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The global politics that have hampered efforts to create a binding international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions may have taken a positive turn as reports suggest the Chinese government is preparing to place a firm cap on the amount of carbon pollution it generates each year.

According to various sources, China’s National Development and Reform Council (NDRC)—which has the authority to propose new energy policies—has sent an official recommendation to the nation’s State Council calling for a limit on the amount of carbon emissions to be put in place by 2016.

The details of the complete plan are not clear, but indications are that officials on the State Council will be “supportive of the plan.”

“Such an important move should encourage all countries, and particularly the other large emitters such as the United States, to take stronger action on climate change” – Lord Stern, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, LSE

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Hundreds of youth have burned down a restaurant, set fire to more than 340 cars and attacked police during a fourth night of rioting in the suburbs of the Swedish capital, shocking a country that dodged the worst of the financial crisis but failed to solve youth unemployment and resentment among asylum seekers.

Violence spread across Stockholm on Wednesday, as large numbers of young people rampaged through the suburbs, throwing stones, breaking windows and destroying cars. Police in the southern city of Malmo said two cars had been set ablaze.

Media reports said a police station office was set on fire in Stockholm’s southern suburb of Rågsved, where several people were also detained. No one was hurt and the fire was quickly put out.

Rioters defied a call for calm from the country’s prime minister, going on the rampage after nightfall damaging stores, schools, a police station and an arts and crafts centre in the four days of violence.

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During 10 days in November 1983, the United States and the Soviet Union nearly started a nuclear war. Newly declassified documents from the CIA, NSA, KGB, and senior officials in both countries reveal just how close we came to mutually assured destruction — over a military exercise.

That exercise, Able Archer 83, simulated the transition by NATO from a conventional war to a nuclear war, culminating in the simulated release of warheads against the Soviet Union. NATO changed its readiness condition during Able Archer to DEFCON 1, the highest level. The Soviets interpreted the simulation as a ruse to conceal a first strike and readied their nukes. At this period in history, and especially during the exercise, a single false alarm or miscalculation could have brought Armageddon.

According to a diplomatic memo obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by National Security Archives researcher Nate Jones, Soviet General Secretary Yuri Adroprov warned U.S. ambassador Averell Harriman six months before the crisis that both countries “may be moving toward a red line” in which a miscalculation could spark a nuclear war. Harriman later wrote that he believed Andropov was concerned “over the state of U.S.-Soviet relations and his desire to see them at least ‘normalized,’ if not improved.”

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In April, the EU’s anti-terror chief Gilles de Kerchove told the British media that some 500 Europeans were in Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has said that a number of German nationals have teamed up with the foreign-backed militants in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly magazine, Friedrich officially confirmed for the first time that there were German-born gunmen inside Syria fighting against the government.Friedrich particularly expressed concern about calls for those Europeans who have been trained in battle inside Syria.German officials say that 20 German nationals are currently fighting in Syria. Some have reportedly even taken their wives there and live directly on the frontlines of battle.

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Although all the news about Chinese investment in the U.S. have focused on the deals that don’t get done, Chinese investment in the U.S. is at an all-time high.

The Chinese are making headlines around the word for hungrily acquiring energy and resource companies in countries such as Canada, Africa and Latin America.

In the United States, the single largest Chinese investment to date is far more mundane: movie theaters. And to a large extent, that type of acquisition explains the broader story about China’s strategy when it comes to U.S. investment.

AMC Theaters, previously owned by a group of U.S. private equity firms, is now a division of Dalian Wanda of China—a huge entertainment conglomerate that spent $2.6 billion in 2012 on the theater chain. With the purchase, Wanda controls more ticket sales in the world than any other company.

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ROME (Reuters) – Millions of Italians cannot afford to heat their homes properly or eat meat as their country is racked by recession and soaring unemployment, said a report which found the number of people considered seriously deprived had doubled in the past two years.

The findings from national statistics institute ISTAT underline the scale of the challenge faced by the new coalition government of Enrico Letta, which has vowed to stimulate growth and tackle a youth jobless rate of almost 40 percent.

A recession that has lasted almost two years has taken a heavy toll on ordinary Italians who are increasingly digging into their savings, ISTAT said in its annual report.

Italy has the highest level in Europe of young people who are neither in education nor employment, at 23.9 percent, the study showed. In Italy’s impoverished south, one in three people aged 15-29 fell into this group.

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The average CEO salary broke records in 2011 at $9.6 million — and now, that record high has been topped by 2012 salaries, which averaged out to $9.7 million [2]. Health care and media CEOs enjoyed the highest pay, while utility CEOs had the lowest at $7.5 million. Sixty percent of CEOs got a raise last year.

Though CEO pay dropped slightly after the financial crisis, it quickly rebounded to reach new heights in 2010, 2011, and now 2012. Simultaneously, the pay gap between CEOs and workers has also broken records, as the average CEO in 2012 earned 354 times more [3] than the average worker.

During the recession, some companies changed their compensation formulas to incorporate more stock as a way to tie executives’ salaries to the company’s performance. As the stock market enjoys all-time highs, CEO pay has also soared. Yet the stock market’s rally has not been felt by most middle and low income families, as the housing market recovers in fits and starts. As a result, income inequality has beenexacerbated [4] in the first two years of the recovery.

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UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 21 2013 (IPS) – Everyone knows water is life. Far too few understand the role of trees, plants and other living things in ensuring we have clean, fresh water.

This dangerous ignorance results in destruction of wetlands that once cleaned water and prevented destructive and costly flooding, scientists and activists warn.

“We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers.” — GWSP’s Anik Bhaduri

Around the world, politicians and others in power have made and continue to make decisions based on short-term economic interests without considering the long-term impact on the natural environment, said Anik Bhaduri, executive officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP), a research institute based in Bonn, Germany.

“Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed,” Bhaduri told IPS.

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The common problem we face is the power of concentrated wealth and monopolistic corporate interests. This has created a crony capitalist economy that uses government to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the people, often threatening our basic necessities for life.A clear example of this is found in the behavior of the chemical and seed corporation, Monsanto.Monsanto threatens the world’s food supply; this is a major challenge of our era. This struggle is central to the global ecosystem, economy and energy crises. Monsanto also pushes poisonous chemicals into the environment and promotes agricultural practices that exacerbate climate change.

Monsanto’s actions truly affect each of us. They put their profits over the need for healthy foods, diverse seed supplies and the stability of the agricultural economy. They employ a variety of tools to control access to seeds and aggressively push genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and toxic chemicals despite serious safety concerns about them. And they accomplish this with great help from the US government.

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Tami Canal is the leading organizer and inspiration behind the global March Against  Monsanto, scheduled to take place in over 400 cities around the world this Saturday May 25.  Having lived in California when Prop 37 to label genetically modified foods and ingredients was defeated in November, she took it upon herself to raise the alarm about Monsanto’s endangering the world’s food supply and organize a popular dissent against the company’s domination of the political dialogue on the safety of our food and a sustainable environment.

For New York City

Union Squre, 50 E. 17^th Street, 1 pm

For New Brunswick in New Jersey

Meet at George Street Food Co-op

89 Morris Street, New Brunswick

For  a list of cities and meeting locations see:

WEBSITE:   www.March-Against-Monsanto.com

Charlene Spretnak talks with Asoka Bandarage about her new book, Sustainability and Well-Being, regarding her analysis of recent dynamics in Sri Lanka and her Buddhist-inflected vision of seeking the balance of the Middle Way in our ideas and project for a just and sustainable future; poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Tens of thousands of activists are uniting in a global day of action to “take back the food supply,” in a worldwide March Against Monsanto Saturday.

News of the event has gone viral as environmentalists and others opposed to the rampant spread of genetically modified (GM) crops have planned over 400 events in more than 45 countries. In the United States, actions in 47 states are slated to occur simultaneously at 11 AM PT.

“Our website is averaging over 40,000 visitors a day and our Facebook page has reached over 10,000,000 people in the last 7 days,” the organizers wrote on their website Tuesday.

Tami Monroe Canal, who initiated the march, says she was inspired to start the movement to protect her two daughters. “I feel Monsanto threatens their generation’s health, fertility and longevity. I couldn’t sit by idly, waiting for someone else to do something.”

Henry Kissinger, the hawkish national security advisor to Nixon who popularized realpolitik, turns 90 this week. Few would have expected President Obama to pick up his mantle, but the erstwhile idealist resembles Kissinger more every day.

When Henry Kissinger was at the height of his power, the US media dubbed then President Richard Nixon’s national security advisor “the true president.” At the time, he was traveling around the world at such a breakneck pace that journalists speculated that there must be five Kissingers (four doubles and one real). Around that time, a reporter asked him a question: Why are Americans so fascinated by a young man from Fürth in the German region of Franconia, who fled the Nazis at the age of 15?

Kissinger replied: “I’ve always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse.”

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The following is the first in a series of articles extracted from a new report by CMD and DBA Press entitled “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With
 Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a nationwide “counter terrorism” apparatus emerged. Components of this apparatus include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (U.S. DHS), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), ODNI’s “National Counterterrorism Center” (NCTC), and state/regional “fusion centers.”

“Fusion centers,” by and large, are staffed with personnel working in “counter terrorism”/ “homeland security” units of municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/”public safety”/”counter terrorism” agencies. To a large degree, the “counter terrorism” operations of municipal, county, state and tribal agencies engaged in “fusion centers” are financed through a number of U.S. DHS grant programs.

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WATCH NOW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6OxbpLwEjQ

In preparation of the global March Against Monsanto, you are invited to watch our award-winning documentary Seeds of Death free on now

http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/

The leaders of Big Agriculture–Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta–are determined that world’s populations remain ignorant about the serious health and environmental risks of genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture.  Deep layers of deception and corruption underlie both the science favoring GMOs and the corporations and governments supporting them.

This award-winning documentary, Seeds of Death, exposes the lies about GMOs and pulls back the curtains to witness our planet’s future if Big Agriculture’s new green revolution becomes our dominant food supply.

A Question and Answer fact sheet deconstructing Monsanto’s GM claims and Big Agriculture’s propaganda to accompany the film is available online:

http://prn.fm/2012/12/17/gary-null-seeds-of-death/#axzz2U3OTG9Mv

We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide.  And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide.  But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night.  A possibility might be “terracide” from the Latin word for earth.  It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist.

The truth is, whatever we call them, it’s time to talk bluntly about the terrarists of our world.  Yes, I know, 9/11 was horrific.  Almost 3,000 dead, massive towers down, apocalyptic scenes.  And yes, when it comes to terror attacks, the Boston Marathon bombings weren’t pretty either.  But in both cases, those who committed the acts paid for or will pay for their crimes.

In the case of the terrarists — and here I’m referring in particular to the men who run what may be the most profitable corporations on the planet, giant energy companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell – you’re the one who’s going to pay, especially your children and grandchildren. You can take one thing for granted: not a single terrarist will ever go to jail, and yet they certainly knew what they were doing.

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Baked Stuffed Baby Eggplant

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

Ingredients
6 baby eggplant
1 can Aduki beans, drained and rinsed
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, diced
2 Tbs. dill
¼ t. dried thyme
1 cup broccoli, small florets
1 cup cauliflower, small florets
4 white mushrooms, chopped
1 portobello mushroom, chopped
Olive oil
3 Tb. tamari
1 t. salt
1 cup cherry tomatoes , halved
2 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
2 Tbs. chopped parsley
¾ cup walnuts, chopped

1. Cut eggplant in half lengthwise. Brush with olive oil. Lay face down and roast in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes
2. Meanwhile, sauté onions in olive oil till translucent. Add carrots. Then add broccoli and cauliflower. Cook for 5 more minutes.
3. Add Aduki beans, cherry tomatoes and mushrooms.
4. Add dill, thyme, tamari, salt, and balsamic vinegar. Continue cooking for 5 more minutes.
5. Add parsley and walnuts and season to taste.
6. Hollow out eggplant boats and fill with vegetable mixture.
7. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes.
8. Serve over Saffron Quinoa or Rice Pilaf.