Solriche

By way of an update on the crisis in Venezuela this is the text of an introduction I gave at a UK Labour Party meeting. Venezuela: Pro-government demonstration [Intro] “Thank you for inviting me to introduce this discussion. Given the short amount of time [10-15 minutes], I'll only be able to give a very general overview and concentrate on the situation as it is today. A lot of the reporting and talk on Venezuela is characterised by double standards. We see the spectacle of British journalists filing hang wringing reports on hungry people in Venezuela while 500k children relying on food banks this summer got barely a passing mention. The West accuses Maduro of forming a dictatorship, they've imposed sanctions and threatened military action. Turkey's Erdogan has gathered huge powers to himself as president, sacked 10,000s of public servants, jailed dozens of journalists on trumped up charges. Hear a lot of tut tutting but no talk of sanctions or military op...

They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. . This thinly veiled threat of nuclear annihilation from Donald Trump was the latest round in the trading of insults between the US and North Korean regime. It's not just mere insults being traded, in their game of one-upmanship the North Koreans fire missiles over Japan and the Americans fly bomber squadrons along the North's coast. This 'sleepwalk' to war is nothing more than a battle to maintain global hegemony but it would be ordinary Koreans paying the heaviest price. Their true interests lie in a united Korea based on democratic economic control. Dress rehearsal for war Kim Jong Un supervises missile launch This latest confrontation over North Korea's Nuclear missile programme is another stage in the phoney war between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the US since the armistice in 1953. PJ Crowley, Former US Assistant Secretary of State, summed it up for...

At this year's Labour Conference a row was sparked with accusations from Labour's right-wing, and their media allies, that debate on Brexit was stifled . The reality, sketched out by Alex Nunns in a Red Pepper article , was there was a full debate and an indirect vote in the form of the arcane sounding 'reference back' which was heavily defeated. The right-wing groups Progress and Labour First are campaigning for Labour to commit to remaining in the Single Market through membership of the European Economic Area ( EEA ). After their set back at conference they pledged to take their argument to "...every constituency Labour party in next 12 months" . An example of this is a resolution to a constituency party: "This Constituency Labour Party: Notes the August publication of the Government's position papers on a range of EU withdrawal matters including future UK-EU customs arrangements; And believes that these recent papers reveal that the curre...

"If it really does get to be a big war, we have many more bullets than any of these other countries…" These bellicose words from US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross are a feature of the US' approach to trade disputes with friends and foes alike. Divisions and sudden about turns are also features, causing confusion and contributing to market volatility . This is pointing to the road leading inexorably to a full blown trade war, becoming more a question of when not if. Geopolitics and economics Geopolitical gold The US has trade disputes with its NAFTA, EU and Asian partners but these take second place to China. The fundamental driver behind the US' trade dispute with China is China's rise as an economic power. This threatens to upend decades of US global dominance. Measures by the US are primarily aimed at China's ' Made in China 2025 ' industrial policy. This policy aims to move China up the value chain, become self sufficient and ...

Oil - 'Black gold'. Economies have been made and broken by it and wars fought over it. It is essential in many products ranging from energy, transport, plastics to fertilisers. This black gold is so fundamental to a modern economy that it can also play a crucial role in geopolitical rivalries. Oil: The Commodity Petrol, diesel and other fuels take up the bulk of the end product of oil but with better energy efficiency they are in relative decline. Petrochemical products such as plastics account for a growing part of the end use for oil. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has reported : "Petrochemicals are set to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030, and nearly half the growth to 2050, adding nearly 7 million barrels of oil a day by then. They are also poised to consume an additional 56 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas by 2030, and 83 bcm by 2050." Oil: The Economics of 'black gold' Supply and demand...

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The scale of Conservative cuts to local government has been devastating for council services. Central government has cut funding for councils by half since 2010 . Southampton alone has lost £136.4 million over the last seven years. These cuts translate to the closure of nearly 800 libraries around the country. Youth services have seen their funding slashed by nearly 70 percent . Sure Start funding has fallen by about 60% . Adult and children’s social care are also under huge pressure. Pressure for innovative solutions Local councils have employed a number of innovative solutions to blunt the impact of this lost funding. Some councils have borrowed to invest in commercial properties for the rental income. Other councils have set up energy providers, Southampton City Council's CitizEn Energy is a local example. Preston Model attracting attention Preston Flag Market by © Francis C. Franklin / CC-BY-SA-3.0 , CC BY-SA 3.0 , Link One strategy that has attracted the att...

" Make America Great Again ", it was a call that resonated in the de-industrialised heartlands in America's Rust Belt. But it was also also a cry from sections of the US elites because they find themselves beset on all sides by challenges to the US' global hegemony . Rise of military and economic challengers The rising global influence of China and Russia is threatening to upend, in the minds of US policy makers, the global order. In the Middle East the US has lost its dominance and finds itself vying with Russia, Turkey and Iran. Even in its own backyard the US finds itself insecure, with China especially making inroads. Dusting off The Project for the New American Century Rebuilding America's defenses Given this environment it's perhaps not surprising to see the re-emergence of key foreign policy makers from the 1990s. One of the think tanks they organised around was The Project for the New American Century (PNAC). PNAC had a profound in...

Using FFmpeg to Convert and Encode Video and Audio This document details a set of common commands for encoding video and audio using FFmpeg , a "cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video". Contents. Video Bitrate Calculator Converting a DVD to MP4 and MKV Converting DVD to MKV format with subtitles Two pass encoding Including subtitles in the video Adding external audio and subtitle streams to video file Batch converting video Change a video container Extract audio from a video file Denoise video Setting the setdar and pixel ratio Joining two video files together Splice video with fade in and fade out FFmpeg Documentation License Video Bitrate Calculator for ffmpeg Encoding Use the calculators to work out the bitrate or calculate a target file siz...