Interesting long term data confirms that Australia is warming. Full text at link.

In the first study of its kind in Australasia, scientists used 27 natural climate records to create the first large-scale temperature reconstruction for the region over the past 1,000 years.

The study led by researchers at the University of Melbourne, used a range of natural indicators including tree rings, corals and ice cores to study Australasian temperatures over the past millennium. They then compared these with climate model simulations.

Dr. Stephen Phipps, a researcher with UNSW’s Climate Change Research Centre and the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science led the climate model simulation research. He said the results showed there were no other warm periods in the past 1,000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950. ... read full story / add a comment

Friends at any cost: Israel is happy to welcome an Anti-Semite and nazi sympathiser to Israel.Tony Greenstein looks at whats going on here. Full text at link.

That the Lithuanian government should commemorate the memory of its quisling Prime Minister is not surprising. That the same anti-Semites who laud the Lithuanian Waffen SS survivors are also pro-Zionist is also not surprising. But that Israel's Foreign Minister, the arch-racist Avigdor Lieberman, should hosts a ministerial welcome to Lithuania's Foreign Minister, a man who tried to prevent the restoration of stolen property to its Jewish owners, should shock even a few Zionists. ... read full story / add a comment

Another day, another provocation. Yes, the US led GCC is carrying out War Games around disputed Isles in the Persian Gulf, Isles first seized by the Shah in 1971. Funnily enough the US had no objections to that. Yassamine Mather writes on this and May Day demonstrations in Iran. Full text at link.

However, then came news of another conflict in the Persian Gulf - this time between Iran on the one side and Saudi Arabia and Gulf Cooperation Council countries on the other. Arab and US media reported that the Peninsula Shield Force, the military coordinating army of the GCC, had been carrying out military manoeuvres to “test harmony and coordination among ground, air and naval forces and their readiness”. ... read full story / add a comment

Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle. ... read full story / add a comment

.The US military top brass has reacted with predictable feigned fury to the contents of documents leaked to Wire magazine last month that give an insight into US military thinking and planning . According to this article , US Army's Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley,a lecturer at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College , frequently invited civilian experts at the demonization of Muslims to address future leaders of the US military

“The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.” ... read full story / add a comment

The imposition of Sanctions against Iran is War by other means. Majid Tamjidi writes on how the sanctions hit ordinary people and tghe nature of the Iranian Government. Full text at link

Over the last few years western governments have created an atmosphere of war against Iran and in the last few months severe sanctions have come into effect. In addition we face the threat of military attacks by Israel against Iran’s strategic centres, including nuclear facilities.

It is not difficult to rebuff western excuses for creating this atmosphere of war and sanctions. The west is Israel’s main ally in the region and that country is a nuclear power. The US and its allies have never questioned Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, nor have they threatened it militarily. The imperialist powers’ main interactions in the region are with Saudi Arabia, which must hold the gold medal (or at least silver) for human rights abuses. ... read full story / add a comment

The persistence shown by Kenyan torture victims and relatives of those tortured and murdered during the Kenyan insurgency have forced the British government to admit that to cover up its crimes, the British Colonial Office in 1958 began a "highly organised" process of document destruction and removal that required “ massive administrative manpower on the ground.”

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has now released thousands of files it previously claimed had been “lost” after Britain withdrew from its former colonies. ... read full story / add a comment

Michael Copestake reports on HOPI's successful weekend school held in London. Speakers included John McDonnel MP, Donnacha DeLong NUJ, Moshe Machover and Iranian activists. Full text at url.

“The only thing that is certain is uncertainty,” said Labour MP John McDonnell in his talk at the April 21-22 weekend school organised by the Hands Off the People of Iran at the University of London Union.

Given the negotiations between the five members of the United Nations security council plus Germany and Iran that have just completed in Istanbul and are due to resume next month in May in Baghdad (of all the places to talk peace in the Middle East, could there be a more ironic one?) and the decline in the number of those mobilised on demonstrations and marches against war, the truth of this statement should be well noted by all. The continued threat of direct military action against Iran combined with factors such as the US electoral cycle constitute a heady and unpredictable brew. ... read full story / add a comment

Jeremy Scahill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Scahill author of "Blackwater" is a former New York Catholic Worker now a writer for "The Nation" Magazine.

YOUTUBE - Jeremy Scahill Speech on Obama Administration and the Use of Drones in a Policy of Assassination

Excellent viewing.... http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/04/29/obamas-deat...ideo/

... read full story / add a comment

For the last while we have been cultivated like proverbial economic mushrooms, "kept in the dark and fed a lot of economic shit". The fact is the current conditions have been deliberately cultivated to achieve exactly the effect they are having. ... read full story / add a comment

That money grubbing clown Senator Fergal Quinn now wants to use anti terrorist methods to monitor welfare claimants.The software would look for words like holiday or new car. This is the same crook who set up a separate company to get around hello money legislation. Full text at link.

Senator Feargall Quinn moments ago in the Seanad has suggested that the Government consider monitoring the use of the internet by social welfare recipients to detect instances of fraud. Keywords such as "holiday" and "new car" could indicate instances of fraud, according to Senator Quinn.
... read full story / add a comment

On April 20 there’s a memorial for Christopher Hitchens at the Cooper Union in Manhattan.
There’s a PEN tribute, also in Manhattan, on April 30.
Here’s my own little envoi. ... read full story / add a comment

A21 REPORT - 40th. anniversary of the Anniversary of Harrisburg 7 Trial - F.B.I. attempt to destroy Catholic Resistance to Vietnam War
http://tinyurl.com/873szz8
... read full story / add a comment

Being Black in Libya, under the NTC régime, means being subjected to racially motivated torture and lynching. ... read full story / add a comment

Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Front de Gauche is now the third candidate in the French Presidential election, at 16% he is level with La Pen but his trajectory is upward. His standing is sending shivers up the spines of the French Bourgeoisie, fearful of what concessions Edwin will wring from Hollande for support in the second round of voting. Here are two articles regarding his candidacy. Full texts at links. ... read full story / add a comment

The UN deploy monitors but the US is preparing for a military intervention in Syria. The Fundamentalist opposition have little support within Syria and have publicly boasted of their intent to Ethnically Cleanse Christians and Alawis, this doesn't seem to bother their Western backers. Full text of article by Niall Green at link.

Despite the claims of the United States and its allies that they are seeking a peace deal and humanitarian relief in Syria, the Annan mission and the presence of foreign observers constitute a political fraud. They are a smokescreen behind which the imperialist powers and their regional proxies are advancing their agenda of regime-change in Damascus. ... read full story / add a comment

Its not just a rogue attack from the Israeli Terrorist State thats on the agenda: Obama and his minions are deliberately psyching up the US people with their bellicose statements. Preconditions which cannot be met are being set for negotiations. Israel is being supplied with enhanced missile capability. Yassamine Mather deals with these points in the article below. Full text at link.

On Saturday April 14 Iran will attend talks with six world powers. The US has indicated this is Iran’s “last chance” to avoid military intervention and the Obama administration is taking very specific demands to the talks as preconditions for further negotiations: for example, Iran “must immediately close” a large nuclear facility allegedly built underneath a mountain if it wants to avoid a devastating strike. ... read full story / add a comment

"The failed north Korea rocket launch has been pounced upon gleefully by a servile media as an excuse to peddle and rehash the usual propaganda statements about North Korea that the US likes to see being propagated. To balance this wave of propaganda, here is an old article by war veteran Brian Willson which is somewhat less hysterical. Reproduced verbatim here under the terms of the global research site ... read full story / add a comment

The Arab Spring morphs into the Islamic Winter. This is supposed to be moderate muslims in control? Full article at link.

Officials in Tunisia say two bloggers have been jailed for seven years after posting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad on the internet.

The Ministry of Justice said the men had put naked caricatures of the prophet on their Facebook accounts.

Activists have criticised the sentences and voiced fears that they could herald a clampdown on free speech. ... read full story / add a comment

Mounties were apparently well-bred Englishmen defending the ideals of the British empire according to English writers. However. that's not exactly how writers from the rest of the world see them, with their history of shootouts and extra-judiciary killing and kidnapping. The Mountie according to Brit writers could ride into a hostile native American camp and arrest a chief 's son without raising his weapon, because of a violent reputation of power. residing not in himself but in the history of the British Empire he symbolized. ... read full story / add a comment