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Like all living creatures, people need to eat to live.

Some people, eaten from within by a demonic force, try to deny others this basic sustenance.

All across the world people are starving because the powerful and wealthy create economic and political conditions that allow their wealth to be built on the backs of the world’s poor.

It is an old story, constantly updated. It is one form of official terrorism.

From the Irish famine with its terrible aftermath created by the imperialist British government in the 19th century that caused the death of between one and two million Irish and the forced emigration of more than a million more between 1846 and 1851 alone, to today’s savage Israeli genocide and forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, the stories of politically motivated famine are legion.

In their wake, as the historian Woodham-Smith wrote in 1962 of the Irish famine, it “left hatred behind.

Between Ireland and England the memory of what was done and endured has lain like a sword.” This Irish bitterness toward the English was strong even in my own Irish-American childhood in the northern Bronx more than a century later. Ethnic cleansing has a way of leaving a livid legacy of rage toward the perpetrators, especially in the Irish case when talk of of one’s ancestors’ perilous forced emigration on the Coffin Ships was ever broached.

Today’s Israeli government leaders must be historically ignorant or suicidal, for the Irish rage at the British led to the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the eventual establishment of the Republic of Ireland, where today in Dublin, its capital, huge throngs march in support of the Palestinian people and their fight against Israel.

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‘Forgotten, but not gone’: How governments have deliberately ignored the safety of contaminated sites in England – and why climate change makes this worse

November 14, 2021

‘Forgotten, but not gone’: How governments have deliberately ignored the safety of contaminated sites in England – and why climate change makes this worse

This is an over thirty-year long story about my involvement with contaminated sites, and helping communities to get action to clean them up ^[1]. It’s innately connected to my home town, Banbury: An average small town, on the border between the Midlands and the South East; yet in the 1980s, this place taught me about the issues of waste disposal and land contamination. Not because it was exceptional, but because these issues affect almost every community across Britain.

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Generations of my family have lived here, from at least the early Nineteenth Century. By word of mouth I learned about local industrial sites, what they did, and where their waste was buried.

The problem with today’s highly mobile society is that such local knowledge is increasingly rare; and before the late 1970s, records of waste or pollution releases were rarely kept. Despite warnings about the issues of contaminated land since the 1960s, governments have failed to act to create a comprehensive system to track down, assess, and where necessary decontaminate these sites.

Just like other major ecological issues – such as climate change – the obstacle to change are the economic vested interests that pressure decision-makers not to act. Valuing profit over the lives of ordinary people, they prevent effective action.

‘What’s past is prologue’

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‘Forgotten, but not gone’:

November 2, 2021

‘Forgotten, but not gone’:

How governments have deliberately ignored the safety of contaminated sites in England – and why climate change makes this worse

‘The Metablog’,
No.18, Podcast:

Generations of my family have lived here, from at least the early Nineteenth Century. By word of mouth I learned about local industrial sites, what they did, and where their waste was buried.

‘What’s past is prologue’

Climate change is important, but it has pushed other pressing ecological issues off the agenda. Like climate change, land contamination is a direct result of historic industrialisation. It is done. Now we have to manage those impacts. Unfortunately, climate change will make those impacts far worse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bristol Bites Back | Fruits & Roots of Radical Resilience in South-West England

August 1, 2021

Bristol Bites Back | Fruits & Roots of Radical Resilience in South-West England

A new e-book published by ARC2020 documents one community’s inspiring response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Download the free e-book

Every crisis has a silver lining. Last summer, as we reeled from the Covid crisis, Ursula Billington, a sustainability activist in Bristol (UK), reached out to ARC2020. Were we interested in stories about community-based food and farming projects in her corner of South-West England?

Ursula’s stories of the sustainability movement couldn’t have come at a better time.

As we faced into a second wave of Covid and another round of restrictions in the autumn, struggling to picture the new normal, Ursula regaled us with tales of agroecological transition in and around Bristol.

A balm to our beleaguered spirits, these stories are tangible, practical proof that ecosystem-based approaches to food, farming and sustainability do indeed bear fruit for their patient protagonists – in some cases after decades of going against the grain of a productivist mindset.

In the spirit of ARC2020’s Letters From The Farm series, Ursula also widens the lens beyond the farm gate. Her focus on the people behind the projects and the wider community ties into broader issues of environmental and social justice, striking parallels with our Nos Campagnes en Résilience project in France.

What really comes across in these stories is the web of community that ties them all together, as the same names crop up like old friends. It’s a reminder of the importance of sticking together in the wake of another crisis – that of Brexit. Europe is, after all, more than the institutions of the EU – it’s we the people.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bank of England Now 2nd Central Bank to Taper, After Canada, but Denies Tapering is “Tapering,” also Following Canada

May 7, 2021

Bank of England Now 2nd Central Bank to Taper, After Canada, but Denies Tapering is “Tapering,” also Following Canada

The Big Taper starts one central bank at a time. But you gotta keep the markets from swooning with a bit of welcome delusion.

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) today announced that it voted unanimously to maintain its policy rate at 0.1%. But in terms of its asset purchases, it took the trail the Bank of Canada blazed last November and then widened in April: tapering.

The BoE announced that the blistering pace of its asset purchases would be “slowed somewhat” – tapering the bond purchases from £4.4 billion a week to £3.4 billion a week – but that this tapering was an “operational decision” that “should not be interpreted as a change in the stance of monetary policy.”

This “is not a tapering decision,” emphasized BoE governor Andrew Bailey during the press conference. The reason this tapering is not “a tapering decision,” he said, is because the BoE left its target for the final level of QE assets unchanged.

Unlike the Fed, the BoE doesn’t have an open-ended QE, but had set a target of bringing its holdings of UK government bonds to £875 billion and its holdings of corporate bonds to £20 billion, for a combined target of £895 billion. And at the meeting, the BoE didn’t change these “fixed amounts,” as Bailey put it.

Obviously, denying that tapering is tapering was designed to mollify the markets with a welcome dose of delusion, and it worked: the UK’s stock index FTSE 100 rose 0.5% for the day.

However, when the members voted on maintaining the target of £895 billion, it wasn’t unanimous, with eight members voting for maintaining it, and one member, outgoing chief economist Andy Haldane, voting to lower it by £50 billion, to £845 billion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s War – France & Britain Face Off at Sea

May 7, 2021

It’s War – France & Britain Face Off at Sea

The French and British are at it again, as always. The British Royal Navy and French police boats patrolled offshore from the Isle of Jersey’s port of Saint Helier. French fishermen are angry about losing access to waters off the Jersey coast, thanks to Brexit, and have some 70 ships gathered for a protest calling for a blockade of Saint Helier.

Two Royal Navy ships, equipped with machine guns and helicopter landing pads, were sent to track the French demonstration. Macron sent gunships armed with a cannon. So here we have the old traditional hatred between the French and English that extends back to the 13th century. There was an English invasion of France in 1230, which was a military campaign undertaken by Henry III of England in an attempt to reclaim the English throne’s rights and inheritance to the territories of France held prior to 1224.

The House of Plantagenet was a royal house that originated from the lands of Anjou in France. Plantagenets’ two cadet branches, the houses of Lancaster and York, held the English throne from 1154, with the accession of Henry II at the end of the chaos until 1485, when Richard III died in battle. It was the Plantagenets that transformed England. The Plantagenet kings were forced to negotiate compromises, which led to the establishment of the Magna Carta. During the 15th century, the Plantagenets were defeated in the Hundred Years’ War which led to political, economic, and social problems which included English nobles raising private armies.

Eventually, a rivalry between the House of Plantagenet’s two cadet branches of York and Lancaster led to the famous Wars of the Roses, which lasted for decades. English succession culminated in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 when the reign of the Plantagenets and the English Middle Ages both met their end with the death of King Richard III.

So the rivalry between France and England has remained in the blood. During the negotiations over Brexit, the French always presented the greatest opposition.

UK | Urban Food Revolution Gaining Ground In Bristol

January 31, 2021

UK | Urban Food Revolution Gaining Ground In Bristol

All hands to shovelling compost. Image © Sims Hill CSA

Small-scale urban farming is a key piece of the food resilience puzzle. In the face of crisis, local growing has proved a reliable ally. For the city of Bristol, a turning point in the local food revolution has been a community growing project called Grow Wilder that is rooted in respect for the soil and a collaborative ecosystem. Ursula Billington reports.

Grow Wilder, a community food and wildlife haven founded on Bristol’s urban fringe in 2012, caught immediate attention with its burgeoning produce in a year so wet that established projects reported crops rotting in the ground.

Its secret lies hidden in the rich red depths: the fertile soil of the Blue Finger, a strip of land just 4 miles from the urban centre running parallel to the city’s main connecting motorway. This soil is Grade 1 agricultural quality, a prime food-growing resource existent across only 3% of the UK. Defined as “Excellent quality with no or very minor limitations to agriculture. Yields are high and less variable than on land of lower quality” it is clearly a valuable resource – one that Grow Wilder work actively to sustain and protect.

Harvest and the roundhouse at Grow Wilder. Image © Sims Hill CSA

Feeding cities

A mammoth 83% of the UK population lives in urban areas, so ensuring sustainable food security for Britain’s cities is crucial. Recently, emerging challenges have aligned to signpost small-scale urban farming as a key piece of the food resilience puzzle. The necessarily urgent response to environmental crises, the impact of the pandemic and Britain’s EU-exit have converged to provoke a look inward to the state of our domestic resilience, which in many ways has been found wanting.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Manchester England Protest

December 27, 2020

Manchester England Protest

“This Is No Free Country”: Anti-Lockdown Protests Rage In London, Dozens Arrested

November 28, 2020

“This Is No Free Country”: Anti-Lockdown Protests Rage In London, Dozens Arrested

Over 60 protesters were arrested in anti-lockdown demonstrations on Saturday, as activists clashed with police who sought to break it up.

If only it was a BLM demonstration.

According to The Guardian, “officers were attempting to disperse the protesters after the Metropolitan police argued the demonstration was unlawful under coronavirus bans on gatherings after the removal of the specific protest exemption.”

Rights groups, however, believe the protests should be permitted under the “reasonable excuse” law, and called the de-facto ban as “alarming.”

Officers faced jeers from demonstrators and chants of “shame on you” and “choose your side” as they sought to end the protest and enter crowds to make arrests, some forcibly. They were also pelted with missiles on at least one occasion, video footage showed.

The Metropolitan police tweeted: “Officers have made over 60 arrests following groups gathering in London today. These were for a number of different offences, including breaching coronavirus restrictions. We expect this number to rise. We continue to urge people to go home.” –The Guardian

“Please ensure you have access to social media throughout the day, as the rally will need to be reactive to circumstances,” wrote anti-lockdown group StandUpX in a Telegram post. “Bring pots, pans, whistles, party horns and anything you can to be heard,” the post continues.

“I got pushed about by police for no reason earlier, just cause they’re squashing up anybody that wants to complain. This is no free country,” one protester told Sky News, while another held a sign saying “Your fear leads to losing our liberty.”

The protest comes weeks after 190 people were arrested on Nov. 5 during another lockdown demonstration.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Immediate moratorium on fracking in England because of tremor risk

November 8, 2019

Immediate moratorium on fracking in England because of tremor risk

Gooseneck at Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road shale gas site, 5 August 2019. Photo: Ros Wills

After seven years of promoting fracking, Conservative ministers have withdrawn their support and blocked the prospects of a shale gas industry.

The UK government has issued an immediate moratorium in England because of the risk of earth tremors. Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have already issued measures that amount to moratoriums on fracking.

In a statement released just after midnight, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), said new scientific advice concluded that it was not possible with current technology to predict accurately whether fracking would cause tremors and how big they would be.

Opponents of fracking described the announcement as a victory for communities and the climate but called for a full, permanent ban. IGas, the only industry representative to respond to our invitation to comment, said it was confident it could operate safely and environmentally responsibly. The industry organisation, UKOOG, later said fracking was a long-standing technology and the UK had a world-class shale resource. Full reaction

Ministers said they had based their decision on a report by the industry regulator, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA). It had been investigating earth tremors caused by fracking at the UK’s only shale gas site, at Preston New Road, near Blackpool, operated by Cuadrilla.

The report looked at the impacts of fracking the PNR1z well in autumn 2018, which caused more than 50 tremors. The OGA is also examining 134 seismic events caused by fracking the second well, PNR2, in August 2019. They included the UK’s largest fracking-induced tremor, measuring 2.9ML. The British Geological Survey said this tremor was felt by several thousand people, while several hundred reported damage to homes. The OGA suspended fracking within hours.

pnr 190826 uwtoc-2 — Campaigners outside Cuadrilla’s shale gas site at Preston New Road near Blackpool, 26 August 2019. Photo: Used with the owner’s consent

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Government That Tortures Journalists Bans RT From Media Conference

July 10, 2019

Government That Tortures Journalists Bans RT From Media Conference

The British Foreign Office has banned Russian outlets RT and Sputnik from attending the upcoming Global Conference on Media Freedom in London, citing their predilection for “disinformation”.

“We have not accredited RT or Sputnik because of their active role in spreading disinformation,” said a Foreign Office spokeswoman.

“It takes a particular brand of hypocrisy to advocate for freedom of press while banning inconvenient voices and slandering alternative media; sadly, the world has learned to expect just that from the UK Foreign Office,” RT said in a statement in response.

“It amounts to direct politically motivated discrimination of the Russian channel,” said the Russian embassy in London. “The refusal of accreditation comes on top of the months-long smear campaign against RT by British political figures, governmental bodies, including media regulator Ofcom, and even fellow journalists.”

“Now a leading Russian international TV channel is denied access to the forum, despite being officially registered and working in the UK, on legal grounds,” the embassy added. “What better illustration of the real situation with media freedom in the UK does one need? Yet the organizers of the Conference, as far as we understand, wish to discuss the situation with media freedom anywhere in the world, but not in this country.”

UK govt organises international conference on ‘media freedom’, bans @RT_com (and Syria & Venezuela) from attending https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48919085 …
’It takes a particular brand of hypocrisy to advocate for media freedom, while banning inconvenient voices and slandering alternative media’1,229 6:26 AM – Jul 9, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy Russia’s RT banned from UK media freedom conferenceThe UK Foreign Office bans two Russian news agencies, accusing them of spreading misinformation.bbc.co.uk

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Venezuela’s gold in limbo amid tug-of-war at the Bank of England

December 20, 2018

Venezuela’s gold in limbo amid tug-of-war at the Bank of England

In early November news was placed into the British media (Reuters and The Times) revealing that the Bank of England in London, one of the world’s largest custodians of gold bars on behalf of other central banks, was refusing to allow the withdrawal and repatriation of 14 tonnes of gold belonging to Venezuela’s central bank, the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV).

According to these media reports, the delays / refusals by the Bank of England to allow the Venezuelan gold repatriation ranged from excuses about the prohibitive cost of transport insurance to concerns about future money laundering. In all cases, these excuses were bogus, as I explained in the article “Bank of England refuses to return 14 tonnes of gold to Venezuela” on the BullionStar website, dated 15 November, and that the real reasons for the Bank of England’s refusal were political. As I stated at the time in my conclusion:

“The reasons put forward by official sources in the Reuters and Times articles for why Venezuela can’t withdraw its gold from the Bank of England are clearly bogus. The more logical and likely explanation is that the US, through the White House, US Treasury and State Department have been liaising with the British Foreign office, HM Treasury to put pressure on the Bank of England to delay and push back on Venezuela’s gold withdrawal request.”

According to the Reuters report dated 5 November, the Venezuelan central bank gold withdrawal plan had “been held up for nearly two months”, which would put the original withdrawal request by the BCV to the Bank of England at a date in at least September and probably earlier. So the BCV had been looking for its gold back for sometime, and the Bank of England was stalling.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

London Assembly passes climate emergency motion

December 10, 2018

London Assembly passes climate emergency motion

The London Assembly has passed a motion by a vote of 12 votes for, 0 against, for declaring a climate emergency. The motion by UK Greens Councillor Caroline Russell urges that the Mayor should “declare a Climate Emergency, supported by specific emergency plans with the actions needed to make London carbon neutral by 2030”.

This follows on from the City of Bristol declaring a climate emergency on 13 November 2018, the first UK council to declare a climate emergency. The Bristol motion was passed unanimously. Consequently, the city council set an ambitious goal of making Bristol carbon neutral by 2030.

Caroline Russel also referred to David Attenborough speech to the United Nations climate change conference COP24 meeting in Katowice, Poland, in which he warned, “If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” The IPCC 1.5C climate science report published in October was also referred to in motivating rapid social transformation needed for meeting the Paris Agreement climate targets and avoiding dangerous climate change..

The debate within London Assembly on the motion to declare a climate emergency

Caroline Russell AM, who proposed the motion said:

“Catastrophic climate breakdown might be as little as twelve years away – this would have profound impacts on every aspect of our lives in London from flooding and overheating in summers, disruption in our food supply chains as well as in the wider natural world.

“The Mayor need to be at the forefront of this challenge, declaring a climate emergency and an urgent updating of his carbon reduction targets to make London carbon neutral by 2030, decades ahead of his current plans, setting a precedent for other major and world cities.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Venezuela is Painfully Reminded of the Golden Rule

November 10, 2018

Venezuela is Painfully Reminded of the Golden Rule

He who holds the gold, makes the rules.

This is a motto that you will hear espoused by gold bugs, precious metals advocates, or anyone that has studied financial history in any meaningful way.

The fact is, if you don’t hold it, then you don’t own it.

This is something that I have warned about for years, as people continue to pile into “paper” precious metals assets, most specifically, those that do not guarantee to hold the precious metals in physical reserve, accounting for every oz that they own via regularly scheduled audits.

As Central Banks around the world continue to race into gold, a trend I have been noting throughout the course of this year, some, are being painfully reminded of the golden rule and are ruing the day they ever gave up physical ownership of their most valuable, real asset.

Venezuela, who is currently led by a failing socialist government, with President Nicolas Maduro at its head, is one such country that is learning this valuable lesson.

Venezuela, for months has been attempting to repatriate their gold holdings from the Bank of England, the latter of whom “allegedly” holds a large percentage of the worlds gold reserves since the ending of World War 2.

The reasoning for this, was one of the greatest cons in history, and one that continues to unfold. Western Central Banksters convinced many of the Worlds Nations that it would be “safer” to hold their reserves within the United States and England.

Ironically, over the last few decades, this has been just about the worst place in the world to hold your gold bullion, as these nations have rehypothecated this gold to near infinity. But don’t worry, they claim their “good” for it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Scotland’s wind exports to England and the myth of a 100% renewable Scotland

October 31, 2018

Scotland’s wind exports to England and the myth of a 100% renewable Scotland

Well over half of Scotland’s wind generation between January 12, 2018 and the present was exported to England and not consumed in Scotland. Euan Mearns reached substantially the same conclusion in his review of January and February 2016 data. Scotland’s government nevertheless assumes that all of Scotland’s wind generation is consumed in Scotland, that intermittency is not an issue, and that Scotland is therefore on track to meet its target of obtaining 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. The chances that Scotland will meet this target are of course zero, and Scotland’s government is pulling the wool over the public’s eyes by pretending otherwise.

[Inset image: Stirling Castle with environmentally enhanced scenery in the background.]

This post is an update of a number of posts Euan Mearns has written since 2015, with the most recent being Scotland-England electricity transfers and the perfect storm in March 2017. It uses five-minute Scotland-England transfer data between January 12 and October 23, 2018 that are now publically available on Leo Smith’s Gridwatch site. Gridwatch, however, does not break out any other grid data for Scotland, meaning that some assumptions have had to be made. These were:

1. Scotland’s wind generation. According to BEIS data UK wind generation totalled 50,004 MWh in 2017 and Scotland’s wind generation totalled 17,063 MWh, 33.5% of total UK generation. In the first two quarters of 2018 UK wind generation totalled 27,802 MWh and Scotland’s wind generation totalled 9,121 MWh, 32.8% of total UK generation. In both cases Scotland’s wind generation amounts to about a third of total UK generation, so it was simulated by dividing the Gridwatch 5-minute UK grid values by three. This conversion assumes that variations in wind generation were the same in Scotland as they were in the UK as a whole.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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