Global News and Analysis

Source: TeleSUR English

“With friends like this, who needs enemies.”  This must be what Washington policymakers muttered to themselves following the decision of London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin to join a new development bank proposed by Beijing.

The anger in Washington most likely mounted when its main Pacific allies, Japan, Australia, and South Korea, also gave strong indications that they would join the bandwagon.  By the end of March, more than 35 countries are expected to be enlisted as founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). read more

Source: Rabble.ca

Night demonstrations — a fixture in the 2012 Quebec student movement — were held on Tuesday in Montreal and Quebec City, and again on Friday in Montreal, with thousands filling the streets as well as hundreds of armoured police.

The mobilization against austerity measures was met by strong police reaction. On Thursday of the same week, the Quebec Liberal government tabled a budget “balanced” by large cuts to education, health care and other social services spending. read more

Source: The Nation

Most forecasts of the future presume that something in the present will continue to grow and increase its power or influence. It’s as simple as doing a math problem on compounding interest or multiplication tables.

Orwell did this intentionally in 1984, creating the vision of a postwar Stalinist Britain circa 1948 that was taken to its absurd and appalling conclusion. Less imaginative people, however, genuinely believe that history moves in a straight line. Alarm about the “population bomb” arose from the assumption that women would continue to have babies at the rate they were worldwide in the 1960s. But thanks to reproductive rights and other factors, birthrates have plummeted so dramatically that some nations, from Germany to Japan, are now worried about a steep population decline. read more

Source: The New Internationalist

Let’s end partisan squabbling and find common ground. Let’s bridge the ideological gulf and work together to solve the problems that face us all.

Do these pleasing sentiments sound familiar? Rarely has a politician emerged who hasn’t voiced a rhetorical call to join hands, overcome differences, or otherwise bask in the glow of togetherness.

Of course, there’s a catch: if coming together means having elected officials unite to push corporate interests at the expense of the 99 per cent, it’s hardly a unity worth achieving. read more

Source: The Independent

The feat was achieved thanks to heavy rainfall, which powered four hydroelectric plants in the first three months of the year, the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute said.

No fossil fuels have been burnt to generate electricity since December 2014, in the state which is renowned for its clean energy policies.

While Costa Rica is a small country, with a popular of about 4.8 million people, it has made great strides in its use of renewable energy.

Last year 80 per cent of the energy used came from hydropower, while geothermal energy made up about 10 per cent of the mix in the volcano-strewn nation. Currently 94 per cent of Costa Rica’s energy needs are met by renewables. read more

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

A few years ago David Graeber’s mother had a series of strokes. Social workers advised him that, in order to pay for the home care she needed, he should apply for Medicaid, the US government health insurance programme for people on low incomes. So he did, only to be sucked into a vortex of form filling and humiliation familiar to anyone who’s ever been embroiled in bureaucratic procedures.

At one point, the application was held up because someone at the Department of Motor Vehicles had put down his given name as “Daid”; at another, because someone at Verizon had spelled his surname “Grueber”. Graeber made matters worse by printing his name on the line clearly marked “signature” on one of the forms. Steeped in Kafka, Catch-22 and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, Graeber was alive to all the hellish ironies of the situation but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. “We spend so much of our time filling in forms,” he says. “The average American waits six months of her life waiting for the lights to change. If so, how many years of our life do we spend doing paperwork?” read more