Congratulations Israel, you've made a terrorist:

Zionist Hasbara operatives have been claiming that the current Israeli genocidal onslaught in Gaza is a “war against Hamas” and that it was only necessitated by the firing of Palestinian rockets on Israel.
(reposted from this group of freedom fighters.)

Barack Obama to shift policy on Cuba

Will Obama Shift Policy on Cuba? BBC Article

"As the Americas have changed, we have sat on the sideline, offering no compelling vision and creating a vacuum for demagogues to advance an anti-American agenda

Barack Obama"

Are you fucking kidding me, Barack Obama? We've "sat on the sideline?!" What fucking sideline? The united states has had an extraordinarily active role in the shaping of Latin America, shaping it against the United States. "Creating a vacuum for demagogues?" As though there is no rational reasoning behind the advancement of an Anti-American agenda? Not the puppet governments of Batista and Pinochet, not the arming of right-wing contra guerillas, not the raping of Mexico by NAFTA, not the free trade zones of Guatemala, Ecuador, not the military campaigns in Colombia, not the centuries of pillaging of South American shores.. the Constitution of Cuba itself thanks in it's opening lines their lineage of patriotism and rebellion that overthrew the "Yankee Imperialists"! You make it sound, Barack Obama, as though all of a sudden, whoaaaa, we've woken up in this scary world where everyone hates us for no good reason. Like we're the little guys between the atlantic and the pacific, offering "no compelling vision" and that's why they hate us. That in our absence as the "leader of the free world", we've allowed "evil-doers" to get ahead. You're sounding an awful lot like your predecessor, Barack Obama. And so now, you're saying, let's kick them down a chance to get ahead in global capitalism, let's open their markets to the same disgusting free trade that's ruined economies around the world. Because every other option has failed. Not invasions, not embargoes, the Cubans have survived through the fall of the Soviet Union, through Peak Oil, through isolation tactics, they've survived and graduated to become one of the most successful, healthful, free countries of the southern hemisphere. And so now you want to subject them to the final test- and screw them to hell with the free market. And then dress it up as helping them out. As though that has ever been the goal of the United States. With friends like us, the Cubans need no enemies.

A fine december we're having

It's been topping out at 40 degrees the last few days of fall here in Western Massachusetts. No snow yet. Last year there was already a few feet. The year before that more.

Reports from across the globe show similar anomalies. Though it is important to recognize that there is variation in weather patterns across years, it seems things are accelerating at an accelerating rate: droughts across the global south, flooding in the north.

Venice is under water, with the worst floods in decades.
Says Venice's Tide Center: [This is] the deepest flood in 22 years, and the fourth highest flood level in recent history, claimed Venice's Tide Center.



Zimbabwe is suffering from a phenomenal drought that has diminished it's grain tonnage to starvation levels: from 4.5 million tons in 2000 to 800,000 tons in 2008, in a country that needs 2 million tons "just to feed its own people". Zimbabwe suffers from a multitude of disastrous conditions- the stated increasing drought, a resurgence of cholera, and perhaps worst of all, a neoliberal dictator whose regime has been bolstered for decades by the ill-fated policies of the (guess who!) International Monetary Fund, World Bank, USAID, which have produced, accordingly, "property and stock-market speculation... and very high levels of foreign debt"


Two crises; one a telling environmental catastrophe, the other a humanitarian disaster. And they're both from the same source- climate change? Guess again: Climate change is a product in and of itself of the global capitalist system we have found ourselves born under. No single action on any of our parts in the colonizing nations can exist outside of a global political system- from the food we eat to the very fact that we can read and write this, this is a privilege made only by a theft of the most extraordinary variety. Am I an alarmist? Sure.
Should alarm bells be ringing?
Absolutely.