Humans have wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, says WWF

WWF called for an ambitious global deal for nature and people

Sky News, 30 Oct 2018:

Earth’s ability to provide for humankind’s increasing demands has been exhausted and the world’s wildlife is paying the price.

Life on earth is being wiped out by humans living beyond the planet’s means, according to conservation organisation WWF.

Their latest global report claims wildlife is dying out faster than ever and says nature needs international “life support”.

Between 1970 and 2014, 60% of all animals with a backbone - fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals - were wiped out by human appetites and activity, the report says.

Nine out of 10 of the world’s seabirds are thought to have plastic in their stomachs, while by 2050 only one 10th of the planet’s land will be free from human impact, according to the Living Planet Report 2018.

‘Life on earth is being wiped out by humans’

Climate change and plastic pollution are growing threats

Wildlife populations in Latin America and the Caribbean have fallen 89% since 1970 and climate-warming carbon dioxide levels are estimated to be at their highest for 800,000 years.

Species are rapidly disappearing from the earth

Even the UK is seeing the effects, with the puffin population falling as rising sea temperatures reduce the numbers of the sand eels they feed on.

Tanya Steele, WWF chief executive, said: “We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it.”

Plastic particles found in humans

Scientists have shown for the first time that humans are ingesting microscopic plastic particles in their food

WWF international director general Marco Lambertini added: “The situation is really bad, and it keeps getting worse.

“The only good news is that we know exactly what is happening.”

The rate of human consumption is too much for the Earth to cope with, the report says

The world’s conservation efforts are not enough to match the scale of the problem, the report says, with climate change and plastic pollution posing particular threats.

Over-fishing, tree felling and the use of pesticides in agriculture are also signs that the rate of human consumption is accelerating so fast that the Earth cannot cope.

But animals are not just “nice to have around”, our food, health and medicines rely on natural resources which, globally, provide services worth £97 trillion a year.

Among the species threatened are hedgehogs, which are predicted to almost vanish within the next few decades.

The jaguar is one of the species under threat in Latin America

The weird and the wonderful - they’re all at risk

Puffin numbers in the UK have declined

Puffin numbers in the UK have declined

At the Northumbrian Hedgehog Rescue Trust just outside Morpeth, where a team of volunteers cares for hundreds of sickly and underweight specimens every year, they fear the species is heading for extinction.

“Everybody likes neat and tidy gardens, puts slug pellets down and uses weedkiller,” says the trust’s founder Carole Catchpole.

“It’s serious and I wish people would take that really seriously and try and do something to help.”

Sky’s Ocean Rescue campaign encourages people to reduce their single-use plastics. You can find out more about the campaign and how to get involved at www.skyoceanrescue.com

By Gerard Tubb, north of England correspondent

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Sign here to force U.K. leaders to debate on TV

Student Debt Slavery II: Time to Level the Playing Field

2018 by Ellen Brown

This is the second in a two-part article on the debt burden America’s students face. Read Part 1 here.

The lending business is heavily stacked against student borrowers. Bigger players can borrow for almost nothing, and if their investments don’t work out, they can put their corporate shells through bankruptcy and walk away. Not so with students. Their loan rates are high and if they cannot pay, their debts are not normally dischargeable in bankruptcy. Rather, the debts compound and can dog them for life, compromising not only their own futures but the economy itself.

“Students should not be asked to pay more on their debt than they can afford,” said Donald Trump on the presidential campaign trail in October 2016. “And the debt should not be an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives.” But as Matt Taibbi points out in a December 15 article, a number of proposed federal changes will make it harder, not easier, for students to escape their debts, including wiping out some existing income-based repayment plans, harsher terms for graduate student loans, ending a program to cancel the debt of students defrauded by ripoff diploma mills, and strengthening “loan rehabilitation” – the recycling of defaulted loans into new, much larger loans on which the borrower usually winds up paying only interest and never touching the principal. The agents arranging these loans can get fat commissions of up to 16 percent, an example of the perverse incentives created in the lucrative student loan market. Servicers often profit more when borrowers default than when they pay smaller amounts over a longer time, so they have an incentive to encourage delinquencies, pushing students into default rather than rescheduling their loans. It has been estimated that the government spends $38 for every $1 it recovers from defaulted debt. The other $37 goes to the debt collectors.

The securitization of student debt has compounded these problems. Like mortgages, student loans have been pooled and packaged into new financial products that are sold as student loan asset-backed securities (SLABS). Although a 2010 bill largely eliminated private banks and lenders from the federal student loan business, the “student loan industrial complex” has created a $200 billion market that allows banks to cash in on student loans without issuing them. About 80 percent of SLABS are government-guaranteed. Banks can sell, trade or bet on these securities, just as they did with mortgage-backed securities; and they create the same sort of twisted incentives for loan servicing that occurred with mortgages.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), virtually all borrowers with federal student loans are currently eligible to make monthly payments indexed to their earnings. That means there should be no defaults among student borrowers. Yet one in four borrowers is now in default or struggling to stay current. Why? Student borrowers are reporting widespread mishandling of accounts, unexplained exorbitant fees, and outright deception as they are bullied into default, tactics similar to those that homeowners faced in the foreclosure crisis. The reports reveal a repeat of the abuses of the foreclosure fraud era: many borrowers are unable to obtain basic information about their accounts, are frequently misled, are surprised with unexpected late fees, and often are pushed into default. Servicers lose paperwork or misapply payments. When errors arise, borrowers find it difficult to have them corrected.

Abuses and fraud in handling student loans have brought the Education Department’s loan contractors under fire. In January 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Navient, one of the largest contractors, alleging that the company “systematically and illegally [failed] borrowers at every stage of [student loan] repayment.”

Getting a Fair Deal

The federal government could relieve these debt burdens, given the political will. A stated goal of the changes being proposed by the Trump Administration is to simplify the rules. The simplest solution to the student debt crisis is to make tuition free for qualified applicants at public colleges and universities, as it is in many European countries and was in some US states until the 1970s. If the federal government has the money to lend to students, it has the money to spend on their tuition (capped to curb tuition hikes). It would not only save on defaults and collections but could turn a profit on the investment, as demonstrated by the seven-fold return from the G.I. Bill. (See Part 1 of this article.)

Alternatively, the government could fund tuition costs and debtor relief with a form of “QE for the people.” Instead of buying mortgage-backed securities, as in QE1, the Fed could buy SLABS and return the interest to students, making the loans effectively interest-free (as were the $16+ trillion in loans made to the largest banks after the 2008 crisis). QE that targeted the real economy could address many other budget issues as well, including the infrastructure crisis and the federal debt crisis; and this could be done without triggering hyperinflation. See my earlier articles here, here and here.

Needless to say, however, the government is not moving in that direction. While waiting for the government to act, there are things students can do; but first they need to learn their rights. According to a new survey reported in November 2017, students are often in the dark about key details of their student loan debt and the repayment options available to them. To get started, see here and here.

Under the Borrower’s Defense to Repayment program, you can get your loans completely discharged if you can prove they were based on deception or fraud. That is one of the alternatives the Administration wants to take away, so haste is advised; but even if it is taken away, fraud remains legal grounds for contract rescission. A class action for treble damages against offending institutions could provide significant financial relief.

Students also have greater bankruptcy options than they know. While current bankruptcy law exempts education loans and obligations from eligibility for discharge, an exception is made for “undue hardship.” The test normally used is that paying the loan will prevent the borrower from sustaining a minimum standard of living, his financial situation is unlikely to change in the future, and he has made a good faith effort to pay his loans. According to a 2011 study, at least 40 percent of borrowers who included their student loans in their bankruptcy filings got some or all of their student debt discharged. But because they think there is no chance, they rarely try. Only about 0.1 percent of consumers with student loans attempted to include them in their bankruptcy proceedings. (Getting a knowledgeable attorney is advised.)

For relief as a class, students need to get the attention of legislators, which means getting organized. Along with degree mill fraud and contract fraud, a cause of action ripe for a class action is the student exclusion from bankruptcy protection, a blatant violation of the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If enough students filed for bankruptcy under the “undue hardship” exception, just the administrative burden might motivate legislators to change the law.

READ MORE...

Desiree Mariottini

Another beautiful Italian girl raped and murdered by diversity

Diversity Macht Frei, 24 Oct 2018:

Africanisation of Italy, Italy, Rome, Uncategorized.

Another beautiful young Italian girl has been raped and murdered by Diversity.

Desiree Mariottini was from San Lorenzo in Rome. Her body was found inside an abandoned slum building, known as a haunt of brown-skinned drug dealers. A woman from the local area said her tablet had been stolen by someone there and she went to try and retrieve it.

According to eye-witnesses, she was drugged, raped and ultimately murdered by a group of Arabs and Africans. The cause of death hasn’t yet been determined. Someone made an anonymous call to the emergency services at 3 o’ clock in the morning on the night in question. They turned up, found chains on the door and then left.

The rapists put her clothes on after her death to try and make it look like an overdose.

This case might produce a reaction similar to the earlier Pamela Mastropietro case, which helped propel Salvini to power. Since he is now the Interior Minister, he is in a much better position to exploit it for political propaganda purposes.

Perhaps it’s a sad commentary on human nature that the death of a beautiful girl affects us more profoundly than the death of an ugly one, but that does seem to be how it is. Whatever helps jolt the NPCs out of their default programming. Her death is already producing a reaction locally.

        Justice for Desiree

       

Regular rape and murder by Diversity is part of the price Italians must pay for having a greater variety of ethnic cuisine. Why they would want this went they already have Italian food available to them is not clear.

UPDATE:

Locals have been laying floral tributes to the dead girl.

Desiree Mariottini was from San Lorenzo in Rome

Salvini turned up, wanting to lay a white rose, but a bunch of screeching women from the local social care centre mobbed him and blocked his passage. They shouted “Jackal” at him and accused him of exploiting the girl’s death. His security then ushered him away.

Other people applauded Salvini and said “We are all with you”.

Salvini declared: “We’re going to do harm to the dealers. We will recover legality street by street, district by district. We are working to put these worms, these beasts, in jail. I fear that this time again they will all be foreign citizens. Justice will be done for this girl. Full Stop.”

Interesting that if one so much as intimates the slightest defense of Poland (e.g., against chauvinism and imperialism) that you will project your mindless German chauvinism (a troll commentor had said that I am a “mindless Polish chauvinist” and that is why MR is unpopular); with a reactionary part of a large demographic under more direct pressure of PC lies, thus going with the pretense that it cares for sheer truth by reaction - it is backed by Jewry as the third default position:

1) Sheer liberalism is their preferred position for Whites (direct betrayal of Whites and White atomization).

2) Christianity as it places Whites mindlessly under the yoke of Abrahamic law (the golden rule is mindless; the gentiles are not ethnicity organized as such).

3) Failing that, they will encourage Nazism - the clear chauvinism - as they know it will repulse most normal people and lead to antagonism among Whites where not otherwise sending us headlong into disaster. ..perhaps take care of some ‘traitorous’ Jews all too intermarried with Germans, Poles, other ‘goyim.’

4) Failing that they will encourage sundry and motley no-account, right wing reactions that help to atomize would-be White organization and coordination:

a) No account scientism and objectivism for the higher I.Q.

b) Conspiracy theories; and ideologies beyond reality and verification for the less intelligent;
or to cover that part of their intelligence that isn’t (lacks judgment).

I am not lonely, but your bubble that appears as camaraderie is based on illusion and lies; along with (((marketing))) of tropes and memes in YKW interest.

Enabling some stupid dude like yourself to absurdly accuse me of “mindless Polish chauvinism”, if I defend ethnonationalism.

Nor am I a chauvinist of any kind. I’m ethnonationalist, defending ethnonationalism of all kinds, but the European kind and its coordination to begin with.

Nazism is the clear imperialist supremacism, programmatic of disaster. And scientism - viz., scientistic reaction - is the mindlessness that lets it be guided headlong to disaster. Get with the reality of praxis instead, get with the ethnonational program.

J.F. Gariepy: “One of the major historians of World War II” Thomas Goodrich: “From what I’ve read..

..from what I’ve read it was a virtual massacre of German residents living in areas under Polish control.”

J.F. Gariepy: “Alright, so that would be quite shocking.”    Thomas Goodrich: “Or maybe”...

The real question is why recycled Nazi propaganda has any sort of currency today and why it should have any credibility beyond your typical Internet lunatic fringe.

For the answer, return to the top of the page and read again (further orienting clue, it’s part and parcel of the YKW’s interest in having Whites identify with right wing reaction).

Ilan Goldfajn (born March 12, 1966) is an Israeli-born Brazilian economist and the current President of the Central Bank of Brazil. Biography: Goldfajn was born in Haifa, Israel. He graduated in Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, received a master’s degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a doctorate from MIT. He was appointed to the position of President of the Central Bank by Minister of Finance Henrique Meirelles on May 12, 2016.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil’s presidential front-runner Jair Bolsonaro said on Saturday he does not rule out keeping acclaimed central bank chief Ilan Goldfajn in the job, on a day that thousands took to the streets of major cities to protest against the far-right candidate: “I am not sure if he will be kept but what is working should be kept,” Bolsonaro told journalists in Rio when asked about Goldfajn’s future.

At the helm of the central bank since June 2016, Goldfajn has kept a tight lid on inflation and was considered the best central banker by The Banker magazine for taming inflation in Latin America’s largest economy.

Goldfajn is preparing to step down by year’s end, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

As the Brazilian central bank does not have full institutional independence, incoming presidents typically replace its top official, creating political risk for monetary policy. President Michel Temer will leave office on Jan. 1.

Bolsonaro also said on Saturday that he intends to tap astronaut Marcos Pontes as science and technology minister in his eventual government. The candidate had already announced part of his potential cabinet, including banker Paulo Guedes as economy minister, retired Army general Augusto Heleno Pereira as defense minister and Congressman Onyx Lorenzoni as his chief of staff.

WOMEN-LED PROTESTS

FILE PHOTO: Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is pictured during a news conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 11, 2018. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

Bolsonaro, a polarizing candidate who has been charged with hate speech for his comments regarding gays, blacks and women, faced a second wave of women-led protests in a month on Saturday.

A Facebook group called Women United Against Bolsonaro invited protesters to gather in 26 Brazilian cities, including Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Other movements also organized protests against Bolsonaro.

In the most polarizing election in a generation, Bolsonaro’s opponent in the Oct. 28 runoff is leftist candidate and former Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad.

According to a recent survey by pollster Datafolha, Bolsonaro was expected to win 59 percent of votes, compared to Haddad’s 41 percent.

Bolsonaro has successfully pitched himself as the anti-establishment candidate, gaining voters fed up with political graft and violent crime.

The far-right candidate nearly died from a stab wound at a rally in early September and skipped debates and most campaign events after spending weeks in the hospital.

Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier in Rio de Janeiro; Writing by Carolina Mandl; Editing by Alistair Bell and Bill Trott

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign @KurdsCampaign

One year since the liberation of Raqqa

The struggle goes on, but the city is now completely free from the ISIS jihadists, rapists, enslavers ✌

“McConnell Blames Entitlements, Not GOP, for Rising Deficits”

Majority Leader McConnell says the budget deficit is “very disturbing.”

Bloomberg, 16 Oct 2018:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed rising federal deficits and debt on a bipartisan unwillingness to contain spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and said he sees little chance of a major deficit reduction deal while Republicans control Congress and the White House.

“It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg News when asked about the rising deficits and debt. “It’s a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.”

McConnell’s remarks came a day after the Treasury Department said the U.S. budget deficit grew to $779 billion in Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year as president, the result of the GOP’s tax cuts, bipartisan spending increases and rising interest payments on the national debt. That’s a 77 percent increase from the $439 billion deficit in fiscal 2015, when McConnell became majority leader.

McConnell said it would be “very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,” with one party in charge of Congress and the White House.

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell said.

Politically Unpopular

Shrinking those popular programs—either by reducing benefits or raising the retirement age—without a bipartisan deal would risk a political backlash in the next election. Trump promised during his campaign that he wouldn’t cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, even though his budget proposals have included trims to all three programs.

READ MORE...

The Independence March in Warsaw is the largest annual patriotic gathering in Europe. Photo: Radio Maryja

Visigrad Post, Poland will soon celebrate the Centenary of her recovered Independence”, 11 Oct 2018:

Poland – In a month, on Sunday, November 11, 2018, Poland will celebrate 100 years of recovery of her independence.

November 11 is a day of celebration and commemoration in Poland. For several weeks, the white and red flags float proudly to celebrate the freedom, so dear to the Polish people and for which they were long deprived. In 1795, the once powerful Poland was disappeared from the map of Europe for the benefit of its neighbors. From 1795 to 1918, the Russian Empire, Prussia and Austria took over the entire Polish territory.

During this long period of 123 years, the country was the subject of a major campaign of depolonization. In addition to the occupation of the territory, the Russian and German invaders also conducted a policy to annihilate the “polonity”. The mere use of Polish in the occupied territories was severely punished in this context of Germanization (in the West) and Russification (in the East). This partly explains the attachment of Poles to their identity (national, cultural, religious, …). It was not until the signing of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that Poland reappeared on the world map.

It must be kept in mind that Poland is one of the oldest countries in Europe. The foundation of the Polish state dates from the year 966. During the seventeenth century, Poland was one of the largest European powers, with a territory extending over an area (largely) greater than that of the present day France (Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, 815,000 km²).

A war of words that went too far

Every year, an “Independence March” is organized on November 11 in the capital, Warsaw. This grand parade is organized by several patriotic-conservative movements to celebrate the anniversary of this “revival” of the homeland.

The people present are also very diverse. Entire families coming from the provinces are also present. Mothers with their strollers parade alongside groups of young people, themselves surrounded by older people.

The 2017 edition of the Independence March took place in a respectful and serene ambience, without major incident. The many smoke bombs gave the streets of the city center a football stadium atmosphere. Of a total number of citizens between 60,000 (police estimate) and 125,000 (estimate of organizers), a handful of extremists (between 50 and 100) unfortunately made themselves known by brandishing racist or hateful banners. One of them read: “Europe will be white or uninhabited. “

A large part of the foreign press (CNN, BBC, The Washington Post, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais, Le Monde, Libération, Russia Today, Al Jazeera …) quickly took the opportunity to launch a real campaign of denigration of this popular gathering, of the government which tolerates it and, by extension, of the country which hosts it.

These media painted tens of thousands of people with the same brush as these activists, not worrying in this case about the amalgam that they are so prone to denounce after each terrorist attack. In this case, no nuance: all the participants were treated as extremists.

“Fascists” “xenophobes” “anti-Semites”, “Islamophobes”, “racists”, “homophobes”, … One would have thought they were attending a contest for the most insulting term to designate this human wave of Poles parading peacefully to celebrate the recovered freedom of their homeland and their show of love for it.

The first prize in this defamation exercise undoubtedly goes to former Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt - now, President of the ALDE group in the European Parliament, he declared in the same Parliament that “60,000 Fascists walked on Saturday in Warsaw, neo-Nazis, white supremacists (…) about 300 kilometers from Auschwitz-Birkenau”.

It is hard to believe that such absurd remarks could have been made by an experienced politician. They nevertheless reveal two interesting observations. On the one hand, this statement shows Mr Verhofstadt’s profound ignorance of Poland’s history as well as its past and present geopolitical situation. On the other hand, it confirms the tendency towards the complex of superiority (moral, ideological, cultural, …) of many members of the “western” elite (of which Verhofstadt is one of the front runners) vis-à-vis what is pejoratively attributed “Eastern Countries”. This attitude makes it virtually impossible to discuss coherently the points of disagreement between “old Europe” and the CEECs (Central and Eastern European Countries) that joined the EU later.

A necessary clarification

If Mr Verhofstadt had even a minimum of good faith and / or basic knowledge of history, he would know that the Poles constitute the first European nation to have resisted Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist regime, at least as early as 1939, and consequently paid a heavy price. He would also know that the Germans looted and razed Warsaw in 1944 and that tens of thousands of civilians were killed by Wehrmacht soldiers throughout the Second World War.

To speak of “Polish neo-Nazis” is therefore at least intellectually dishonest and insulting, especially regarding the families of the victims who died under the “fascism” that Verhostadt claims to denounce.

The height of the perfidy of these remarks can be illustrated by the presence at this Independence March of veterans of the Second World War who themselves fought the real Nazis! A surrealism worthy of George Orwell’s “1984” universe.

By Sébastien Meuwissen, Belgo-Polish student in journalism at IHECS.