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.
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.
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?
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
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
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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,”
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.
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/ 