would be hurt by an abolishment of copyright?
Big tech companies, Big Pharma, the media and music industry, a few famous and rich artists.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-26/cancer-cluster-california-elementary-school-results-removal-sprint-cell-phone-tower
https://truthout.org/articles/surveillance-capitalism-is-destroying-our-freedom-and-our-intimacy/ The surveillance and the targeted advertising will stop, when the buying and consuming stops. It’s in our hands, they cannot force us to buy things. They cannot prevent us to mend old equipment, to recycle, repurpose, upcycle things, to swap and barter.
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/899-fake-news-tsunami-the-mueller-report-and-peter-oborne-on-tom-bower.html
https://www.databreachtoday.com/dark-patterns-how-weaponized-usability-hurts-users-a-12364
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/04/assange-vault-7.html
http://johnhelmer.net/cia-deputy-director-lies-to-the-president-of-the-united-states-showing-him-fake-photographs-alleged-to-be-from-the-british-government-of-ducks-and-children-poisoned-by-a-russian-spy-operation-in-sali/ Good old propaganda.

Imperial news:

https://truthout.org/articles/the-fbi-is-the-enemy-of-the-left/
https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/
https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-eviction-crisis-is-starting-to-look-a-lot-like-the-subprime-crisis-2019-03-26
https://fair.org/home/the-homeless-8-year-old-chess-champion-and-other-horrific-uplifting-stories/
https://truthout.org/articles/when-cities-shut-the-water-off/
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article228704849.html The environmental costs of nuclear weapons production are usually not covered by mainstream media. Whatever authorities and politicians want to make us believe, it’s not smooth going.
https://truthout.org/articles/socialism-has-always-been-part-of-the-black-american-tradition/
https://truthout.org/articles/logging-is-the-leading-driver-of-carbon-emissions-from-us-forests/
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-curse-of-the-thinking-class/
https://truthout.org/articles/teachers-are-the-underdogs-in-a-decades-long-class-war/
https://www.ehn.org/right-to-farm-laws-failing-rural-people-2634037860.html
https://truthout.org/articles/as-we-mourn-notre-dame-let-us-remember-black-churches-also-matter/
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176553/ How the empire will defeat itself, starting with education.
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305002 

Imperial conquest news:

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/03/20/un-human-rights-expert-blasts-manipulation-on-venezuela-we-are-swimming-in-an-ocean-of-lies/
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/455081-manufactured-crisis-venezuela-us-intervention/
https://blackagendareport.com/who-were-us-mercenaries-targeting-haiti
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/21/whose-blood-whose-treasure/
https://bracingviews.com/2019/02/19/the-u-s-military-is-everywhere/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/god-is-on-the-side-of-us-americans-he-may-guide-us-to-use-it-nuclear-weapons-in-his-ways-and-for-his-purposes/5602892
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/03/28/vene-m28.html Tensions rise on the eve of WW III.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/455053-souch-china-sea-invade-us/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/saudi-arabia-is-losing-the-war-in-yemen/
https://gowans.blog/2019/03/31/land-theft-ethnic-cleansing-and-jewish-supremacy-israels-settler-colonialism-in-syrias-golan-the-forgotten-occupied-territory/
https://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-suspected-al-qaeda-chemical-attack-in-northern-hama-and-al-skeilbiyyeh-bells-ring-in-defiance/5673343
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/04/01/cnn-and-wapo-demand-that-trump-further-escalate-tensions-with-russia/ Get used to the idea, that we all have to die one day, so it might be as well collectively in a nuclear apocalypse. We (as a species) surely deserve to be annihilated, the sad thing is, that we will take so many innocent creatures with us who really would have liked to enjoy their lives a little bit longer.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/declaration-florence-international-front-nato-exit/5674125
https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/the-organisation-for-the-prohibition-of-chemical-weapons-opcw-critical-questions/#more-8163
https://truthout.org/articles/the-f-35-fighter-jet-will-cost-1-5-trillion-its-time-for-new-priorities/
https://blackagendareport.com/military-spending-and-never-ending-trump-diversion 

Armageddon news:


Uncategorized news:

News from cat land:

Princess Min Ki has astonished me again with a completely unexpected ability. She is an ordinary European shorthair with a black mask. She is also not very big, just normal sized. Despite a deep scar on her nose, which she acquired in her early youth, she looks pretty.

14 years ago I lived in an old farmhouse surrounded by meadows, fields, and some fruit trees.  The nearest neighbor was a farm some 100 meters away. This was the place were Princess Min Ki grew up. The cats at such farms are practically feral cat colonies, the farmers need them to keep the rodent population down, but they don’t feed the cats or provide any veterinarian care.

Min Ki was not born on this farm, the farmer fetched her together with a bunch of other kittens from a friend after the whole cat population on the farm was wiped out by an epidemic.

There were always straying tomcats in this area and Min Ki soon became pregnant, but after raising her babies she decided that farm life was not for her and joined my cat family. She was not welcomed (no newcomer ever was welcomed), but proceeded very carefully to gradually gain thrust and acceptance. I can remember when she first followed us (the cats and me) at our daily walks across the fields trailing some 20 meters behind. This distance became smaller every day and after one week she suddenly was inside the group and nobody objected anymore. 

Min Ki is a princess because after she got sterilized she certainly is not a queen anymore. Raising kittens, having heat cycles, and the whole reproduction business in general is a cumbersome affair, I never had the impression that she resented the decision to get her spayed.

It was only one year later, when after the untimely death of Harry, the undisputed patriarch of the cat family, she outsmarted Aunt Rosy’s brother Paul, who had hoped to take over the reign, to become the new leader of the family. Paul never forgave her and when we moved into a new house he stayed behind. He had long since found another family and only occasionally had visited to eat a bit and join the walks across the meadows and fields which we then still made.
Princess Min Ki is a proud cat. She is friendly but not submissive. When she comes to me, she demands undivided attention, a few strokes or hugs and some friendly words alone won’t cut it. She wants to be respected and treated as equal. I composed a little verse for the Princess which I think has been already published here, but it doesn’t hurt if I repeat it:

Princess Min Ki,
Leader of the family
Be my sweetheart 
Be my lovely little darling
Stay with me.

Princess Min Ki was the undisputed leader of the family for eight years, but when Gandhi Jr. and Lady Linda grew up and became massive cats with nearly 6 kilogram weight, she resigned quietly and informally. Competing with this heavy weight contenders seemed to be too great a risk. It would not have been necessary to resign. Gandhi Jr. has no ambition to become a leader, he just wants to live an easy life. Linda is occasionally bullying the other cats, but she faces the closed phalanx of all family members. Maybe if Linda over time becomes friendlier, more diplomatic, and more accommodating, she will be accepted as a kind of spokesperson or representative but there will never be a leader again, the cat family has irreversibly transitioned to a democratic shared leadership. 
A few years ago Princess Min Ki sneaked into the garage while I was unloading the car and got trapped when I closed the door, unaware of her presence. The windows were also closed and the only escape route left was a narrow ventilation shaft near the ceiling. Princess Min Ki could reach it by jumping onto a wall mounted shelf and from there to a higher one and a third one which then was high enough that she could reach the ventilation shaft and squeeze herself in. 

There was only one barrier left to overcome, a metal blind which covered the shaft to keep rodents out. The blind was held in place by four robust snap-in brackets but the Princess somehow managed it to loosen the bracket, push the blind out, and crawl through the shaft into freedom. The blind fell into one of the rainwater barrels positioned at this side of the house and that was also the reason I became aware of the incident as I was searching for the missing blind.  

Two days ago Princess slipped into the toilet and became trapped there when I went out. The house has two toilet rooms and I mainly use the other one. When I opened the toilet door in the evening I found the Princess and I also found that she had used the toilet exactly as it is intended to be used, defecating and urinating into the toilet bowl just like a human would do it. This is not easy for a cat because she has to keep balance on the toilet seat.

I have heard before that potty training cats is possible and there are special cat toilet seats available, but I didn’t bother because all cats go into the forest where they dig a little hole and cover it then properly.

Princess Min Ki is now 14 years old but in very good health. I hope that we will spend many more years together and I’m sure that there will be more occurrences where she shows how clever she is.
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