The Hedge School hub of West of Ireland Portal Hubs has a number of workshops & courses planned for the next few months.

Thousands of Kazakh oil workers are now in their third month of strike action. In their struggle for trade union rights and negotiations over the implementation of a wage agreement, they have faced massive repression and intimidation. Hundreds of workers have now been fired. Their lawyer has been imprisoned for six years for “stirring up social conflict”. The police and riot police have been used against the strikers as well as the company’s security. One of the key trade union activists has now been murdered.

This is an article about a new book on climate change. Written by Orrin Pilkey and illustrated by Mary Fraser.

"IT TURNS out that there is a hoax involved in climate change. Only the hoax is being perpetrated by public relations efforts by the fossil fuels industry." Thus begins the most memorable chapter of Global Climate Change.

Better known for his exposés on the flaws of coastal engineering, geologist Orrin Pilkey has turned his attention to this century's hot environmental topic: climate change. There are no surprises for those familiar with the subject, but the book does a good job of explaining the foundations of climate science to an interested novice.

Yassamine Mather is interviewed by  Mark Fischer on developing divisions in the Iranian Regime and the failure of the leading reformists to challenge the existing institutions. Full text at link.

Given its potential importance, it seems odd that there has been so little said in the western media about the ongoing conflict between Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the supreme religious leader, Ali Khamenei. Why is this?

It can perhaps be explained by the attitude of the US administration, which seems to be playing a waiting game. Obviously, they will have followed these disputes, but they expect the system to disintegrate without much intervention from the US and at the moment they have other countries to worry about in the region.
 
However, this is a serious, ongoing struggle which shows no signs of abating and has actually started a process of political differentiation within the green movement between leaders looking for ‘reconciliation’ with the regime and the more militant, intransigent sections of its base. A number of developments indicate the scale of the crisis.

Throwing more debt, in the short or long run, at the problem will not solve the problem. At most it merely alleviates or postpones the problem. This is precisely because the source of the problem does not lie within the process of circulation (i.e. money and credit spheres). It is contained within the production process­­­.

Yet more startling  news from the Wikileaks US Cables. This time its about US attempts to overthrow Bolivian President Evo Morales. Full text at link.

Recently released United States embassy cables from Bolivia have provided additional insight to the events leading up to the September 2008 coup attempt against the Andean country’s first indigenous president.

On September 9, 2008, President Evo Morales expelled then-US ambassador Philip Goldberg as evidence emerged that Goldberg and embassy officials had been meeting with several key civilian and military figures involved in an unfolding coup plot.