Curacao Zorgsector uit Kritiek op concept-Landsverordening Luchtkwaliteitseisen?
Sommige organisaties, waaronder Fundashon Birgen di Rosario, een stichting gericht op bejaardenzorg, hebben kritiek geuit op de nieuwe concept-Landsverordening luchtkwaliteitseisen, voorgesteld door het ministerie van Gezondheid, Milieu en Natuur.
Deze organisaties benadrukken de noodzaak van een betere balans tussen economische belangen en volksgezondheid, vooral in relatie tot de activiteiten van de raffinaderij en de luchtvaart op Curaçao.
Hoewel deze organisaties het op prijs stellen dat hun mening is gevraagd, zijn ze kritisch over bepaalde inhoud van de verordening, met name met betrekking tot de raffinaderij in het Schottegat-gebied, waar de hotels en restaurants ook een te grote CO2 voetdruk achterlaten.
Het gaat onder meer om Amigu di Tera/ Defensia Ambiental, stichting Clean Air Everywhere en Schoon Milieu op Curaçao, Smoc, maar Stichting Crickey Amigu di Natura (incl. opkomen voor de mens) denkt daar ook anders over.
Fundashon Birgen di Rosario, gevestigd nabij die raffinaderij, heeft in het verleden veel overlast ervaren van stank, roet en chemische uitstoot en sluit verplaatsing en/of verhuizing daarmee uit.
De zorgstichting wil herhaling van deze situatie zien te voorkomen en pleit daarom voor strengere luchtkwaliteitseisen. Helaas blijkt uit verschillende wereldwijde onderzoeken dat de toerisme industrie 10% voor haar rekening neemt.
De scheepsvaart is verrweg de grootste vervuiler op aarde. Kortom de gehele transport industrie zorgt voor veel (verborgen) vervuiling. De cruise schepen vormen de grootste ramp op aarde, zij diumpen het meeste afval water in de Caribisce Zee.
Toch uiten de oudjes hun bezorgdheid dat de nieuwe wetgeving niet voldoende rekening houdt met het (ondergeschikt volksbelang) en dat economische belangen (lees : bedrijven) nog steeds zwaarder lijken te wegen dan gezondheidsbelangen, evenals in Europa.
De bejaarden stichting suggereert dat de overheid haar plicht verzaakt door disproportionele voorbehouden te maken voor de heropening van de oude stijl raffinaderij.
Maar om de grootste raffinaderij van het Caribisch gebied te sluiten is onzin, zeker met de torenhoge olieprijs en enorme werkgelegenheid die het met zich meebrengt is deze een mogelijke boost voor de eenzijdige economie.
Ze adviseren om strengere eisen te stellen aan een eventuele nieuwe uitbater van de raffinaderij en andere industriële exploitanten, maar laten voor het gemak de zwaar vervuilende toeristen industie buiten schot?
Fundashon Birgen di Rosario benadrukt ook dat de economische bijdrage van de raffinaderij aan de economie van Curaçao is verminderd en dat de regering nieuwe economische pijlers zoals toerisme en medisch toerisme zou moeten overwegen?
Maar dat lijkt niet echt een haalbare optie, omdat het ziekenhuis gratis aan derden uit handen gegeven werd. Ook de bouw van een nieuw vliegveld blijkt onrendabel, zeker nu CAP alle Airport Tax in eigen zak mag steken.
Bovendien blijven de vier grote raffinaderijen in Rotterdam ook gewoon doordraaien, gelijke monnikken gelijke kappen. Het formaliseren van HNO naar CMC is ook een hekel punt voor de samenleven, die de uit de hand gelopen rekening moest betalen.
Ook kritiseren de oude vandagen uit de stichting de beperkte opsomming van verontreinigende stoffen in de verordening en stelt voor dat naast emmissienormen die gaan over de maximale uitstoot die geaccepteerd wordt(?).
Maar ook emissienormen – uitstoot door individuele bronnen – moeten opgenomen worden. Dit zou voorkomen dat één industriële partij te veel kan uitstoten, zoals in situatie voor 2020 met PdVSA?
De stichting bekritiseert de beperkte opsomming van verontreinigende stoffen in de verordening en stelt voor dat naast emmissienormen (maximale uitstoot die geaccepteerd wordt) ook emissienormen (uitstoot door individuele bronnen) opgenomen worden.
Dit zou voorkomen dat één industriële partij te veel kan uitstoten. Kortom allemaal politieke blokkades die vanuit Den Haag aanbevolen worden, waar de eigen slager haar vlees keurt.
Curacao.nu / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Sudan sounds alarm over Child deaths in war-torn African nation
More than a dozen children die every day at the Zamzam camp for displaced people in Sudan, where an armed conflict between two rival military forces has been raging since mid-April last year, the medical charity Doctors without Borders (MSF) reported on Monday.
According to MSF, the deaths are caused by catastrophic malnutrition at the camp in the North Darfur region, as UN agencies and international NGO’s that provide food assistance have had to scale back their operations due to the fighting.
We estimate that at least one child is dying every two hours in the camp… there are around 13 child deaths each day, Claire Nicolet, head of MSF’s emergency response in the Sahel nation, said in a statement.
Those with severe malnutrition who have not yet died are at high risk of dying within three to six weeks if they do not get treatment, Nicolet added, calling for an immediate increase in the humanitarian response.
Zamzam Camp, one of the largest and oldest facilities for displaced people in Sudan, was originally built by people fleeing the Darfur civil war in 2003, which left an estimated 300,000 people dead.
The camp has, however, not been spared from the humanitarian crisis that has engulfed the landlocked country since fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on April 15 last year, according to the medical charity.
Last April, the UN World Food Program (WFP) halted all operations in war-torn Sudan after three of its employees were killed in the clashes.
In May of the same year, the agency announced it was rapidly resuming activities to provide life-saving aid to the Sudanese population despite enormous security challenges.
However, on Monday, MSF said there have been no food distributions from the WFP since May to residents of the Zamzam camp, who were heavily reliant on international agencies for survival prior to the outbreak of fighting.
According to UN figures, 16 million people in Sudan are subjected to hunger, with Darfur having the highest rates.
Sudan, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), has the world’s largest internal displacement crisis, with around 9 million people forced out of their homes over the course of 10 months of hostilities.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned on Monday that without humanitarian support and a ceasefire agreement between the warring factions, Sudanese refugees will make their way to European Union countries, which are already grappling with record numbers of migrants.
A previous UN report says more than 12,000 people have been killed in the fighting that erupted in the capital, Khartoum, and has since taken on an inter-ethnic dimension, triggering waves of killings in Darfur.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2024
Indonesia started returning Containers of Waste and Hazardous materials to the EU and USA
Dozens of shipping containers full of waste will be returned to France and other developed countries, as Southeast Asian nations increasingly reject serving as dumping grounds for international trash.
The 49 containers were loaded with a combination of garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials in violation of import rules, according to customs officials on Batam island.
The waste transported to Indonesia came from the United States, Australia, France, Germany and Hong Kong.
China’s decision in 2018 to ban imports of foreign plastic waste threw global recycling into chaos, leaving developed nations struggling to find places to send their waste.
In 2019, Malaysia also vowed to ship back hundreds of tonnes of plastic waste, to countries that present themselves as Eco-friendly?
The Philippines, meanwhile, returned about 69 containers of rubbish back to Canada in 2019, putting an end to a diplomatic row between the two countries.
Around 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), with much of it ending up in landfills or polluting the seas, in what has become a growing international crisis.
TRT World / ABC Flash Point News 2020
Spanish farmers join continental protests over EU regulations
Spanish farmers blocked several major highways nationwide on Tuesday in what is the latest protest by agricultural workers in a European country, against rising costs, taxes and European Union (EU) bureaucracy.
The latest farmers’ protest followed similar demonstrations in Germany, France, Belgium and other EU countries, with much of their ire directed at EU regulations that, they contend, harms their abilities to earn a living in an overly-competitive marketplace.
With different shades, in the whole of the EU, we have the same problems, Donaciano Dujo, vice president of Spanish agricultural advocacy group ASAJA, told broadcaster TVE.
Ahead of union-led protests planned for Thursday many farmers mobilized tractors across the country on Tuesday to stage mass blockades that gridlocked numerous traffic thoroughfares across Spain.
Affected areas included Seville and Granada in the south of the country as far as Girona in the country’s north close to the French border, Reuters said on Tuesday, citing local traffic authorities.
Chief among the farmers’ complaints is that EU policies imposed to protect the environment harms their abilities to compete with agricultural producers from Latin America, or from non-EU countries.
We spend more time dealing with paperwork than in the field, one farmer, Eva Garcia, told Reuters. Garcia added that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy was choking us.
On Tuesday, in what was viewed as a concession by Brussels, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the bloc intends to remove a controversial law designed to reduce the use of pesticides – describing the legislation as a symbol of polarization.
Meanwhile, also on Tuesday, the Spanish Agriculture Ministry said it would distribute an additional €269 million ($289 million) of aid to around 140,000 farmers affected by a long-running drought, as well as for market downturns brought on by the conflict in Ukraine.
Last week, Catalonia declared a state of emergency over the three-year drought which has vastly impacted some agricultural production.
In Italy, farmers have also converged ahead of a planned protest in Rome later this week. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has declared her support, though Italian farmers have also expressed concern at government plans to end agricultural-sector tax subsidies.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2024.
Global Electronic Waste is causing problems for the Environment in Nigeria
In Lagos, Nigeria, truckloads of electronic waste illegally imported from developed countries is causing problems for human health and the environment.
It’s a towering mountain of waste that greets the eyes as cars zip by on nearby highways and head into the central area of Lagos.
African countries like Nigeria and Ghana bear the brunt: An estimated 500 containers, each carrying about 500,000 used computers and other electronic equipment, enter Nigeria’s ports every month from the USA, Europe and Asia.
Formerly Nigeria’s capital city, this commercial nerve center of Africa’s biggest and fastest growing economies and is its most populated urban center, with an estimated 21 million residents.
But for all of Lagos’ appeal, the mega-city is drowning in rubbish. It is mostly plastic waste, which threatens the environment in no small measure. Yet, growing piles of another kind of waste could prove to be far more dangerous.
Overwhelming amounts of electronic waste are piling up in landfills across the port city. Also referred to as Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) or simply e-waste, it involves discarded items that have power or battery supplies.
Old electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) such as computers, phones, printers, televisions and refrigerators, commonly end up as e-waste.
E-waste is one of the fastest growing types of waste in the world. But globally, the Eco-friendly recycling of e-waste is optimally low: more than half of almost 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste generated worldwide ends up in landfills or is illegally transported.
As trendier technologies emerge, the lifespans of consumer electronics are getting even shorter, worsening the issue. The world is currently generating e-waste faster than it can be recycled or repurposed.
Developed nations are responsible for more than half of that. In 2014, the United States alone generated 11 million metric tonnes of e-waste, 80% of which was exported to poorer countries where they are either sold for re-use, mined for raw materials or abandoned in landfills.
A ready market for used EEE encourages the importation, 80 million of the 200 million Nigerians live on less than $2 a day, yet more than 90 million use internet enabled-gadgets.
Most people will buy used phones and computers rather than spend all their money on new ones. It’s a market that yields quick returns he says, perhaps more so than selling only brand new products.
However, more than half of used EEE imported to the country is near end of life or completely damaged. Apart from computers and phones, the e-waste also include air conditioners and LCD TVs, which contain mercury.
It is illegal to import end-of-life EEE, which is basically e-waste, into the country according to national laws, but corrupted systems at Lagos ports mean Western backed smugglers can sneak their consignments in.
Cables and wires are useful too. Thousands of bundles of wires are burnt every day to get to the copper. The burning activity also releases toxic fumes into the air, affecting the scavengers and residents in the area.
Containers marked as carrying vehicles are filled with e-waste – a trick employed to mislead port officials since importing vehicles is legal – continue to dock in Lagos from the USA, China and Europe, according to the Global E-waste Monitor.
E-waste dumping is not new or limited to Nigeria. In 1988, Italy shipped 18,000 barrels of toxic waste marked to a village in Delta State.
In 2016, an explosive investigation showed that GPS-tracked e-waste dropped off at American recycling companies ended up in Kenya. Every year, Ghana groans under the weight of 40,000 metric tonnes of imported e-waste.
Environmental experts are urging the Nigerian government to ratify the Bamako Treaty, a continental framework which aims to place an outright ban on the importation of hazardous waste.
Many agree that tighter law enforcement is needed at the ports to stop e-waste from coming in. An outright ban on used EEE would be too harsh and would put “most of the crime rings out of business”.
TRT World / ABC Flash Point News 2020.
Ashkenazim Jews Genetically proven to be European descendants
The origin of the Ashkenazim Jews, who come most recently from Europe, has largely been shrouded in mystery. But a new study suggests that at least their maternal lineage may derive largely from Europe.
It hereby contradicts the notion that European Jews mostly descend from people who left Israel and the Middle East around 2,000 years ago.
Little is known about the nomadic Khazars before they were expelled from Asia and settled in what is now Poland around the 12th century.
The Khazars invaded Europe over the land route between the north end of the Caspian Sea and the south end of the Ural mountains, and ended up in Germany, Crimea, Hungary, Austria and Lithuania.
On average, all Ashkenazim Jews are genetically as closely related to each other as fourth or fifth cousins, said Dr. Harry Ostrer, a pathology, pediatrics and genetics professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
But depending on whether the lineage gets traced through maternal or paternal DNA or through the rest of the genome, researchers got very different answers for whether Ashkenazim originally came from Europe or the Near East.
Past research found that 50% to 80% of DNA from the Ashkenazim Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East Asia. But historical documents tell a slightly different tale?
By the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70, as many as 6 million Jews were living in the Roman Empire, but outside Israel, mainly in Italy and Southern Europe. In contrast, only about 500,000 lived in Judea.
Analyzed mitochondrial DNA, which is contained in the cytoplasm of the egg and passed down only from the mother, from more than 3,500 people throughout the Near East, the Caucasus, including Ashkenazim Jews.
All told, the maternal lineages of Ashkenazim Jews could be traced to Europe, with only a few lineages originating in the Near East.
After the fall of the Khazarica kingdom the people were known as “Yiddish” in Russia and Eastern Europe. They still to this day, refer to themselves as “Yiddish”.
Jews of our era fall into two main categories the Ashkenazim Jew (common), whom in 1960 numbered around 11 million.
The term Ashkenazim Jew is associated with Germany, Hungary and Poland which shared culture and borders with the Khazarian empire.
The Sephardi Jews who numbered about 500,000 in 1960 and are the descendants of the Spanish Jews that were expelled from Spain by the Muslims in 1492.
Live Science / ABC Flash Point News 2019.
Gokken noemt men in NL, Vrienden Loterij en Maatschappelijk Partner
Holland Casino wordt in Nederland op TV aangemerkt als de sponsor van het volk. Een beetje buitensporig zal een helder persoon registereren.
En dat klopt wel want op Curacao werd evenals Pim Fortuin in NL, een klokkenluider tegen de gok industrie om zeep geholpen.
Helmin Wiels had alle documentatie verzameld over hoe gok netwerken in de wereld opereerden. Want toen Amerika het online gokken en het gebruik van credit cards officieel onmogelijk maakten moest er een nieuwe bodem worden gevonden om gokken rendabel te houden.
Curacao verleende daarvoor 3 tot 4.000 wereld wijde offshore vergunningen via provider UTS en Antelecom. Wiels wilde dat aan het licht brengen, maar werd op 5 mei, om 5 uur ‘s middags met 5 kogels om het leven gebracht.
Alle getuigen en deelnemers liggen inmiddels veilig op het kerkhof. Nummer vijf was het geluks getal van wijlen Wiels.
De NL’se autonome ABC eilanden voor de kust van Venezuela dienen voor NL’se en andere wereldwijde misdadigers als hoofdkantoor, waar alle vertegenwoordigers van offshore bedrijven, accountants en belasting specialisten hun geld stromen samenstellen.
De omzet van de handel in cocaine is vele malen groter als dan dat de grootste bedrijven ter wereld in verkoop omzetten.
De springplank voor deze handel worden op Aruba en Curacao gesmeed. Nederland is de grootste handelaar met Zuid Amerika waar Nazi nep-Joden hun schuilkelders vonden.
De op Curacao geboren zoon van een grote hanndelaar voor Mannesman staal fabrieken in Zuid Amerika gevestigd in Havana, Cuba heeft in isolatie zijn verborgen reputatie omgebouwd.
De woning van de klokkenluider werd volgepomt met lood.
Zijn huisdieren werden gemarteld, en zijn vele binnen- en buitenlandse bankrekeningen werden gesloten onder de noemer van geldwasserij.
Er wordt dagelijks om hem gejaagd door misdaad kartellen, die niets beters te doen hebben en zich als mariku’s gedragen.
Ecoterroristen hebben het voor het zeggen op het eiland. Ontwikkelen in beschermde gebieden levert namelijk heel veel geld op. Zodoende werden vele lokalen eigendommen roekeloos geprivatiseerd en verboden toegang verklaard.
WordPress verwijderd vaste lezers die zich aangemeld hadden als ‘follower’, blokkeert de ‘view’ tellers van abonnees, wat bewezen kan worden omdat lezers wel commentaar achter laten bij de bezochte nieuwsartikelen.
Eerder werd Cosmos Chronicle, toen nog de Black Hole Zoo website, door Go-Daddy als provider uit de lucht gehaald door de Amerikanen. De waarheid moet verborgen blijven, zodat de beroeps misdadigers door kunnen gaan met hun wandaden jegens de mensheid.
Het doel van de website is om verschillende bekende wereldwijde nieuws bronnen naast elkaar te leggen om daaruit de overeenkomsten in visie te analyseren om deze dan te presenteren als beter nieuws.
Over een periode van 12 jaar werden steeds betere contacten gelegd met mede Facebook gebrukers die op hun vakgebieden hun visie deelden.
Allerlei wetenschappers op vele gebieden, zoals filosofen, biologen, religieuzen, economen, acheologen, natuurkundigen, astrologen en defensie specialisten boden hun diensten aan om de inhoud van Cosmos Chronicle sinds 2012 te verbeteren op vak niveau.
Helaas worden er vaak halve waarheden aangekondigd door alles wat op TV programma’s en kranten wordt aangeboden door de ‘professionals’. Vooral de reclame nemen de mensheid in de maling, zodat hun aangeboren spiritualiteit ontspoort wordt.
Als men dus niet de juiste basis kennis van geschiedenis en aardrijkskunde heeft opgedaan wordt het lastig om nog een opinie of een mening te delen die op waarheden berusten. Daar om mag iedereen een opinie hebben, behalve op Facebook, daar wordt men als een klein kind afgestraft.
Het probleem wat er deze dagen aan de horizon verschijnt is dat een groot gedeelte van de onze geschiedenis op aarde uit het Bronzen tijdperk verwijderd en vernietigd werden door belang hebbenden die de dag van vandaag te zeggen hebben.
Woordspeling is de grote boosdoener in het geheel, omdat met mooie woorden leugens worden aangekondigd en met negatieve opmerkingen de waarheid opzij geschoven wordt door onder heersers op aarde.
Ieder kind wordt geboren als geniaal, tot dat zij rond hun vierde jaar naar school moeten gaan en onzin aan te leren. Maar omdat iedereen in dezelfde pas loopt, worden de wijzen onder ons als idioten aangemerkt.
De markt waar dit fenomeen het beste herkenbaar is noemt men de toeristen industrie, die met reclames en mooie beelden het geld uit de zakken klopt van de hardwerkende werkers en arbeiders onder ons.
Een zonnetje met een palmboom doet wonderen voor velen die vaak als alocoholisten en andere vormen van verslaving op vakatie worden gelokt. Met moet op vakantie kunnen gaan, omdat het dagelijkse leven een sleur lijkt te zijn voor velen.
Wij stevenen als mensheid op de laatste van ons leven op aarde terecht. Maatregelen die ons worden opgelegd zullen onze bank rekeningen plunderen en onze ijskasten leeg achter laten. de toekomst ziet er niet bepaald rooskleirig meer uit.
The Great Reset and Build Back Better zij de inmiddels bekende sloguns die Klaus Schwabb en het World Economic Fund daar voor gebruiken. Rusland dient nu als voorbeeld hoe eigendommen, tradities en culturen om zeep en afhendig gemaakt worden geholpen.
Op TV en in Hollywood worden de Hunger Games zelfs al bekend gemaakt door de regiseurs inzake. Wij denken dat het een speeltje is, en daarvoor zullen de meesten gaan boeten. Huishoudens zonder voedselbronnen zullen ge-elimineerd.
Mensen die in de grote steden wonen krijgen het moeilijker dan de mensen die op het platteland wonen en/of tuintjes hebben om het een en ander, zoals noodvoorraden te planten.
ABC Flash Point News 2022.
The Destroyed City of Darkness in China
Destroyed 27 years ago, the Kowloon Walled City still attracts attention with its incredible story, in which reality manages to surpass the imagination.
The city was located on an area of 213 meters by 126 meters and was home to more than 33 thousand people, making it the most densely populated place in the world.
Known for its misery, filth, and impossible living conditions, Kowloon was known as the City of Darkness, where no laws applied.
1. Founded in Hong Kong in 1810 as a fortress city, it has repeatedly been held hostage to the complex relationship between China and the British Empire. Since 1898, Kowloon (also called the Walled City) remained a Chinese land, surrounded by Hong Kong territories under British jurisdiction.
2. Gradually, the place began to develop and more and more people settled in. The location was appealing due to the fact that after the Second World War, China and Great Britain had neither the strength nor the desire to impose their influence on the Walled City. It became home to refugees from the Chinese regime who could not afford to live in Hong Kong.
Uncontrolled construction began on the existing buildings in Kowloon. The distance between the buildings rising to 14 floors was not more than 2 m, which turned the streets into labyrinths without sunlight, through which people pass bent due to hanging bundles of cables.
3. By 1990, there were 500 buildings in the city. There were only two elevators and many “bridges” between the upper floors. Thanks to them, the occupants did not have to go down to the first floor to go to a neighboring building.
Kowloon was being built on the move, without a plan and rules, the premises had no windows and no ventilation system. This architectural marvel, contrary to any logic, still arouses the interest and wonder of architects and builders. The apartments were between 4 sq.m. and 16 sq.m. and served simultaneously as working places.
4. In these “factory apartments”, families managed to house a shop, a weaving factory, a workshop for noodles, candies, plastic, or to organize the production of ready-made foods such as fried fish balls and roast meat.
5. Access to water was difficult. There were only eight supply pipes available (one within the city, the seven outside it), serving about 33,000 residents and hundreds of factories and workshops.
Residents of ground-floor homes dug wells in their properties to have access to water. Hygiene was a challenge that people failed to cope with, coexisting with rats and cockroaches.
Electricity was the other big problem as production required a lot of electricity. Not to mention normal life as a whole.
6. The biggest luxury available for a minimum number of people were balconies overlooking the open space outside the city. Roofs were the only place where residents could go out in the sun, for children to play or even write their homework.
But outdoor holidaymakers were exposed to the loud noise of landing planes at the Hong Kong airport, whose corridor ran just above the city.
7. Heavy working and living conditions were the price residents had to pay to take care of their families. Not all children went to school, some helped their parents earn a living, others were raised by their grandmothers or stayed home alone until the adults return home.
The city has only one crèche, and the children in it ate and slept in shifts due to insufficient space. But on the other hand, there were many dental offices in Kowloon because, unlike in Hong Kong, dentists in Walled City did not need a dental license.
The medical and health services did not take action against unregistered dentists and doctors, they even believed that they should continue to tolerate them, except in cases where there is a danger to the lives of patients.
The low prices of health services made health services in the Kowloon Walled City preferred especially to those living outside the city.
8. Restaurants were offering dog meat dishes, opium smoking rooms, access to heroin, gambling, prostitution. Real power was in the hands of triads (Chinese criminal organizations) that controlled criminal activity. And although police patrolled the City of Darkness on a daily basis, they only intervened in serious crimes and cooperated with triads for the rest.
9. In the last years before the destruction of Kowloon, crime and the number of drug addicts filling its streets had dropped dramatically. Some evidence suggests that at the time, triads controlled primarily the water supply, which remained the most indispensable resource for residents. There was no lack of social activities, there were small schools, clinics, churches, and even a center for the elderly.
10. With the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, China regained Hong Kong. The first steps were being taken to resolve the issue with the status of the Kowloon Walled City. Three years later, the two sides agreed to demolish the city and allow residents to receive monetary compensation.
Surprisingly, most of them refused to leave as life outside the Walled City was much more expensive. Some doubted that they will be able to feed their families if they have to comply with the regulations valid for Hong Kong.
Despite protests and refusals to leave their homes, the last remaining people were evicted by 1992, and the City of Darkness was finally destroyed in April 1994.
In just one year, a spacious park with lots of greenery was built in its place. There you can see artifacts from the fortress, and the alleys bear the names of the streets and ruined buildings of the former city.
Curiosmos / ABC Flash Point News 2021.
Brazil Amazon deforestation drops 34% under famous President Lula
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon dropped by a third during the first six months of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s term, according to government satellite data.
It follows four years of rising destruction in the critical rain-forest under Bolsonaro, but experts know the fight isn’t over.
From January to June the rain forest had alerts for possible deforestation covering 2,650 square kilometers, down from 4,000 sq km during the same period last year under former leader Jair Bolsonaro.
This year’s data includes a 4% plunge in alerts for June, which marks the start of the dry season when deforestation tends to jump.
The effort of reversing the curve of growth has been reached. That is a fact: we reversed the curve; deforestation isn’t increasing, João Paulo Capobianco, the Environment Ministry’s executive secretary, said during a presentation in Brasilia.
Capobianco noted that full-year results will depend on a few challenging months ahead.
Still, the data is an encouraging sign for Lula, who campaigned last year with pledges to rein in illegal logging and undo the environmental devastation during Bolsonaro’s term.
The former far-right leader weakened environmental authorities, while his insistence on developing the Amazon region resonated with land-grabbers and farmers who had long felt maligned by environmental laws.
They were emboldened, and Amazon deforestation surged to a 15-year high.
Lula has committed to restoring the workforce, but the number of Ibama’s enforcement agents remains at its lowest in 24 years. For the entire country that is bigger than the contiguous USA, there are just 700 agents, with 150 available for deployment.
Ibama has also strengthened remote surveillance, where deforestation is detected through satellite imagery.
By cross-referencing with land records, it is possible to identify the owner of the area in many cases, leading to an embargo that restricts access to financial loans and imposes other sanctions.
Another strategy has been to seize thousands of illegally raised cattle within embargoed areas. It is effective because it inflicts immediate punishment, whereas fines are rarely paid in Brazil due to a slow appeals process.
Rodrigo Agostinho, the head of Ibama, noted that the value of fines imposed in the first half of the year jumped 167% from the 2019-2022 average, and the agency embargoed 2,086 areas – up 111%.
We started the year with a lot of difficulty because of everything we inherited, reorganizing all the enforcement teams, environmental protection, reactivating tech systems.
Improved deforestation data also reflects the change in rhetoric coming from the top.
Whereas Bolsonaro openly criticized Ibama and advocated for the legalization of deforested areas, Lula has said he will rebuild law enforcement and promised to expel invaders from protected areas.
Experts say the mere expectation that a land-grabbed area will eventually be regularized has historically been one of deforestation’s biggest drivers.
It may be premature to celebrate the reversal in deforestation’s trend, however. According to satellite monitoring, there were 3,075 fires in the Amazon in June alone, which marks the beginning of the dry season – the most since 2007.
The jump is due to the clearing of areas deforested in the second half of 2022. In the Amazon, fires are mostly man-made and occur after clear-cutting of the forest.
With El Niño looming, which typically brings less rain and higher temperatures to the Amazon, Ibama has doubled its budget for fighting forest fires and increased the scope of its fire squads by 17% for the most critical period, typically July to October.
Approximately half of the 2,117 temporary firefighters are Indigenous peoples.
The Amazon rain-forest covers an area twice the size of India and holds tremendous stores of carbon, serving as a crucial buffer against climate change. Two-thirds of it is located in Brazil.
Next month, Lula will preside over a meeting in Belem, bringing together heads-of-state from all Amazonian nations to discuss means to effectively cooperate in the challenging region.
Lula has promised to end net deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon by 2030. His four-year mandate, his third term, ends two years earlier.
To achieve this, law enforcement alone will not be enough, says Adevaldo Dias, a rubber-tapper leader who presides over the Chico Mendes Memorial, a non-profit organization that assists traditional non-Indigenous communities in the Amazon.
It is necessary to invest in sustainable productive chains under community management, such as managed pirarucu (arapaima) fishing, Brazil nuts, vegetable oils, and açai.
This will help revitalize and expand these chains, generating decent income for those engaged in conservation efforts within their territories
Green Euro News / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
The Viking Sun-Stone Navigation Crystals
Sun-stones have been described in Viking tales from the 13th–14th century AD, used as a navigation tool for transatlantic crossings to the new lands of Greenland and Iceland, and possibly even North America, as confirmed by the discovery of the archaeological site of l’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland in 1960.
Without any knowledge of the magnetic compass invented by the Chinese during the Han dynasty, the Vikings developed their own methods of navigation to trade over long distances and establish settlements in the new lands.
To navigate, the Vikings used horizon boards and sundials like the wooden disc found in 1948 in Uunartoq. However, these techniques only worked when the sun was directly observable, and not obscured by cloud cover or had moved below the horizon.
To resolve this, the theory suggests that the sunstone was a crystal that would polarize light, and by which the azimuth of the sun can be determined in a partly overcast sky or during twilight conditions.
The existence of sunstones has been a subject of scholarly debate, first appearing in allegorical stories such as the Rauðúlfs þáttr by an unnamed author, who recants the sagas of King Olaf.
The Rauðúlfs þáttr relates King Olav’s trip with his retinue, including the queen and bishop, to Eystridalir (now Österdalen) a then rather remote part of Norway, bordering on Sweden.
The text describes: The weather was thick and snowy as Sigurður had predicted. Then the king summoned Sigurður and Dagur (Rauðúlfur’s sons) to him. The king made people look out and they could nowhere see a clear sky.
Then he asked Sigurður to tell where the sun was at that time. He gave a clear assertion. Then the king made them fetch the solar stone and held it up and saw where light radiated from the stone and thus directly verified Sigurður’s prediction.
In the Hrafns Saga, it says: the weather was sick and stormy. The King looked about and saw no blue sky, then the King took the Sunstone and held it up, and then he saw where the Sun beamed from the stone.
It wasn’t until the 1960’s that the concept of Vikings using polarized light for navigation gained some weight, when Thorkild Ramskou, a Danish archaeologist, noted that Scandinavian Air Systems transArtic pilots used a Polaroid-based instrument called the Twilight Compass (Kollsman sky compass) to determine the Sun’s location.
This led Ramskou to propose that the Viking may have used a local mineral employed as a polariser, such as cordierite crystals, tourmaline or calcite from Icelandic spar.
Experiments by Guy Ropars confirmed that Iceland spar could be used in both cloudy and twilight conditions to detect concentric rings of polarization and thus the location of the sun.
This was further supported with the discovery of Iceland spar on an Elizabethan ship that sank near Alderney in 1592, however, archaeologists are still yet to find a sunstone among Viking shipwrecks or settlements.
Heritage Daily.com / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
US banking crisis heralds End of Dollar reserve system
The US banking system is broken. That doesn’t portend more high-profile failures like Credit Suisse. The central banks will keep moribund institutions on life support.
But the era of dollar-based reserves and floating exchange rates that began on August 15, 1971, when the US severed the link between the dollar and gold, is coming to an end. The pain will be transferred from the banks to the real economy, which will starve for credit.
And the geopolitical consequences will be enormous. The seize-up of dollar credit will accelerate the shift to a multi-polar reserve system, with advantage to China’s RMB as a competitor to the dollar.
Gold, the barbarous relic abhorred by John Maynard Keynes, will play a bigger role because the dollar banking system is dysfunctional, and no other currency — surely not the tightly-controlled yuan — can replace it.
Now at an all-time record price of US$2,000 an ounce, gold is likely to rise further.
The greatest danger to dollar hegemony and the strategic power that it imparts to Washington is not China’s ambition to expand the international role of the yuan.
This crisis is utterly unlike 2008, when banks levered up trillions of dollars of dodgy assets based on “liar’s loans” to homeowners. Fifteen years ago, the credit quality of the banking system was rotten and leverage was out of control.
Bank credit quality today is the best in a generation. The crisis stems from the now-impossible task of financing America’s ever-expanding foreign debt.
America’s chronic current account deficits of the past 30 years amount to an exchange of goods for paper: America buys more goods than it sells, and sells assets (stocks, bonds, real estate, and so on) to foreigners to make up the difference.
America now owes a net $18 trillion to foreigners, roughly equal to the cumulative sum of these deficits over 30 years. The trouble is that the foreigners who own US assets receive cash flows in dollars, but need to spend money in their own currencies.
Before 1971, when central banks maintained exchange rates at a fixed level and the United States covered its relatively small current account deficit by transferring gold to foreign central banks at a fixed price of $35 an ounce, none of this was necessary.
The Vietnam war bankrupted the USA and created the end of the gold link to the dollar and the new regime of floating exchange rates allowed the United States to run massive current account deficits by selling its assets to the world.
In effect, the market worries that buying inflation protection from the US government is like passengers on the Titanic buying shipwreck insurance from the captain. The gold market is too big and diverse to manipulate.
The dollar reserve system will go out not with a bang, but a whimper. The central banks will step in to prevent any dramatic failures. But bank balance sheets will shrink, credit to the real economy will diminish and international lending in particular will evaporate.
Southeast Asia will rely more on its own currencies and the yuan. The dollar frog will boil by slow increments. It’s fortuitous that Western sanctions on Russia during the past year prompted China, Russia, India and the Persian Gulf states to find alternative financing arrangements.
These are not a monetary phenomenon, but an expensive, inefficient and cumbersome way to work around the US dollar banking system.
As dollar credit diminishes, though, these alternative arrangements will turn into permanent features of the monetary landscape, and other currencies will continue to gain ground against the dollar, concludes ‘The Asia Times’.
Asia Times / ABC Flash Point WW III News 2023.
Pakistan and Belarus join mission to help China build its Moon Base
Pakistan and Belarus have come aboard the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a China-led project that will be constructed in the 2030’s, if all goes according to plan.
Belarus announced its involvement on Monday (Oct. 23), while Pakistan’s became known late last week. There are now seven nations in the ILRS coalition, according to SpaceNews: China, Russia, Belarus, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Venezuela and South Africa.
Pakistan does not have its own launch capabilities, it depends on China for that and Pakistan has only three active satellites on orbit, while China has over 800, Victoria Samson, Washington office director for the nonprofit Secure World Foundation, told SpaceNews.
NASA is also building a moon coalition of its own, via a set of agreements known as the Artemis Accords. The Accords lay out guidelines for responsible and peaceful lunar exploration, which the American space agency is undertaking via its Artemis program.
Twenty-nine nations have signed the Artemis Accords to date, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
One of the Artemis program’s main goals is the construction of one or more bases near the moon’s south pole, which is thought to be rich in water ice, by the end of the 2020’s.
The skills and lessons learned in doing so will help NASA get astronauts to Mars by the late 2030’s or early 2040’s, agency officials have said.
Space News.com / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Milan is one of Italia’s most polluted cities in Europe
Levels of pollutants in Milan’s air are almost four times the safe amount. Milan, one of Italy’s busiest cities, has proposed banning cars from its center.
Mayor Giuseppe Sala wants to reduce pollution in the traffic-heavy metropolis of 1.4 million people and said similar measures would follow. If it gets the green light, the measure will come into force in 2024. Authorities will use surveillance cameras to enforce the ban.
Milan is one of Europe’s most polluted cities. It has poor air quality due to the volume of fine particles, the pollutant which poses a risk to human health.
The maximum level considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO) is a long-term average of no more than 5 μg/m3 (micro-grams per cubic meter). Milan’s levels are almost four times the safe amount, at 19.7 μg/m3.
As part of a push to tackle the dangerous emission levels, Milan’s authorities have proposed a ban on private traffic in the city center. It’s a small thing, but at the same time it’s a historic thing, mayor Sala said during a festival to promote sustainability last week.
To enforce the ban, cameras will be installed along the Corso Venezia to record traffic and prevent entry to private cars. Residents with a garage, anyone accessing car parking, taxis and public transport are exempt from the ban.
Those caught accessing the area unauthorized face a fine, though the mayor did not specify the sum. The move will make some of Milan’s busiest areas more pedestrian-friendly, including the elegant Fashion Quadrilatero where many of the city’s high-end boutiques are located.
We, like Milan, must be pioneers and have the courage and common sense to do things,” Sala told reporters at a climate change festival. I am not an antagonist of capitalism, but honestly seeing the parade of super-cars in the center which they then can’t park can’t continue.
The mayor also suggested that there would be more reforms of this kind to follow. He said many of the fashion houses in the area where the ban will be enforced backed his proposal and even suggested making the zone pedestrianized.
Not everyone is in favour of the reform, however. In addition to traffic restrictions in large areas of the city, Sala is now launching the idea of a Milan in which from 2024 no cars can circulate anymore, mayor of suburban ‘commune’ Sesto San Giovanni, Roberto Di Stefano, criticized.
He added that the measure was an absurdity that penalizes not only the Milanese but all the citizens of the outskirts, who are forced to commute every day.
Milan is not the first European city to consider a car ban. Earlier this month, Stockholm announced plans to block petrol and diesel cars from entering the city center.
The measure hopes to slash emissions and reduce pollution. The new rules will come into force on 31 December 2024. Paris is also hoping to eliminate private vehicles from its historic center by early 2024 ahead of the Olympic Games.
The move could see as many as 100,000 cars taken off the French capital’s roads daily.
EuroNews.com / ABC Flash Point Ne3wws 2023.
Crickey Amigu di Natura 