The John James Newsletter 111

2 April 2016

Hope is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for whosoever hopes has within him the gift of miracles

Samuel Smiles

Study Confirms World’s Coastal Cities Unsavable If We Don’t Slash Carbon Pollution

We still could limit sea level rise to two feet this century if we keep total warming below 2°C. Otherwise, we should anticipate five to six feet by 2100 — and that isn’t even the worst-case scenario.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/31/3765266/coastal-cites-carbon-pollution/ 

Dyson developing an electric car

The company, which makes a range of products that utilise the sort of highly efficient motors needed for an electric car such as vacuum cleaners, hand dryers and bladeless fans, last year refused to rule out rumours it was building one.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/23/dyson-developing-electric-car-government-documents 

The Game-Changer: “More Electric Cars” 

http://pwa2100.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/the-game-changer-more-electric-cars.html 

The Whole World Is Watching Brazil’s Hollow Men

The crisis in Brazil is not about corruption, but the overthrow of a democratically elected government.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-Whole-World-Is-Watching-Brazils-Hollow-Men–20160330-0024.html 

Can Macri save the Argentine economy

When you have read Naomi Klien’s “Shock Doctrine” you will see how Argentine is being set up by the IMF for asset stripping, no protection for local labour or industry, and open borders for international capital to play whatever games please them. The largest conglomerates will walk away with the pickings, the surveillance industry will snoop on everybody, and any objection will be handled by international private contractors.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/24/can-mauricio-macri-save-argentinas-economy-obama-kirchner/ 

Venezuela Faces Outside Threats

Another government being destabilised in the interests of US hegemony. What is the possibility that when the IMF ramps up the pain the Russo-Chinese banks will step in?

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuela-Faces-Outside-Threats-Says-Russian-Foreign-Minister-20160325-0012.html 

Overthrowing Dilma Rousseff

Brazil is a member of BRICS

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Overthrowing-Dilma-Rousseff-20160323-0050.html 

Civilian Control of the US Military Has Become a Fantasy with terminal dangers for the future of democracy

Traditionally civilian control of the military reside with elected civil officials. Today the military sets its own standards, makes and produces its own news, and appropriates policy and policymaking for its own ends, whatever civilian leadership may think or want. It is a massive, self-propelled institution no longer under civilian control

.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-d-foster/pentagon-excess-has-fueled-a-civil-military-crisis_b_9468520.html 

America’s Post-Democratic Military

Increasingly divorced from the people, with a way of life ever more foreign to most Americans, it’s regularly put to purposes foreign to any traditional idea of national defence.  In Washington, it has become a force unto itself, pursuing its own agendas, increasingly unaccountable to either the president or Congress.

http://lobelog.com/americas-post-democratic-military/#more-33602 

Israel’s next steps in the West Bank

Israel’s voracious settlement enterprise in the past half century has transferred more than one half million Israelis to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while the random attacks of recent months attest to the absence of direction and leadership that is the disheartening legacy of the PLO’s tottering experiment in limited self-rule.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/03/israel-steps-west-bank-160322072751243.html 

Gallup Poll: The Biggest Threat To World Peace Is America

Researchers for WIN and Gallup International surveyed more than 66,000 people across 65 nations and found that 24% answered that the US “is the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” Pakistan and China fell significantly behind the US, with 8 and 6%. Afghanistan, Iran, Israel and North Korea all tied for fourth place with 4%.

http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-biggest-threat-world-peace-america-1525008 

Could Nuclear Disaster Come to America? 

On March 11, 2011, following earthquake and tsunami, Fukushima melted down.  Radioactive cesium contaminated  12,000 square miles. 12.5 square miles around the plant so poisoned it was declared a permanent “exclusion” zone. (At Chernobyl a 1,000 square mile exclusion zone is still in place.)  One hundred and twenty thousand evacuees have still not gone home. Sixteen to twenty-two million bags of contaminated soil and debris will someday be buried in a vast landfill near the plant, but it may take decades to get them there and that’s only the beginning of the problems to come. And let’s not forget that the ocean waters around Fukushima received “the largest single contribution of radionuclides to the marine environment ever observed.”

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176122/ 

16 US Ships That Aided Japan Still Contaminated With Radiation

Sailors entering spaces deep within the ship, testing for high levels of radiation, and if it was found, sanding, priming and painting the areas. They say there were given little to no protective gear, a claim that the Navy denies

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/03/14/16-us-ships-that-aided-japan-still-contaminated-with-radiation.html 

The EU refugee deal is a disaster for Greece. 

Take a Country on the Brink. Now Add 10,000 Asylum Hearings a Week. Cargo containers used as courthouses. Camps flooded with sewage. A government on the verge of collapse.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/31/take-a-country-on-the-brink-now-add-10000-asylum-hearings-a-week-greece-eu-turkey/ 

Exposing the Libyan Agenda: A Closer Look at Hillary’s Emails 

Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary. Hillary’s recently published emails confirm it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty.

http://www.courtfool.info/en_Hillary_Clintons_emails_about_Libya.htm

Wikileaks Drops Hillary Email Bomb That Could End Her Campaign but FB Censored It

A major archive of 30,000+ of Hillary Clinton’s emails have been made available in a searchable format.

http://anonhq.com/wikileaks-drops-hillary-email-bomb-end-campaign-fb-censored/ 

India’s plan to build 12 new nuclear reactors is fraught with risk

Investing in new solar photovoltaic capacity would be a much lower-cost option, would be significantly less harmful to the environmental, and would be a far more sustainable alternative to Mithi Virdi and Kovvada.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/indias-plan-to-build-12-new-nuclear-reactors-is-fraught-with-risk%E2%80%A8-34777 

India Aims to Become 100% Electric Vehicle Nation by 2030

The government is working on a scheme to provide electric cars on zero down payment for which people can pay out of their savings on expensive fossil fuels “We are thinking of scale. We are thinking of leading the world rather than following the world. India will be first largest country in the world to think of that scale.”

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/others/news/india-aims-to-become-100-percent-electric-vehicle-nation-by-2030-power-minister-818298 

The Inequality Sweepstakes 

62 billionaires now have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the global population, while the richest 1% own more than the other 99% combined. In 2010, it took 388 of the super-rich to equal the holdings of that bottom 50%.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176121/tomgram%3A_thomas_frank%2C_the_inequality_sweepstakes/ 

As Coal Use Drops, Investors Blow Nearly $1 Trillion Globally on Unnecessary New Plants

$1 trillion could provide electricity from renewable energy to 1.2 billion people, but it was funneled into coal projects instead. “In terms of climate safety, the clock is ticking on the transition to clean energy. There is no time to waste.”

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/30/coal-use-drops-investors-blow-nearly-1-trillion-globally-unnecessary-new-plants 

The Dark Side of GIs in Liberated France

The liberators made a lot of noise and drank too much. They raced around in their jeeps, fought in the streets and stole. But the worst thing was their obsession with French women. They wanted sex for free, for money or by force.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/new-book-reveals-dark-side-of-american-soldiers-in-liberated-france-a-902266.html 

Scotland Is Coal-Free

5 million people aim to have enough renewable energy to power 100% by 2020. Renewable electricity output has more than doubled since 2007 from onshore and offshore wind, which has established Scotland as a renewable energy leader in the region. Scotland’s largest wind farm is also the largest in the UK.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/24/3763158/scotland-closes-last-coal-plant/ 

Palmyra images taken following Syrian recapture 

The first images to emerge from the ancient city of Palmyra after Syrian regime forces expelled Islamic State fighters have shown large swaths of destruction,  including the Temple of Bel and the Arch of Triumph, but also suggest that several important archaeological sites are intact.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/28/palmyra-after-isis-images-taken-following-syrian-recapture-offer-hope-amid-ruins 

The Wounded Phoenix Of Palmyra

Captured ISIS records makes plain that its campaign of destruction was methodical and centrally planned. The local citizen’s resistance and public demonstrations prevented more damage to their and our cultural heritage and identity.

http://www.countercurrents.org/lamb010416.htm 

Fracking-Induced Earthquakes Highlighted in New USGS Map

Scientific consensus links uptick in seismic activity with gas drilling activities in the central and eastern US since 2009. “It is linked to industrial operations that dispose of wastewater by injecting it into deep wells.”

Photo of fracking sites in Wyoming.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/23/fracking-induced-earthquakes-highlighted-new-usgs-map 

 

New Insight on Ground Shaking from Man-Made Earthquakes

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=4202&from=rss_home#.VvnbkNc3Egv 

Globalization and the Acceleration of Forest Destruction since Rio

The development of increasingly powerful transnational corporations, many bigger than the average nation, with no social or ecological concerns — only their immediate financial interests. They are accountable to nobody and because of their ever-increasing power they can, dictate economic policies to the governments of even the most powerful nation states.

http://rainforestinfo.org.au/wrr40/globalis.htm 

Satellite Technology Aims to Combat Illegal Logging in Real Time

New system produces images clear enough to detect new roads and pathways beginning to snake through uncut primary forests, a first sign of illegal logging.”You can’t solve the problem of climate change if you don’t solve the problem of deforestation,”

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/24032016/illegal-logging-indonesia-satellite-deforestation-climate-change 

Are ‘Water Wars’ imminent in Central Asia?

Once a zone with perfect conditions for farming, Ferghana Valley is today under threat of desertification. Farmers here are “ready to kill each other for water,” This year, there’s next to nothing to irrigate the fields with.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/03/water-wars-imminent-central-asia-160321064118684.html 

False economic forecasts by the IMF, again and again

We are facing indirect problems brought on by our high consumption of energy products. We don’t just extract fossil fuels, but get a lot of other things as well: rising debt, rising pollution, and a more complex economy.

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/03/17/our-economic-growth-system-is-reaching-limits-in-a-strange-way/ 

The John James Newsletter 110

26 March 2016

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little

Edmund Burke

How Barack Obama Turned His Back On Saudi Arabia And Its Sunni Allies

A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. One administration official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as ‘Arab-occupied territory’. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies were briefly convinced that they would get their wish and the US was going to do their work for them by overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. They claimed this would be easy to do, though it would have happened only if there had been a full-scale American intervention and it would have produced a power vacuum that would have been filled by fundamentalist Islamic movements as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. By refusing to bomb Syria, Obama “broke with  ‘the Washington Playbook’. This was his liberation day”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/barack-obama-saudi-arabia-us-foreign-policy-syria-jihadism-isis-a6927646.html 

Globally as in Australia, residential solar is a people-led revolution

Surge in renewable energy reduces world greenhouse gas emissions. Falling coal use in China and the US and a shift towards renewable energy globally saw energy emissions level for the second year running,

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/16/surge-in-renewable-energy-stalls-world-greenhouse-gas-emissions 

China Is Getting Serious About Kicking Its Coal Addiction

China is halting construction of hundreds of coal-fired power plants across the country, a major move that highlights the sudden and accelerating death throes of the fuel that powered the creation of the modern world.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/24/chinas-crackdown-on-coal-continues/ 

Tathra Community Solar Farm performance

In 2014 Bega Valley Shire Council formed a partnership to develop one of Australia’s first community solar farms.

http://cleanenergyforeternity.net.au/clean-energy-tathra-solar-farm/ 

Australia adds 100MW of rooftop solar in first two months of 2016

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/australia-adds-100mw-of-rooftop-solar-in-first-two-months-of-2016-2016 

Port Augusta ‘busting a gut’ to reinvent itself as a solar city 

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/24/port-augusta-busting-a-gut-to-reinvent-itself-as-a-solar-city-when-coal-fired-power-is-switched-off 

Russia’s Ultimate Lethal Weapon

What we had as a result was a tectonic geopolitical shift; the reconfiguration of the entire world balance of power as Russia and China deepened their strategic partnership, based on a mutual external threat coming mostly from the US, with the EU as accessories. Russian intelligence now knows the alliance makes Russia and China invulnerable, whereas separately they could easily fall victim to US Divide and Rule.

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/315731-russia-kommersant-moscow-kremlin/ 

Is capitalism driving climate change?

We speak to author Naomi Klein, and ask UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres if the Paris deal is too little, too late.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2016/03/capitalism-driving-climate-change-160318152551036.html 

What makes consciousness? 

Integrated Information Theory has a rather surprising implication: consciousness can, in principle, be found anywhere where there is the right kind of information processing going on, whether that’s in a brain or a computer.

https://theconversation.com/what-makes-us-conscious-50011 

Land-clearing surge in Queensland set to wipe out Direct Action gains

In just three years the rate of clearing will create enough additional carbon dioxide emissions to cancel out emissions savings the government says it will make by paying farmers $670m to stop cutting down trees.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/29/exclusive-land-clearing-surge-in-qld-set-to-wipe-out-direct-action-gains-report 

Israel at 60: A Grim Balance Sheet

Given its artificial character and built-in problems, as well as global political-economic and regional demographic trends, Israel’s future in the next 60 years is not bright.

http://www.ihr.org/interviewmay08.html 

Jimmy Carter unveils truth about Israel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvtC_qzHVM4 

Syrian Kurds Hope to Establish a Federal Region in Country’s North

To formalize the semiautonomous zone they have established during five years of war and to create a model for decentralized government throughout the country they will be stirring the debate over two proposals to redraw the Middle East, each with major implications for Syria and its neighbors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/world/middleeast/syria-kurds.html

Syrian Kurds Risk Their Gains With New Federalization Demands

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/03/syrian-kurds-risk-their-gains-with-new-federalization-demands.html 

Putin exposes danger of vaccines

“We as a species have the choice to continue to develop our bodies and brains in a healthy upward trajectory, or we can follow the Western example of recent decades and intentionally poison our population with genetically altered food, pharmaceuticals, vaccinations, and fast food that should be classified as a dangerous, addictive drug. We must fight this. A physically and intellectually disabled population is not in our interests,”

http://www.drbuttar.com/putin-exposes-vaccines/ 

15 Children Sue Obama for Lack of Climate Change Action

A group of teenagers went head to head against the US government and the fossil fuel industry after the Oregon-based nongovernmental organization Our Children’s Trust opened a lawsuit against President Obama and a number of federal agencies for inaction on climate change. The group are demanding the government “cease their permitting, authorizing and subsidizing of fossil fuels and, instead, move to swiftly phase out CO2 emissions,”

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/15-Children-Sue-Obama-for-Lack-of-Climate-Change-Action-20160310-0001.html 

Ten Times Faster Than a Hothouse Extinction 

The human fossil fuel emission is outrageous and unprecedented on geological timescales. An insult the Earth has never seen before. The pace we are emitting carbon into the atmosphere is just insane. We’ve known this for some time because the best of science can’t find any time in all of Earth’s geological history equalled what’s happening now.

C02 emissions are about 150 times that of all the volcanoes on Earth, 10 times faster than the hothouse extinction that occurred some 60 million years ago. “If you look over the entire period, the only event with a massive carbon release that happened over a relatively short period of time is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. We don’t see anything even remotely comparable to what we humans are currently doing.”

The PETM Hothouse was amazingly bad. It wiped out half of all shellfish; it completely reversed ocean circulation and set up a stratified ocean state; peatlands and forests went up in mass conflagrations; terrible insect plagues swept the globe; it forced a mass poleward migration and widespread genetic alteration of mammals which were eventually reduced to dwarfism.

Expected warming  this century is 10 to 200 times faster than during the PETM extinction event

http://robertscribbler.com/2016/03/22/ten-times-faster-than-a-hothouse-extinction-human-carbon-emission-is-worst-in-at-least-66-million-years/ 

Hothouse Earth

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/hothouse-earth/kunzig-text 

PETM: Global Warming, Naturally

https://www.wunderground.com/climate/PETM.asp?MR=1 

Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2681.htmlC02 

Native American Tribe Flee Coast Due to Rising Sea Levels

A small Native American community in coastal Louisiana is to be resettled after losing nearly all its land, believed to be caused in part by rising sea levels, making it the first case of its kind in the US.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/USA-Native-American-Tribe-Flee-Coast-Due-to-Rising-Sea-Levels-20160318-0005.html 

Executions in Saudi Arabia reach ‘frightening’ rate as 70th prisoner in 2016 is killed

“Saudi Arabia is making a mockery of justice and dozens of people are paying with their lives”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/executions-in-saudi-arabia-reaching-alarming-rate-as-70th-prisoner-is-killed-a6917226.html 

China dumped billions of America’s debt in December.

Japan sold even more: $22 billion. In the past year, Mexico, Turkey and Belgium have also lowered their holdings of US debt, all of which have led to a record dump by banks.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/17/news/economy/china-us-debt-dump-central-banks/?iid=EL 

Wall Street’s Pile of Unwanted Treasuries Exposes Market Cracks

The world’s biggest bond dealers are getting saddled with Treasuries they can’t seem to easily get rid of. surge in holdings is more likely the result of investors including central banks dumping the debt on the firms

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-20/wall-street-s-pile-of-unwanted-treasuries-exposes-market-cracks 

A world war has begun. Break the silence – John Pilger

No journalist in the Western “mainstream” asks why China is building airstrips in the South China Sea. The answer ought to be glaringly obvious. The US is encircling China with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear-armed bombers. This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose around the neck of China. This is silenced by media Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired?

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/336785-world-war-break-silence/ 

Belgian Authorities Had “Precise Intelligence Warnings” Of Brussels Bombings

The day after the mass bombings in Brussels that killed 34 people and wounded another 230, it emerged that Belgian authorities had specific forewarnings of the attack and had already last year identified the men who carried out the assault as Islamist terrorists and that Zavantem Airport and the Maelbeek metro station were known to be target.

http://www.countercurrents.org/lantier240316.htm 

Brazil Is Engulfed by Ruling Class Corruption

Brazil is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades. An enormous graft scheme has hobbled the national oil company. The Zika epidemic is causing despair across the northeast. And just before the world heads to Brazil for the Summer Olympics, the government is fighting for survival under the cloud of scandal.

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/18/brazil-is-engulfed-by-ruling-class-corruption-and-a-dangerous-subversion-of-democracy/ 

UK Austerity: Save the Rich, Cut the Disabled, Punish the Poor

Britain’s government has accelerated the privatization of care, education, health and housing services – a quiet revolution. Budget cuts to social services and payments for disabled people fund tax cuts that line the pockets of the wealthy.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/UK-Austerity-Save-the-Rich-Cut-the-Disabled-Punish-the-Poor-20160321-0024.html 

Big solar is heading for boom times 

In 2007, there were zero utility-scale solar power plants in the US. Today there are hundreds, ranging from the 579 MW Solar Star project (the world’s largest solar farm) in California down to dozens upon dozens of 10, 20, and 50 MW projects in communities across the country.

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/10/11192022/big-solar-boom-times 

World’s first floating wind farm to ‘store’ power

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/21/world-first-floating-wind-farm-to-store-power.html 

Playing Poker with One Card

The number of registered refugees in Turkey has exceeded three million, which makes it the largest sanctuary in the world. This number is terrifying, not only for human rights organizations or Turkey’s government, but also for European leaders. Turkey is struggling with serious domestic and foreign-policy challenges. Yet another deadly explosion—blamed on the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) this time—has caused multiple casualties in Istanbul. Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet close to its border with Syria last November largely backfired, resulting not only in Moscow’s installation of advanced anti-aircraft systems in Syria, but also shaking NATO’s confidence in Ankara as a reliable ally. Refugees offer a golden opportunity for Erdogan to continue and intensify his blackmail abroad and his repression at home, though it’s unclear how long he can survive by pursuing this strategy.

http://lobelog.com/turkey-playing-poker-with-one-card-on-refugees/#more-33545 

Turnbull’s sleight of hand on clean energy investment

But the move to de-fund ARENA and create a “new” fund using money already allocated to the CEFC may back-fire, because although the new set-up will continue to support near commercial projects, the technologies and ideas at the formative stage of the innovation process may be left stranded, without funding. So much for the “Innovation Nation”.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/turnbulls-sleight-of-hand-on-clean-energy-investment-63202 

Human Warming Pushing Seas Toward EXPONENTIAL Rise of Several Meters This Century

Rates of sea level rise since 1900 and a 1.1 C jump in global temperatures show a non-linear progression, and suggest the initiation of a Heinrich Event. Link this to 90% of solar heat held in the ocean deeps and the 5% increase in evaporation from the seas and we have a sense of what is driving today’s catastrophic weather.

http://robertscribbler.com/2016/03/23/dr-james-hansen-human-warming-pushing-seas-to-exponentially-rise-by-several-meters-this-century/ 

Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms: The Threat of Irreparable Harm

We have uncovered the interactions between the ocean and the ice sheets and how soon we will pass points of no return, in which we lock in consequences that cannot be reversed on any time scale that people care about. This would mean loss of most of the world’s large cities and all their history.

.http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/22/ice-melt-sea-level-rise-and-superstorms-the-threat-of-irreparable-harm 

Rate of increase in sea levels more than 3.3 mm/yr and rising

Following image from Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016.pdf 

Carbon emissions highest in 66 million years, since end of the dinosaurs

The pace of emissions eclipses the onset of the biggest-known natural surge in fossil records, 56 million years ago, that was  driven by a release of frozen stores of methane beneath the seabed, drove temperatures up by an estimated 5 C

http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL5N16Q2FD 

Beyond surveillance: what could happen if Apple loses to the FBI

An Apple loss in the San Bernardino encryption case risks creating a world in which we can no longer trust the gadgets that track how we drive, when we’re home and whether the door is locked

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/21/selling-tpp-farm-economy-drops-cliff 

The John James Newsletter 109

19 March 2016

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any

Alice Walker

When government is free to do anything it pleases, while citizen may act only by permission, we have the darkest periods of human history with rule by brute force

Ayn Rand

The Middle East is now multi-nuclear! The Saudi bombs are private property with no constraining hands. The Crescent of ownership runs from Israel to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and India, and then China and North Korea. Can any of this lot be trusted to put humanity before national pride?

A Nuclear Near East!

While the West was applying pressure on Iran to abandon its civilian nuclear programme, the Saudis were buying the atomic bomb from Israel or Pakistan. We have entered a phase of the privatisation of nuclear weapons – a scenario which until now had been unthinkable. This evolution must be taken most seriously. The Saudis acted within the framework of US policy, and have laid the foundation for a nuclearised Near East

http://www.voltairenet.org/article190635.html 

In May 2015, the Joint Arab Force, under Israeli command, used a tactical atomic bomb in Yemen.

https://youtu.be/Myy7IQphmPM 

Greenhouse gas ‘bookkeeping’ turned on its head

Human activities have transformed the land biosphere into a contributor to climate change.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/ci-gg030816.php

Global food production threatens to overwhelm efforts to combat climate change

Each year our terrestrial biosphere absorbs about a quarter of all the C02 that we produce.

https://theconversation.com/global-food-production-threatens-to-overwhelm-efforts-to-combat-climate-change-55946 

Rouhani’s Moment of Truth

Iran’s president may have popular support, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has guns. Whoever wins this fight will shape the country for years to come.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/11/rouhanis-moment-of-truth/ 

Turmoil in Eastern Saudi Arabia

The Saudi state is highly fragile with disparate cultures, distinct tribal identities and tensions between a Sunni majority and a Shi’ite minority, notably in the oil-rich east. It could divide into five smaller regions.

http://lobelog.com/turmoil-in-eastern-saudi-arabia/ 

The Bernie Sanders voters who would choose Trump over Clinton 

Both Trump and Sanders are non-establishment candidates not bought by the special interests. Both are outsiders who understands that the government and the economy are broken.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/13/bernie-sanders-supporters-consider-donald-trump-no-hillary-clinton 

February breaks global temperature records by ‘shocking’ amount 

The average global surface temperature in February was warmer by a far bigger margin than ever seen before. We are now hurtling at a frightening pace toward the globally agreed maximum of 2C warming

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/february-smashes-earths-alltime-global-heat-record-by-a-jawdropping 

Unprecedented Spike in CO2 Levels in 2015

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/unprecedented-spike-co2-levels-2015-20125 

Paris a relic of historic failure 

We fool ourselves if we are not deeply alarmed by the recent news. CO2 concentrations jumped by 3.05 ppm during 2015, the largest year-to-year increase in 56 years of research. Scientists are stunned by the “unprecedented” temperature figures for February. Michael Mann says “we have no carbon budget left for the 1.5°C target and the opportunity for holding to 2°C is rapidly fading unless the world starts cutting emissions hard right now”.

http://www.climatecodered.org/2016/03/as-planet-burns-hot-new-report-shows.html 

Yet we are still getting denial lies like this:

Have CO2 Emissions Peaked?

http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/an-epochal-change-have-co2-emissions.html 

Seafood Slaves

Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand investigation into slavery in the multi-billion dollar seafood industry shows thousands of migrants from Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos in search of higher-paying jobs were lured onto Thai fishing boats with empty promises about jobs “on the other side” and into years of ongoing seaborne labour.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/faultlines/2016/03/seafood-slaves-160308070134432.html 

How Hitler Tackled Unemployment And Revived Germany’s Economy

The scale of the Nazi economic achievement should not be underestimated. It was real and impressive. No other European economy achieved such a rapid recovery. To most in 1930s Germany it seemed an economic miracle.

http://www.ihr.org/other/economyhitler2011.html 

Why videos go viral 

Viral videos have four things in common that inspire us to share and drive up those YouTube views.

https://theconversation.com/from-backflips-to-power-potato-peeling-why-videos-go-viral-56293 

US Government Blames 9/11 On Iran, Fines Iran $10.5b; Iran Refuses To Pay

The court ruling is based on the 9/11 Commission Report that some attackers moved through Iran and did not have their passports stamped. Yet none of the 19 hijackers were Iranian citizens, 15 were from Saudi Arabia, 2 from the United Arab Emirates and one each from Egypt and Lebanon.

http://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse150316A.htm  

Analysis Of The Russian Military Pullout From Syria

The Russian intervention is a stunning success, that is indisputable, with a small force and  limited goals: the legitimate authority of the Syrian government has been stabilized and the conditions for a political compromise have been created.

http://thesaker.is/analysis-of-the-russian-military-pullout-from-syria/ 

Putin Shuns Syrian ‘Quagmire’

Gambling that President Obama will cooperate in seeking peace for Syria, Russian President Putin called back much of Russia’s military force dispatched to Syria last fall

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/15/putin-shuns-syrian-quagmire

Russia’s Military Aims Achieved, Putin Switches To Diplomacy

http://www.countercurrents.org/pcr160316.htm 

Israel seizes 234 hectares of land in West Bank

Israel has grabbed one of the largest Palestinian land plots in the occupied West Ban. These settlements are major stumbling blocks to peace as they are built on land that Palestinians see is part of a future state.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/israel-seizes-234-hectares-land-west-bank-160315133241395.html 

Poll Paints Problematic Picture of Israel’s Future

48% of Israeli Jews agreed with the statement, “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel”.

http://lobelog.com/poll-paints-problematic-picture-of-israels-future/ 

Solar Battery Storage Comparison Table

A handy set of tables for the enthusiast,

https://www.solarquotes.com.au/battery-storage/comparison-table/ 

United Airlines is flying on biofuels.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/03/11/united-airlines-is-flying-on-biofuels-heres-why-thats-a-really-big-deal/

25 Companies Are More Powerful Than Many Countries

Going stateless to maximize profits, metanationals are vying with governments for global power. In 2001 they were an emerging phenomenon, a divergence from the tradition of corporations taking pride in their national roots. Today, severing state lifelines has become normal business.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/15/these-25-companies-are-more-powerful-than-many-countries-multinational-corporate-wealth-power/

Labor Protests Multiply in China as Economy Slows

After more than two decades of breakneck growth, strikes and labor protests have erupted across the country. Factories, mines and other businesses are withholding wages and benefits, laying off staff or shutting down altogether. Worried about their prospects in a gloomy job market, workers are fighting back with unusual ferocity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/world/asia/china-labor-strike-protest.html

Beef Ban Hysteria: Two Men Lynched To Death In Jharkhand

Two Muslims herding eight buffaloes to a local market were bashed and hanged from a tree in Jharkhand state of India. The locals claimed the assailants were Hindu radicals. The men were subjected to extreme levels of brutality. One Government Minister has said that “Muslims can continue to live in this country, but they will have to give up eating beef because the cow is an article of faith here”.

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc180316A.htm 

The John James Newsletter 108

12 March 2016

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, whenever their “vital interests” are menaced. 

James Baldwin

Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the conqueror

Niccolo Machiavelli

What’s the real outcome of TPP & TTIP?

The motivation behind these enormous international trade-deals is to transfer political power from the public to the  aristocrats who run international companies. They will select the members to the international-trade-panels which will determine the rules of workers’ rights, product-safety, and the environment.

They are intended to reduce wages to the lowest hourly wage in the entire international trading-area, minimise regulation of the safety of foods and avoid having to raise the safety of their products.

Those expenses  will be increasingly borne only by the consumers. Risk is shifted onto the public.

Environmental damage will cost nothing to the international corporations that perpetrate them, while the real costs are borne by the general, in toxic air, water, etc.

THUS profits will increase and will be increasingly concentrated in international corporations and the families that control them, and losses will become increasingly paid by us.

THUS less and less democratic government.

THUS, the costs for product-safety, workers’ rights, and the environment become borne by us.

THUS, aristocrats will be able to pass to their heirs their ever-increasing dominance and control over us.

THUS, the concentration of wealth will become more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer families, a gradually smaller super-aristocracy.

This is what’s happening already, and it will happen really quickly if we let TPP and TTIP pass. 

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/04/whats-obama-up-to-with-his-tpp-ttip.html 

Tokyo was on the brink of nuclear catastrophe

Five years on from the tsunami, the former Japanese prime minister says the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of a nuclear disaster requiring the evacuation of 50 million people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/12184114/ukushima-Tokyo-was-on-the-brink-of-nuclear-catastrophe-admits-former-prime-minister.html 

Five Years After Fukushima, ‘No End in Sight’ to Ecological Fallout

These impacts will last “decades to centuries.”

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/04/five-years-after-fukushima-no-end-sight-ecological-fallout 

Mutations, DNA damage seen in Fukushima forests

Mutations in trees and DNA-damaged worms were beginning to appear, while “vast stocks of radiation” mean that forests cannot be decontaminated.

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-mutations-dna-fukushima-forests-greenpeace.html 

Tipping Point Looms for South Africa 

South Africans are paying the price not just for a collapse in commodities prices — metals and mining contribute more than 50 percent of exports — but for growing questions over whether President Jacob Zuma is up to the task.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-21/tipping-point-looms-for-south-africa-as-economy-s-despair-grows 

It’s a point of no return in the West Antarctica. What happens next?

The retreat of ice in the Amundsen sea sector of West Antarctica is now unstoppable. Sea levels will rise one metre worldwide. Its disappearance will likely trigger the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which comes with a sea level rise of between three and five metres. Such an event will displace millions worldwide.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/17/climate-change-antarctica-glaciers-melting-global-warming-nasa 

Sydney: what’s behind the city’s record run of warm weather

Offshore sea temperatures have been uncharacteristically warm. The East Australian Current has extended further south

https://theconversation.com/sydney-so-hot-right-now-whats-behind-the-citys-record-run-of-warm-weather-55756 

Mike Baird Wants To Protect Big Miners

Laws could substantially curtail the right to protest and unnecessarily increase already vast police powers.

https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/08/mike-baird-wants-protect-big-miners-expense-civil-liberties/ 

Bob Brown Is Taking Anti-Protest Laws To The High Court 

The laws passed through the Tasmanian Parliament in late 2014. They prohibit protests, whether on private or public property, that hinder access to business premises or disrupt business operations.

https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/10/bob-brown-challenges-tasmanian-anti-protest-laws-in-high-court/ 

Mining protesters could face seven years’ jail under Baird government plans

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mining-protesters-face-seven-years-jail-under-baird-government-csg-plans-20160310-gnfdi8.html 

WikiLeaks: US, Saudis Planned to Topple Syria’s Assad in 2012

Saudi Arabia, the US, France, and Britain were involved in a secret deal to overthrow Assad, from more than 60,000 classified Saudi diplomatic cables

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Wikileaks-US-Saudis-Planned-to-Topple-Syrias-Assad-in-2012-20150629-0011.html 

Syria War Was Planned In Advance, 

Because Syria is Anti-Israel, Says Ex-French Foreign Minister Dumas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz-s2AAh06I 

Because Syria would not allow an oil pipeline through his country

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiK3Tqlw1ls

North Korea Pushing World to Nuclear Brink

This situation has not garnered the attention it deserves in the press nor by the markets. Should tensions escalate to the point of causing a nuclear event then such an engagement could lead to wider actions  bringing  the involvement of respective allies and the bigger powers, through the automatic responses of machines, not people. Russia operates a mechanized nuclear defence program that is termed “the dead-hand system” because the missile-launch-order can be triggered from the radioactivity in the atmosphere. The system concludes that a nuclear attack is being carried out against them it will automatically order the launch.

http://firstfinancialinsights.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/north-korea-pushing-world-to-nuclear.html 

James Hansen: “We Have a Global Emergency” 

The tropics and the Middle East in summer are in danger of becoming uninhabitable by the end of the century if emissions continue, because wet bulb temperature could approach the level at which the human body is unable to cool itself under even well-ventilated conditions, and temperatures are approaching the limit of human tolerance and agriculture is an outdoor activity. A shift of over 2C in the mean, the highest in the world.

http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/02/29/regional-climate-change-and-national-responsibilities/ 

Tony Windsor Names Climate Change As Central Plank In His Political Comeback 

“The message is [that]if people want their future to be different – in terms of climate, renewable energy, water resources, health, education, etc – it’s in their hands,”

https://newmatilda.com/2016/03/10/windsor-makes-climate-change-a-central-feature-of-his-political-comeback/ 

What’s driving regional West Australians off the grid? A solar installer’s view

Many people in fringe-off-grid areas believe that if their network gets privatised, power prices are going to go up. And if it doesn’t, something will have to be done to recoup the losses the companies have incurred.

http://onestepoffthegrid.com.au/whats-driving-regional-west-australians-off-the-grid-a-solar-installers-view/ 

The Syrian exodus: ‘Epic in scale, inconceivable until you witness it’

Booker prize winner Richard Flanagan visits Lebanon, Greece and Serbia to report on the plight of the 5 million Syrians fleeing their country. ‘Forced to choose between life and death, they choose life’

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/05/great-syrian-refugee-crisis-exodus-epic-inconceivable-witness-lebos-islamic-state 

The largest Global-Warming induced exodus so far, certainly with more to follow! A drought that turned 60% of the farmland into desert, killed 80% of the livestock and generated the flight of its people. Where next? 

In Praise of Impractical Movements

Bernie Sanders’s insurgent presidential campaign has opened up a debate about how social change happens in our society. It is seldom as incremental as many suggest. Every once in a while, the great moments of equalizing reform — securing labor rights, expanding the vote, creating a social safety net — have been directly related to surges of widespread defiance.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176111/tomgram%3A_engler%2C_the_transformative_power_of_democratic_uprisings/#more 

Take-No-Prisoners: the World of Oil 

The fallout from the precipitous descent in the price of oil has been of disastrous for the industry: many smaller companies have already filed for bankruptcy; larger firms have watched their profits plummet; whole countries like Venezuela, deeply dependent on oil sales, seem to be heading for receivership; and an estimated 250,000 oil workers have lost their jobs globally – a strange new world in which an unlimited capacity to produce oil meets an increasingly crippled capitalist system without the capacity to absorb it.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176112/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_a_take-no-prisoners_world_of_oil/#more 

China: Crisis set to deepen

The coal industry has shed 890,000 jobs in the past two years, 15% of the total workforce in coal mining. In the same period, 550,000 workers were laid off in the steel industry. In January, the State Council closed a further 4,600 coal mines

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/7499 

A Warning From the Bank for International Settlements : The Calm Before the Storm?

The plunge in stock prices and the slowdown in global growth are taking place at the same time that investor confidence in central banks is waning.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44404.htm 

China’s Export Slump Shows Growth Push Hinges on Local Demand

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-08/china-export-slump-shows-growth-push-depends-on-domestic-demand 

Dead Man’s Market and the Boy Gangs of Niger

Impoverished young men have menaced the city of Zinder with rapes and murders. Now Boko Haram wants to turn their ultra-violence into a weapon of war.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/08/dead-mans-market-and-the-boy-gangs-of-niger-boko-haram/ 

GOOD CAUSES – ESSENTIAL READING

The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein

The intellectual foundation for the anti-democratic and pro-corporation disasters of the past 70 years. All concerned for the society of the future should read this.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/series/naomiklein 

Climate, Fire and Human Evolution, Andrew Glikson

Uses Earth System science to explain pre-historic human evolution, give insight into the origins of the mastery of fire and broaden our understanding of climate change.

http://www.anu.edu.au/events/book-launch-climate-fire-and-human-evolution 

Crowd Funding: Project Dead Stump – Rebuilding Ross’ Buns

Ross slid onto a sharp stump whilst snowboarding, and was badly impaled.

https://ozcrowd.com/campaigns/project-dead-stump-rebuilding-ross-buns-please-help-to-fund-ross-surgical-and-hospital-fees/

 

The John James Newsletter 107

5 March 2016

An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein – and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the US – would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans.

David Frum, speachwriter for George W Bush

Al Gore: The case for optimism on climate change

A wonderfully optimistic talk with some graphs that I reproduce below. BUT he left without telling how we can use the good news to roll back the C02 and Methane that is already in the system and which will play out over the next few decades. Sure, “We are winning!” but how do we turn a tactical success into a strategic long-term victory for the sake of our children? How do we sequest what we have put out there, and then there is the pesky question of  the environmental cost of doing so?

http://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_the_case_for_optimism_on_climate_change 

FACT We produce 110 million tons pollution every 24 hours

This heat is equivalent to dropping 400,000 Hiroshima bombs each day

FACT As heat is stored in the oceans average world humidity has risen 4%

Hence the storms, cyclones and unusual weather

FACT Climate change in Syria intensified the drought that turned 60% of the farmland into desert

and killed 80% of the livestock

and generated 1.5 million refugees

China Redoubles Its War On Coal

The Chinese have shut inefficient coal power plants, closed countless mines, slashed imports, and adopted a slew of policies to scale back coal use by some of their biggest industrial coal consumers — cement, steel, iron, and power.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/29/3753342/china-war-coal/ 

Coal use falls further as China plans massive layoffs

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coal-use-falls-further-as-china-plans-massive-layoffs-47325 

Land-clearing surge in Queensland to wipe out Direct Action gains

In just three years the rate of clearing will create enough additional carbon dioxide emissions to cancel out emissions savings the government says it will make by paying farmers $670m to stop cutting down trees

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/29/exclusive-land-clearing-surge-in-qld-set-to-wipe-out-direct-action-gains-report 

Bees And Other Pollinators Are Facing Extinction

Almost 90 percent of wild flowering plants depend on pollination by animals, and 75 percent of food crops around the world depend on pollination. “Without pollinators, many of us would no longer be able to enjoy coffee, chocolate and apples, among many other foods that are part of our daily lives

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/26/3754235/pollinators-ipbes-report/ 

The truth about battery ready solar systems

In my opinion if you are going to claim a specific solar system as battery ready then you must be more specific and explain the basis on which you are making the claim. In this post I’ll go through 3 different interpretations of ‘battery ready’.

http://onestepoffthegrid.com.au/the-truth-about-battery-ready-solar-systems/ 

The most fundamental problem modern Turkey is facing is the Kurdish question. 

When the modern Turkish state was created on the ashes of the Ottoman empire following defeat in WWI, it was seeking a new identity on which it could successfully establish itself.Turkey, just like some of its European counterparts, was however faced with the imperial heritage of diverse ethnic groups living on its newly established territory.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44303.htm 

State-of-the-art Technology Gives Syrian Army the Edge

Syrian officers have been shown how the new T-90 anti-missile system causes rockets to veer off course only yards from the tanks when fired directly at them. Even more important for the Syrians are the new Russian night-vision motion sensors, and the electronic surveillance-reconnaissance equipment which enabled the army to smash through the Nusra defences in the mountainous far north-west of Syria, breaking the rebel supply lines from Turkey to Aleppo

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44326.htm 

King of Chaos

if Hillary Clinton was Queen of Chaos, Obama is surely King. If Iraq, Libya and Syria have been reduced to a chaotic state, Obama has a heavy responsibility for these developments.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/02/king-of-chaos/ 

Don’t Cry for Me, America

Donald Trump has already transformed the tone and temper of American political life. If he becomes the Republican nominee, he will demolish its structural underpinnings as well. Should he prevail in November, his election will alter its very fabric in ways likely to prove irreversible.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176109/ 

Hilary Clinton named the most corrupt politician of 2015

Much has been disclosed from her Stare Department emails.

http://www.usapoliticstoday.com/watchdog-names-clinton-most-corrupt-politician-of-2015/ 

Bird-brained and brilliant: Australia’s avians are smarter than you think 

Many Australian birds are brilliant mimics. Mimicry was once dismissed as “mindless”. In fact, it’s the first stage of learning. Human babies and infants do it all the time, gradually linking the mimicked sounds with words and meaning. Eventually they are able to apply specific sounds in a correct context. That is not mindless.

https://theconversation.com/bird-brained-and-brilliant-australias-avians-are-smarter-than-you-think-51475 

Leonardo DiCaprio Uses Oscars Speech To Call For Climate Action

“Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history — our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/02/29/3754667/leo-oscars-speech-climate-change/ 

Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1m people 

The dam’s former chief engineer who spent most of his professional career shoring it up in the face of fundamental flaws in its construction, said that the structure would only survive with round-the-clock work with teams filling in holes in the porous bedrock under the structure, a process known as grouting. But that level of maintenance evaporated after the Isis occupation. “We used to have 300 people working 24 hours in three shifts but very few of these workers have come back. There are perhaps 30 people there now,”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/02/mosul-dam-engineers-warn-it-could-fail-at-any-time-killing-1m-people 

US warns of Mosul dam collapse in northern Iraq

Maintenance work was disrupted after the dam was briefly seized by militants from so-called Islamic State in 2014. If the dam burst, floodwaters could kill 1.47 million Iraqis living along the River Tigris

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35690616 

Incredibly Creepy Billboards to Track Behavior of Passers-By

Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which owns tens of thousands of billboards nationwide, is on Monday announcing plans to use people’s cell phones to allow its billboards to track the behavior of everyone who walks or drives past the ads.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/02/29/incredibly-creepy-billboards-track-behavior-passers

Another massive sign of how badly Saudi Arabia is suffering from the oil price crash

The reserve assets held by the Saudi government now stands at $602 billion, nearly $150 billion down from their recent peak in late 2014, just before oil prices started plummeting.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/saudi-arabian-fx-reserves-decline-to-lowest-levels-in-nearly-three-years-2016-2 

Public ideas leadership on climate? The truth rarely sees the light of day

Propositions that are entirely scientifically valid are rare to non-existent in public discourse in Australia. The idea that more than 1.5C of warming is already locked into the system would be a shock to most participants in public debate http://www.climatecodered.org/2016/03/public-ideas-leadership-on-climate.html

Euro depression is ‘deliberate’ EU choice, says former Bank of England chief 

“In the euro area, the countries in the periphery have nothing at all to offset austerity. They are simply being asked to cut total spending without any form of demand to compensate. I never imagined that we would ever again in an industrialised country have a depression deeper than the US experienced in the 1930s and that’s what’s happened in Greece.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/01/europes-depression-is-deliberate-eu-choice-says-former-bank-of-e/ 

Oregon becomes first state to pass law to completely eliminate coal-fired power 

To eliminate the use of coal-fired power by 2035 and to double the amount of renewable energy in the state by 2040.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/03/oregon-coal-climate-law-kate-brown 

Chronic stress effects help cancer spread

Chronic stress refers to prolonged, repeated exposure to stressful situations, such as caring for a sick relative for a long period of time.

https://theconversation.com/chronic-stress-effects-help-cancer-spread-researchers-find-55619 

Saudi War for Yemen Oil Pipeline is Empowering al-Qaeda

Secret cable and Dutch government official confirm that Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen is partly motivated by an ambitious US-backed pipeline fantasy Yemen has as yet untapped potential to provide an alternative set of oil and gas trans-shipment routes for the export of Saudi oil, bypassing Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/essays/saudi-war-yemen-oil-pipeline-empowering-al-qaeda-1386143996 

The John James Newsletter 105

20 February 2016

A nation that is afraid to let us judge truth and falsehood in an open market is afraid of its people

John F. Kennedy

Compassion and understanding arise from an awareness that we are all reflections of each other

Tom Feeley

Washington’s Machiavellian Game in Syria

The world’s most powerful Superpower did not come to that position without extraordinary skills, cunning, a remarkable ability to lie convincingly, to deceive, to precisely manipulate the weaknesses of their opponents. Around late March or April it will be clear. The US has lured not only Turkey and Saudi Arabia, but now Moscow into their trap in the Middle East. The initial losers in this unfolding deadly game will be Saudi, Turkey, Syria, Iraq and likely Russia.

http://journal-neo.org/2016/02/17/washington-s-machiavellian-game-in-syria/ 

Europe is disintegrating while its citizens watch indifferent

We are witnessing the slow agony of the dream of European integration, disintegrating without a single demonstration occuring anywhere. European institutions are in an existential crisis but the debate??

http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/02/europe-is-disintegrating-while-its-citizens-watch-indifferent/ 

The Great Turning

The shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization. The ecological and social crises we face are caused by an economic system dependent on accelerating growth.

http://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/great-turning 

Four billion people facing severe water scarcity

Two-thirds of the global population live under conditions of severe water scarcity at least 1 month of the year. Nearly half live in India and China. Half a billion people severe water scarcity all year round.

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/2/e1500323.full 

Methane’s Role in Arctic Warming

Greenhouse gas levels are higher over the Arctic than elsewhere on Earth, gasses that would otherwise be radiated out to space. The first image shows higher CO2 levels at higher latitudes north over 410 ppm. In the second that methane levels of over 1900 ppb over most of the Arctic Ocean on February 4, 2016. Surely these two events are connected!

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com.au/2016/02/methanes-role-in-arctic-warming.html 

The consequences of CSIRO climate cuts

National and global interests were at stake in CSIRO’s decision to axe about 110 of the 140 present staff involved in two key climate monitoring and modelling programs

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/coordinated-action-needed-to-limit-damage-from-csiro-climate-cuts-exofficials-20160215-gmugys.html

The elephant whisperer / march funebre

Music honours the deep intelligence and sentiment of the highly ordered society of elephants who trekked for 2 days without eating or drinking to reach Lawrence Anthony’s house, following his death. He was the extraordinary supporter of wildlife, conservationist, rehabilitator of elephants worldwide. They stayed 3 days, still not eating nor drinking then quietly trekked home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD4VsebBhEQ    

Sugar may be as damaging to the brain as extreme stress or abuse

Chronic consumption of sugar in rats who were not stressed produced similar changes in the hippocampus as rats who were stressed but not drinking sugar. Drinking sugar or exposure to early life stress reduced the expression of genes critical for brain development and growth.

https://theconversation.com/sugar-may-be-as-damaging-to-the-brain-as-extreme-stress-or-abuse-53813 

Russian Diplomat Drops a Bombshell: US Expected ISIS to Seize Damascus by October

The US was planning to start a bombing campaign to overthrow the government knowing that by October in the victory of the Islamic State and its capture of Damascus. To stop the US proclaiming a no-fly zone – i.e. commencing a bombing campaign aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government – Russia intervened in Syria.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44236.htm 

Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath

It was US intransigence – Clinton’s intransigence – that led to the failure of Annan’s peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well known among diplomats.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-clinton-and-the-s_b_9231190.html 

Understanding Islamic State: where does it come from and what does it want? 

IS is an instance of a phenomenon that recurs in most religions, and certainly in all monotheistic religions. Every so often militant strains emerge, flourish temporarily, then vanish. If the recent past has demonstrated one thing, it’s that IS thrives when its adversaries underestimate it.

https://theconversation.com/understanding-islamic-state-where-does-it-come-from-and-what-does-it-want-52155 

The true cost of bushfires

Long-burning massive bushfires is the new normal as climate change causes more heatwaves of greater intensity. The number of professional firefighters would need to double by 2030 in a hotter and drier climate.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-24/climate-change-driving-increased-fire-risk-in-wa/6224332 

and

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-14/the-cost-of-bushfires-to-communities/7156782 

The Pope, the Patriarch — and a Little Bit of Putin

The focus on the state of Christianity in the Middle East is a public relations win for the Russian Orthodox Church, which is trying to shore up its position in Russia by presenting itself as the defender of persecuted Christians around the world. “This meeting allows them to play a large public role and sell it back in Russia,”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/12/the-pope-the-patriarch-and-a-little-bit-of-putin-orthodox-francis-kirill-cuba/   

Apple launches $1.5bn green bond

Technology giant is raising finance for renewable energy, greener materials and efficiency

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/02/17/apple-launches-1-5bn-green-bond/

The real reason for the war on cash 

It is political: holders of currency could undermine their brave new monetary world of negative interest rates. Japan and Europe are already deep into negative territory, and US is preparing for the possibility.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-18/end-economic-liberty-war-cash-wont-end-well 

10 Secret Armies of the Central Intelligence Agency

Would US intelligence secretly back a brutal, murderous paramilitary group to destabilize a country on the US hit list? Of course. The US intelligence apparatus has been doing it for 60 years.

http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2015/12/10-secret-armies-of-the-central-intelligence-agency/ 

No Winter For the Arctic in 2016 — NASA Marks Hottest January Ever Recorded

We’re witnessing the end for Winter as we know it. Greenhouse emission — now pushing CO2 levels to above 405 ppm — is rapidly forcing our world to warm most swiftly in one of the absolute worst places imaginable: the Arctic.

http://robertscribbler.com/2016/02/18/no-winter-for-the-arctic-in-2016-nasa-marks-hottest-january-ever-recorded/ 

Oldest known case of Neanderthal-human sex revealed by DNA test 

Tests revealed that the female, whose remains were recovered from the Altai mountains on the Russia-Mongolia border, carried traces of DNA from Homo sapiens who mated with her ancestors 100,000 years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/17/oldest-known-case-of-neanderthal-human-sex-revealed-by-dna-test 

Solar homes facing meter bill shock, delays as premium tariffs end

Some 150,000 households have been enjoying a 60c/kWh gross feed-in tariff for the last few years – that is 60c/kWh paid for entire output of their rooftop solar systems. However, that comes to an end on December 31,

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/solar-homes-facing-meter-bill-shock-delays-as-premium-tariffs-end-98999 

Greece Faces New Round of Strikes and Protests

Lawyers, dockworkers, and teachers are all set to engage in job actions.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Greece-Faces-New-Round-of-Strikes-and-Protests-20160216-0002.html 

Why Is China Spending $43 Billion for a Farming Company?

The biggest overseas purchase in Chinese history is meant to ensure the world’s largest country can keep feeding its people.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/15/why-is-china-spending-43-billion-for-a-farming-company/ 

Don’t throw away stuff you don’t need. Give it to someone who does

http://freecycle.org 

Pilger explains why he believes “extremists” run the political system in the US and UK

He talks about why he supports Julian Assange, what whitleblowers mean to society today, and why he feels real change will never come from within mainstream political parties.

http://sputniknews.com/radio_loud_and_clear/20160216/1034828977/john-pilger-extremists-run-america.html 

Israel’s rash behavior blew operation to sabotage Iran’s computers

“We spent millions on this operation to sabotage all of the computers of the Iranian infrastructure in the instance of a war. We penetrated the government, electricity lines, power stations and most of the infrastructure in Iran.”

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran/Israels-rash-behavior-blew-operation-to-sabotage-Irans-computers-US-officials-say-444970