Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

The Imperialist War in Ukraine – Havana Times 

I don’t know if anyone still has any doubts about Vladimir Putin’s openly imperialist policy in Ukraine. He has invaded a sovereign country, a member of the United Nations.

He has used typical tricks that remind us of Hitler. After allegedly protecting the Russian-speaking people in Donetsk and Luhansk, that are the majority in only a third of the Donbas region, Putin wants to occupy all the region claimed by the separatist republics and annex the region, which is coal-rich.

Source: The Imperialist War in Ukraine – Havana Times

Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war | Yuval Noah Harari | The Guardian

But the most important issue has already been decided. The last few days have proved to the entire world that Ukraine is a very real nation, that Ukrainians are a very real people, and that they definitely don’t want to live under a new Russian empire. The main question left open is how long it will take for this message to penetrate the Kremlin’s thick walls. Source: Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war | Yuval Noah Harari | The Guardian

The rightwing US supreme court has climate protection in its sights | Laurence H Tribe and Jeremy Lewin | The Guardian (Me: Has Chief Justice lost control of court?)

The stakes are higher still: by ruling on the case at all, the court usurps power constitutionally entrusted to government’s politically accountable branches. Article 3 of the constitution limits federal courts to deciding concrete “cases and controversies” about the rights of individual parties. Yet this “case” involves neither a concrete dispute nor the specific rights of any of the challengers. Instead, it’s akin to an exam question about the options theoretically available to a federal agency to address a grave problem. In answering that hypothetical question, the court will have arrogated to itself an unprecedented, open-ended power to reshape the nation’s social and economic landscape – far in excess of its legitimate authority, as the foundational case Marbury v. Madison put it, to “declare what the law is”.

The court has avoided such a wide-ranging role ever since our founding, when Chief Justice Jay refused President George Washington’s 1793 request for legal advice about America’s obligations under treaties with France and Britain, concluding that issuing such an “advisory opinion” to guide the nation’s foreign policy would exceed the court’s constitutionally assigned power. The underlying axiom is neither liberal nor conservative but universal. As Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court just last term, “federal courts decide only ‘the rights of individuals’ [and] do not possess a roving commission to publicly opine on every legal question.”

The role the court is poised to play in West Virginia v. EPA is more breathtaking still. It stands ready not just to “publicly opine” on a broad legal question but to bind the entire federal government to its answer, restricting the range of policies the EPA –under President Joe Biden and future presidents – can even consider to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and tackle climate change.

Issuing any such “super advisory opinion” would seize the power to set regulatory policy itself – a perversion of separation of powers unthinkable just a few years ago. Yet, as its recent onrush of breaks with precedent, procedure and prudence to achieve the ultra-conservative majority’s policy preferences on abortionpublic health and voting rights demonstrate, today’s court flouts all institutional bounds. As it charges ahead, what remains of the court’s legitimacy, the constitution’s allocation of decision-making authority, and the planet’s future all hang in the balance.

Source: The rightwing US supreme court has climate protection in its sights | Laurence H Tribe and Jeremy Lewin | The Guardian

Ukrainians denied entry to UK despite being eligible for visa | Ukraine | The Guardian (Me: Bumbling Boris strikes again…)

He drove from his home in London to the Polish border and waited for them to get across Ukraine’s border with Poland. He then did a return 24-hour journey by road across Europe before reaching Paris on Sunday where he hoped he would get the green light from British officials to bring his wife and daughter on the last leg of the journey to the UK.

The family hoped it would be straightforward to reach the UK, especially after the publication of new Home Office guidance giving permission for some immediate family members of British citizens to apply free of charge to join their loved ones in the UK.

But when Oksana and Veronika tried to apply for the new visa online they were blocked from proceeding unless they paid thousands of pounds, even though the application is supposed to be free.

“We just don’t know what to do,” Voloshchuk told the Guardian on Monday morning. “My wife’s bank account in Ukraine is frozen. We have booked into a hotel in Paris for a couple of days but I want to bring my family back to the UK to my home in London. We are getting very worried about my daughter because she is type 1 diabetic and is running out of insulin. We also don’t have a lot of money for food. She needs to eat regularly.

“We went to Calais yesterday to try to cross to UK but we were refused permission and told to go to the visa centre in Paris. But when we tried to apply online the application says we need to pay £2,200 each and medical charges. The embassy is saying they can’t help. I am very worried about my daughter and I don’t understand why we have not been allowed to reach the UK.”

Source: Ukrainians denied entry to UK despite being eligible for visa | Ukraine | The Guardian

Russia-Ukraine talks started in Gomel

EUROPE DIPLOMATIC

Brussels 28.02.2022 Talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials began on the Belarusian border, Moscow said, while diplomatic and economic estrangement between Russian and the West deepens after four days of ongoing Russian assault in Ukraine.

Russian army overtook a number of cities in southeastern and the area around a notorious nuclear plant Chernobyl, the Interfax news agency wrote.

Talks between Russia and Ukraine are to be held in the Gomel region of Belarus.

As the site KP newspaper wrote earlier, the delegation from Ukraine was delayed due to difficult logistics – the diplomats decided to go through Poland first. The Ukrainian negotiators were reluctant to go directly to Gomel, as the…

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Desmatamento e devastação de terras indígenas na Amazônia – Veja o que podemos fazer para ajudar onde quer que estejamos no mundo!

Barbara Crane Navarro

Foto: Chefe Raoni Metuktire

«Por muitos anos nós, os líderes e os povos indígenas da Amazônia, alertamos vocês, nossos irmãos, que causaram tantos danos às nossas florestas.
O que você fizer mudará o mundo inteiro e destruirá nossa casa – e também destruirá sua casa.

Presidente Bolsonaro do Brasil incentiva o agronegócio
e garimpeiros para limpar a floresta – e ele não faz nada para impedi-los de invadir nosso território.
Apenas uma geração atrás, muitas de nossas tribos estavam lutando, mas agora estamos juntos, lutando juntos contra nosso inimigo comum. E esse inimigo comum são vocês, os povos não indígenas que invadiram nossas terras e agora estão destruindo até aquelas pequenas partes das florestas onde moramos que vocês nos deixaram.
Pedimos que pare o que está fazendo, pare a destruição, pare seu ataque aos espíritos da Terra. Quando você corta as árvores, você ataca os espíritos de nossos ancestrais. Quando…

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Jair Bolsonaro está desligando um dos melhores sistemas de monitoramento de desmatamento do mundo —

Barbara Crane Navarro

Fumaça sobe de um incêndio ilegal na reserva da floresta amazônica, ao norte de Sinop, no estado de Mato Grosso, Brasil, em 11 de agosto de 2020. (Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images) Por Mac Margolis, colunista colaborador de Opiniões Globais do “The Washington Post” Os caudilhos da América Latina lidaram com verdades pouco lisonjeiras prendendo críticos[…]

Jair Bolsonaro está desligando um dos melhores sistemas de monitoramento de desmatamento do mundo —

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