Faeroe Islands: Sea Shepherd Undercover Operation Exposes Cetacean Mass Slaughter

On July 19, 2010, a pod of 236 pilot whales was ruthlessly slaughtered in the town of Klaksvik in the Danish Faeroe Islands. Sea Shepherd was able to document the slaughter through the efforts of an undercover operative who had been living among the locals in order to capture footage of “the grind.” The grind is a cruel method of whaling that involves stranding pods of cetaceans in coves before severing their spinal chords with knives.

EU Warns of Democracy Ending in Greece, Spain and Portugal

By: Frank McGuire

Democracy could “collapse” in Greece, Spain and Portugal unless the debt crisis is controlled, the head of the European Commission reportedly has warned.

Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso recently detailed his “apocalyptic” vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe are jolted by military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money, the London Daily Mail reported.

Greece, Spain and Portugal are facing dire problems with their public finances. All three countries have a history of military coups. Greece has been hit by a series of national strikes and riots this year following the announcement of drastic cuts to public spending.

Barroso also has warned Spain and Portugal that they will have to keep up their painful budget cuts into 2012 to curb deficits and regain investor confidence. "Without confidence coming back to the financial markets in Europe, we will not be able to achieve that higher level of growth ... that is why fiscal consolidation is so important," he said, according to the Associated Press.

John Monks, former head of the TUC, told the Daily Mail that he had been “shocked” by the severity of the warning from Barroso, who is a former prime minister of Portugal.

In an interview with the Brussels-based magazine EU Observer, Monks said: “This is extremely dangerous. This is 1931, we're heading back to the 1930s, with the Great Depression and we ended up with militarist dictatorship. I'm not saying we're there yet, but it's potentially very serious, not just economically, but politically as well.”

Meanwhile, the European Commission on Tuesday reviewed budget programs for Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovenia and Slovakia — which all use the euro — and the Czech Republic, which still has its own currency.

It said it had called on most of them to spell out clearly the cutbacks they are planning for the coming years as they aim to bring deficits below the 3 percent limit.

Belgium and Italy have a tighter deadline than the others and are supposed to reduce their deficits by 2012. Ireland has more time — until 2014 — and all the others have until 2013.


Source:  moneynews.com

The Israelis attacked the "Freedom Flotilla"

Gaza, May 31, (Pal Telegraph – By Sameh Habeeb)

A number of Israeli naval ships is approaching the “Freedom Flotilla” sea aid convoys near Gaza shores. The boats which is carrying thousands of tones of aid and food stuff sailed to Gaza from Cyprus after launching the flotilla a few days ago.
Tweeting from the sear, Freegaza is saying that signals are going up and down. Israel is doing its best to block the satellite.

It’s 9:16 PM In Europe

And we’re still waiting for the rescue plan …

12-Year-Old Yemeni Bride Dies of Internal Bleeding

Every so often, I come across a story that simply breaks my heart.  Last fall, it was the death in childbirth of a 12-year-old girl who had been forced, because of her family's financial hardship, to drop out of school and marry a man twice her age.  She died of severe bleeding after a three-day labor, and her baby also died.

Guess what!

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Κάλλιο αργά παρά ποτέ.

Με το ποσό του 1,25 δισ.δολαρίων προτίθεται να αποζημιώσει το αμερικανικό κράτος, τους μαύρους αγρότες, οι οποίοι έχουν υπάρξει θύματα φυλετικών διακρίσεων για δεκαετίες.

Οι μαύροι αγρότες στις ΗΠΑ, βίωσαν τον ρατσισμό ακόμα και στις κρατικές επιδοτήσεις και τα κρατικά δάνεια από το ομοσπονδιακό υπουργείο Γεωργίας. Επί πολλά χρόνια οι προσφυγές των μαύρων αγροτών κατά του συστήματος δανείων και επιδοτήσεων είτε δεν γίνονταν δεκτές, ή εξετάζονταν με πολύ χαρακτηριστικές καθυστερήσεις. Δεν ήταν λίγες οι φορές που οι αγρότες που είχαν αποκλειστεί από το σύστημα λόγω φυλετικών διακρίσεων, πρώτα πτώχευαν και στη συνέχεια δικαιώνονταν!

You were born to save the planet!

The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and it has all been leading up to you.  4.4 million years ago an ancestor we now call ARDI roamed the land of Ethiopia, and her life was leading up to you.  The last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, thawed, leaving the redwood forests to our North, and all of this was leading up to you.  The Earth needs you right now. 

Major Antarctic glacier is 'past its tipping point'

A major Antarctic glacier has passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study. After losing increasing amounts of ice over the past decades, it is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres.

Pine Island glacier (PIG) is one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In 2004, satellite observations showed that it had started to thin, and that ice was flowing into the Amundsen Sea 25 per cent faster than it had 30 years before.

Now, the first study to model changes in the ice sheet in three dimensions shows that PIG has probably passed a critical "tipping point" and is irreversibly on track to lose 50 per cent of its ice in as little as 100 years, significantly raising global sea levels.

The team that carried out the study admits their model can represent only a simplified version of the physics that govern changes in glaciers, but say that if anything, the model is optimistic and PIG will disappear faster than it projects.

Richard Katz of the University of Oxford and colleagues developed the model to explore whether the retreat of the "grounding line" – the undersea junction at which a floating ice shelf becomes an ice sheet grounded on the sea bed – could cause ice sheets to collapse.