The John James Newsletter 15
23 September 2014.
A trenchant warning
Fossil Fuels, Global Warming and Democracy – Dr Kevin Taft
Global warming requires political and state institutions to confront the interests of the fossil fuel industry and reduce its size dramatically. This poses a triple jeopardy for any government that depends heavily on fossil fuel production.
First, the government must overcome its own dependence on royalties.
Second, the government must simultaneously challenge a dominant power, the fossil fuel industry.
Third, the government must face both of these challenges where political and state institutions have been moulded to support a mineral economy.
Governments are unlikely to take on this challenge and survive.
When democracy is caught between the needs of global warming and the demands of the fossil fuel industry, global warming is ignored and democracy is sacrificed.
http://www.whitlam.org/the_program/perspectives
Libraries under threat – by Michael Wilding
The last years of the nineteenth century saw a concerted move to educate people, provide free schooling, free libraries and universities of quality and distinction; the twenty-first century seems to be running a policy of dumbing down and surveillance. How many centres of Learning still have libraries?
http://www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/libraries-under-threat/
Warm water flowing into Arctic Ocean
Over 90 percent of Earth’s energy imbalance has been going into the oceans, almost unnoticed by people keeping track of the temperatures in the atmosphere. The warmer ocean water is going through the Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea, Barents Sea, East Siberian Sea and worst of all, the Laptev Sea.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/warm-water-flowing-into-arctic-ocean.html
And see my post on the Gakkyl Ridge in the Laptev Sea
http://planetextinction.com/documents/Methane,%20the%20Gakkel%20Ridge%20and%20human%20survival.pdf
As everything is hotting up, both in CO2, in wars and in terror, I ask you to revisit the talk I gave in Katoomba in June last year. This is still relevant, indeed, more so as methane levels have been soaring all this year.
An interesting overview without the hyperbole
Russia Rejects Ukrainian Seperatists Bid To Join Russian Federation
Putin and Obama have regularly been in direct contact since February. Perhaps Putin’s declining to accept Ukrainian territory into Russia is part of an agreement between the two leaders in which Obama declines the urgings from his right for the US to provide weapons to the Ukrainian military. Maybe its a deal.
http://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse200914.htm
Will this never stop?
Israeli bulldozers enter border area in southern Gaza
Israel has severely limited Gaza’s imports and exports since 2006, also imposing a no-go buffer zone ranging from 500 to 1,500 meters from the border, an area encompassing 17 percent of Gaza’s total land. The siege has led to frequent humanitarian crises for Gazans, and the UN and various human rights groups have repeatedly called on Israel to lift it.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=728502
A penetrating analysis of the war we cannot win
The Folly Of Obama’s “War” On ISIS
In truth, the whole thing is a giant, pathetic farce. There will be no coalition, no strategy, no boots, no ISIS degradation, no gain in genuine safety and security for the American homeland. This is an utterly misbegotten war against an enemy that has more urgent targets than America, but a war which will nonetheless fire-up the already boiling cauldron of Middle Eastern tribal, religious and political conflicts like never before. There is no name for what Obama is attempting except utter folly.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39731.htm
