Category: The war that will not end in our lifetimes
US Secretary of State told a group of journalists when the United States invaded Iraq, “this will be a war that will not end in your lifetimes.” The vision of the project for the New American Century which backed George W Bush’s bid for presidency, is that the United States will control the world economy, by controlling the world’s oil supplies. The backing of independence movements in Georgia and Chechnya has deprived Russia of the gateway to Middle Eastern oil, and prevented it building a planned pipeline to China. Combined with manouvers in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel, it is clear that this plan is being put into effect. The news stories in this category track the progress of this project and the impact it is having on the world economy and hence, your daily life.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs addressed NATO this month, begging European nations not to blindly follow the US into a global war with China and Russia. He says US is no longer a global leader, and is in denial about this, leading the West into a dangerous and futile global war. He points out that successive US presidents expanded NATO despite warnings by European and US diplomats that it would inevitably lead to war. <snip> He also spent much of the last two years investigating the sources of CoViD and believes it escaped US biotech laboratory though this is not yet proven. Jeffrey Sachs is adviser to the UN on the Sustainable Development Goals and professor of economics at the Columbia University.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SequPvRFn0
Jeffrey Sachs in Madrid
Jeffrey Sachs started his speech by saying, we are in a mess. A real mess, and we show no signs of getting ourselves out of it. He then rattled off the list of mistakes that we have made in recent years that have brought western economies crashing down and plunged Africa and South America into chaos. His point that US insistence that the world follow its policies is a major part of the problem and, unless we wake up, and start working cooperatively with China and Russia, it will continue to get worse, not better. I have posted a link to his speech on the 4zzzecoradio socials and to Ecoradio.net. Watch it and weep. It makes perfect sense and we have to convince our government to decouple from the US madness and seriously work toward a sustainable future. The alternative is unthinkable.
Reef grief competition heals despair with creativity
Liberals turn on market forces to protect coal
Climate deniers are going under – courtesy @Bruceneeds2know
Once a political party dedicated to the ideology of a free-market that operates with minimal government intervention, the Liberal Party this week announced that it will oppose moves by investors and financial institutions to replace coal fired electricity generation with renewables. In announcing that it would use foreign-investment and competition veto powers to stop tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes from purchasing AGL and closing down coal fired power stations, Scott Morrison said, “our government is very committed to ensure we sweat those assets for their life [to keep] energy prices affordable ”. Cannon-Brookes has consistently pointed out that renewables are bringing energy prices down.
This move by the party is consistent with the politically engineered sacking of the CEO of AGL in 2018 when he announced that the company would close the Lidell power station early and replace it with renewables. Banks, private equity firms and insurance companies have all damned the Liberal Party for allowing the influence of the coal lobby to set policy that limits sensible economic investment in energy solutions that address the climate emergency.
Yesterday we globally celebrated the contribution made by women through events such as the National Art Gallery announcing that it has reached gender equity in its collection and the newspaper Big Issues publishing a list of 50 feminist books to smash the patriarchy. Many thoughtful women have been more cautious, however, identifying that some of the fundamentals have not changed, especially the ongoing and weekly murder of Australian women, generally by ex-partners. Last IWD, Dr Quek and Dr Tyler pointed out on the ABC’s Mindfield that one of the world’s most prominent IWD websites claims, “Equality is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue.” The Times of India directly confronted the “misogynist patriarchy in which we live” with a wide ranging vox pop listing “what women really want.”
Truth is the first casualty as Australia toes US line on Ukraine
The government has announced that it will outlaw media and speech that does not follow the US-NATO line in unilaterally damning the Russian military action in the Ukraine despite a highly complex situation involving multiple ethnic and political groups and decades of struggle. In a statement yesterday, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said, “The Australian Government is placing new sanctions on Moscow’s propagandists and purveyors of disinformation, who are trying to legitimatise Russia’s unprovoked, unjustified invasion with false narratives such as the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine.”
The announcement follows an ABC press release defending its censorship and exclusion of a Russian born Australian who asked a Q and A panel last Thursday night, why the media ignores the activities of the Azov regiment.
Al Jazeera described the Azov Regiment as ultra-nationalist, right wing fighters integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces in 2014 after fighting against Russia in the Crimea. The Ukrainan president at the time Perozhenko described them as “our best warriors” at an awards ceremony where he gave them official status and funding. Putin has stated that one of the aims of Russia in the Ukraine is to de-militarise and de-Nazify the Ukraine. The Azof regiment have terrorised Roma and Jewish community, gay groups, and left-wing organisations. They smear their bullets with pig fat to dishonour Chechen Muslims who are in the Ukraine specifically to fight them.
PM leaps into action as Climate Emergency reaches Cronulla
The Guardian illustrating B.O.M figures showing the impact of the atmospheric river
Australia’s East Coast rain bomb is actually an atmospheric river, dragging warm water evaporated from the coral sea down the east coast of Australia where it is dumped as the air rises and cools on contact with the coast. The phenomenon causes many floods in the West Coast of the USA and is known as the pineapple express because the warm water comes from Hawaii.
The local phenomenon is caused when an east coast low is held against the Australian coast by a stationary high over New Zealand. The effect of climate change has been to increase the amount of water in the atmosphere and to push it further south reaching Newcastle, Sydney and Woollongong.
The Betoota Advocate joked this week that these towns form the acronym N.S.W. which is the region the Liberal Party considers to be the ‘real Australia’ and that the Prime Minister now understands that there is a climate emergency because the floods have reached Cronulla.
The Prime Minister is visiting Lismore today, where residents are arguing whether to greet him with actual pitchforks or with a damages bill.
Reef grief competition heals despair with creativity
Ecowarrior organisation Extinction Rebellion, also known as XR, has put together a competition to find a song that best encapsulates “Reef Grief” and deal with the phases of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Entries from members of the public, including 4ZZZ listeners, are welcome but must be submitted by this Friday, Details are available at http://reefgrief.org/competition/
Writing in Al Jazeera today, Dimitar Bechev, writes that the visit by Hungarian President Viktor Orban to Moscow to secure a new gas deal and express support for Russian resistance to NATO shows how complex the situation in Eastern Europe is. Poland, the Baltic states and Romania have strongly expressed support for NATO involvement in the Ukraine. The Balkan states are less enthusiastic and support Russian concerns about NATO expansion. Germany has refused to send troops to the Ukraine. Bechev believes that despite the complexity, most states will resist Russian intervention in the eastern region of the Ukraine. British troops are already on the ground and have been involved in battles with Russian soldiers. Land mines are being used to booby trap trenches on the front line.
The song Putin Khuilo
Meanwhile, anti-Russian Ukrainians have taken to song to express their frustration. The popular ‘Putin Khuilo’ is belted out at rallies, clubs and quoted in official speeches, labelling Putin as a ‘dickhead’. The 2019 song Alga by symphonic rock outfit, Ignea, continues to be a staple at similar events. It famously advises the Russians to get off Uklranian soil with the words ‘you godless bastards, put your two headed eagle into your asses and run.’
Australia is being coerced into war with China over Taiwan by US strategists, Nury Vittachi writes in Pearls and Irritationsthis morning.
Colby’s book, Strategy of Denial
ANU Professor of strategic studies, Hugh White, wrote in the Australian last week that there is a much greater advantage for Australia to live in a Chinese-dominated Asia than to join a US war over Taiwan. “There is a moral imperative to avoid war, especially nuclear war,” said Professor White.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute director, Peter Jennings, countered with an article confirming that Australia’s regional strategy is to support the continuing US dominance of Asia and the Pacific.
A recent book by US defence strategist Elbridge Colby reveals that the US is deliberately provoking a war with Taiwan to cement an alliance between Japan, South Korea and the Philippines to protect its commercial interests. It is inevitable that Asia will dominate the world’s economy, Colby writes, and the US wants to dominate the region.
The demise of regional newspapers in Australia is the latest reminder that the business model of media has been broken by the Internet. Funneling tax-payer dollars from the ABC into regional print may not be the most intelligent response, however.
In 1998 Rupert Murdoch received a Papal Knighthood
There is a widely held and often expressed assumption that independent
journalism has flourished under and been supported by “the rivers of gold” that
represented classified advertising in particular but advertising in general. It
follows that the transition of those funding dollars away from traditional
media to facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon et al has created a vacuum once
occupied by the fourth estate, that governments now attempt to address.
This narrative has led to a number of government
interventions, including the attempted regulation of online communication
systems, the calling of executives before committees of elected officials, and threats
to frame legislation that curtails special privileges enjoyed by tech companies
or reinforces the advantages given to traditional media companies.
That narrative is overlaid by privacy concerns, the veracity
of news and the use of mass media by foreign actors to manipulate the
democratic process. All these factors combine to create a wicked problem of the
first order, that will only be resolved over coming decades as we shape a new
communications system and political process that can operate within it.
There are a number of important elements missing from this
narrative, and their absence makes it all the more difficult to understand what
is happening. Adding in these elements, adds to the complexity of the picture
but, at the same time, makes it easier to understand.
Advertising and Journalism: an arranged marriage
Implicit in this narrative is the assumption that a separation
of powers in traditional media allowed journalism to flourish independently from
the influence of powerful advertisers.
Of course, that separation of powers did exist in the great
media properties of our time and launched brilliant examples of holding truth
to power and fine traditions such as the protection of sources and other forms
of immunity that allowed journalists into war zones under similar conditions we
have come to expect for medical services.
It was never universal, however, and it only existed at all
through the impassioned efforts of its greatest defenders.
In general, media owners have wielded great power through
their ownership of communication networks and have used that power in the same way
that bankers have, to control and manipulate the polity for their own ends.
Rupert Murdoch quoted mentor Lord Beaverbrook as “selling to the masses to eat
with the kings” and since backing Fraser in 1975 has consistently taken his
role as king-maker very seriously. He recently re-organised News Limited
specifically to separate the cash-cows from the influence-wielding consumers of
capital. He is not pretending any more that his media ownership is a business
concern.
The first newssheets carried only advertisements and
gradually the printers realised that they could use the “eyeballs” they had
garnered to influence people and thus the editor was born. The relationship
between advertising and journalism is entirely arbitrary and opportunistic with
journalism the dependent parasite feeding on the rivers of gold. The television
headlines, the day’s talking points and the front page of the newspaper have
always been out of the hands of the editorial department and in the hands of
the media proprietor regardless of the popular perception to the contrary.
The significance of this is to recognise that it is up to
the journalism community to follow the money and find the way to use the
evolving platform to promote truth, rather than to preserve some blessed
alliance that is under threat.
Readers Digest, trade press and big data
The manipulation of popular sentiment through public ritual
is as old as religion and has experienced various historical climaxes in Olympic
and Roman Games, public executions, football and mass rallies famously choreographed
by twentieth century dictators.
The far more subtle collection and collation of personal
data by secret police or other informer networks has an equally ancient and
unvenerable history. The techniques were refined by the Catholic Church and the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
In a parallel but similar universe, the combination of the printing press, postal system and global capitalism allowed the Readers Digest to create a user-pays, infotainment network in which the customer, come content consumer, pays to build an increasingly accurate profile of their preferences so they can be drip-fed content-on-demand for a fee. The combination of base subscriptions supplemented with one-off fees for special products was well established by the sixties and fed into a burgeoning mail-order network that sold a significant portion of the retail trade operating in that decade.
As a young Packer editor in the 1990s, I was flown to New York and Boston to study the techniques of database mining which was then responsible for a third of US magazine revenue, the other two thirds being cover price and advertising. The value of that information network was confirmed by the business model of the trade magazines which I edited, which had no coverprice and, in the US, made equal amounts from advertising and database sales. The investment Packer made in my trip was to be returned by doubling the revenue of the trade stable using the knowledge newly acquired on that trip.
Computers were instrumental in managing this volume of information,
but there was only a nascent computer network, that information was collected exclusively
via the postal and telephone networks and collated on computers in media
company head offices.
The surveillance state and the commercial publishing industry
moved in parallel to extend those capacities as more of us began to participate
electronically, but the model existed well before the World Wide Web or mobile
phone.
The importance of understanding this is to realise that the
manipulation of people through collecting and collating information about their
participation in public entertainment, spectacle and conversation is not new, and
has always been the justification for funding and developing many of the public
institutions that we consider to be important pillars of civilisation.
Power, the individual and the State
It has always been the case that institutional power, regardless of its philosophical justification, demands the sacrifice of the individual. Every solider is prepared to die for their General, Commander, King or cause. We bow down in worship because we understand, ie stand under, the Omnipresent power of our God, gods, their divine representatives or our local bully boy.
It is the nature of the organisation to protect itself and an essential ingredient of that operating principle that no individual is above the law, the lord, Lord or the lore. The dark side of that principle is intimate state control of your person through surveillance and coercion.
Venice, the Innovation Hub that harnessed the printing press and double entry accounting to dominate European commerce and intellectual life for two centuries used a sophisticated surveillance state to underpin it’s rule of law. Shylock’s pound of flesh was the sacrifice made buy every Venetian to keep the riches flowing.
The notion that the common good is served by individual rights is a relatively modern proposition known as liberal humanism. It assumes that we can align personal desires with the needs of the state and so govern in the broader interests of the people. It conflates all of us, with each of us.
Cooperative sensibilities are generally promoted by conservative
governments in good times and progressive or radical governments in tough times.
We sacrifice our individual freedoms for the common good when we are convinced
we will be better off doing so. Sometimes that conviction stems from fear, at
other times by opportunity, but the system always comes unstuck when the contract
does not hold.
Brexit, Trump, Erdogan, Duterte, and Bolsonaro are all made
possible by the end of the continuous growth enjoyed over the last fifty years.
Thanks to cheap oil, the ‘democratisation’ of debt and an increase in the
global population by an order of magnitude we enjoyed three drivers of economic
plenty that ensured we were each better off than our parents. Now those drivers
have dried up, we fight over the scraps, yelling at each other “What about me?”
The supreme selfishness evolving from a lifetime of unfettered affluence (literally) has now run headlong into the harsh reality that there is rarely enough to satisfy everyone and some of us get our share at the expense of others. The advocates of abundance-thinking do not work in African mines or live in trash mountains on the fringes of the world’s megacities. Europeans across the planet consider their freedom of choice as a benefit of the Enlightenment. The awful truth is that Free Thought has been built on an affluence that has been won by conquest.
The relevance of this to the debate about how to best ‘recover’ the independence of the world’s media is to check our privilege. We have experienced the luxury of the welfare state, a free press and relatively even distribution of wealth, that does not make it our natural right.
The battle for power using new communications technologies is only now taking shape. An attempt to preserve twentieth century business models because we understand them is the modern equivalent of defending horse-drawn transport on the basis of the revolutionary nature of the automobile. It is true, but it is irrelevant. It is a distraction from the real problem of maximising the benefits of the revolution and avoiding its greatest dangers.
Reality Check
I am not advocating that we should roll over to the narco-villians, arms traders or energy ogliarchs, pop the blue pill and harness ourselves to the matrix. I am, though, suggesting that it is not enough to invoke the righteous wrath of John Stuart Mills or the poetry of Pablo Nerada in the hope that we might shame the one-per-crore into putting down the reins of power and raising Vaclav Pavel from the dead so that he can run Google.
Had governments a century ago thought through the impact of the car on the village, the inner city and the market town, transport policy may have been more broadly discussed and less nineteenth century infrastructure dismantled. On the other hand, maintaining horse troughs and street sweepers would not have proved terribly productive.
The role of governments in the media is extremely chequered. The Australian Broadcasting Cooperation like the British version on which it is modeled has a long and proud tradition of independence and calling truth to power. On the other hand government media and communications policy has been shaped to benefit its powerful owners.
We now need to start imagining and demanding the services made possible by the network and imagining the way we communicate in 50, 100 and 500 years. Along the way we will need to crack the heads of the constantly evolving rogues who mis-use it to gain personal advantage at the expense of the rest of us but that regulation is very different role from planning and building it properly.
The printing press combined with numeracy and modern accounting to bring down the Church, empower the Guilds and fund the enlightenment. That involved bloody revolutions, religious fundamentalism and global imperialism at the same time as it nurtured the human rights of Europeans. It banished the epic poem and the oral tradition at the same time as it vastly democratised language, created the scientific journal and the newspaper.
The Internet will have a similar revolutionary effect and
will be just as messy. It is time we stopped bleating about what we are losing
and started focusing on what we might build.
Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies – socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor – and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food. John Pilger
Help one person at a time, and start with the one nearest to you. Mother Teresa
The Plague Species grows by nearly 1/4 million daily. Extinctions (excluding micro organisms) and toxification will only worsen.
Steve Kurtz
This was not a good year for journalists. 80 members of the press have been killed in 2018, at least 60 are currently being held hostage, and nearly 350 are being detained. Of those who were killed over 40 were targeted murders. Julian Assange still held hostage. Reporters Without Borders
Who will rebuild after a climate disaster as workers retire and weather worsens? We simply don’t have enough tradespeople to rebuild after an event. Presently we are three months out from the next tornados hitting Ottawa and there are whole apartment units that haven’t been touched and are filled with snow because there hasn’t been anybody available to work on them. David Burke
‘Conservation never ends’: 40 years in the kingdom of gorillas
While studying Rwanda’s critically endangered mountain gorillas in the 1970s, newlywed graduate students Amy Vedder and Bill Weber learned that the government was considering converting gorilla habitat into a cattle ranch. At the time, conventional wisdom held that the mountain gorillas would inevitably go extinct. But Vedder and Weber believed the species could be saved, and proposed a then-revolutionary ecotourism scheme to the Rwandan government. Forty years later, that scheme has proved its worth. Mountain gorilla populations have rebounded, and tourism generates hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Vedder and Weber now work to inspire the next generation of conservationists both in Rwanda and abroad.
PICA year of hard-fought wins in conservation
There were other things happening out there too: conservation successes, huge wins for global health, more peace and tolerance, less war and violence, rising living standards, some big clean energy milestones, and a quiet turning of the tide in the fight against plastic. Stories of human progress, that didn’t make it into the evening broadcasts, or onto your social media feeds.
And for more happy news click here. Lets hope we may be in time
In 2017, Darebin Council in Victoria, Australia, became the first council in the world to declare a climate emergency. They wrote a Climate Emergency Plan and in 2018 held a Climate Emergency Conference. https://www.yoursaydarebin.com.au/climateaction
Recently, London became the third city in the UK to declare a Climate Emergency, after Bristol and Manchester, with Totnes and Stroud following soon after. The London emergency transition program will include retrofitting buildings, creating a national electricity system that runs without creating greenhouse gas emissions, and electrifying the transportation system.
There are now 21 councils and cities that have declared a climate emergency and eight of these declarations were in the last two weeks!
In the US, The Climate Mobilization succeeded in having emergency climate action and a World War two-scale mobilisation written into the platform of the Democratic Party. Newly elected Democrats are pushing hard for a Green New Deal.
So, now we have the story. Stage wars in small S**hole countries to strike terror, and against the bigger more determined like Russia and China only threaten and rattle the sabres, but under no circumstances risk a real war. That might hurt. The expensive might of America may be used only to destroy the weak but merely to bully the strong.
The Pentagon Wants You to Go Shopping While the Experts Go to War
People are calling the US wars failures – Afghanistan, Syria, etc. But suppose this was not their purpose? Suppose the most powerful military on earth was not created to conquer but to destabilise and overawe? Suppose that institutional instability was the real aim? The benefits are many. People in these countries are then too busy surviving to prevent the theft of their assets; leadership too fragmented to construct a defence against the Empire; nations too deeply in shock to realise what is being done to them. In this scenario every country should be made into willing allies – like the UK and Australia – or shambles. Then there is nobody to oppose the Imperial will.
Americans are in the dark about the near-global warfare being waged in their name. Societal degradation and democratic implosion, caused in part by endless phoney war and the lies associated with it, are this country’s real existential enemies, even if you can’t find them listed in any National Defence Strategy. Indeed, the price tag for America’s wars may in the end prove not just heavy but catastrophic.Iceland elects 41-year-old environmentalist as prime minister
One of the most well-liked politicians in Iceland, Katrín, a former education minister and avowed environmentalist, has pledged to set Iceland on the path to carbon neutrality by 2040. As Iceland’s fourth prime minister in only two years, Katrín will take office at a time when national politics have been tainted by public distrust and scandal. A democratic socialist, Katrín is viewed as a bridge-building leader that may lead the country towards positive, incremental change. “She is the party leader who can best unite voters from the left and right,” Democratic Party Platform
The US cannot wait for another nation to lead the world in combating the global climate emergency. We must move first in launching a green industrial revolution, because that is the key to getting others to follow; and because it is in our own national interest to do so. Our generation now must lead a World War II-type national mobilisation to save civilisation from catastrophic consequences. In the first 100 days of the next administration, the President will convene a summit of the world’s best engineers, climate scientists, climate experts, policy experts, activists and indigenous communities to chart a course toward the healthy future we all want for our families and communities.40 years ago we had the chance to save the planet.
In the 1970s it was clear we needed to act on fossil fuels, and even the big producers supported action. By 183 the voices of caution and uncertainty were dampening any sense of urgency. Within ten years the sense of urgency was gone and the US government and the press moved to counter action. Attention was concentrated on diversions, such as the hole in the ozone layer which took the pressure off the fossil fuel industry. Inaction has just solidified since then, with hints of progress to still the opposition.
Rise of carbon dioxide–absorbing mountains in tropics may set thermostat for global climate
Many mountains in Indonesia and neighbouring Papua New Guinea consist of ancient volcanic rocks from the ocean floor that were caught in a colossal tectonic collision between a chain of island volcanoes and a continent, and thrust high. Lashed by tropical rains, these rocks hungrily react with CO2 and sequester it in minerals. That is why, with only 2% of the world’s land area, Indonesia accounts for 10% of its long-term CO2 absorption. Its mountains could explain why ice sheets have persisted, waxing and waning, for several million years (although they are now threatened by global warming). Now, researchers have extended that theory, finding that such tropical mountain-building collisions coincide with nearly all of the half-dozen significant glacial periods in the past 500 million years.
If anyone thinks that mass protests and marching on the streets is going to achieve anything, then watch these two. If the streets can be cleared how do our greater numbers have any impact. With this system, now well-developed in China, you wont want to march any more – not if the pollies feel threatened. A new strategy is needed. Its urgent to consider this, for the media is owned by the fossil fuel industry and the internet and social media can be switched off at the first hint of real trouble. Do we have any other role than to be consumers? ????? And to this add swarms of miniature killer drones, and we the people may be forced to stay home and be mindlessly entertained.
620 KM Long Women’s Wall of Kerala Challenges Brahmanical Patriarchy
About 3-5 million women formed a wall across Kerala to protect to protect Kerala’s renaissance values and for women empowerment. About three million women stood shoulder to shoulder across Kerala and formed 620 KM “wall” from Thiruvananthapuram to the northern district of Kasaragod. They also pledged to protect the renaissance values of Kerala. The wall was organised against the backdrop of the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala temple entry of menstruating women. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the wall was to save Kerala being ‘dragged back into the era of darkness’. The wall saw massive participation cutting across class/caste/religious barriers. Expressing solidarity, thousands of men also lined up parallel forming a second human ‘wall’.
PIC The Gathering Climate Storm and the Media Cover-up
With the exception of the few who comprehend the nature of a Faustian Bargain, some billionaires, captains of industry and their political and media mouthpieces are driving humanity toward self-destruction through the two biggest enterprises on Earth, the fossil fuel industry, which is devastating the Earth atmosphere, and the industrial-military machine leading toward nuclear war. The rest of the world is dragged subconsciously, induced by bread and circuses. The Emissions Gap Report 2018 from the UN lays out the past failure with brutal clarity.
This year will most likely be the fourth warmest year on record since 1880, with the past five years the warmest ever recorded. Worse, in 2017 emissions increased once again, after three years of stagnation. We are still to turn this corner.
Furthermore, the “determined commitments” made in Paris in 2015, would be insufficient, even if implemented, to keep the temperature below 1.5C. Instead, current commitments imply global warming of about 3C, with warming continuing afterwards. Moreover, the shift has to start now.
The commitments announced so far are inadequate. The climate talks in Katowice, Poland, have not changed this, particularly now that the US is an egregious free-rider. Yet, even without US backsliding, the commitments are inadequate.
What makes this so depressing is that a zero-carbon economy is now both feasible and affordable. The tragedy is that while the scientists and technologists have won the argument, the climate sceptics and deniers have effectively won the policy debate: we are doing far too little, far too late.Here’s what may be driving a US troop withdrawal from Syria
Turkish forces want to push their troops into Syria. The U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds want to keep the Turkish forces out. And the U.S. has struggled for months to keep both players happy.mA confrontation between the U.S and Turkey, officially NATO allies, would create a geopolitical crisis at the heart of the world’s most powerful military alliance.
National debt interest will soon exceed national defence spending
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the interest payments will surpass Medicaid costs within 18 months and that they will exceed all national defence spending by 2023. By 2025, the interest will surge past the combined totals of all non-defence discretionary programs together, including funding for national parks, scientific research, health care, education, the court system and infrastructure. Between now and 2023 nearly three-quarters of the federal debt will mature and must be refinanced at whatever the presumably higher interest rates are in effect then.
$800M in Taxpayer Money Went to Funding For-Profit Immigrant Prisons in 2018
While President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda has been disastrous—and deadly—for asylum-seekers fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries, a Daily Beast investigation published on Thursday found that the White House’s xenophobic policies have been a major boon for the private prison industry at the expense of American taxpayers.The beginning of the water wars
There is no doubt, Egypt will be in serious problems if the level of the Nile actually sinks. And it is not only Ethiopia with its new Renaissance Dam threatening the water flow of the Nile. The African countries around Lake Victoria also make their claims. East Africa seeks more Nile water from Egypt. Egypt considers such claims as a declaration of war. The countries recognise that, without co-operation, if you add climate change and growing populations the future is a very risky. Egypt and Ethiopia have tried their best to defuse the potential armed conflict, and with some success so far. The negotiations are based on the Nile water treaty of 1929, in which Egypt and Sudan were given rights to a stipulated amount of water and safeguard Egypt’s historic rights by giving Egypt full reservations on any agreement concerning the flow of the water. The East African countries no longer accept old agreements made by the colonial rulers in the Nile countries.
Peak Trump
Whatever you might think of Trump’s record in office, the last two years were something of a honeymoon for Donald Trump. The president will never again have so many levers of power at his disposal. After the mid-term elections, the Democrats control the House of Representatives by a significant margin of more than 30 seats, and able to block Trump’s legislative agenda. They will also use their control of committees to launch multiple investigations into Trump personally (such as his tax returns), into his 2016 campaign (including campaign financing), and into the actions of his administration (for instance, the use of his office to increase his family’s wealth). In 2019, Trump will face greater pressure from the investigation by Robert Mueller. So far, this investigation under the auspices of the FBI has resulted in five guilty verdicts for Trump associates. Growth of CO₂ in the atmosphere to be accelerating.
And it’s not just carbon dioxide emissions that are rising. Methane emissions are rising as well. Sadly, politicians typically ignore this elephant in the room, i.e. seafloor methane emissions that threaten to trigger a huge temperature rise within years. In December sea surface temperature anomalies were as high as 8.9°C in the Pacific and as high as 10.1°C in the Atlantic. Albedo change is one of the feedbacks that the IPCC has yet to come to grips with, and merely hoped it would somehow compensated for by albedo gain in the Antarctic.
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