President Trump expressed concern that 150 people could be killed if U.S. airstrikes against Iran had been carried out last week. We must ask how many people could die because of economic warfare against Iran. The economic war cripples Iran’s economy and afflicts the most vulnerable Iranian people—the sick, the poor, the elderly and the children.
Of the recent windfall of books published around the 80th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War, Antoine Gimenez’s memoir Sons of Night stands out. The book does a good job of capturing the spontaneous and hope-filled mood of the times. This is an exhilarating and somewhat swashbuckling tale. The reader is treated to a ringside seat of what it is like to be caught up in the maelstrom of a revolution in progress.
The U.S. has the most expensive health care system among the 36 mostly high-income countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But for all that money, we rank just 28th in life expectancy and 31st in infant mortality. Nothing about this system is healthy or caring. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Source: Truthdig
It’s been a harrowing couple of weeks for climate change observers. First, as Vice reported, there was an analysis from an Australian think tank, co-written by Ian Dunlop, a former fossil fuel company CEO, that posits that the planet is “reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order.’ ”
Then, on Wednesday, Brown University released a report revealing that the Department of Defense is “the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world.” According to the report, the DOD released approximately 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, between 2001 and 2017.
Duterte will take control of Congress, but his quest for more power must be stopped.
Rural and indigenous populations in countries like Guatemala and Honduras are increasingly on the move – either migrating internally or to neighboring countries. But the focus on these populations has been limited, leaving them forgotten and marginalized as they continue to be disproportionately affected by climate change.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019