#Capitalism, #Poverty and the #Environment

Venezuela: From Oil Proxy to the Bolivarian Movement and Sabotage
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Bonnie Faulkner
In the period prior to the Bolivarian Revolution, extending into the 1990s, the levels of poverty were abysmally high. More than 70 percent of the Venezuelan population did not meet minimum calorie and protein requirements, while approximately 45 percent were suffering from extreme undernourishment. More than half of Venezuelan children suffered from some degree of malnutrition. Read more...

Al-Nusra Front: Islamic State’s Breakaway Faction in Syria’s Idlib
By Nauman Sadiq
In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio statement in which he announced that al-Nusra Front had been established, financed and supported by the Islamic State of Iraq. Read more...

Venezuela – The Straw that Breaks the Empire’s Back?

New Ice Age

Obama’s Top Science Advisor Warned In 1971 that a New Ice Age Was an Imminent Threat … 

Which Could Destroy Agriculture and Cause a Sudden Slump In the Antarctic Ice Cap, 

Leading to the Biggest Tidal Wave In World History

WashingtonsBlog

Obama’s Science Advisor Has Been “Catastrophizing” For 43 Years

In the 1970s, many American scientists were terrified of an imminent ice age.   Obama’s top science advisor – John Holdren – was one of them.

Holdren and some other scientists proposed pouring soot over the arctic to melt the ice cap and so prevent the dreaded ice age.

Holdren warned of dire consequences if mankind did not rally on an emergency basis to stop the coming ice age.

New York Times science columnist John Tierney noted in 2009:

In 1971, long before Dr. Holdren came President Obama’s science adviser, in an essay [titled] “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide,” Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age.
They certainly weren’t the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can’t think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich wrote:

The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.