29/11/2012
SPECIAL REPORT by EurActiv*, 29 November 2012 — UN plans to double the world’s renewable energy capacity within two decades are under threat from fossil-fuel handouts, which have almost doubled in three years, campaigners say.
**Traffic slows to a crawl on the Monash Freeway in Melbourne, Australia through peak hour traffic. | fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au
More than 60 nations have committed to the UN’s ambitious Sustainable Energy For All (SE4ALL) targets which would, among other things, double the amount of renewables in the global energy mix.
But the world currently spends twelve times more on fossil fuels subsidies than renewable ones, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and campaigners say this could threaten the SE4ALL project.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
Leave a Comment »
29/11/2012
By Shahira Amin for RIA Novosti*, 28 November 2012, Cairo — After five days of angry street protests that left a Muslim Brotherhood supporter dead in the Nile Delta City of Damanhour, Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi has decided to scale back sweeping powers he seized last week that would make him immune to judicial oversight.
In a televised press briefing earlier this week, Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali said that the President has full respect for the judiciary . He explained that the new powers would be limited, allowing the President to make unilateral decisions only on “sovereign matters.”
No definition of the term was provided indicating that it would be up to the President alone to decide on what he considered as ‘sovereign’.
President Morsi had earlier defended his new powers insisting they were “temporary but necessary to complete the democratic transition.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Africa, Middle East, The Peoples |
1 Comment »
29/11/2012
Paris – The global economy is expected to make a hesitant and uneven recovery over the coming two years. Decisive policy action is needed to ensure that stalemate over fiscal policy in the United States and continuing euroarea instability do not plunge the world back into recession, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook.
Source: OECD
“The world economy is far from being out of the woods,” OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said during the Economic Outlook launch in Paris.*
“The US ‘fiscal cliff’, if it materialises, could tip an already weak economy into recession, while failure to solve the euro area crisis could lead to a major financial shock and global downturn,’ he added.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
Leave a Comment »
29/11/2012
“A global energy outlook cannot just talk about rich countries and ignore the other end of the spectrum.” This is why, for more than a decade, the World Energy Outlook (WEO) has published data and analysis on modern energy access for the poor*. Today, it does so again.
**Women in Madagascar preparing to use wood as their primary energy source. Sub-Saharan Africa scores lowest on the WEO 2012’s Energy Development Index. | Photo by World Resources Institute Staff
The International Energy Agency‘s WEO 2012 finds that, despite progress in the past year, nearly 1.3 billion people have no access to electricity while 2.6 billion must use traditional fuels (such as wood, charcoal, tree leaves, crop residues and animal waste) to cook their food, breathing in noxious smoke as they do so.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
Leave a Comment »
28/11/2012
Massive stores of carbon trapped under the northern hemisphere’s frozen expanses risk being unleashed and significantly contributing to global warming should thawing of the region’s permafrost continue to accelerate, a United Nations report warns.
A scientist (bottom right) standing in front of an ice-rich permafrost exposure on the coast of Herschel Island in Yukon Territory, Canada. Photo: Michael Fritz
Released on 27 November 2012 on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference in the Qatari capital of Doha, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report – Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost – underlines the potential hazards facing global ecosystems as well as national infrastructures if the rigid permafrost terrain were to become unstable.
It also warns that the threat posed by carbon dioxide and methane emissions from warming permafrost has only begun to enter mainstream scientific discourse in recent years and, as a result, has not been included in climate prediction modelling.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Market Lords, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
Leave a Comment »
28/11/2012
By Dr. Maung Zarni*
#1 Early anti-Rohingya Policy
I would call the military’s policy towards the Rohingya “structural genocide”, a systematic and sustained act of policy maintained and pursued, irrespective of which general or ex-general is in charge.
This includes various severe restrictions and other punitive acts in order to create living conditions as unattractive and unbearable as possible so that they would voluntarily exit Burma – and which thousands have done.
.
(after the Caretaker Government of General Ne Win took care of the restive Rakhine nationalists and their demand for autonomous Statehood in the 1950s. The Rohingya were useful as a counter-force towards the Rakhine nationalists in Arakan).
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Asia, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
2 Comments »
27/11/2012
By Roberto Savio*
Rome, 26 November 2012 – In recent weeks, we have seen the media presenting a homogeneous reading of the last act of the Palestine drama.
**By Gringer (talk) 14:01, 8 January 2009 (UTC) | Wikimedia Commons
Hamas started launching rockets against Israel. The Israelis retaliated with punishing aerial raids and when the Palestinians did not stop, Israel decided to invade and eliminate the Hamas structure.
At that point, US President Barack Obama got very worried and sent Hillary Clinton to the area. Clinton persuaded President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt to intervene, who was able to mediate successfully, and there is now a truce between Hamas and Israel. This, more or less, is what we have all read.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
27/11/2012
The head of the United Nations agency tasked with helping Palestinian refugees said that the ceasefire halting the recent violence between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza offered a chance to “address the real problems underlying the crisis.”
Scene of the impact of the bombing of the Israeli air force, at the Palestine Stadium in Gaza. UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan
“It is of crucial… importance that we seize the opportunity provided by this tragic escalation,” the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA), Filippo Grandi, on 26 November said in remarks at a meeting of the body’s Advisory Commission, taking place by the Dead Sea in Jordan.
“Difficult political work would have to be carried out, including promoting and supporting lasting Palestinian unity,” he noted in reference to divisions among the wider Palestinian leadership, according to an UNRWA news release. “But failing to act now will have dire consequences,” he added.
In his remarks, Grandi also noted that an Israeli blockade on Gaza, imposed since 2007, was illegal, and the “greatest danger is to return to the status quo ante, and restore the prison-like conditions of Gaza.” He said it would be “only a matter of time (until) violence resumes” if there was such a return.
Grandi called for the blockade, which Israel has reportedly said it maintains for security reasons, to be “lifted in all its aspects.”
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
Leave a Comment »
26/11/2012
By Shahira Amin for RIA Novosti*, Cairo, November 26 — The highly-controversial constitutional declaration that Egypt’s Islamist President Mohamed Morsi issued on Thursday, dramatically extending his powers, has polarized the country and plunged it deeper into political and economic turmoil.
The Presidential decree puts President Morsi above judicial oversight, preventing the dissolution of both the constituent assembly (the 100-member panel currently drafting the country’s new constitution) and the Shura or Consultative Council.
It has also allowed him to dismiss the highly unpopular Mubarak-appointed Public Prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud and replace him with Judge Talaat Ibrahim, who headed the Independence of the Judiciary Movement.
Revolutionary and political forces almost immediately united to condemn the decree, with some describing President Morsi as a “fascist dictator.”
Sunday saw the third straight day of clashes between Morsi’s supporters (mostly Muslim Brotherhood members) and his opponents. These clashes, although intermittent, left one person dead in the Nile Delta City of Damanhour.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples |
2 Comments »
26/11/2012
By RT*, 26 November 2012 — US President Barack Obama has fast-tracked the creation of a new rulebook on when it is ‘legal’ to use drones for targeted killings. Obama reportedly feared that drones would be abused in a potential new administration after the November elections.
**A MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle prepares to land after a mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan | U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson | Source: USAF Photographic Archives (image permalink)
Two anonymous Obama administration officials claimed that explicit rules were being developed to establish clear standards and procedures for when “lethal action is acceptable,” the New York Times reported.
The administration wanted to accelerate the codification of these rules when there was a possibility that Obama would lose the November 6 presidential elections, and the “levers might no longer be in our hands,” one of the officials said.
read more »
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords |
3 Comments »
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 