Author: Wade

Press TV

The Guardian – by Suzanne Goldberg

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, says saving the world’s oceans was a vital security issue, and has urged leaders at an international summit to take immediate action on overfishing and pollution.

Kerry, speaking at the start of the summit, said humans had caused “enormous damage” to the oceans, jeopardising the food security of three billion people on the planet.

The two-day conference includes officials from 80 countries, and is the most visible effort to date by the Obama administration to lead a global conservation effort for the oceans. To that end, the State Department on Monday announced that actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who recently donated $3m to Oceana, will attend the summit on Tuesday.   Continue reading “Obama to order ocean protections with executive powers, Kerry says”

Press TV – by Dr. Kevin Barrett

Headlines read: “Sunni Islamist Militants Seize Mosul.” “Sunni militants capture northern Iraqi town.” “Iraq Army Tries to Roll Back Sunni Militants’ Advance.”

The corporate media casts the fighting in Iraq as a Sunni vs. Shia conflict. The Sunni side, according to these reports, is led by ISIL – a group that was expelled from al-Qaeda for being too extreme.   Continue reading “‘Is ISIL really ‘Sunni’? Not at all’”

The Economic Collapse – by Michael Snyder

Their names are familiar to all of us: Cleveland, Flint, Youngstown, Saginaw, Gary, Toledo, Reading, Akron, Flint and Buffalo were all once booming manufacturing cities that were absolutely packed with thriving middle class families.  But now most of the manufacturing jobs are gone and all of those cities are just shadows of their former selves.  When you drive through many of these communities, you will notice that a lot of people have a really hollow look in their eyes.  Decades of slow, steady economic decline have really taken a toll, and even the architecture in these cities looks depressed.  But despite all of the decay, there is still evidence that there was once something truly great about these communities.  Will we be able to recapture that greatness before it is too late?   Continue reading “The Death Of The Rust Belt”

The Guardian – by Paul Lewis in Washington, Spencer Ackerman in New York and Saeed Kamali Dehghan in London

US and Iranian officials held talks over the advance of Islamist insurgents in Iraq on Monday, the first time the two nations have collaborated over a common security interest in more than a decade.

The discussions in Vienna took place on the sidelines of separate negotiations about Iran’s nuclear programme, as Barack Obama told Congress that the he was deploying up to 275 military personnel to Iraq.   Continue reading “US and Iran hold talks over Iraq crisis but rule out military alliance”

RT News

Terror alerts, 9/11-style bombings and murders of British citizens will soon come to London’s streets, according to chilling threats from UK citizens fighting alongside Islam’s most violent terrorist group operating in Syria and Iraq.

The threat comes from British nationals fighting for the Sunni militant group calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS) in Syria. According to the Sunday Times, they promise that after they’re done there, Britain is next. The message comes from three such fighters, all youngsters in their teens and twenties.   Continue reading “‘Black flag of jihad will fly over London’: Alarm over UK-born Iraq fighters’ threat”

The Guardian -by Shaun Walker

An explosion on a gas pipeline carrying Russian gas to Europe throughUkraine was described as a possible terrorist attack on Tuesday, as fighting in the east of Ukraine continued.

The explosion on a section of the pipeline in the Poltava region came a day after Russia‘s Gazprom monopoly said it would stop supplying Ukraine with gas for its own needs until the country paid a huge accumulated debt.   Continue reading “Ukraine investigates gas pipeline blast”

Washington Examiner – by Paul Bedard

The Internal Revenue Service is about to get slapped with a harsh payback for messing around with conservative groups, blowing wads of tax dollars on employee conferences and helping implement Obamacare.

The House Appropriations Committee is set to OK an IRS budget of $10.9 billion, $1.5 billion under President Obama‘s request for fiscal year 2015, reducing the agency’s budget to 2008 levels.

The goal is to keep the tax agency focused on its “core duties,” and eliminate efforts to judge the political activities of tax-exempt groups and brake its implementation of Obamacare.   Continue reading “House budget punishes IRS with 15% cut, halts Obamacare enforcement”

Huffington Post – by Dennis Kucinich

As Iraq descends into chaos again, more than a decade after “Mission Accomplished,” media commentators and politicians have mostly agreed upon calling the war a “mistake.” But the “mistake” rhetoric is the language of denial, not contrition: it minimizes the Iraq War’s disastrous consequences, removes blame, and deprives Americans of any chance to learn from our generation’s foreign policy disaster. The Iraq War was not a “mistake” — it resulted from calculated deception. The painful, unvarnished fact is that we were lied to. Now is the time to have the willingness to say that.   Continue reading “Stop Calling the Iraq War a ‘Mistake’”