IV522 - July 2018

IVP522 July 2018 PDF magazine

It is difficult – not impossible, but it will be done after the fact – to establish with certainty that the current heatwave in Europe is due to climate change. What is certain, however, absolutely certain, is: 1 °) that this weather event is consistent with the projections of climatologists who study "global warming"; 2 °) that the multiplication of extreme weather phenomena like this obviously reinforces the idea that it is the "anthropogenic" climate change that is making us sweat, threatening our water resources (among other things)... and that can even dramatically kill people, as in Greece.

Writing about Nicaragua is as painful and sad as it is indispensable. Memories of the Sandinista Revolution are still alive for the generation that lived through it. To remain silent would be an affront to those who took part in that memorable insurrection against Somoza.

GREECE’S PRIME Minister Alexis Tsipras promised his European partners that he would don a necktie once the debt problem was resolved and the Greek economy was freed from the barbarous Memorandum polices applied under the “Troika” of creditors: the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission.

Britain is in the midst of a profound political crisis around the question of how to navigate “Brexit”. The outcome of the EU referendum in 2016 now sets the coordinates for the main political parties, none of which wanted the result, “leave”. The Liberal Democrats pushed for a referendum that they were sure would endorse “remain” as a tactical manoeuvre within their coalition with the Conservative Party, and the Conservative Party split over the issue, a split that has led to recent ministerial resignations at the rate of more than one every six weeks. The Labour Party campaigned for “remain”, but cautiously so, with Jeremy Corbyn, the Party’s new radical leader, elected the year before, quite rightly responding to a journalist question about his enthusiasm for the EU that he was about “7 out of 10” in favour of it.

Ali Wazeer, a central committee member of The Struggle group, has won a seat in the national parliament with 23530 votes and his closest rival from religious alliance MMA got 7515. Thus winning the seat with a majority of 16015.

Discussion in Denmark about the European Union generally tends to be a question about "for" or "against". Ultimately, this is about remaining or leaving the Union, but more frequently, the debate raises the question if the Union should have more or less power, i.e. should policy measures be decided at European at national level.

From Rafael Bernabe and Manuel Rodríguez Banchs, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 20 July 20 2018

Children separated from their families and caged in Trump’s USA, thousands drowning as they cross the Mediterranean, boats transporting migrants refused the right to dock by Salvini’s Italy, Orban’s Hungary declaring that helping refugees is a crime, 370 thousand Rohingya fleeing from to Bangladesh after another military raid and massacres by Myanmar government, tens of thousands of economic refugees from Haiti and Venezuela spreading throughout South American countries, more than five million Syrian refugees outside the country and even more internally displaced .… Those who hold power in Old Europe and the Americas are joined in a holy witch hunt against the spectre of “migrants”: a wide ranging alliance embracing the populists of the right and what remains of the traditional Social Democrats. Salvini and Macron, Putin and Trump – chauvinists from the east and the west, French liberals and German police...

This effect “is not due to global warming. It is a direct effect of elevated carbon dioxide on crop nutrients, independent of climate.”