The state of the forests, deforestation, and what we can do about it
By Kersasp D. Shekhdar
The People's Voice

Amazon Forest: World watches wildfires lash through
'lungs of the earth'

Deforestation at warp speed

Up until about the Industrial Revolution, deforestation—if it could be called that—used to be a not unnatural consequence of man’s need for timber, the expansion of human settlements, and slash-and-burn agriculture which has been practised since the Neolithic Age and is still used by indigeous or nomadic peoples and settlers. Forests have been cleared “to make space for agriculture and animal grazing, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing, and construction.” Further and other drivers of deforestation vary from one geographical region to another.

Fully a third of the planet’s forests, comprising two billion hectares, have been destroyed since the Great Ice Age but the pace of deforestation has not been even—far from it. The rate of deforestation has accelerated exponentially such that, according to the World Wildlife Fund, “the fastest rate of forest destruction has been in the past couple of centuries,” as “up to 15 billion trees are now being cut down every year.” While the first half of total deforestation took place over nearly 100 centuries (from 8,000 B.C. to 1900), the second half occurred in the blink of an eye within only the past one century, culminating in the 1980s with no let up (unless one is to fall for corporate-sponsored happy statistics).

So though only a few centuries ago an old man could take his grandchild for a walk in a nearby forestland or woodland, identifying tree species and small wildlife along the way, how many grandfathers can do so today? All too few, for how many human habitations are still blessed with nearby forestlands or woodlands? And when such is the reality in our time, what forests might a grandfather show his ten-year-old only a century from now?

John Waters

"[E]ach migrant abroad became as though a mobile force-field of ideological power, which neutralised many of the rights of those into whose former territories it sought to encroach." — John Waters, ‘Bullied Towards Extinction’

I am threatened by the Irish police with prosecution for 'incitement to hatred,' 'racism' and 'anti-semitism,' on the basis of an article containing nothing remotely resembling any such quantities.

On Tuesday last, October 17th, at 17.40, I received the following communication from ‘Don Griffin Detective Sergeant Dun Laoghaire Detective Unit’:

💬 Dear John,

Reference to complaints relating to articles appearing in The Irish Light "The Uncensored Truth”

I am contacting you to let you know that the Gardaí at Dun Laoghaire have received complaints about the contents of two separate articles contained in The Irish Light Newspaper, of which I understand you are the Journalist. The first complaint relates to an article in Issue 16 with front page headline ‘Ireland is full.’ It is alleged by the complainant that the related contents are offensively racist and Anti-Semitic. A second and separate complaint relates to what is alleged to be an Anti-Semitic article on pages 22 and 23 of Issue 17.

It is envisaged that the articles will be submitted by file to DPP to make a direction on whether or not the said articles constitute a possible offence under Section 2 of the Prohibition of the Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989. Prior to the submission of this file I am inviting you to comment, if you wish to do so, on the articles’ potential to offend. For that purpose you can arrange to attend at Dun Laoghaire Garda Station where I could meet you on any date at your convenience. You can contact me by email [here he provides an email address and phone number, which I have omitted here to protect his privacy] if you should require any further information.

Yours sincerely,

Don Griffin Detective Sergeant
Dun Laoghaire Detective Unit

Christopher Black

International law has essentially collapsed with the US backed Israeli siege of the Palestinian people of Gaza, in response to the Hamas attack on Israeli occupation forces on October 7. The Palestinians have no expectation of mercy from the Israelis, when they have suffered decades of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinian lands and their replacement by Israeli settlers, all in violation of international law and several UN resolutions, including of course, Resolution 242 which required Israel to withdraw from all the lands they seized in the 1967 War; a war which they now admit was started on a pretext in order to seize those lands and push out the Palestinians who lived there.

Israel has been granted impunity for its aggression and occupation of Palestinian lands for decades by the nations that helped to create it and support it after World War I and World War II; the USA, Britain and their allies, who granted it impunity to act as it wishes because Israel serves their objectives in the Middle East, acting as the local agent of the nation that seeks to be the world hegemon, the United States.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court says nothing about the crimes being committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians in the occupied lands and Gaza, even though it has had a file open on Palestine-Israel since 2019. Its lack of action is in stark contrast to the quick issuance of a warrant of arrest against President Putin some months ago based on no real investigation whatsoever.

Mark Curtis

Declassified British files highlight a little known aspect of the joint MI6/CIA coup against Iran’s democratically elected government in August 1953 – UK covert action in support of leading radical Shia Islamists, the predecessors of Ayatollah Khomeini.
   ● British officials wanted “a non-communist coup     d'état” in Iran to install a “dictator” who would    promote UK oil interests
   ● UK and US governments backed Islamist forces    to stir up unrest and even considered installing    Ayatollah Kashani as a client leader following a    coup

In many accounts the CIA is regarded as the prime mover behind the 1953 coup in Iran, yet Britain was in fact the initial instigator and provided considerable resources to the plot, which UK planners named ‘Operation Boot’.

In the early 1950s, the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), or BP as it is now known, was run from London and owned jointly by the British government and private citizens. It controlled Iran’s main source of income, oil, and by 1951 had become, according to one British official, “in effect an imperium in imperio [an empire within an empire] in Persia”. Iranian nationalists objected to the fact that the AIOC’s revenues from oil were greater than the Iranian government’s. Britain’s ambassador in Tehran, Sir Francis Shepherd, had a typically colonialist take on the situation. The declassified files show his writing:

💬 “It is so important to prevent the Persians from destroying their main source of revenue…by trying to run it themselves.” He added: “The need for Persia is not to run the oil industry for herself (which she cannot do) but to profit from the technical ability of the West.”

Of course Iran was perfectly capable of running its own oil industry. In March 1951 the Iranian parliament voted to nationalise oil operations, take control of the AIOC and expropriate its assets. In May, Mohammed Mossadeq, the leader of Iran’s social-democratic National Front Party, was elected as prime minister and immediately implemented the bill.

Britain responded by withdrawing the AIOC’s technicians and announcing a blockade on Iranian oil exports. Moreover, it also began planning to overthrow Mossadeq. “Our policy”, a British official later recalled, “was to get rid of Mossadeq as soon as possible”.

Christopher Black

Attorney Says Britain and NATO "At War" - Russian Military Strikes Against Them Would Be Lawful

On the 19th of May, the Financial Times quoted the British Minister of Defense, Ben Wallace, stating that the West could face the threat of full-scale war with Russia and China by the end of the decade and proclaimed defence preparation a paramount task for Western countries.

One has to wonder what universe Mr. Wallace and his boss, Rishi Sunak, are living in since Britain is engaged in war with Russia right now, has, with every step, every hostile action, set itself up for a full-scale war, a full-scale catastrophe, which they cannot prevent. Why Britain would go to war with China as well as Russia when China has not threatened it and is oceans away, no one can explain in rational terms. Yet, this is the British rhetoric, the fetishistic parroting of the words of their lord and master, the USA.

Many argue that statements, a war is not happening, that it is something that exits only in the future, are desperate attempts to fool the British people, to lie to them about their government’s intentions and what is coming. Others argue that they are signs that the British government has no sense of reality. But, in the end, one has to conclude that they are both at the same time. Worse, these statements speak of a government, that seems to think it is untouchable, that the war with Russia will be limited in geographic space to Ukraine, that Britain’s participation in the war against Russia will have no direct consequences for Britain and its people, that Russia will not dare to follow military and political logic and conduct military strikes against Britain. Nothing could be further from the truth, yet the British establishment, dreaming of its past, is unable to accept reality, is leading the British people towards disaster, as the gathering storm of war edges ever closer to their shores.

Christopher Black

The First Geneva Convention governing the sick and wounded
members of armed forces was signed in 1864. (Wikipedia)

(This article was first published by New Eastern Outlook, March 9, 2022)

The western mass media and governments have fallen into a frenzy of anti-Russian propaganda over Russia’s military operations in Ukraine. One element of their propaganda war is the claim that Russia’s action is illegal under international law. But is this the case and what does it mean for these countries to make that claim when they have themselves invaded and attacked too many nations to enumerate, every one of which was not only illegal, but without any moral, ethical justification whatsoever?

The law on the use of force in international relations has two aspects, codified international law as set out in the Charter of the United Nations, and the commonly understood right to self-defence.

The UN Charter is the primary document governing the use of force. Nation states do not have a right to use force in relations with other sovereign states except in very limited circumstances. It used to be, before the twentieth century, that there was an understanding that all nations had the right to use force, to go to war to ensure their interests. But the cataclysms of World War I and World War II led in each case to an attempt to prevent wars of aggression.

After WWI the League of Nations was created, supported by the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which I have referred to in previous articles, a Treaty still in effect, in which the USA and Soviet Union and all other nations promised never to use war to solve political disputes. The League of Nations fell apart in the 1930’s with the rise of fascism and the aggressions of Italy and Germany. But the Kellogg-Briand Pact still exists.

James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler's Substack

A solemn silence turned collective gasp in the District of Columbia Woke Circuit courtroom as two bailiffs entered the door beside the jury box with the small cream-colored bear suspended between them, his stumpy hind legs wheeling fruitlessly to seek purchase in the unavailing air. The Queen of Hearts, presiding, banged her gavel as the little bear was seated at the table for the defense beside another rather small, darkish, furtive figure.

The Queen of Hearts peered over her half-glasses at the defendant and snarled, “State your full name and residence.”

“Winnie-the-Pooh,” the defendant said. “From the Hundred Acre Wood.”

“What is your personal pronoun?”

The bear looked perplexed. “Oh, bother,” he said. “Nobody I know has such a thing?”

“Of course they do,” the Queen said.

“Perhaps it’s ‘the’,” the bear said.

“That is a definite article, not a pronoun!” the Queen barked. “Are you an imbecile?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s ‘dear'”—

“That’s enough out of you!” the Queen said. “And let’s have no more impertinence! Do you have counsel?”

“Why, yes,” the bear said. “Mr. Kafka, who is seated beside me.”

“You are mistaken,” the Queen said. “That is a cockroach seated beside you, and the court is displeased to see it. Bailiff, please remove that disgusting cockroach from my court.”

Mr. Kafka, gesticulating in protest with all six arms and legs, had to be dragged out.

John Pilger

Across the political and media elite in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.

Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had "reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution". Whitlam ended his nation's colonial servility. He abolished Royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported "zones of peace" and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor Party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country's resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to "buy back the farm". In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain's colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent's vast natural wealth.

Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of this "breaking free" in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided "black teams" to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington's informants during the Whitlam years.

Patrick Martin

From the August 2013 "rebel" gas attack in Damascus (Ghouta)

It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in public because no one wanted to know.

In a lengthy article published Sunday by the London Review of Books, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb on August 21, 2013 was actually carried out by Syrian “rebel” forces acting at the behest of Turkey, for the purpose of providing a pretext for a US attack on Syria.

The gas attack killed many hundreds of people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, and the Obama administration and the corporate-controlled US media immediately blamed the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad for the atrocity. The New York Times, in particular, published a lengthy analysis by its military “expert,” C. J. Chivers, which purported to show, based on rocket trajectories, prevailing winds and other technical factors, that the gas shells could only have been fired from Syrian army artillery positions.

For several weeks, the Ghouta attack became the pretext for a warmongering campaign by the White House and the US and European media. Obama threatened immediate air strikes, claiming that the Syrian government had crossed a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons, which he had laid down in 2012.

John Pilger

Washington's role in the fascist putsch against an elected government in Ukraine will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore the historical record. Since 1945, dozens of governments, many of them democracies, have met a similar fate, usually with bloodshed.

Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries on earth with fewer people than Wales, yet under the reformist Sandinistas in the 1980s it was regarded in Washington as a "strategic threat". The logic was simple; if the weakest slipped the leash, setting an example, who else would try their luck?

The great game of dominance offers no immunity for even the most loyal US "ally". This is demonstrated by perhaps the least known of Washington's coups - in Australia. The story of this forgotten coup is a salutary lesson for those governments that believe a "Ukraine" or a "Chile" could never happen to them.

Australia's deference to the United States makes Britain, by comparison, seem a renegade. During the American invasion of Vietnam - which Australia had pleaded to join - an official in Canberra voiced a rare complaint to Washington that the British knew more about US objectives in that war than its antipodean comrade-in-arms. The response was swift: "We have to keep the Brits informed to keep them happy. You are with us come what may."