General updates |

Yemen: Crime Against Humanity – Change It!

March 3, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Finance, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, World war danger updates

Yemen Donors Conference Raises Even Less Money for Yemen Humanitarian Relief than Was Provided Last Year

March 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—The UN donors conference which convened yesterday to raise funds for relief efforts in Yemen, cosponsored by Sweden and Switzerland, failed to raise even half of the $3.85 billion that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealed for. Pledges amounted to a total of $1.7 billion, even less than the $1.9 billion that was donated in 2020. Guterres called for countries to “consider again what they can do to help stave off the worst famine the world has seen in decades.” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who is on a week-long visit to Yemen, also called the outcome of the conference “disappointing,” warning that the lack of funding would cause huge cuts to Yemen aid. “The shortfall in humanitarian aid will be measured in lives lost,” he said.

The Saudis pledged $430 million; the U.S. promised $191 million, reportedly a decrease of $35 million from last year. The reduction in aid is attributed to the pandemic, corruption allegations, and concerns the aid might not be reaching its intended recipients in territories controlled by the rebels.

The Houthi leadership dismissed the conference, saying that such donor meetings only aid the aggressor countries and not the people of Yemen. “Conferences help aggressor states to identify themselves as obliging, not hostile or aggressor states which must end the siege and aggression,” said Houthi spokesman Mohammad Abdul-Salam, reported Iran’s Tasnim News Agency. He stressed in a twitter posting that stopping the aggression and lifting the blockade is the biggest help Yemen can ever receive. “The best services that the Saudi-led coalition provides to Yemen are nothing but daily airstrikes, brutal siege, the blockade of oil products and the closure of Sana’a International Airport, and the human consequences thereof.”

Gabbard Scores Biden’s Air Strikes

March 3, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Color Revolutions, General updates, Geopolitics updates, World war danger updates

Tulsi Gabbard Slams Unconstitutional U.S. Regime-change War in Syria

March 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—In a series of tweets on Feb. 28, former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard addressed the Biden administration’s unconstitutional airstrikes in Syria, but also addressed the broader issue of the U.S. regime-change war in Syria, carried out through an alliance with Al Qaeda, al-Nusra/HTS terrorists. This alliance, she warned, combined with draconian sanctions and embargoes, is “similar to what the Saudi-U.S. alliance did in Yemen.”

Her tweets are as follows:

“I’m glad some of my former colleagues in Congress are speaking out against the recent unconstitutional airstrikes in Syria—but they’re ignoring the bigger issue: the regime change war the U.S. continues to wage in Syria using al-Qaeda/al-Nusra/HTS terrorists as our proxy ground force, who now occupy and control the city of Idlib, imposing Sharia Law and ‘cleansing’ the area of most Christians & religious minorities.

“The Biden Administration continues to use the U.S. military to illegally occupy NE Syria to ‘take the oil’ as Trump so crassly but honestly put it, violating international law. A modern-day siege of draconian embargo/sanctions similar to what the Saudi-U.S. alliance employed in Yemen is causing death & suffering for millions of innocent Syrians depriving them of food, medicine, clean water, energy & warmth, and making it impossible for the Syrian people to try to rebuild their war-torn country.”

How Continued Adherence to British Imperial Geopolitics Caused the Afghan Debacle

July 6, 2021by Malene Robinson in General, General updates, Harley Schlanger Daily Update

As news reports feature the threat of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces, some voices in the U.S. Congress are questioning why we are leaving! The real question should be, “Why were we there for 20 years? Why did we waste more than $1 trillion and several thousand American lives on a war the Pentagon knew was unwinnable?” The followup question to that should be, “Why are we still using British geopolitical strategies to conduct our foreign and military policies? When will we learn our lesson — as Lyndon LaRouche always insisted — that the British Empire is our republic’s only true enemy?”

Chinese Scientists “Reinvent” the Potato to Feed More People

July 6, 2021by madeleine in Agriculture, General, General updates, Scientific research studies

In a groundbreaking experiment, Chinese scientists led by Huang Sanwen, a researcher with the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen (AGIS) (a city just north of Hong Kong), under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), used a genome design to transform potato breeding, and developed “pure and fertile potato lines” with genome-editing technologies

Their study, titled “Genome Design of Hybrid Potato,” was published online in one of the world’s leading academic journals, {Cell}, on June 24.

Unlike other crops that are propagated from seed, the potato is a tuber crop which is propagated by cloning. This results in long breeding cycles, low reproduction efficiency, and makes the potato plant more susceptible to disease and insect attacks.

CGTN reported that “Huang and his team initiated the “Upotato Plan” in 2015, aiming to replace vegetative reproduction with hybrid seeds via genome design and improve potato breeding speed and reproduction efficiency.

“‘We must first solve the problem of self-incompatibility, which is that potatoes do not produce seeds after self-pollination. Through material selection and gene editing, we have successfully tackled the problem and produced seeds,’ said Huang.

“‘Meanwhile, we have also discovered how to improve plant health and output. By genome design, we eliminated harmful mutations, aggregated good genes and finally cultivated the potato variety called ‘Upotato NO. 1.’ After testing, it has shown excellent performance…

“We now only need 2 grams of potato seeds for a one-mu land, compared to 200 kilograms of seed potatoes before, which greatly reduces the planting costs.” (There are about 15 mu to one hectare.)

Their work has been recognized by their international peers, with one scientist from the European Academy of Sciences commenting, “This work is very important because it’s relevant to feeding the planet.”

Genome design of hybrid potato

David Beasley to Musk and Bezos: We Need You NOW to Stop Starvation!

July 6, 2021by madeleine in Agriculture, General, General updates

David Beasley, World Food Program Executive Director jumped into the competition between billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson, on which of them would be the first to go into space, by tweeting them on June 26, that they should “team up” to save 41 million of people on Earth facing starvation. He followed it up with a number of tweets that day, including specific messages to Bezos and Musk personally: .

“Jeff Bezos’ net worth increase during Covid was $65 billion. Jeff, just 10% of your net worth INCREASE would save 41 million people about to die from hunger. We need you, NOW! Can we talk? @famine” and

“Elon Musk’s net worth increase during Covid was $137 billion. Elon, just 5% of your net worth INCREASE would save 41 million people about to die from hunger. We need you, NOW! Let’s talk. #famine” and

“During the covid pandemic, the world’s 2,275 billionaires’ net worth increase was over $5.2 BILLION PER DAY. Is it too much to ask for just ONE day’s worth of wealth increase to save 41 million people about to starve to death?!!! #famine”

Great Leap Backwards: the Green Deal

March 2, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Environmentalism updates, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Green New Deal, New financial order updates

Biden Drops a `Green’ Hammer on American Industry

March 1 (EIRNS) – The Biden White House on Feb. 26 announced that it would multiply the “price of carbon” by more than seven times, to $51 per ton of CO2, for all cost-benefit analyses of industrial technologies – and was likely to more than double that again after “further analysis”. The “carbon price” set by the Federal government since the Bush 43 Administration in 2004 is not a purchase price but rather the price assumed for all use of carbon in materials – energetic, chemical, industrial, agricultural – whose use can form CO2, and is supposed to govern the valuation of bids for government contracts of all kinds. Obviously it would also then affect the valuation of industrial and agricultural products and even the valuation of capital goods and/or entire companies for investment.

The Biden Administration’s proposed price announced by the Department of Energy under new Secretary Jennifer Granholm is supposed to be the price that greenhouse gas emissions impose on society. The $51/ton of CO2 is not only seven-plus times the Trump Administration’s “price”, but double that of the Obama Administration. And it is likely soon to be adjusted to the “price” the Andrew Cuomo government of New York State adopted in 2020, which is a range of $79-125/ton.

A UC-Santa Barbara Environmental Science assistant professor, Tamma Carleton, responded giddily, “A new social cost of carbon can tip the scales for hundreds of policy decisions facing the Federal government. Any policy, project or regulation that lowers emissions will now have a higher dollar value.” And any decision to use carbon products, a lower one. This will hit all industries, not just the energy and power production sector.

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy!

March 2, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Daily Beethoven — Sparks of Joy, Music updates

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy — Three nations on Mars; Beethoven’s triple concerto.

The space agencies of three different countries – the United States, China, and the United Arab Emirates – have successfully arrived at Mars and begun a promising collaboration for the advancement of human knowledge and power.
In that spirit, we have today’s selection: Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for violin, cello, and piano. The soloists are cellist Mischa Maisky, his son Sascha on violin, and his daughter Lily at the piano. Enjoy! [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]

Great Leap Backwards: the Green Deal

March 2, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Environmentalism updates, Finance, General, Green New Deal, New financial order updates

UK Proposes Climate Change Have UNSC Veto

March 1 (EIRNS) — In typical “snow is black” fashion, the United Kingdom is attempting to declare the “fake news” Climate Change hoax as the biggest threat to global security, today. To argue their case, London resurrected the 90 year-old serial Malthusian Sir David Attenborough, who addressed the UN Security Council on Feb. 23. Although the virtual meeting was opened with a keynote by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, it was clearly organized by the UK — which held the rotating chair of the UNSC during February — and was intended as a primer for the COP 26 Climate talks, now (re)scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November, 2021.

Chaired by Boris Johnson, who presented the issue as “a matter of when, not if,” the central feature was an 8 minute video by Attenborough, who — speaking as a member of the “public” — likened the crisis to that of World War Two (“the Great War that took place during my youth”). Unlike WWII, however, {this} crisis is one “which should unite us,” said the voice from the crypt, since the threat is not rising global fascism, but “rising global temperatures!” Growing threats of wars, collapsing food supplies (from both land and sea), all was the product of our species’ failure to address Climate Change. “No matter what we do, it’s too late … and the poorest among us are(now certain to suffer,” Sir David told the united global security representatives. Climate Change is, he said, “{the biggest threat to security that modern humans have ever faced}” and only by recognizing this can we unite to avoid the worst. [emphasis added]

Also addressing the ministers was young Sudanese “activist” Nisreen Elsaim, who has been chosen as chair of the UN Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. A very well-briefed Elsaim gave “on the ground” affirmation to the destruction that the elders had warned of.

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy!

March 1, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Daily Beethoven — Sparks of Joy, Music updates

Beethoven: Sparks of Joy — the master’s climactic Op. 111 finishes his use of the sonata form.

Although Beethoven would go on to compose other works for solo piano, the Opus 111 is Beethoven’s climactic finish to the sonata form. With the first movement, he reduces the C minor key to its bare elements (think of the Pathétique) and produces a work of incredible power and passion. The second movement, innocuously called “Arietta,” takes the form of variations on a simple theme in C major, but these variations transcend anything that has ever been done on the piano.
Here is an thoughtful performance by Mitsuko Uchida. [Notes by Margaret Scialdone.]

Taikonauts Successfully Complete First Space Walk From Tianhe Station

July 5, 2021by madeleine in General, Space updates

This morning, taikonauts Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo finished all assigned tasks during a seven hour space walk outside China’s Tianhe space station. This is only the second space walk in the history of China’s space program. The first one was in 2008, but it lasted only 20 minutes. As the first taikonauts aboard Tianhe, Liu and Tang with support from Nie Heisheng from inside the station, performed tasks to set up Tianhe for future use.

The completed tasks included raising the external camera to a height that maximizes its ability to record panoramic views; installing and testing footsteps on the working arm and external working station; and conducting an emergency escape drill to rapidly get back inside Tianhe if necessary. The space walk also initiated use of newly designed 130 kilogram space suits.

Page 67 of 104First...«666768 »...Last

General updates

Recent posts