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Plaintiffs, lawyers and activists gather outside South Korea’s constitutional court in Seoul ahead of a public hearing for a climate lawsuit on Tuesday, April 23, 2024.

SEOUL — As plaintiffs, lawyers and activists chanted slogans outside South Korea’s constitutional court on Tuesday, 17-month-old Woodpecker giggled, sending ripples of laughter through the crowd.

Woodpecker is the nickname of Choi Heewoo, the youngest among more than 250 plaintiffs involved in Woodpecker et. al. v. South Korea, one of four petitions filed since 2020 that the court is considering together in a landmark case.

The plaintiffs argue that by not effectively tackling climate change, their government is violating its citizens’ human rights.

While there are other cases in progress elsewhere, this is the first in Asia to have a public hearing and plaintiffs say that the court’s verdict, when it comes, is also likely to be the first in Asia.

Woodpecker’s mom and legal representative Lee Donghyun made him a plaintiff while he was still in her womb. She says South Korea’s government is deferring the task of reducing carbon emissions to future administrations and younger generations.

“The more we think this task can be delayed now, the bigger the burden our future generations will have,” she says. “I think it’s the same as passing on a debt to your children.”

Environmentalists criticize carbon emission reduction goals

Plaintiffs argue that South Korea’s goal of reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 compared to 2018 levels is insufficient — it will lead to disastrous climate change and violate their constitutional rights.

South Korea’s human rights watchdog has filed an opinion with the government, stating that climate change is a human rights issue, and that the government is therefore obligated to protect citizens from it.

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

Biden says he worries that cutting oil production too fast will hurt working people

November 1, 2021

Biden says he worries that cutting oil production too fast will hurt working people

President Biden spent three days in Rome talking to world leaders before and during the G-20. He held a formal press conference before heading to the UN climate summit in Glasgow.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

President Biden said on Sunday that the world can’t immediately stop using oil and said OPEC and Russia need to pump more of it, even as he pushes the world to pledge to cut climate-changing carbon emissions at the Glasgow climate summit this week.

After three days of meeting with world leaders in Rome, where he attended the G-20 summit, Biden said he is worried that surging energy costs are hurting working class families.

“On the surface it seems like an irony,” Biden said of simultaneously calling on major oil producers to pump more as he heads to the COP26 climate change summit. “But the truth of the matter is … everyone knows that idea that we’re going to be able to move to renewable energy overnight … it’s just not rational,” he said.

Biden said the idea that Russia, Saudi Arabia and other producers are holding back to boost prices “is not right.” With gas prices averaging $3.40 a gallon in the US, according to AAA, Biden said families are feeling it.

“It has profound impact on working class families just to get back and forth to work,” Biden said. He talked about the issue with other major oil-consuming countries at the G-20, but told reporters he was reluctant to reveal any of their plans to spur producers to pump more.

New Evidence Shows Fertile Soil Gone From Midwestern Farms

February 25, 2021

New Evidence Shows Fertile Soil Gone From Midwestern Farms

Soil on hilltops in this photo is lighter in color, revealing a loss of fertile topsoil.

Evan Thaler for NPR

Farming has destroyed a lot of the rich soil of America’s Midwestern prairie. A team of scientists just came up with a staggering new estimate for just how much has disappeared.

The most fertile topsoil is entirely gone from a third of all the land devoted to growing crops across the upper Midwest, the scientists say. Some of their colleagues, however, remain skeptical about the methods that produced this result.

The new study emerged from a simple observation, one that people flying over Midwestern farms can confirm for themselves. The color of bare soil varies, and that variation is related to soil quality.

The soil that’s darkest in color is widely known as topsoil. Soil scientists call this layer the “A-horizon.” It’s the “black, organic, rich soil that’s really good for growing crops,” says Evan Thaler, a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

It’s full of living microorganisms and decaying plant roots, also called organic carbon. When settlers first arrived in the Midwest, it was everywhere, created from centuries of accumulated prairie grass. Plowing, though, released much of the trapped carbon, and topsoil was also lost to wind and water erosion. The soil that remains is often much lighter in color.

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

The Triumph of Evil

April 22, 2019

The Triumph of Evil

Today (April 17) I heard a NPR “news” report that described the democratically elected president of Venezuela as “the Venezuelan dictator Maduro.” By repeating over and over that a democratically elected president is a dictator, the presstitutes create that image of Maduro in the minds of vast numbers of peoples who know nothing about Venezuela and had never heard of Maduro until he is dropped on them as “dictator.”

Nicolas Maduro Moros was elected president of Venezuela in 2013 and again in 2018. Previously he served as vice president and foreign minister, and he was elected to the National Assembly in 2000. Despite Washington’s propaganda campaign against him and Washington’s attempt to instigate violent street protests and Maduro’s overthrow by the Venezuelan military, whose leaders have been offered large sums of money, Maduro has the overwhelming support of the people, and the military has not moved against him.

What is going on is that American oil companies want to recover their control over the revenue streams from Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Under the Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez, continued by Maduro, the oil revenues instead of departing the country have been used to reduce poverty and raise literacy inside Venezuela.

The opposition to Maduro inside Venezuela comes from the elites who have been traditionally allied with Washington in the looting of the country. These corrupt elites, with the CIA’s help, temporarily overthrew Chavez, but the people and the Venezuelan military secured his release and return to the presidency.

Washington has a long record of refusing to accept any reformist governments in Latin America. Reformers get in the way of North America’s exploitation of Latin American countries and are overthrown.

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

Intelligence Contractors Make New Attempt To Provoke Tensions With North Korea

March 9, 2019

Intelligence Contractors Make New Attempt To Provoke Tensions With North Korea

It’s the second, but no less ludicrous, attempt in one week to sway the opinion of the public and President Donald Trump against the concept of denuclearization and peaceful dialogue with North Korea.

A March 8, 2019 report from National Public Radio (NPR) follows another by NBC News with sensational and misleading claims that satellite imagery released by private corporations with contractual ties to government defense and intelligence agencies show imminent preparations by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to engage in missile testing or the launch of a satellite from their facilities in Sanumdong, North Korea. An examination of the photos provided shows absolutely no indication of such activity.

I. Satellite Footage Of Sanumdong Facility Shows No Sign Of Imminent Launch

Images provided to NPR by private contractor DigitalGlobe consist of two low resolution images, one of a building in the Sanumdong complex and the other of a train sitting along a rail line. In neither photo is there any discernible amount of unusual activity.

Credit: Image ©2019 DigitalGlobe, Inc. Graphic: Alyson Hurt/NPR

The first image of a “production hall” bears a striking resemblance to a similar photo run by the Washington Post in July 2018 where unnamed intelligence officials claimed that North Korea was building one or possibly two liquid fueled ICBMs which appear to have never materialized or been used in any launch. The claims came one month after President Trump met with Chairman Kim Jong Un in Singapore for a historic summit between the United States and the DPRK.

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

The Prevalence of Myth over History

November 10, 2018

The Prevalence of Myth over History

Today (Nov. 9) I heard a black historian on NPR say that the “civil war” was fought in order to establish a framework for human rights.

He also said that black civil rights achieved by the war were overturned by the rollback of Reconstruction, put back in place by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and was now being overturned again by Trump’s response to the caravan from Honduras.

As best as I could tell, this was an Identity Politics explanation of history with all of its contradictions and factual errors.

Identity Politics is based on the accusation that the white male is a racist and a misogynist. This is inconsistent with the belief that Washington, totally in the hands of white males, chose to fight a bloody civil war in order to bring human rights to black slaves. If white males are this idealistic and willing to make such a sacrifice for blacks, how is it that the white males are racists?

The black historian can’t have it both ways.

Moreover, how would the black historian explain how it possibly can be that the same Union army that fought to bring human rights to black slaves immediately on war’s end was sent under the same generals, Sherman and Sheridan, to slaughter the Plains Indians. Why did the Union army fight for human rights for blacks and against human rights for native American Indians?

As every competent historian knows, there was no “civil war.” A civil war is when two sides fight for control of the government. The southern states had seceded and formed their own country. The Confederacy had no interest in controlling Washington. The war happened because Lincoln invaded the Confederacy. The Confederacy fought because they were invaded.

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

How the U.S. Does Propaganda

September 10, 2018

How the U.S. Does Propaganda

A typical example was on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday,” on September 8th, when the program-host Scott Simon interviewed the Obama Administration’s diplomat Robert Malley, in a segment titled “What’s Next In The Syrian War: Idlib”.

Simon’s introduction said: “After this weekend, the last contested region of Syria may come under ferocious attack. After more than seven years of fighting, the end of the Syrian war may come down to Idlib province. … It holds more than 3 million people, many of whom have been displaced. It’s been essentially a kind of dumping ground for those opposed to Bashar al-Assad’s regime and ISIS.”

Actually, there’s a factual problem with Simon’s lead-in there. Though I have seen official estimates of the population of Idlib ranging from 1.5 million to 3 million, I haven’t seen any of “more than 3 million people.” Mr. Simon is always happy to please his CIA minders, and might simply have gotten carried away in this interview.

Furthermore, Simon’s lumping “Bashar al-Assad’s regime and ISIS” together was striking, because ISIS has actually been one of the major forces in Syria working to overthrow “Assad’s regime”; and, “Assad’s regime” was elected in 2014 and has been shown by repeated polling done since then by the British firm of Orb International to retain more support amongst the Syrian public than does anyone else to serve as that nation’s leader. Polls taken in the U.S. today show that more of the public wish that Bernie Sanders were our President than that Donald Trump is; and, so, if Syria is a “regime” instead of a “government,” then the U.S. is even more of a regime than is Syria. (And the scientific evidence is consistent that the U.S. is more of a “regime” than a “democracy.”)

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

Putin Confronts The American Dystopia

July 18, 2018

Putin Confronts The American Dystopia

We have to hand it to Putin. He is the best that there is. Note the ease with which he mopped up the floor with that idiot Chris Wallace. https://www.rt.com/usa/433447-putin-interview-fox-wallace/

What is wrong with the US media that it cannot produce a second competent journalist as company for Tucker Carlson? Why are America’s remaining good journalists, such as Chris Hedges, now in the alternate media?

All I can say, and Putin probably already knows it, is that there is more going on than presstitutes holding the relationship between Russia and the US hostage to an internal political struggle between the Democratic Party and President Trump. It is not just that the corrupt US media is serving as propagandists for the Democratic Party against President Trump. The presstitutes are serving the interest of the military/security complex, which has ownership interests in the highly concentrated US media, to keep Russia positioned as the enemy that justifies the huge $1,000 billion budget of the military/security complex. Without the “Russian enemy,” what is the justification for such a waste of money when so many real needs go underfunded and unfunded?

In other words, the American media are not only stupid, they are corrupt beyond all measure.

Today at 12:40 Eastern time NPR had a collection if Trump-bashers doing their utmost to prevent the Trump/Putin meeting from leading to a normalizing of relations between the two governments. For example, as every informed person knows, the US intelligence community has most certainly not concluded that Russia interferred in the presidential election. That conclusion was reached by a few hand-picked members of 3 of the 16 intelligence agencies and was expressed not as a proven fact but as “highly likely.” It other words, it was nothing but an orchestrated opinion given by cooperative agents who no doubt expect promotions in return.

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

NPR, the CIA and Corporatism

October 25, 2017

NPR, the CIA and Corporatism

Photo by Todd Huffman | CC by 2.0

In her five-minute interview with Ursula Wilder, a CIA psychologist whose job there is debriefing returning spies, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly (their alleged National Security Correspondent) spoke of what makes someone who reveals state secrets tick. Kelly failed big-time to probe Wilder about whether she ever thought an insider might ever have a patriotic motivation to inform the public of illegal behavior on the part of the agency. Based on Wilders’ profile of leakers, the answer would surely have been No, but it sure would have been nice to ask.

Instead, the official story is simple. Each and every leaker, Wilder maintained, suffers from some DSM psychopathy, such as impulsiveness, narcissism or drug addiction, often compounded by exigencies such as marital discord or gambling debts. Leaks all stem from character defects, Wilder says—and Kelly doesn’t contradict—not to blowback by thwarted careerists or misdeeds the agency wants to disappear. She also neglected to point out that leaks should only happen when authorized by superiors, but Kelly didn’t ask about that kind either.

Wilder’s job description implies she treats agents for PTSD but she probably doesn’t admit to it. Wants the world to think they’re all so well motivated, trained, equipped, and managed as to be impervious to shock and awe. If they’re stressed, it’s likely that their personal lives are out of control, their problems self-inflicted. Any time you have a problem with power, the problem is you. Hear for yourself.

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

Gullible Americans Forever

August 18, 2015

Gullible Americans Forever

“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.” — Mark Twain

Listening to NPR news today I was reminded how throughly this once independent voice has sold out.

I was also reminded of the Mark Twain quote above. NPR reported that Syrians were lined up in Turkey waiting on passage on inflatable rafts to Greece. According to the NPR report, there are 2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and 250,000 Syrians have been killed. NPR said nothing about the cause of this murder and displacement of vast numbers of people. It was if the plight of these people materialized out of thin air. The fact that Washington sicced ISIS, al Qaeda, Turkey, the US and NATO Air Forces, and Washington’s Middle Eastern vassals on Syria was not mentioned. The view on NPR is the same as Washington’s — that if only Assad would resign and hand Syria over to Washington, everything would be fine.

Americans don’t go to bed every night unable to sleep from shame from the atrocities that the US government has inflicted on Syria. And on Iraq. And Libya. And Afghanistan. And Pakistan. And Yemen. And Somalia. And Ukraine. And Serbia. According to the prostitute media, all of these human catastrophes are the work of dark forces that America must combat. It is all a clever orchestration of public emotion in favor of the military/security complex’s bank balance.

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

NATO Lies to NPR

June 18, 2015

NATO Lies to NPR

On June 17th, U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed NATO’s and America’s General Ben Hodges, who is the Commanding General of the U.S. Army in Europe, which is “NATO’s most senior land forces command.” He said (after 4:54 in the audio):

“This notion that somehow, Russia, you know, has no choice but to respond or that the West is being provocative, really, I don’t think rings true at all. … We’re building up on NATO’s borders. These are NATO countries, these are allies of ours, that are concerned based on what Russia is doing on their borders, and they’ve asked for assurance that their allies are there.”

The interviewer asked, “President Putin said that only an insane person could imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. I mean, is NATO insane for worrying about a Russian attack?” Hodges replied (6:41):

“I think that’s an irresponsible question. It is completely unimaginable to me that Russia would ever invade Crimea. I mean, this was the day after the Sochi Olympics, after the Russians had spent millions and millions of dollars, and then threw away whatever goodwill they had earned the following day by invading Crimea.”

That’s so meny lies in such a short span, so that unpacking all of them will produce a long article; but, those lies are the mainstream view in America’s news media, so, here goes the reality that demolishes them:

HIS BASIC ‘HISTORY’ IS FALSE

Everything he says about what preceded Crimea’s switching back to Russia (of which it had always been a part until 1954) is false.

The Sochi Olympics ended on 23 February 2014. Contrary to what Ben Hodges says, there was no Russian invasion of Crimea the next day (nor actually ever, but we’ll get to that later). According to wikipedia, which is edited by the CIA (and so it must be right, if not far-right — like Hodges is), the “2014 Ukrainian Revolution” started on 18 February 2014.

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

NPR Propagandizes Against Putin, for Regime-Change in Russia Washington’s Blog

December 28, 2014

NPR Propagandizes Against Putin, for Regime-Change in Russia Washington’s Blog.

On Friday, December 26th, National Public Radio aired two superbly done pieces of anti-Russia propaganda, which could as well have been written by the U.S. CIA, or by Voice of America, it was so skillfully deceiving.

One of these propaganda-pieces, on “Morning Edition,” presented Eleanor Beardsley alleging that the anti-immigrant political parties in Britain and France are anti-U.S. and pro-Russian because they are supposedly all “far right”; and the other piece, on “All Things Considered,” presented Corey Flintoff alleging that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin “seized Crimea” (as if he hadn’t actually rescued it) and thereby caused U.S. President Barack Obama and the EU to respond with economic sanctions as punishment for the ‘seizure’ (actually, as we’ll show, rescue).

Here, the two ‘news reports’ will be exposed:

First, Beardsley’s propaganda-piece: it was titled “Europe’s Far Right And Putin Get Cozy, With Benefits For Both.” She noted that, in France, “Marine Le Pen, head of the National Front, has made no secret of her admiration for Putin,” while, across the English Channel, “Nigel Farage, the head of UKIP, Britain’s far-right party, called Putin one of the world leaders he admires most.” Beardsley was trying to suggest that Vladimir Putin is a fascist, and she argued on this false basis that “Europe’s Far Right And Putin Get Cozy” because they’re all “far right.”

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

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