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The SakerA bird's eye view of the vineyard
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international / anti-war / imperialism Friday October 14, 2011 - 12:51 by pat c
 3 comments (last - wednesday october 19, 2011 - 13:19)
Bill Van Auken analyses the latest attempt by the US to ramp up pressure on Iran including an increase in sanctions. The FBI Director said it read like a Hollywood script. Well maybe its just that: a work of fiction. Robert Baer, a 21-year veteran CIA case officer in the Middle East told ABC News that the US charges were not “credible.” He said: "They’re much better than this. They wouldn’t be sending money through an American bank, they wouldn’t be going to the cartels in Mexico to do this." Full text at link. The White House announced Wednesday that it is imposing a new round of economic sanctions against Iran, while Vice President Joseph Biden warned that “nothing has been taken off the table” in regard to Washington’s response to an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, suggesting the possibility of military strikes. Among the new targets of US sanctions is Mahan Air, Iran’s first privately owned airline, which flies to 12 countries. US officials claimed that the airline was involved in “secretly ferrying” members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. ... read full story / add a comment 
national / miscellaneous Thursday October 13, 2011 - 17:20 by SpunOutter
 1 image
WE ARE THE YOUTH RISING.... We are the younger generation. We make up 40% of the population, making Ireland the youngest country in the EU. 30% of us are unemployed and dream of work. We are among the 1000 weekly emigrants who don’t want to leave. Many of us are artists without spaces, visionary entrepreneurs with no investment, politicians without parties, the spiritual without churches, and idealists without leaders. ... read full story / add a comment
international / environment Sunday October 09, 2011 - 18:23 by P. Rampal
64 comments (last - tuesday october 18, 2011 - 14:18) 7 images
The discussion continues as to why climate modelling may underestimate Arctic sea ice loss. In recent decades, Arctic sea ice has suffered a dramatic decline that exceeds climate model predictions. The unexpected rate of ice shrinkage has now been explained by researchers at CNRS, Université Joseph Fourier and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They argue that climate models underestimate the rate of ice thinning, which is actually about four times faster than calculations. This model bias is due to the poor representation of the sea ice southward drift out of the Arctic basin through the Fram Strait. When this mechanism was taken into account to correct the discrepancy between simulations and observations, results from the new model suggested that there will be no Arctic sea ice in summer by the end of the century. This work was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research on 29 September 2011. ... read full story / add a comment
national / anti-capitalism Sunday October 09, 2011 - 09:39 by Red Banner
Issue 45 of Red Banner is out now. €2 / £1.50 from bookshops or from the address above. ... read full story / add a comment
international / anti-war / imperialism Saturday October 08, 2011 - 18:57 by Ramzy Baroud
12 comments (last - tuesday november 08, 2011 - 20:32) 3 images
Ramzy Baroud is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com and author of My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). Here he writes of Syria and US attempts to interfere in the country's future. But he says: United States involvement in Syria is the second-greatest danger facing the Syria uprising (the first being the cruelty of the regime). United States ambassador to Syria Robert Ford is quite a feisty diplomat. He shows up unannounced and uninvited at various hot spots in the country, greeted with varying degrees of enthusiasm and, oftentimes, anger. When he made a highly touted appearance in the city of Hama in July, residents reportedly greeted him with flowers. However, his appearance at the home of an opposition figure in Damascus on September 29 earned him a salvo of tomatoes and rocks from angry protesters. ... read full story / add a comment
international / rights, freedoms and repression Saturday October 08, 2011 - 18:41 by John Pilger
2 comments (last - wednesday november 02, 2011 - 11:21)  1 video file
John Pilger writes about what Assange faces in the upcoming court case. The High Court in London will soon to decide whether Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct. At the appeal hearing in July, Ben Emmerson QC, counsel for the defence, described the whole saga as "crazy". Sweden's chief prosecutor had dismissed the original arrest warrant, saying there was no case for Assange to answer. Both the women involved said they had consented to have sex. On the facts alleged, no crime would have been committed in Britain. ... read full story / add a comment
international / education Thursday October 06, 2011 - 15:51 by opus diablos
This extract gives an update on the current state of play, and a little background, from the yankee 'backyard' of Latin America. It indicates there are lessons for our predicament that our betters would prefer we didn't learn. ... read full story / add a comment
international / worker & community struggles and protests Wednesday October 05, 2011 - 13:17 by pat c
British Maoist Harry Powell writes on the recent riots in Britain. Harry argues that the riots were led by a lumpen element that has long preyed on working class communities. Here is an extract, the full article runs to 36 pages. The incident that sparked off the rioting was the police shooting Mark Duggan in Tottenham, North London on 4th. August. After an unsatisfactory response from the police to their inquiries the family and friends of Duggan held a protest outside a police station. This attracted other people and developed into more general disorder involving fighting with the police, damage to buildings and looting from shops. This sort of disorder spread to other areas of London and outside in cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Nottingham. Just as suddenly as these outbursts had begun, they came to an abrupt end on 10th. August when the weather turned wet. As someone commented, “I don’t recollect that the Russian Revolution came to a sudden halt when the weather turned bad.” ... read full story / add a comment
national / politics / elections Sunday October 02, 2011 - 16:25 by Groucho Marx
19 comments (last - sunday october 16, 2011 - 15:37)  1 audio file
Eoghan Harris tried to run the 1997 election through Derek Nally, former head of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors. He tried to destroy the Mary McAleese campaign by using Nally. That is where Harris's description of McAleese as a 'Tribal Time Bomb' came from. The bomb blew up in Harris's face when Nally found out. He ditched Harris and his political playmate, John Cadden, when he found out that he was a patsy. Nally was an unusual policeman who challenged the Garda 'Heavy Gang' in the 1970s. The info is here: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/81368 Today, Harris wants to run the election through Gay Mitchell, see: ... read full story / add a comment 
international / arts and media Friday September 30, 2011 - 14:22 by Chicherin
1 video file
Marxism and Other Worlds: Fantasy and Sci-fi Speaker: James Turley, Communist Party of Great Britain. This speech was delivered at Communist University 2011. http://vimeo.com/29188003 ... read full story / add a comment
international / rights, freedoms and repression Thursday September 29, 2011 - 12:49 by pat c
An interesting article about the genuine and well founded fears of the Christian community in Syria. The possibility of a sectarian bloodbath is all too real. Just look at the example of Iraq. Also look at the Irish example: when loyalist demagogues in the six counties were rousing up Protestants against Catholics they also made sure that Protestant Socialists suffered in the pogroms. The same threat hangs over Syria. This is not a statement of support for Assad rather a reminder that if Assad goes and power falls into the hands of fundamentalists there is a risk of sectarian butchery. ... read full story / add a comment 
dublin / arts and media Tuesday September 27, 2011 - 17:49 by seedot
1 video file
The new season of Dole TV starts with this stormer of an episode. Whether its political hip hop, an analysis of Nama or the full series of Dotsy this is the best 20 minutes you can spend this week watching telly. And next week help make the show - [email protected] ... read full story / add a comment
international / crime and justice Saturday September 24, 2011 - 16:59 by concerned
In a report from the WSWS site, they describe how the broadcasting media have been forced by the UK govt. to hand over 100s of hours of unbroadcast footage of the riots to the police. This is yet another serious erosion of checks and balances in the system and reflects both the paranoia and vindictivness of the system. Whilst the mainstream media are generally to be trusted anyhow especially when it comes to social justice and matters relating to maintaining the system, they rightly see that this is a threat to themselves. ... read full story / add a comment
international / rights, freedoms and repression Thursday September 22, 2011 - 13:39 by An Draigneán Donn
26 comments (last - tuesday september 27, 2011 - 14:11)
Libya is not only a republic. Officially, it does not call itself a ‘Jumhuriya’. Instead, it is described as a ‘Jamahiriya’, meaning a republic with a system of direct democracy. Not too many non-Libyans are aware that this North African country, conquered several times in the past - and which lost thousands of its citizens, including the legendary hero Omar Mukhtar, as martyrs, to colonialism - has been experimenting since the late 1970s with a governmental policy and practice that enables it to credit its own society as being ahead of a number of Western regimes that have habitually claimed to be the cradle of democracy. ... read full story / add a comment
international / gender and sexuality Friday September 16, 2011 - 14:34 by John Cornford
Iran hangs men for having gay sex. Confirmed by the Iranian news agency ISNA Iran. Full story at Three Iranian men have been executed after being found guilty of charges related to homosexuality, according to a semi-official news agency. The men, only identified by their initials, were hanged on Sunday in the south-western city of Ahvaz, the capital of Iran's Khuzestan province. "The three convicts were sentenced to death based on the articles 108 and 110 of Iran's Islamic penal code, for acts against the sharia law and bad deeds," the Isna agency quoted a judiciary official in Khuzestan as saying. Iran Human Rights, an independent NGO based in Norway, said the men were charged with "lavat" – sexual intercourse between two men. It is not clear whether the three men were homosexuals or merely smeared with homosexualityaccused of being gay. ... read full story / add a comment
international / anti-war / imperialism Friday September 16, 2011 - 13:57 by Yassamine Mather
Yassamine Mather writes on developments in the Middle East and North Africa. She analyses the breach between Israel and Turkey and the continuing Israeli threat . The world is only just beginning to realise the international consequences of the Arab awakening. Of course, Israel was the first to express concerns in the first days of the protests against president Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. It joined Saudi Arabia in warning the Obama administration that Mubarak’s downfall would endanger the ‘peace process’ with the Palestinians. Events in the last few weeks have proved them both right. First came the deterioration of Israeli-Turkish relations. For decades Turkey has been the single most important economic partner of the Zionist state. However, relations between this key Nato ally and Israel broke down after Israel refused to apologise for its deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that resulted in the death of eight Turks and a Turkish-American. In response, Turkey expelled several senior Israeli diplomats, suspended military cooperation and boosted naval patrols in the eastern Mediterranean. ... read full story / add a comment
national / miscellaneous Friday September 09, 2011 - 14:45 by MediaMega
2 comments (last - sunday september 11, 2011 - 09:30)
IRELAND is in the grip of a "heroin epidemic", while alcohol abuse among the young is leading them towards drug use, two youth support organisations warned yesterday. The Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children were told by Spunout and the Aislinn Adolescent Addiction Centre that alcohol was both a gateway and relapse drug and that issues such as the availability of alcohol and its below-cost selling needed to be tackled as a matter of urgency. ... read full story / add a comment
international / anti-capitalism Friday September 09, 2011 - 13:04 by Simon Basketter
Papers found in Tripoli expose links between Libya and MI6 relating to rendition and the torture of prisoners. Previous investigations were a whitewash, this must not be allowed to happen again. New documents expose years of murderous interventions in Libya by British governments. Within days of celebrating their role in overthrowing former dictator Gaddafi, the shallowness of British claims to support democracy in Libya was shown in evidence of their support for torture. After years of denial and cover-up by both Labour and Tory governments there is now panic in the political establishment. ... read full story / add a comment
national / anti-capitalism Wednesday September 07, 2011 - 23:27 by Freeman Gerry
Fascinating example of double-speak and newthink in the latest of RTE's press-releases on behalf of our overlords in the IMF: http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0907/imf-business.html Instructive and personally therapeutic to sift through the seemingly innocuous and dry-as-dust statements therein and see what lies behind the appearance of 'news.' ... read full story / add a comment
international / anti-war / imperialism Wednesday September 07, 2011 - 14:03 by James Turley
James Turley looks at developments in Libya: the divisions among the rebels, how most of the Left opposed NATO intervention. More at link. As it threatened, briefly, to do this spring, the regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi has collapsed. The forces previously known as the Libyan rebels have seized power in most of the country, including the capital, Tripoli - assisted, of course, by months of aerial bombardment by Britain, France and America. ... read full story / add a comment |
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