Category: Belgium

Avoiding a climate lockdown 🧐💭

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

As the world faces three major threats, namely the COVID-19 induced public health and economic crises as well as the ongoing climate emergency, the business world is in a position to make real positive change.

Avoiding a climate lockdown (original)

H/T: Kim Iversen—The Next Agenda

Related:

A green economic renewal after the COVID-19 crisis (PDF)

WEF: Paris Is Planning To Become A ’15-minute City’

15-minute city:

A 15-minute city is a residential urban concept in which most daily necessities can be accomplished by either walking or cycling from residents’ homes. The concept (see also the New Urbanism of the 1980s) is present, among many, in D’Acci’s Isobenefit Urbanism since 2013 (“The Isobenefit Urbanism approach aims to create cities in which each dweller can do her/his usual main daily activities by walking or at maximum biking”) was popularized by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and inspired by French-Colombian scientist Carlos Moreno who in 2016 coined the term. 15-minute cities are built from a series of 5-minute neighborhoods, also known as complete communities or walkable neighborhoods. The concept has been described as a “return to a local way of life”.

Feet on the Ground in St. Petersburg: The Public Mood

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

by Gilbert Doctorow

One of the first questions put to me by a reader via the Comments function with respect to Monday’s report of my initial impressions after arriving in St Petersburg was: and what is the general mood of people? I begged off answering, saying that I would have to speak to a lot more people before I could confidently answer that question.

Feet on the Ground in St. Petersburg: The Public Mood

Sanctions don’t seem to be effecting the wealthy or the middle class, in Russia, much.

Massive Protest By Czechs Targets Russia Sanctions, High Prices

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | October 29, 2022

Fed up with soaring food, energy and housing costs, tens of thousands of Czech protestors railed against their government on Friday, demanding the resignation of conservative Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s government, withdrawal from NATO and the negotiation of gas purchases from Russia.

Massive Protest By Czechs Targets Russia Sanctions, High Prices

NATO Wants To Place Nuclear Missiles On Finland’s Russian Border — Finland Says Yes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

According to Newsweek, on October 26th, “Finland Will Allow NATO to Place Nuclear Weapons on Border With Russia”. They cite Finnish media reports. Allegedly, a condition that NATO had placed on Finland to join NATO was to allow America’s nuclear missiles to be positioned on Finland’s Russian border, which is closer to Moscow than any other except Ukraine’s. Whereas Ukraine’s would be 5 minutes from blitz-nuking Moscow so as to preemptively decapitate Russia’s retaliatory command, Finland’s would be 7 minutes — only around 120 seconds longer for Russia to be able to launch its retaliatory strikes. Finland now is to vote on the bill joining NATO, on that basis (i.e., to become America’s spearhead to defeat Russia in WW III). Obviously (assuming that NATO had, indeed, given Finland’s leaders to believe that saying yes to this would increase NATO’s likelihood of expediting Finland’s application to join), NATO is set upon checkmating Russia into capitulation if Finland does join.

NATO Wants To Place Nuclear Missiles On Finland’s Russian Border — Finland Says Yes

Related:

Finland, Sweden Promise to Join NATO Together in United Front to Türkiye

The War and the Intellectuals: Randolph Bourne Vents His Animus Against War

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

[World War I] Pro-war statements and speeches—as well as more coercive measures—gradually captured American public discourse in 1917. Fairly quickly, those who rejected the rationales for United States participation in the war found themselves increasingly isolated. Liberals, intellectuals, and even many socialists soon supported American intervention. A youthful critic in his twenties, Randolph Bourne wrote a bitter essay in the intellectual magazine Seven Arts, lambasting his fellow intellectuals for lining up so readily behind the war effort.

The War and the Intellectuals

Mark Sleboda on the new reality unfolding in Ukraine after Russia’s Kharkov retreat

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Loud in the press this week has been the major development in the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, what is described as a massive “Russian defeat” in the Kharkov region of east Ukraine. Russia’s manpower-lite and artillery-heavy military formation was forced to organize a withdrawal from Kharkov, facing multi-axis and casualty-heavy attacks from the Kiev forces, which unlike the now-destroyed Ukrainian military of some months ago, are fully equipped and operated as a NATO army manned by Ukrainians. Despite evacuation efforts, this leaves behind Eastern Ukrainians who will pay brutally with their lives as the Kiev bureaucracy implements what it has already announced as cleansing for anyone deemed a Russia-collaborator. There is now a massive movement of both NATO-Ukrainian and pro-Russian military building up in the south and south-east, preparing for a storm in the next weeks.

To assess this situation, “On the Barricades” has the pleasure of bringing repeat-guest Mark Sleboda onto the show for a two-part series this weekend. Mark is a former US Navy specialist, military expert, and academic who attended the London School of Economics before becoming a senior lecturer at Moscow State University.

In this first episode, hosts Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski enlist Mark’s military analytical expertise to help piece together interpretations of the events in Kharkov, and to dissect the big questions that follow. He tells us about what’s happening on the ground, what military entities are engaged, what the events represent in terms of the Moscow and Kiev-NATO strategy, and what changes to the dynamic could come out of this now unstable balance of forces. We also hear updates about the role of Belarus in the war, the relevance of the renewed Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, as well as the general mood of the Russian population toward the Putin regime and their attitude toward escalating the conflict to a full-out mobilization for war with NATO.

Mark Sleboda on the new reality unfolding in Ukraine after Russia’s Kharkov retreat via The Barricade

Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Well, gosh, this is kind of embarrassing. For approximately the last two and a half years, I have been documenting, analyzing, and occasionally satirizing the so-called “New Normal,” i.e., the new, pathologized, official ideology that has been rolled out all across the planet by the global-capitalist ruling classes under the pretext of combating an apocalyptic pandemic … or at least that’s what I thought was going on.

Mass Formation Hypnosis Disorder