Ivory Coast law could see chocolate industry ‘wipe out’ protected forests | Environment | The Guardian

The crags of an ancient tree, destroyed by a fire lit by the farmer who planted cocoa and banana trees around it, at Mont Tia forest reserve in Ivory Coast. Photograph: Ruth Maclean/The Guardian

 

The Ivory Coast’s dwindling rainforests could be “wiped out” under a new law that will see legal protections removed from thousands of square miles of classified forest and unprecedented power handed to industrial chocolate manufacturers.

Civil society groups, environmental campaigners and workers’ cooperatives have warned that the new forestry code, ratified by the National Assembly and currently being implemented, will encourage unsustainable cocoa production and legalise large-scale deforestation in already ravaged areas.

 

Source: Ivory Coast law could see chocolate industry ‘wipe out’ protected forests | Environment | The Guardian

Jimmy Dore: Pentagon-Backed Rebels Fight CIA-Backed Rebels in Syria

America never learn, but do believe they are the sole masters of the universe and what they do must be right. Trump said he was different, but as we see he is just the same.

Oil is the paymaster and oil has to be obeyed.

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

Here’s another brilliant little video from the Jimmy Dore Show, which casts further light on the US’ role in spreading the carnage and chaos in Syria. In this clip, the comedian, with his co-hosts Steffi Zamora and Ron Placone, talk about a story which appeared in March, 2016, in the Los Angeles Times. The Pentagon and the CIA are backing different rebel factions in Syria. The Pentagon is backing one bunch as part of their campaign against ISIS, while the CIA is arming another group in order, the paper claimed, to bring Assad to the negotiating table. As Dore points out, this isn’t what the CIA and its government paymasters want. They want to oust Assad altogether. He reminds his viewers how the United States was approached by Saudi Arabia and Qatar several years ago. The two Arab nations offered to pay if America invaded Syria and overthrew Assad…

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Jimmy Dore Show: US Begins Bombing in Somalia Again, Because Oil Found

Oil is the reason for many conflicts, so is the case for the American involvement in the Middle East but not mentioned only are the atrocities.

But atrocities happen in other countries, but there is no American involvement as there is no oil.

Oil the root of all evil.

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

This is yet another video about the expansion of the American war machine and war propaganda by the Jimmy Dore Show. In this video, he discusses the report that AFRICOM, the part of American High Command responsible for Africa, has decided to put troops back into Somalia after 24 years. The troops are apparently there at the request of the Somalian government, and will be there for training purposes. The article does reveal that American troops have also been deployed several times within that space of 24 years in minor missions, such as scouting for bombing sites.

The US troops are being deployed to help the Somali government against the Islamist group, al-Shabaab. The article states that al-Shabaab, although sharing a similar Islamist ideology with ISIS and al-Qaeda, aren’t actually part of those organisations. Most of the time, they’ve been confined to Somalia. They arose after a long period of…

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North Dakota Oil Pipeline: Company Destroys Native Burial Sites

This is disgraceful and the law should be protecting the victims,the Standing Rock Sioux people.

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If true, this is pure barbarism. I blogged earlier this week about protests by Native Americans about the North Dakota Access Pipeline, which is intended to carry oil through the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux people. The tribe are opposing it, as they fear that the pipeline will lead to the pollution of their water supply and the destruction of their lands and its ecosystem. In this piece from Democracy Now!, the anchor Amy Goodson speaks to the tribe’s lawyer, Jan Hasselman, from the chambers Earthjustice, and the tribe’s chairman Dave Archambault.

The oil company has tried a number of tactics to try to close down and disrupt the protests. They local sheriff and officials have pulled cellphone access over the area, to stop citizens uploading videos of the protests to the internet. They’ve also attacked the protesters with dogs and pepper spray. There’s video footage of the bites…

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What does Brexit mean for the key parts of the UK economy?

It is still early days and although stock markets have recovered much of the loss racked up in the immediate aftermath of the vote, Brexit is already affecting Britain’s big businesses and leading to a host of new challenges.

Source: What does Brexit mean for the key parts of the UK economy?

Friedrich Engels: Principles of Communism

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

Looking through one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham last wee, I found a copy of Friedrich Engels’ Principles of Communism, published by Pluto Press. It was written in 1847, and is a very short introduction to Marx and Engels’ ideas of what constituted Communism. It’s 20 pages in length, and is written in the form of a catechism, Engels presenting their ideas as answers to the following questions: What is Communism? What is the proletariat? Proletarians, then, have not always existed? How did the proletariat originate? Under what conditions does this sale of the labour of the proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place? What working classes were there before the industrial revolution? In what way do proletarians differ from slaves? In what way do proletarians differ from serfs? In what way do proletarians differ from handicraftsmen? In what way do proletarians differ from manufacturing workers? What were the…

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Norman Finkelstein on the Coming Break-Up of American Zionism: Part 3

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Another audience member asks why it is that so many Palestinians survived in Israel, when the Israeli government was trying to cleans them. Finkelstein replies that in some areas, like Hebron, the Arab population survived because the Israelis needed them as workers. Galilee was mostly Christian, and the Arabs survived there because the Israelis were scared of offending the Vatican. And incidentally, their survival is further evidence that the cleansing of the Palestinians was not accidental, but was planned, as it wouldn’t have occurred otherwise. And some Palestinians survived by accident and sheer good fortune, like the Jews who survived the Holocaust.

Finkelstein also tackles the Holocaust industry, in response to another question from the audience. He is particularly incensed by this, as the descendant of Holocaust survivors himself. His father survived Auschwitz, while his mother survived that horrors of a succession of concentration and force labour camps. He makes…

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Norman Finkelstein on the Coming Break-Up of American Zionism: Part 2

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

What changed Jewish attitudes to Israel was the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The Americans saw Israel very much as a kind of outpost of American interests in the Middle East, and identified its people with great American heroes like Davey Crockett, and the struggle of the Texans for independence from Mexico. There was an equivalence between Israel’s soldiers and the heroes of the Alamo. The Israelis were invested with all the heroic values Americans believed characterised themselves, and from it being unpatriotic to support the Israelis, it became the reverse. It was super-patriotic to support them.

Crucial to this was the Israeli claim to have practised ‘purity of arms’. Unlike Vietnam, where the Americans were losing and committing terrible atrocities, the Israelis were winning without committing massacres and other breaches of human rights. This record has gradually darkened as the wars between Israel and its Arab neighbours continued. The classic case…

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Vox Political: Bank of England Economist Says High Executive Pay Damages Economy

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Mike over at Vox Political has posted a piece about the remarks by Andy Haldane, the Chief Economist at the Bank of England, that Britain’s economy is being damaged by exorbitantly high executive pay. An article in the Independent notes that the average pay of FTSE 100 bosses is now 150 times that of the average UK worker. The Indie then went on to say

This large and growing remuneration gap, Mr Haldane said, “drive[s] a wedge between management and employees…that in turn erodes social capital. A company, like a country, whose physical and social capital is being eroded is one whose wealth-creation capacity is being impaired.”

Social capital refers to trust and relationships in a society and Mr Haldane argued this matters “every bit as much to wealth and well-being” as financial capital such as stocks and shares and other such assets.

It also reported that there have been…

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