If you were to believe the headlines (something not generally recommended) gracing newspapers and interwebs this week, you'd be assured that if you don't go vegan, you're going to kill the planet. Peer-reviewed research published in the prestigious journal Science late last month is based on a database of a bunch of different food products, which the study's authors analyzed from production to retailing to determine their environmental impact. From Science Daily:

Researchers at Oxford University and the Swiss agricultural research institute, Agroscope, have created the most comprehensive database yet on the environmental impacts of nearly 40,000 farms, and 1,600 processors, packaging types, and retailers. This allows them to assess how different production practices and geographies lead to different environmental impacts for 40 major foods.

So how did they assess the environmental impact of our daily foodstuffs? Pollutants like heavy metals or toxic chemicals being released? Destruction of fragile ecosystems? The number of endangered species affected? Invasive genetically modified technologies and their consequences? Nope. Those things don't matter in the grand scheme of things, apparently. All that matters now is carbon dioxide, the innocuous gas that feeds plants. In the current media landscape, all the horrific things we do to the environment get a pass. The only thing that gets attention is CO₂.

Little more needs to be said about events in Singapore. Slings and arrows finally parked after a 65-year war in which millions died on a divided Korean peninsula where a nuclear slingshot was assembled and decommissioned.

The world was taken to the brink of war and then back again.

That Donald J Trump will now become a Nobel Laureate is axiomatic, however surprising such a sentence might be, but a second term as president, which is looking more likely by the day, may almost be as surprising.

With the US economy on the up, his G7 "partners" roasted in insults, and the Korean imbroglio basted in Trumpian batter - seasoned by the oft-reviled China and Russia - it is more entertaining to take a look at the smoking wreckage of Trump's domestic opposition.

So Rocket Man and The Dotard have met. After last year's epic mud-slinging, US President Donald Trump now says he and Chairman Kim Jong-un of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have a "special bond". The 'optics' of the summit reflect well on both leaders, who were cordial and without any of the hysterics and tantrums that had 'analysts' forecasting nuclear conflagration just last year.

But that's all ancient history now. The signed document - a declaration, not a 'deal', 'roadmap' or anything more - is brief:

Convinced that the establishment of new U.S.-DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world, and recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:

1. The United States and the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

Up to the 21st of May, Israel had murdered at least 112 people and injured 13,190 during the protests of the Great March of Return in Gaza. One of Israel's latest crimes was the killing of 21 year-old volunteer nurse Razan al-Najjar, who was shot by a sniper as she walked towards a wounded protestor with her arms in the air and wearing a clearly visible medical white coat. In the middle of the PR disaster this created for Israel, did the authorities admit to the crime, apologize, prosecute the sniper, compensate the victim's family and cease all aggression towards the civilian demonstrators? No. Instead, they spread on social media this highly edited video designed to smear the victim:

As an excuse for her murder, it is both malicious and ludicrous. We see her throw an already activated smoke bomb away from people and a mere few meters into an empty field. The apparent suggestion is that she is a violent person in the habit of throwing bombs - perhaps even a Hamas agent - when the most likely scenario is that she was trying to spare the people around her from the effects of an Israeli tear gas canister, probably dropped from a drone.

We also hear her declare that she was acting "as a human shield". But the video cuts abruptly before we can hear the rest of the sentence: "...as a rescuer for the injured on the front lines." In that context, what she meant was that she was trying to protect the people. Indeed, the practice of human shields is morally reprehensible only when people are forced into it by armed forces which seek extra protection. In contrast, if one volunteers to be a 'shield' for injured civilians, then one is in fact a hero. The IDF video is trying to make a reference to the Israeli government line that civilian casualties are the responsibility of Hamas that seeks to attack Israel while hiding behind civilians.

The question is not whether the IDF claims are valid - they are evidently not - but why do they think that anyone apart from hardcore Zionists would take seriously such a poor attempt at misrepresenting the facts? Don't they realize that rather than helping their case they are hurting it further?

While unseasonable snow fell throughout the month of May from the Rocky Montains and northern USA, to Canada, northern Europe, northeast China, northern India, Kashmir and Nepal, it was flooding of "biblical" proportions around the world that stole the show this month.

The US and much of Europe also got their share of tornados and and damaging hailstorms... giant hail is becoming the new normal in many parts of the world it would seem.

Thousands of people across South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa were displaced and left without electricity in some areas as a result of remarkably heavy and persistent rainfall. Somalia, that had been suffering from extensive drought, is now flooded due to unprecedented rain wile the desert nation of Yemen received 3 years of rainfall in just one day as a result of Cyclone Mekunu. The first named storm of the 2018 season, hurricane Alberto, also brought floods and destruction to Cuba.

The sheets of rain, hail, floods and unusual temperatures also damaged a large amount of crops in some of the world's most fertile areas, adding to concerns of a food crisis in not too distant future.

This month's volcanic activity was crowned by Kilauea that continues to produce an unstoppable lava flow that has affected thousands of Hawaiian residents. As the lava poured, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake also shook the big island triggering a swarm of smaller quakes and at least a dozen lava spiting fissures that opened up afterwards destroying 37 buildings, including 28 homes. At least 1800 were ordered to evacuate. The Kilauea volcano also surprised with methane flames at the end of the month, and toxic gas has engulfed the area.

But Kilauea is not the only one spitting lava, many other volcanoes around the Ring of Fire - like the Volcan de Fuego, Sinabung, and Mount Merapi -, are active and raging...

Check it out below:

Renowned psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson took the stage at the sold-out Warner Theater in Washington DC Friday night. The crowd got on its feet and started cheering, ecstatic to hear him speak.

You can hardly blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for enjoying a "told you so moment". He lately reminded European leaders that their all-out spat with the United States is what happens when you are too deferential to American hegemonic ambitions.

This predicament is just what the Russian leader had warned against almost 10 years ago in a famous speech he delivered in Munich on growing global disorder.

Last week, during his nationally televised marathon Q and A with Russian citizens, Putin referred to the unprecedented trade tariffs that President Trump is slapping on European states.

Rightly, Putin said those penalties were effectively a form of economic sanctions imposed by Washington on its supposed allies.

Putin hinted that the Europeans were now getting a taste of the noxious medicine that has been doled out to Russia by Western powers which have inflicted sanctions on Moscow over dubious allegations concerning the nearly four-year-old Ukraine conflict.

Last week I wrote about what civilians from Ghouta told me regarding unverified claims of the Syrian Army attacking them with chemicals, but they also talked about crimes committed by terrorists and the White Helmets' role.

Although benignly dubbed "rebels" by corporate media, the Salafist terrorist group Jaysh al-Islam are not fighting for freedom or human rights in Syria, nor are the other terrorist groups who formerly ruled in eastern Ghouta.

It was Jaysh al-Islam which imprisoned Syrian civilians in cages, using them as human shields against potential bombing, and Jaysh al-Islam was among the terrorist groups firing missiles and mortars onto civilians in Damascus, killing over 10,000.

They, Faylaq al-Rahman, and the other terrorist factions occupying the region reigned with terror, beheading men and women and starving the people.

Hellish rule of Jaysh al-Islam: Starvation and executions by sword

When I visited eastern Ghouta and the Horjilleh center for displaced people just south of Damascus-people mostly from Ghouta now-I asked about their lives under the rule of Jaysh al-Islam and others, including why they had been starving in the first place. The reply was, as I and others heard in eastern Aleppo, Madaya, and al-Waer, the terrorists stole aid and controlled all food, only selling food at extortionist prices which ordinary people could not afford.

Big things are happening in the arena of global power politics. The USA under Trump fears that it will be unseated as global hegemon by the looming threat of Eurasian integration. To forestall such an unpleasant situation, Trump and Co. have decided to 'reset the clock' on the way the US does business in the world and how it runs its empire. The first order of business is kicking Europe and any other 'lackeys' to the kerb, cutting them off from the 'favorable' trade deals they have enjoyed with the USA. The Europeans, Canadians, Japanese etc. are understandably not happy with this flagrant attempt to, in their words, destroy the "global order" that was built by the US itself.

Will Trump prevail in his ham-fisted attempts to Make America Great Again at the expense of long term "partners"? Will America remain on top in the face of major moves by Russia and China to create a 'New World Order'? Will the EU survive it all? Find out on this week's show with Joe and Niall.


This show aired live Sunday 10th June, from 12-1.30pm EST / 6-7.30pm CET

Running Time: 01:23:57

Download: MP3

In Part 2 of our discussion on religion, God and atheism, we dive deeper in why belief in God might be rational - contrary to what atheists believe. But there are many conceptions of God, some more rational than others. Traditional monotheism - taken literally - can't withstand the assault of its critics. The atheists have that going for them. But a naturalistic theism arguably can. And the atheists don't have anything to say about that. In fact, there are some things that probably cannot be accounted for without some sort of divinity: truth, values, even math.

Tune in Saturday, 12:00 pm EDT, as we begin to flesh out what a naturalistic God might be like.

Running Time: 01:26:46

Download: MP3