Biomass firm poised to clear Bornean rainforest for dubious ‘green’ energy:

3 villages have signed over at least 5,000 hectares of their land to a biomass company. Much of this area, locals say, is covered in rainforest to be cleared for the project.

news.mongabay.com/2024/10/reveal… Despite its billing as sustainable, research has shown that burning woody biomass emits more climate change-causing CO2 than coal per unit of electricity produced. The company in Borneo, moreover, has said it plans to export the wood pellets to be produced on its plantation.

Wikileaks - US Consulate General Kolkata*, 13 February 2007:

"On February 12, [the US] Consul General spoke with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus about his plans to enter Bangladesh politics.

Yunus, on a two-day visit to Kolkata, expressed a strong interest to enter the political fray and said that he was reviewing his options. He expressed support of the present Caretaker Government and its decision to declare a "State of Emergency," saying it had averted a possible civil war."

*This message was cleared with AmEmbassy Dhaka.

wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/0… "Yunus felt that Muslim fundamentalists represented a fringe and that while the dominant parties had developed ties with fundamentalists for political gain, most Bangladeshis did not favor the extremism."

Cargo cult: Why America cannot have nice things

Every society must cross its river of denial and pain to reach the shores of modernity. America is no exception.

Biden’s saving grace is that most Americans do not know that they don’t have nice things.

asiatimes.com/2024/05/cargo-… Few Americans lament the lack of high-speed rail. How can you miss what you never possessed?

If you’ve never experienced 300 Mbps download speeds,you won’t question AT&T marketing 100 Mbps as 5G.

If every student goes $40,000 into debt,it’s not considered a burden on the young.

Just weeks after the import policy was introduced, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, during an August 26 meeting, told Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal privately that Washington wants New Delhi to "rescind the requirement", as per a USTR briefing paper.

theweek.in/news/biz-tech/… Travis Coberly, a US diplomat for trade in New Delhi, reportedly told his US colleagues that India's IT ministry "understands they (India) screwed up. They admitted as much. American companies here have been hammering them about this," he wrote, according to the news agency.

Friedman has accidentally answered the question 'why do Indians support 🇷🇺 or 🇮🇱 online?'

It is a form of bitter self-critique.

Living in a soft state that has, in exchange for 'good boy points', consistently refused to stand up for them, people live vicariously through others. “I myself pressed at that time for immediate visible retaliation” Shivshankar Menon wrote.

“But on sober reflection and in hindsight, I now believe that the decision not to retaliate militarily and to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the right one for that time and place.”

Germany: Leipzig forbids fresh far-left demonstration after 2 nights of unrest:

Police arrested nearly 30 people during the weekend protests, which followed the conviction of a left-wing activist for physically attacking neo-Nazis.

dw.com/en/leipzig-for… The underpinning legal rationale for the decision, they said, was a broader restriction for any protests in the city this weekend connected to the conviction earlier in the week of left-wing activist Lina E. for her part in violent physical assaults on neo-Nazis.

New York traffic cop sues city over ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ cards issued to NYPD friends and family:

Mathew Bianchi claims superiors retaliated against him for writing tickets for people holding ‘corrupt’ courtesy cards.

theguardian.com/us-news/2023/j… Bianchi was reprimanded for writing a ticket to a relative or parent of an officer; in others, his commanding officer reviewed body-camera footage to see if he was giving motorists with cards a “hard time”.

Indonesia proposes demilitarised zone,UN referendum for Ukraine peace plan:

Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto proposed a multi-point plan including a ceasefire and establishing a demilitarised zone by withdrawing 15 km from each party's forward position.

reuters.com/world/indonesi… The demilitarised zone should be observed and monitored by a peacekeeping force deployed by the UN, he said, adding that a UN referendum should be held "to ascertain objectively the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants of the various disputed areas".

"It is not clear what the Zelensky regime, which has been at the receiving end of frequent accusations of Nazism even from friendly Western media [hoped] to achieve through an image that demeaned a Hindu article of faith, stigmatised Hindus and sought to normalise Hindu hatred."

https://twitter.com/sreemoytalukdar/status/1652900088140947456

"Despite its history of condemning India and voting against the country at the UN — not to speak of supplying weapons worth $1.6 billion to Pakistan — the Ukrainians have been demanding India’s support for Western sanctions against Russia & heaping moral opprobrium on New Delhi"

"Introduced in 2009, Liberal Studies was one of the four core subjects in the senior secondary curriculum – meaning that every secondary school student had to sit an exam in it.

That changed in 2021, when the subject was revamped and renamed."

hongkongfp.com/2023/04/30/as-… "The new Citizenship and Social Development course has a greater emphasis on national security and identity, half the teaching hours of Liberal Studies, a pass-fail assessment instead of a grading system, and a study trip to mainland China."

A UN Security Council status update on efforts to achieve a final peace between Serbia and Kosovo turned into nearly four hours of name calling with accusations blaming each side for everything from ethnic cleansing to intentional diplomatic obstruction.

arabnews.com/node/2294286/w… Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic said efforts to achieve "normalization" are being sidelined by Kosovo's efforts to win independent statehood and EU membership wirthout addressing the suffering and losses by Serbian citizens of Kosovo who have been forced to leave.

Left to freeze by Canada police, Darrell Night exposed their deadly ‘starlight tours’:

Cree man, now dead at 56, helped reveal practice in which Canadian police drove Indigenous people out of city and abandoned them in sub-zero temperatures.

theguardian.com/world/2023/apr… On a freezing winter evening more than 20 years ago, Darrell Night was picked up by police as he left a party in an apartment building in the Canadian city of Saskatoon.

As they drove him to the edge of the city, Night, who was drunk at the time, began to grow fearful.

Germany: Majority thinks 4-day work week is not a good idea:

More than half of people living in Germany don't believe it makes sense to introduce a four-day working week with full pay. But views on the topic are strongly linked to political affiliations.

dw.com/en/germany-maj… Most businesses and organizations that have tested the 4-day model have found that it facilitates a better work-life balance and reduces stress among workers.

The IG Metall metalworkers' union, Europe's largest trade union, has been among those to propose introducing the model.

Fascinating article by Pervez Hoodbhoy on the pathology of subcontinental convert ideologies.

"To quote Gen Zia ul Haq (1981),

'Take the Judaism out of Israel and it will fall like a house of cards.

Take religion out of Pakistan and make it a secular state,it would collapse.'"

https://twitter.com/Saffronwing1/status/1649862963749179396

"Elsewhere,one does not see such nervousness. Turkey? Egypt? Iran? Indonesia? Morocco?

Being historically formed nation states, they are comfortable with Islam and do not have existential worries.

Their national narratives are free from apocalyptic scenarios of disintegration."

Canada:

The shishalh Nation on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast says ground-penetrating radar has identified what are believed to be 40 unmarked graves of children on or near the site of the former St. Augustine's Residential School.

bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-first-nati… A statement from the First Nation on Thursday said it listened to elders and survivors of the residential school, and stories shared of missing children have been confirmed.

The [British colonial] government thought that they would be able to divert the minds of [Indian] political prisoners by making them interested in socialist ideas, which they thought were a lesser evil than 'terrorist' actions such as the murder of oppressive British officials."

https://twitter.com/gulluboy10/status/1643818143712784385

"One possibility, as suggested by [CPI member] Subodh Roy himself, was that communism was considered less dangerous than the revolutionary nationalism that had spread among the youth in the previous three decades. At the very least, it would create cleavages [to] be exploited."

"English, in all its glory, has become a potent instrument for spreading Anglo-Saxon values and ideologies far and wide.

It's like a Trojan horse that stealthily enters foreign lands, bringing with it a cultural shift that leaves an indelible mark on local societies."

https://twitter.com/buddhimedia/status/1643605521625399297

"The impact on native cultural practices and traditions is profound. As people embrace English, they gradually drift away from their roots, adopting Anglo-Saxon customs and values."

Quebec has launched its latest salvo in the battle to stop the decline of the French language.

The target this time: people who use English words in the middle of French sentences.

In a new ad, the province is encouraging people not to use ‘franglais.’

globalnews.ca/news/9554937/q… The video ad opens with a shot of a peregrine falcon flying majestically. Describing the bird in French, the narrator calls it “vraiment sick,” and says it’s known to be “assez chill.”

Faith leaders show rare unity:

Muslim, Jain, Sikh and Christian leaders, along with the RSS, are opposing same-sex marriage in an ongoing Supreme Court case, arguing that it contravenes religious scriptures, societal values and the natural family order.

thehindu.com/news/national/… Taking the lead is the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, which has opposed the petitions seeking legal validation for same-sex marriages through an application filed in the Supreme Court.

Justice KM Joseph added that while “it is not open to the legislature to don the robes of a judge and arrogate to itself the judicial function”, courts “can make law” and that it would not amount to transgression of the “separation of powers” principle.🤡

theprint.in/judiciary/ec-a… Delving into the concept of “demarcation of powers”, cited several times by successive governments to stall judicial intervention in policy matters, the constitution bench that there is “no strict separation of powers in India, unlike the position in the USA and Australia”.

"Colombia plans to fly dozens of its “cocaine hippos” – the descendents of drug trafficker Pablo Escobar’s private menagerie – to new homes in India and Mexico in a bid to control their booming population, according to the local governor."

edition.cnn.com/2023/03/04/ame… "A total of 70 hippos, a mix of males and females,are expected to be moved – with 60 going to India and 10 to Mexico.

The technical term for this operation is “translocating,” governor Aníbal Gaviria explained.

Sending the hippos back to Africa was “not allowed,” Gaviria said."