Religious leaders representing over 95% of Puerto Rico's population wrote Congress urging that the island be included in the next stimulus plan. Job creation, disaster relief and protections for the vulnerable were lifted in a letter signed by leaders of the Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Christian (Disciples) and Evangelical Churches. The Puerto Rico Council of Churches, Catholic Charities (Caritas) and the General Bible Society also added their names to the letter to Congress. read full story / add a comment

Ireland Has a New Coronavirus Fear: Americans Who Flout Quarantine read full story / add a comment

Alert to citizens, governors, mayors, presidents, prime ministers, and public health officials—

You want science. You always state that. Well, here is your very own science. In a paper titled: “Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures.” Published in: “Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol.26, No. 5, May 2020, it says:

Here, we review the evidence base on the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical personal protective measures and environmental hygiene measures in non-healthcare settings and discuss their potential inclusion in pandemic plans. Although mechanistic studies [*] support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning.”
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Many people may already be aware of Jon Rappoport who writes at extensively at https://NoMoreFakeNews.com/ and who has from the very get go has asked fundamental questions about the Covid-19 crisis and provided very insightful analysis.

He has in conjunction with Catherine Austin Fitts of the Solari Report created a six part series of podcasts covering the how, why and objectives of the Covid-19 crisis. Catherine Austin Fitts is a leading financial expert and during the Bush Snr administration was She was Assistant Secretary of Housing — Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development

The second set of podcasts are interviews of various people, one an Prof of pathology of 20 years, Dr John Lee who talks alot of sense and calls out the British government on their approach to Covid. Then there is a really interesting interview of another doctor,

Dr James Todaro who explains what LancetGate is -the scandal around the Lancet Journal and the campaign to denigrate the drug Hydroxychloroquine read full story / add a comment

High Court calls Ireland and the Attorney General into challenge to Legal Aid Board’s refusal to consider aid for environmental charity.

Judge highlight Aarhus Convention’s requirements for access to justice

High Court Justice Niamh Hyland has directed that Ireland and the Attorney General be joined in the proceedings brought by an environmental charity against the Legal Aid Board for its refusal to consider an application for legal aid because the charity was a company and not an individual. read full story / add a comment

Chaired by Saudi Arabia, G20 Finance Ministers met virtually and focused on the global health and economic impacts of the coronavirus. A communiqué issued by the Ministers suggested most decisions on the crisis will be made later in the year. read full story / add a comment

Ahead of Saturday's G20 Finance Minister meetings, a wide range of 213 organizations is pressing for more action to confront the global health and economic impacts of the coronavirus. The largest religious bodies in the United States and Africa were joined by the biggest labor unions, human rights, environmental and anti-poverty groups in letters sent to the G20, IMF and White House. read full story / add a comment

Michael Moore's important new film 'Planet of Humans' has given shape to suspicions that I and many others have had about the burgeoning green movement and what is driving it's sudden popularity across the spectrum, despite all the years "in the wilderness" when old school green activists were pariahs.
Of course It's the usual reason as we suspected: i.e. corporate PROFIT!
WATCH THIS MOVIE!! read full story / add a comment

The G20 and Paris Forum convened a global virtual High-Level Ministerial conference for 39 countries focused on the economic, debt and development impacts of the coronavirus. read full story / add a comment

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has released a press release today where they did their own analysis of the excess deaths in Ireland since early March and the figure they come to is between 1,100 and 1,200 which is substantially lower than the "official" Covid death toll of 1700+.

This means that as was suspected the official number was way too liberal with categorizing deaths as due to Covid. This new figure is closer to a regular year of flu in terms of number of deaths and conclusively proves that Covid is barely any more dangerous than flu in terms of threat. What we see here is a slow back track and while the emphasis is still on social distancing, this is merely to give cover to the fact that at a minimum this has been one big mistake and a massive over-reaction but is true of many other countries but not all. It could be viewed as how badly group think has taken over our society because there were moments in the last few months where one dare not challenge the official figures for fear of social ostracizing
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IRELAND'S UN SECURITY COUNCIL SEAT

LETTER SENT TO IRISH BROADSHEET NEWSPAPERS

Sir,

Ireland’s previous stint on the UN Security Council in 2001 is nothing to be proud of in terms of promoting world peace.

In 2001, under the then Fianna Fail Government with Brian Cowan as Foreign Minister, Ireland voted for several resolutions that ultimately approved the US led invasion of Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, in what then Labour TD Michael D. Higgins termed “an illegal war”. Nineteen years later with no end in sight America’s longest war has caused the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands, many of them women and children, and has created deep bitterness, division and sectarianism. read full story / add a comment

Comparing similarities of the Political Governance in Ireland to that of China.
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Shannon LNG faces further challenge in High Court
Judicial Review of listing as ‘Project of Common Interest’

The controversial Shannon LNG terminal proposed for the Shannon Estuary faces its second challenge in the High Court from the environmental charity, Friends of the Irish Environment today. The environmental organisation is asking the Irish Court to seek a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union on whether the inclusion of the project on a list of priority European Energy infrastructure was lawful. read full story / add a comment

Legal Aid Board refusal to fund environmental NGO faces High Court challenge
Irish legal costs ‘prohibitively expensive’

The High Court will tomorrow [June 30] hear a two-day challenge to the Legal Aid Board’s refusal to provide legal aid to the environmental charity Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE].

The NGO sought the funding in April of 2018 to support its Judicial Review of the National Development Plan and the National Planning Framework. This case alleges that the Government of Ireland erred in law in failing to adequately fulfil its obligations under the Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Habitats Directive when approving the plans. read full story / add a comment

Finally there is someone out there and certainly not from the mainstream media who is calling bullshit on the whole Covid nonsense. In this opinion piece by John Church from the hectordrummond blog, many will nod their head in agreement. He really cuts through the crap.

I have had enough. After nearly 3 months of this, I am going to call it for what it is: TOTAL AND UTTER NONSENSE. I cannot watch any news programme anymore, given the 24/7 monochromal pseudo-emotion that is all we ever see. read full story / add a comment

PLANNING BOARD QUESTIONS DURSEY ISLAND MASS TOURISM PROJECT
Not Satisfied Over Bird Protection on Remote Island

An Bord Pleanála has sought further information on the application by Cork County Council in partnership with Fáilte Ireland for a €10 million development on Dursey Island off the west Cork coast.

The 6.5 km long uninhabited island, currently accessed by a cable car with a capacity of 6 and return journey time of 20 minutes, is to be replaced by a state-of-the-art two-way cable car system capable of carrying up to 300 people each way every hour. The project includes an extensive Visitor Centre with restaurant, gift shop and glazed elevator on the mainland. read full story / add a comment

Dr. Meryl Nass has uncovered a hornet’s nest of government sponsored Hydroxychloroquine experiments that were designed to kill severely ill, Covid-19 hospitalized patients. On June 14th Dr. Nass first identified two Covid-19 experiments in which massive, high toxic doses – four times higher than safe of hydroxychloroquine were being given to severely ill hospitalized patients in intensive care units. read full story / add a comment

The Programme for Government produced by Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party promises a lot that is encouraging, but on the issue of US military use of Shannon Airport - which the majority of Irish people oppose - it is disappointing. The change of government provided an opportunity to end Irish complicity in the ongoing cycles of war and occupation that have been responsible for the loss of millions of lives this century. The military industrial complex is also the single biggest polluter on the planet (see recent study from Brown University’s Costs of War project). The US. Department of Defense has a larger annual carbon footprint than most countries on earth, and with its global network of bases and logistics networks the US military is the single biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world outside of nation-states themselves. [1] read full story / add a comment

High Court to hear challenge against unsustainable fishing in Ireland and the EU

The Irish High Court today formally initiated a Judicial Review proceedings aimed at challenging the EU Regulation setting 2020 fishing quotas under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) because of its failure to meet a legally defined deadline of ending overfishing in all stocks by 2020.

A judge will be assigned on July 15th to hear the application for leave to apply for a Judicial Review from the environmental charity Friends of the Irish Environment. read full story / add a comment

Bord na Móna ‘Enforcement Holiday’ flies in the face of a High Court Judgment
Semi-state accused of declaring Brexit for 80,000 hectares

An ‘enforcement holiday’ currently being exercised by Bord na Mona to allow industrial harvesting to continue this year across its bogs ‘flies in the face of a High Court Judgment’, according to the environmental charity Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE]. read full story / add a comment