A pan-Asia high-speed train has left the station – and India – behind. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which would have been the largest free trade deal in the world, was not signed in Bangkok. It will probably be signed next year in Vietnam, assuming New Delhi goes beyond what ASEAN, with diplomatic finesse barely concealing frustration, described as “outstanding issues, which remain unresolved.”

The partnership uniting 16 nations – the ASEAN 10 plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and, in theory, India – would have congregated 3.56 billion people and 29% of world trade.

Predictably, it was billed as the big story among the slew of high-profile meetings linked to the 35th ASEAN summit in Thailand, as RCEP de facto further integrates Asian economies with China just as the Trump administration is engaged in a full spectrum battle against everything from the Belt and Road Initiative to Made in China 2025.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng was blunt: “It’s the 15 nations that have decided to move forward first.” And he added “there won’t be any problem for the 15 nations to sign RCEP next year,” when Vietnam takes over as the chair of ASEAN.

It’s not hard to figure out where the “problem” lies.

Mahathir ‘disappointed’

Diplomats confirmed that New Delhi came up with a string of last-minute demands in Thailand, forcing many to work deep into the night with no success. Thailand’s Commerce Minister, Jurin Laksanawisit, tried to put on a brave face: “The negotiation last night was conclusive.”

It was not. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad – whose facial expression in the family photo was priceless, as he shook hands with Aung San Suu Kyi on his left and nobody on his right – had already given away the game. “We’re very disappointed,” he said, adding: “One country is making demands we cannot accept.”

ASEAN, that elaborate monument to punctilious protocol and face-saving, insists the few outstanding issues “will be resolved by February 2020,” with the text of all 20 RCEP chapters complete “pending the resolution of one” member.

RCEP dwells across a large territory, covering trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property and dispute resolution. The Indian “problem” is extremely complex. India in fact already has a free trade agreement with ASEAN.

CEP, in practice, would extend this agreement to the other big boys, including China, Japan and South Korea.

New Delhi insists it is defending farmers, dairy owners, the services industry, sectors of the automobile industry – especially hybrid and electric cars, and very popular three-wheelers – and mostly small businesses all across the nation, which would be devastated by an augmented tsunami of Chinese merchandise.

Agriculture, textile, steel and mining interests in India are totally against RCEP.

Yet New Delhi never mentions quality Japanese or South Korean products. It’s all about China. New Delhi argues that signing what is widely interpreted as a free trade agreement with China would explode its already significant US$57 billion a year trade deficit.

The barely disguised secret is that India’s economy, as the historical record shows, is inherently protectionist. There’s no way a possible removal of agricultural tariffs protecting farmers would not provoke a social cataclysm.

Modi, who is not exactly a bold statesman with a global vision, is between a heavy rock and a very hard place. President Xi Jinping offered him a “100-year plan” for China-India partnership at their last informal, bilateral summit.

India is a fellow BRICS member, it’s part of the Russia-India-China troika that is actually at the center of BRICS and is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Geopolitically as well as geoeconomically, it hardly makes sense for India to be out of RCEP – which means excluded from East Asia and Southeast Asia integration. The only feasible solution might be an elaborate bilateral India-China deal within RCEP.

Questions remain whether both players would be able to work that out before the Vietnam summit in 2020.

Putting it all together

India was only part of the story of the summit fest in Thailand. At the important East Asia Summit, everyone was actively discussing multiple paths towards multilateralism.

The Trump administration is touting what it calls the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy – which is yet another de facto China containment strategy, congregating the US, India, Japan and Australia. Indo-Pacific is very much on Modi’s mind. The problem is “Indo-Pacific,” as the US conceives of it, and RCEP are incompatible.

ASEAN, instead, came up with its own strategy: ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) – which incorporates all the usual transparency, good governance, sustainable development and rules-based tenets plus details on connectivity and maritime disputes.

All the ASEAN 10 are behind AOIP, which is, in fact, an original Indonesian idea. It’s fascinating to know that Bangkok and Jakarta worked together behind closed doors for no fewer than 18 months to reach a full consensus among the ASEAN 10.

The biggest story in Thailand was, in fact, the convergence of myriad moves towards Asia integration. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang was lavishly praising the prospects of integrating Belt and Road with something called the Master Plan of ASEAN Activity, which is the connectivity part of AOIP.

South Korea’s Moon Jae-in jumped in extolling the merits of his Southern Policy, which is essentially northeast-southeast Asia integration. And don’t forget Russia.

At the ASEAN business and investment summit, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev put it all together; the blossoming of the Greater Eurasian Partnership, uniting the Eurasia Economic Union, ASEAN and Shanghai Cooperation Organization, not to mention, in his words, “other possible structures,” which is code for Belt and Road.

Belt and Road is powerfully advancing its links to RCEP, Eurasia Economic Union and even South America’s Mercosur – when Brazil finally kicks Jair Bolsonaro out of power.

Medvedev noted that this merging of interests was unanimously supported at the Russia-ASEAN summit in Sochi in 2016. Vietnam and Singapore have already clinched free trade deals with Eurasia Economic Union, and Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia are on their way.

Medvedev also noted that a trade and economic cooperation deal between China and Eurasia Economic Union was signed in late October. Next is India, and a preferential trade agreement between the union and Iran has also been signed.

In Thailand, the Chinese delegation did not directly address the United States’ Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy. But Medvedev did, forcefully: “We are in favor of maintaining the effective system of state-to-state relations which was formed on the basis of ASEAN and has shown a good track record over the years.

“In this regard, we believe the US initiative is a serious challenge for ASEAN countries, since it can weaken the association’s position and strip it of its status as a key player in addressing regional security problems.”

Summits come and go. But what just happened in Thailand will remain as another graphic illustration of myriad, concerted moves leading towards progressive, irreversible Asia – and Eurasia – integration. It’s up to Modi to decide when and if to hop on the train.

Pepe Escobar is correspondent-at-large at Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook.

“Give Peace a Chance” is the key motto for China’s peace philosophy throughout her 70-years Revolution, often against challenging situations, especially in the last decade with almost permanent aggressions of one kind or another by the United States and their coopted allies in Europe. China is a tremendous challenge for the west, not only because of her sheer size and economic and technological advances, but also because China seeks peaceful cooperation and development around the globe.

The West does not seek Peace. Peace is bad for business. War is good and profitable, as such renown mainstream journals as the Washington Post have openly propagated in their op-ed columns time and again. Anecdotally, both world wars were initiated in the west. This is the premise under which the permanent western aggressions against the east, especially the leadership of the east, China and Russia, are being waged.

The motto of non-aggression and Peace – a Tao doctrine – prevails in China’s foreign policy as the top principle, as of this date. And there is no indication that China will depart from this Peace dogma which has brought her internal stability, international recognition – and has made China over the last decades to one of the world’s foremost economies, as well as a leader in technological and environmental advances. This, despite constant western castigating for pirating western technology and destroying the environment. The demonization is like a propaganda tool to deviate the world’s attention from western capitalist disasters around the world. But China moves on, undisturbed, generously, with a vision for a common future for mankind all mankind, not just China.

On 1 October, China celebrated the 70^th Anniversary of her Revolution. China’s vision began with the Chinese Revolution,when China’s leader of the Communist Party, Mao Zedong, declared the Independent People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949, succeeding the Republic of China (1912). In fact, China’s Revolution already began just after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), at the end of WWII, with the Chinese Civil war (1945 – 1949), also called the War of Liberation.

The International Forum on “China’s 70-Year Development and the Construction of the Community with a Shared Future for Mankind”– 5-6 November in Shanghai, is part of the celebration. It is a forward-looking event with a Chinese vision for the future. To better grasp that vision for the future, here is a quick look at the past.

History with Foresight

Visionary Chairman Mao Zedong wanted to finally free the people of China from hundreds of years of western colonization and oppression, from the calamities of Opium Wars I and II (British imposed 1839-1842, and 1856-1860) and engaged the Chinese Communist Party (CPC – Communist Party of China) in an all-out confrontation with the Kuomintang (KMT), or the second phase of the Civil War (1945 – 1949).  The KMT, also called the Nationalist Party, was led by General Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded KMT’s founder, Sun Yat-sen, after his death in 1925.

Chiang Kai-shek had the support of the United States, whose main objectives were stopping the “spread” of communism and maintaining continuous access to China’s riches, mostly in the form of natural resources, but also by exploiting the Chinese labor force. Washington ordered Chiang to break all relations with the Soviet Union – and to eliminate the threat of a communist leadership in China. This led to a lingering on and off conflict from the 1920s onwards between KMT and the CPC (also considered the first phase of the Civil War).

Hostilities began shortly after the foundation of the KMT in 1919 which was ‘helped’ by the United States. While Mao and his Communist Party emerged as the winner of the Civil War in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his followers took over the Chinese Province of Taiwan, where Kuomintang is still the ruling party. China’s non-aggression against the occupation of Taiwan is one of the many demonstrations of China’s peaceful diplomatic approach to conflict.

The current President of the Republic of China, as Taiwan calls itself, although it is a part of China, is Tsai Ing-wen, a politician and professor, in office since 2016. He caters entirely to the interests of Washington and the west in general, even vying to buy independently – and totally illegally – weapons from the US. While part of the PRC, Taiwan enjoys a certain autonomy, again compliments of China’s non-belligerent approach to conflicts.

Today, Taiwan is still recognized by 14 countries out of 193 UN members as the official representative of China. This, despite the fact that the UN declared the People’s Republic of China already in 1971 as the official representative of China with one of the five permanent seats in the UN Security Council (UNSC). Countries recognizing Taiwan as official China, still bending over to please Washington, are becoming fewer and fewer, as China is emerging as the number one economy of the world; call it socioeconomy, because China’s advancements are not just measured by the western standards of linear economic growth, but promote distributive growth, encompassing also vast improvements of people’s quality of life.

Mao’s victory brought a new era to the Chinese people. With what he called the Great Leap Forward (1958 – 1962), Mao and the CPC led a social and economic campaign converting the rural agrarian areas into a socialist industrialized economy through communal farming or agricultural cooperatives. This 4-year effort was constantly attacked and disrupted by infiltrated anticommunist saboteurs at a high social and monetary cost for China. But it served as a learning phase. China’s flamboyant rise to the second (by some accounts the first) world economy, proved that the lessons helped defeat US interference then and today.

The ten-year Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976) was Mao’s sociopolitical movement aiming at cleaning socialist China from infiltrated capitalist elements and influences. Then, and to some extent still today, China was full with so-called Fifth Columnists, a term coined during the Spanish Civil war, when General Franco’s Nazi-party, the “Falange”, were able to defeat the legitimately elected Republicans, because the “Falange” had what they called a “Fifth Column” clandestinely embedded among the Republican defense forces in Madrid. Today Fifth Columnists are everywhere. They come in all shapes and forms, including disguised as western NGOs, in every country that Washington and its western allies want to dominate and provoke ‘regime change’.  It was clear that the west, predominantly the emerging US empire, wanted to disrupt Mao’s revolution; they would not let China flourish under her own political, communist values and believes.

Foreign meddling in China’s Revolution came at a huge cost for China. As a consequence, Mao’s revolutions are often portrayed by the west as failures, the usual western tarnishing the success of other nations, of other socioeconomic systems, in order to hide the west’s own disastrous failures. From a Chinese and humanitarian perspective, Mao’s Revolutions have drastically improved the public education and health system, have eradicated endemic deadly diseases inherited from the western dominated colonial and KMT times – and, foremost, poverty was largely eradicated. As of these days, about 750 million people have been lifted out poverty. Alleviation of poverty was an emphasis under both of Mao’s Revolutions. These Revolutions also taught valuable lessons to Chinese scholars and future leaders – and have drastically advanced China towards food self-sufficiency which she reached by 2018.

It is thanks to these lessons that, after Mao’s death in 1976, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, led China through a far-reaching economic reform, including elements of a market economy, however always under central government control – a principle that is maintained as of today. Deng called the new Chinese economic model “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, a principal that continues today. He helped develop China into the world’s fastest-growing economy, improving the lives of hundreds of millions of citizens. Deng also masterminded the return of Hong Kong from a UK colony to China in 1997, and Macau from Portugal in 1999. The transition was completed by Deng’s successor, Jian Zemin.

Deng retired in 1992. His successor, Jian Zemin, had several high-ranking positions in previous governments and was President of the PRC from 1993 – 2003. Jian opened China further for foreign investments and trade. He visited the US in 1997, where he met with President Clinton. Jian followed a non-confrontational foreign policy, like his predecessors, strengthened relations with western partners, especially the United States – and maintained at home an economic annual growth of at least 8%. This led to an explosion of wealth, but also initially to a less than optimal distribution of wealth, most of which concentrated along China’s eastern shores, risking conflicts with the lesser developed Chinese “hinterland”.

Hu Jintao followed Juan Zemin as China’s Paramount Leader from 2002 to 2012. Hu, as a rather modest leader, along with his Premier, Wen Jiabao, and his Vice-President, Xi Jinping, continued the policy of economic growth and development, achieving more than a decade of double-digit growth, however shifting the economy gradually more to non-consumption growth, fostering, instead, socioeconomic equality, aiming at building a “Harmonious Socialist Society”.

Hu was seeking a prosperous China, free of internal social conflicts and pursued internally and externally a “peaceful development policy” – with ‘soft power’ meaning a diplomatic approach to foreign policy issues, that was never confrontational. During Hu’s rule China increased its influence in Africa and Latin America, laying the groundwork for future closer relationships with these regions. Hu was also known for shared and consensus-based leadership. Hu was succeeded in 2013 by Xi Jinping.

The Vision

Enter the era of President Xi Jinping. He is a lawyer, chemical engineer, philosopher – and visionary. On 7 September 2013, President Xi Jinping gave a speech at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University, in which he spoke about ‘People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. He referred to the Ancient Silk Road of more than 2,100 years ago, that flourished during China’s Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

Referring to this epoch of more than 2,000 years back, Xi Jinping pointed to the history of exchanges under the Ancient Silk Road, saying,

“they had proven that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.”

Xi’s vision may be shaping the world of the 21^st Century. He designed and engineered the Belt and Road Initiative, loosely modeled according to the Ancient Silk Road, soon after assuming the Presidency in 2013. He launched this ground-breaking “project”, a fabulous idea to connect the world with transport routes, infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, teaching and research institutions, cultural exchange and much more. Enshrined in China’s Constitution, BRI has become the flagship for China’s foreign policy.

BRI is literally building bridges and connecting people of different continents and nations. The purpose of the New Silk Road is “to construct a unified large market and make full use of both international and domestic markets, through cultural exchange and integration, to enhance mutual understanding and trust of member nations, ending up in an innovative pattern with capital inflows, talent pool, and technology database”.

During the 19^th National Congress in 2017, BRI was included in the Chinese (CPC) Constitution as an amendment to promote the BRI’s objective of “shared interests” and “shared growth” which are major political objectives for China. This amendment to the Constitution for raising international cooperation through a multifaceted socioeconomic development endeavor is unique in China’s history. It fits precisely the theme of the present Forum, “The Construction of the Community with a shared Future for Mankind”.

The BRI is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese Government, eventually with investments in more than 150 countries and international organizations – and growing – in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. BRI is a multi-trillion investment scheme, for transport routes on land and sea, as well as construction of industrial and energy infrastructure, energy exploration, cultural exchange and integration facilities, education and research institutions – as well as trade among connected countries; and, unlike WTO (World Trade Organization), BRI is allowing nations to benefit from their comparative advantages, creating win-win situation. In essence, BRI is to develop mutual understanding and trust among member nations, allowing for free capital flows, a pool of experts and access to a BRI-based technology data base.

At present, BRI’s closing date is foreseen for 2049 which coincides with new China’s 100^th Anniversary. The size and probable success of the program indicates, however, already today that it will most likely be extended way beyond that date. It is worth noting, though, that only in 2019, six years after its inception, BRI has become a news item in the West. Remarkably, for six years BRI was denied, or ignored by the western media, in the hope it may go away. But away it didn’t go. To the contrary, many European Union members have already subscribed to BRI, including Greece, Italy, France, Portugal – and more will follow, as the temptation to participate in this projected socioeconomic boom is overwhelming.

Germany is mulling over the benefits and contras of participating in BRI. The German business community, like business throughout Europe, is strongly in favor of lifting US-imposed sanctions and reconnecting with the East, in particular with China and Russia. But the official Berlin is still with one foot in the White House – and with the other trying to appease the German – and European – world of business. This balancing act is in the long run not sustainable and certainly not desirable. At present BRI is already actively involved in over 80 countries, of which at least half of the EU membership.

To counteract the pressure to join BRI, the European Union, basically run by NATO and intimately linked to Washington, has initiated their own ‘Silk Road’, to connect Asia with Europe through Japan. In that sense, the EU and Japan have signed a “free trade agreement” which includes a compact to build infrastructure, in sectors such as energy, transport and digital devices. The purpose is to strengthen economic and cultural ties between the two regions, boosting business relations between Asia and Europa. It is an obvious attempt to compete with or even sideline China’s BRI. But it is equally obvious that this response will fail. Usually initiatives taken in ill-fate are not successful. And China, non-belligerent China, is unlikely to challenge this EU-Japan competitive approach.

China’s New Silk Road is creating a multipolar world, where all participants will benefit. The idea is to encourage economic growth, distributed in a balanced way, so as to prioritize development opportunities for those most in need. That means the under-developed areas of western China, eastern Russia, Central Asia, Central Europe – reaching out to Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, as well as to South East Asia and the Pacific. BRI is already actively building and planning some six to ten land and maritime routes, connecting Africa, the Middle East, Europe and South America (see map, above).

The expected multi-trillion-dollar equivalent dynamic budget is expected to be funded by China, largely, but not exclusively, by the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), by Russia – and by all the countries that are part of BRI and involved in singular or multi-country projects.

Implementing BRI, or the New Silk Road, is itself the realization of a vision of nations: Peaceful interconnectivity, joint infrastructure and industrial development, as well as joint management of natural resources. For example, BRI may help with infrastructure and management advice resolving or preventing conflicts on transboundary water resources. There are some 263 transboundary lake and river basins, covering almost half the earth’s surface and involving some 150 countries. In addition, there are about 300 transboundary aquifers serving about 2 billion people who depend on groundwater.

Water resources, life depends on them.

If these resources are not properly managed, by, say, one or several parties taking advantage of the other users, a conflict is born. Often such conflicts can become violent. BRI may turn this source of potential hostilities around into a source for peace. Water is among the most shared resources on earth, and as such it may serve as an instrument for peaceful connectivity.

The Chinese government calls the Silk Road Initiative “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”. With freshwater resources rapidly diminishing for ready use in the public domain, because of industrial and human pollution and privatization, management of water resources and transboundary water in particular, may be constructed into a “Shared Future for Mankind.” The Belt and Road Initiative may provide the guiding principles for this shared future of life’s essential resource – water.

Today, “Give Peace a Chance” is more relevant than ever. And China is a vanguard in promoting peaceful development across the globe. During the Cuban Conference “For a World in Equilibrium” of January 2019, one of the Chinese representatives said very unequivocally in his presentation, “we are building bridges between people and nations to connect the world peacefully”. Undoubtedly, he is right and was referring to President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, or the New Silk Road.

The same can unfortunately not be said about the West which is, instead, building walls, predominantly the US, followed by her European vassals, either physical walls, or walls by conflicts, wars and – walls by “economic sanction”, by which they strangle and kill people en masse. Whenever a government does not share the US neoliberal doctrines, or refuses to bend to their dictate and efforts to plunder a country of natural resources, it is first subject to atrocious sanctions, then to military intervention with the goal of regime change. All that is possible, because the western world is run by the fiat dollar system, under which all international transactions have to transit through an American bank, foremost a Wall Street bank. That’s how they block transfers, confiscate and steal money in banks all over the world.

In Venezuela sanctions started soon after President Hugo Chavez was elected as President in 1998. They were severely enhanced under Obama in 2014, and President Trump squeezed the country even more in 2017. In August 2019 Trump tightened the noose of economic strangulation to the maximum, “the most that any country has been sanctioned”, he proudly proclaimed, blocking and confiscating government accounts, including national reserve accounts and gold all around the western world. They are seizing Venezuelan assets in the US and internationally, intercepting ships and otherwise interrupting trade, for example blocking crucial medication and food stock from entering the country, while also threatening sanctions on countries that are trading with Venezuela.

According to Venezuelan officials, the financial losses since 2017 amount to at least 130 billion dollars. These funds represent goods and services, the absence of which compromises not only wellbeing but real lives of Venezuelans. The 130 billion dollars could amply supply food and medication for Venezuelans to live well and for hospitals to function with the necessary medication and equipment. In addition, the US was directing mercenaries and members of the government opposition to sabotage the countries electric system, which caused days, in some regions weeks of black-outs, a disaster for hospitals depending on electricity for refrigeration and lighting of operating theaters. Indeed, a recent study by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), in Washington, concluded that sanctions of the US and their European allies may have cost the lives of up to 40,000 Venezuelans. But Venezuela will not cave in and will survive, largely thanks to the support from China and Russia.

At this time could also be mentioned the 60 years blockade of Cuba, the US instigated wars on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the civil wars in Central America, Central Africa, the hostilities towards North Korea – and of course the constant aggressions vis-à-vis China and Russia – and much more. All for eradicating any “threat” of socialism that might spread as a positive alternative to boundless turbo-capitalism which is currently running the western world.

But enough about the west and its drive for world hegemony in flagrant disrespect of international law and Human Rights. It just goes to illustrate a few examples to juxtapose the west and the east, foremost China in alliance with Russia, whose approach is a multipolar socioeconomic development scheme, generous and peaceful, connecting people through trade and through BRI.

“The future is in the East” – so goes a progressive axiom. It is also my strong believe. By the East is meant China, Russia, most of Central Asia; now all represented by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or the Shanghai Pact. SCO is a Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance, the creation of which was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai, China by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The Pact was signed in June 2002 and entered into force in September 2013. SCO’s headquarters are in Beijing

Today, the SCO counts 8 members, including the member India and Pakistan. Iran and Mongolia are on a “waiting list”, on the verge of becoming members. Turkey, already a dialogue partner, is increasingly vying gaining SCO access, either through association or full membership. And this, despite the conflict it may create with Turkey’s NATO partners, mainly the US. Clearly, were Turkey to join the SCO, exit from NATO would be imminent – and disastrous for NATO, perhaps he stumbling block that would bring NATO down. Especially, since popular anti-NATO pressure from Italy to Germany, Greece, Spain and Portugal is steadily growing. Turkey is also the most strategically located NATO partner between East and West; between Europe and Asia, controlling the Bosporus, access to the Black Sea.

The SCO has also several observer and dialogue partners which eventually, it is assumed, may become full-fledged SCO members. The SCO is also called the alliance of the east and is considered a security pillar in more ways than one: SCO members account for almost half of the world population and for about one third of the world’s economic output. In other words, this eastern alliance is politically and economically autonomous and to a large extent detached from the western dollar based “sanction-prone” economy.

The SCO, a visionary Chinese initiative of the early 2000s, was overlaid and expanded in 2013 by another brilliant Chinese Initiative, the BRI. May also be added to this powerhouse another association of countries, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), primarily a trading partnership. The members are located in central and northern Asia, and include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The treaty was formally established in January 2015.

This block of eastern countries and associations is seeking against all odds, a multi-polar world, a world of Peace and Prosperity for All – a big challenge given the current socioeconomic disequilibrium – but feasible with mutual respect and a will to cooperate, to apply the forces of synergy and solidarity, as is inherent in the Belt and Road approach. The stakes are high. As Russia’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Lavrov pointed out during the 74^th UN General Assembly, in September 2019: “The West ignores reality by trying to prevent the formation of a multi-polar world by imposing its narrow “liberal” rules on others.” But, he added, “Western dominance is on the wane, ‘we’re liberals, so everything’s allowed’ just isn’t working anymore.” These words are the basis for a strong pillar and union of eastern associations.

Outlook and Vision

Economy

China has registered during the past decades a phenomenal economic growth rate, at times exceeding 12% per year. Today it has been on purpose reduced to about 6%, so as to allow a better distribution of the growth benefits, and also spread wealth more horizontally to create greater equality of wellbeing.

In figures and facts:

China’s GDP measured in US-dollars amounts to $14.2 trillion (nominal; 2019 est.), which corresponds to $27.3 trillion in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP; 2019 est.). This corresponds to US$ 10,153 / capita, in nominal term (2019 est.), to US$ 19,520 / capita measured by PPP.

Compare this with the US GDP of US$ 21.345 trillion in nominal terms (2019 est.) and $64,767 / per capita (2019 est.) This makes China the world’s second largest economy in nominal terms, expected to exceed the US by 2026. However, when comparing the two GDPs by their PPP values, China is number one; having surpassed the United States in 2016.

Measured by PPP, China is already today de facto the world’s largest economy, because the only figures that have any significance in economic production and consumption, are those that reflect the output’s purchasing power.

Examples of Economic Efficiency

New Airport in Beijing:

In only 4 years China built by far the world’s largest airport in Beijing, Daxin International Airport. It was ready for China’s 70^th Birthday on 1 October 2019, when it was inaugurated by President Xi Jinping. It has been operational the week after inauguration. This airport, an architectural wonder, covers some 700,000 m2 (almost 100 football fields) and carries passengers by fast train in 20 minutes to the center of Beijing. It is expected to accommodate in 2021 already 45 million passengers and can easily be expanded to receive and serve 100 million passengers as the need requires. This airport is a sign that China is capable of realizing extraordinary achievements – it signals a visionary future.

China’s Rapid Urbanization:

When in 2017, Beijing was faced with a housing shortage for low-wage migrant workers, they built 100,000 low-rent apartments in twelve months. The speed of China’s infrastructure development, the rapid urbanization, providing millions of new subsidized housing for migrant workers, is a model that has worked and is being replicated throughout China. In fact, pays off socially and economically. People who do not have to worry about shelter, are healthier and live and work better. China has been building homes for a million people–the entire housing stock of San Francisco – every month since 1950. This policy aims at and creates wellbeing among the workers, among the people – and is at the same time a solid tool for China’s economic development – and people’s happiness. China’s successful and rapid housing development is being closely watched by Australia, as her major cities, Sydney and Melbourne face similar problems.

Trade

China has been the world’s largest exporter of goods since 2009. Official estimates suggest Chinese exports amounted to about $2.1 trillion in 2017. The total annual value of the country’s exports equates to approximately $1,500 for every Chinese resident. Since 2013, China has as well become the world’s largest trading nation.China is also a significant importer and accounts for about 10% of total global imports, i.e., about US$ 1.7 trillion, leaving China as a net exporter with a trade surplus of about US$ 400 billion. – Trade war with the US– see below.

Monetary Policy

China’s Yuan, is a solid currency, backed by China’s economy and by gold. In 2017 the Yuan was admitted into the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) basket of reserve currencies, which constitute the SDR – or Special Drawing Rights. The SDR basket consists of five currencies and their respective weights are: US-Dollar $41.73%, Euro 30.93%, Renminbi (Chinese Yuan) 10.92%, Japanese Yen 8.33%, British Pound 8.09%. The Yuan is clearly undervalued in the SDR basket, as it is rapidly replacing the dollar as reserve currency. Treasurers around the globe realize that the US-dollar is fiat money, backed by nothing, whereas the Yuan is a solid currency, based on a solid economy, plus backed by gold.

The decline of the US dollar as a world reserve currency means that the US dollar hegemony is fading. This is inadmissible for the US. Therefore, Washington along with the major western allies are considering to abandon the key reserve role of the dollar and replacing it with some kind of an SDR, in which the dollar would maintain a prominent role, but its Ponzi-scheme characteristics would no longer be openly visible.

The current US debt to GDP ratio is about 105%. However, what the General Accounting Office calls “unmet obligations” amounts to about 700% of GDP (net present value – total outstanding obligations discounted to today’s value). According to former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, responding to a journalist’s question, “we will never pay back our debt; we will just print new money”. This is a dangerous pyramid, or Ponzi-scheme, of which most governments are aware, and yet many of them hold on to the dollar as key reserve currency. With the yuan rising, this may change rapidly. In fact, the conversion from dollar to yuan as reserve currency has already started.

Regarding the western foreseen reserve basket to “save” the dollar, it is not clear yet what the other currencies and their respective weight in the new “Reserve SDR” would be, but let’s assume the same five currencies. The Yuan, if still in the reserve basket would probably still be under-valued. If so, this might be a good reason for China to exit the Reserve SDR and continue with the Yuan by its own economic and monetary value as a reserve currency. The Yuan has made its reputation of stability and does no longer need the backing of a (western coined) SDR to prove its strength as a reserve currency.

The War on Tariffs

In June 2018, US President Trump started an unprovoked Trade War with China, then expanded it to other countries, including his European allies. But it is most ferocious with China. As usual, China’s response was not hostile. Retaliation, yes; but still an approach of seeking negotiations and compromise. In reality, the US market for China may be important, but not that important to be humiliated as was the case with the American bulldozer approach to impose not just tariffs, but tariffs that were nothing but a new form of economic sanctions.

The real meaning and purpose behind these tariffs was not reducing China’s exports in the first place, but harming the Yuan, as it was gaining strength and, as mentioned before, gradually taking over the US-dollar’s role as world reserve currency. Some 20 years ago the US dollar accounted for more than 90% of all reserve assets in nations’ treasuries around the globe. Today, that percentage has shrunk to less than 60% and is fading rapidly. Much of the lost territories by the US dollar was made up by the Chinese Yuan. And as the importance of the Yuan rises, the US hegemony of the world’s economy, resources and people will fade. This does not go down in Washington without a fight.

Future Economic Growth

China, in the near future, will most likely keep to a “modest” growth rate, around 5% to 7%, concentrating on horizontal distributive growth, with a focus on improved public wellbeing for all, universal access to affordable housing, basic infrastructure, water supply, sanitation, public transportation, rural higher education, as well as internal cultural exchange and harmonization. Two areas of economic development, ”horizontal growth”, may be singled out; (i) Artificial Intelligence (AI), and (ii) Environmental Improvement.

Technological Innovation

China is a Power House of new technologies and no doubt the world’s number one in Technological Innovation. Just to mention a few, not in order of priority:

• Rapidly progressing robotization of construction and manufacturing, as well as of medical interventions, like surgeries and localized cancer treatment;
• 3-D construction of serving a myriad of sectors, including manufacturing in the medical sector, medical equipment, human body replacement parts, production of construction materials – and more. China predicts in 20 to 30 years everybody (in China) will have access to individualized 3D building capacity;
• Face recognition technology, making traditional ID and bank account access cards obsolete and identity protection more secure;
• High-speed train systems, a domain where China has bypassed Japan and is the world’s number one; i.e. the high-speed railways Shanghai Maglev and Fuxing Hao CR400AF/BF;
• A new generation of garbage recycling – into building material, fertilizers, fuel as a source of energy – and more;
• Architecture and building efficiency, only two examples, (i) the new Beijing Daxin International Airport, the world’s largest, built in just 4 years, with a capacity of more than 100 million passengers per year – and a superb architecture; (ii) the “Birds Nest” – the stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics which will also be used for the 2022 Winter Olympics; it was built in less than 5 years and is an architectural masterpiece, and
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – see below.

China’s ambition: Everything is possible – and China has already proven that it can be done.

Artificial Intelligence (AI).China is also moving rapidly towards leadership in Technical Innovation for Artificial Intelligence, with plans to invest considerable resources into research. In 2017, the State Council (CCP) issued a “Next Generation Intelligence Development Plan”, including a US$ (equivalent) 2.1 billion AI industrial park. By 2025 the State Council predicts China to be a leader in AI research and predicts that China’s AI core industry will be worth some US$ 60 billion, amounting to about US$ 700 billion equivalent, when accounting for related industries. By 2030, the State Council expects China to be the global leader in development of AI.

Environmental Improvement.

China has made leaps in improving her environment, by far exceeding efforts of western countries. China’s environmental policies are developing BRI at home and abroad in shades of green. New parks with trees and areas for recreation are emerging in every major city in China. According to an expert at the School of Regulation and Global Governance of the Australian National University, Beijing has improved its air quality by 30% in the last five years.

A study of the University of Chicago demonstrates that Chinese cities have reduced the concentrations of fine particulates in the air on average by 32 % between 2014 and 2018.

The Chinese people and government are putting utmost importance to protecting the environment and ecosystems. Green development makes for improved public health, but is also attractive for investments.

China has a three-year “green” plan to improve air quality and tighten regulations. Air quality is one of the key environmental issue besetting China. In that sense, the government is accelerating the electrification of vehicles and has pledged that by 2030 all new cars will be powered by electricity.The government is also tackling drinking water quality and shortages, as well as improving urban and rural sanitation. These are longer-term propositions. Cost estimates for China’s overall environmental programs are not readily available but may easily reach into hundreds of billions of US-dollar equivalents over a ten-year period.

Conclusion

A few years ago, China, Russia and other SCO countries have started trading among themselves in their local currencies with a non-western monetary transfer system, using mostly the Chinese Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). It is out of control of the western SWIFT transfer system, thereby escapes the sanctions regime of the US. Gradually, the SCO and associated countries are detaching themselves from the western dollar-based fiat system.

In terms of trading, the SCO countries, mainly China, control most of the Asian markets, even making rapid inroads into Japan and Australia, and are evermore present in Latin America and Africa. Before long Europe will see the light and turn eastwards. It would be a wise decision. Dealing first within the confines of the huge Eurasian landmass, including the Middle East and parts of Africa – has been the logical way of trading since the Ancient Silk Road, more than 2,000 years ago.

China has a great visionary future that had already begun 70 years ago, and was enhanced six years ago with President Xi Jinping’s launching of the Belt and Road Initiative. BRI will continue spanning the globe for the next at least 50 to 100 years, spreading development in a multi-polar world, stressing equality and wellbeing for all. BRI investments may be counted in the multi-multi trillions and will be funded by China and the participating countries, with a socio-economic return that cannot be expressed in sheer monetary terms, as investments will also bring unfathomable social benefits, poverty reduction, improved health, higher and better education and, generally improving people’s wellbeing.

The bright side of this initiative, is the Chinese philosophy of non-aggression, of diplomacy to resolve conflicts and of promoting peaceful economic coexistence and development around the globe.

China’s determination to develop with a “green” economy, a “green” BRI and a horizontal distributive growth that emphasizes equality and inclusion is a landmark model for the world to embrace. It is a model to construct a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

The truth must be spoken with a view to the results it will produce in the sphere of action. As a specimen of a truth from which no results, or the wrong ones, follow, we can cite the widespread view that bad conditions prevail in a number of countries as a result of barbarism. In this view, Fascism is a wave of barbarism which has descended upon some countries with the elemental force of a natural phenomenon. According to this view, Fascism is a new, third power beside (and above) capitalism and socialism; not only the socialist movement but capitalism as well might have survived without the intervention of Fascism. And so on. This is, of course, a Fascist claim; to accede to it is a capitulation to Fascism.

Fascism is a historic phase of capitalism; in this sense it is something new and at the same time old. In Fascist countries capitalism continues to exist, but only in the form of Fascism; and Fascism can be combated as capitalism alone, as the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive, and most treacherous form of capitalism.

But how can anyone tell the truth about Fascism, unless he is willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it forth? What will be the practical results of such truth?

Those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.

Outcries against barbarous measures may be effective as long as the listeners believe that such measures are out of the question in their own countries. Certain countries are still able to maintain their property relations by methods that appear less violent than those used in other countries.

Democracy still serves in these countries to achieve the results for which violence is needed in others, namely, to guarantee private ownership of the means of production.  [our emphasis]  The private monopoly of factories, mines, and land creates barbarous conditions everywhere, but in some places these conditions do not so forcibly strike the eye. Barbarism strikes the eye only when it happens that monopoly can be protected only by open violence.

Some countries, which do not yet find it necessary to defend their barbarous monopolies by dispensing with the formal guarantees of a constitutional state, as well as with such amenities as art, philosophy, and literature, are particularly eager to listen to visitors who abuse their native lands because those amenities are denied there. They gladly listen because they hope to derive from what they hear advantages in future wars. Shall we say that they have recognized the truth who, for example, loudly demand an unrelenting struggle against Germany “because that country is now the true home of Evil in our day, the partner of hell, the abode of the Antichrist”? We should rather say that these are foolish and dangerous people. For the conclusion to be drawn from this nonsense is that since poison gas and bombs do not pick out the guilty, Germany must be exterminated—the whole country and all its people.

The man who does not know the truth expresses himself in lofty, general, and imprecise terms. He shouts about “the” German, he complains about Evil in general, and whoever hears him cannot make out what to do. Shall he decide not to be a German? Will hell vanish if he himself is good? The silly talk about the barbarism that comes out of barbarism is also of this kind. The source of barbarism is barbarism, and it is combated by culture, which comes from education. All this is put in general terms; it is not meant to be a guide to action and is in reality addressed to no one.

Such vague descriptions point to only a few links in the chain of causes. Their obscurantism conceals the real forces making for disaster. If light be thrown on the matter it promptly appears that disasters are caused by certain men. For we live in a time when the fate of man is determined by men.

Fascism is not a natural disaster which can be understood simply in terms of “human nature”. But even when we are dealing with natural catastrophes, there are ways to portray them which are worthy of human beings because they appeal to man’s fighting spirit. After a great earthquake that destroyed Yokohama, many American magazines published photographs showing a heap of ruins. The captions read: STEEL STOOD. And, to be sure, though one might see only ruins at first glance, the eye swiftly discerned, after noting the caption, that a few tall buildings had remained standing. Among the multitudinous descriptions that can be given of an earthquake, those drawn up by construction engineers concerning the shifts in the ground, the force of stresses, the best developed, etc., are of the greatest importance, for they lead to future construction which will withstand earthquakes.

If anyone wishes to describe Fascism and war, great disasters which are not natural catastrophes, he must do so in terms of a practical truth. He must show that these disasters are launched by the possessing classes to control the vast numbers of workers who do not own the means of production. If one wishes successfully to write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be identified, the evil conditions can be fought.

By Vijay Prashad

November 13, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  Bolivia’s President Evo Morales was overthrown in a military coup on November 10. He is now in Mexico. Before he left office, Morales had been involved in a long project to bring economic and social democracy to his long-exploited country. It is important to recall that Bolivia has suffered a series of coups, often conducted by the military and the oligarchy on behalf of transnational mining companies. Initially, these were tin firms, but tin is no longer the main target in Bolivia. The main target is its massive deposits of lithium, crucial for the electric car.

Over the course of the past few years, Bolivia has struggled to raise investment to develop the lithium reserves in a way that brings the wealth back into the country for its people. Morales’ Vice President Álvaro García Linera had said that lithium is the “fuel that will feed the world.” Bolivia was unable to make deals with Western transnational firms; it decided to partner with Chinese firms. This made the Morales government vulnerable. It had walked into the new Cold War between the West and China. The coup against Morales cannot be understood without a glance at this clash.

Clash With the Transnational Firms

When Evo Morales and the Movement for Socialism took power in 2006, the government immediately sought to undo decades of theft by transnational mining firms. Morales’ government seized several of the mining operations of the most powerful firms, such as Glencore, Jindal Steel & Power, Anglo-Argentine Pan American Energy, and South American Silver (now TriMetals Mining). It sent a message that business as usual was not going to continue.

Nonetheless, these large firms continued their operations—based on older contracts—in some areas of the country. For example, the Canadian transnational firm South American Silver had created a company in 2003—before Morales came to power—to mine the Malku Khota for silver and indium (a rare earth metal used in flat-screen televisions). South American Silver then began to extend its reach into its concessions. The land that it claimed was inhabited by indigenous Bolivians, who argued that the company was destroying its sacred spaces as well as promoting an atmosphere of violence.

On August 1, 2012, the Morales government—by Supreme Decree no. 1308—annulled the contract with South American Silver (TriMetals Mining), which then sought international arbitration and compensation. Canada’s government of Justin Trudeau—as part of a broader pushon behalf of Canadian mining companies in South America—put an immense amount of pressure on Bolivia. In August 2019, TriMetals struck a deal with the Bolivian government for $25.8 million, about a tenth of what it had earlier demanded as compensation.

Jindal Steel, an Indian transnational corporation, had an old contract to mine iron ore from Bolivia’s El Mutún, a contract that was put on hold by the Morales government in 2007. In July 2012, Jindal Steel terminated the contract and sought international arbitration and compensation for its investment. In 2014, it won $22.5 million from Bolivia in a ruling from Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce. For another case against Bolivia, Jindal Steel demanded $100 million in compensation.

The Morales government seized three facilities from the Swiss-based transnational mining firm Glencore; these included a tin and zinc mine as well as two smelters. The mine’s expropriation took place after Glencore’s subsidiary clashed violently with miners.

Most aggressively, Pan American sued the Bolivian government for $1.5 billion for the expropriation of the Anglo-Argentinian company’s stake in natural gas producer Chaco by the state. Bolivia settled for $357 million in 2014.

The scale of these payouts is enormous. It was estimated in 2014 that the public and private payments made for nationalization of these key sectors amounted to at least $1.9 billion (Bolivia’s GDP was at that time $28 billion).

In 2014, even the Financial Times agreed that Morales’ strategy was not entirely inappropriate. “Proof of the success of Morales’s economic model is that since coming to power he has tripled the size of the economy while ramping up record foreign reserves.”

Lithium

Bolivia’s key reserves are in lithium, which is essential for the electric car. Bolivia claims to have 70 percent of the world’s lithium reserves, mostly in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats. The complexity of the mining and processing has meant that Bolivia has not been able to develop the lithium industry on its own. It requires capital, and it requires expertise.

The salt flat is about 12,000 feet (3,600 meters) above sea level, and it receives high rainfall. This makes it difficult to use sun-based evaporation. Such simpler solutions are available to Chile’s Atacama Desert and in Argentina’s Hombre Muerto. More technical solutions are needed for Bolivia, which means that more investment is needed.

The nationalization policy of the Morales government and the geographical complexity of Salar de Uyuni chased away several transnational mining firms. Eramet (France), FMC (United States) and Posco (South Korea) could not make deals with Bolivia, so they now operate in Argentina.

Morales made it clear that any development of the lithium had to be done with Bolivia’s Comibol—its national mining company—and Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB)—its national lithium company—as equal partners.

Last year, Germany’s ACI Systems agreed to a deal with Bolivia. After protests from residents in the Salar de Uyuni region, Morales canceled that deal on November 4, 2019.

Chinese firms—such as TBEA Group and China Machinery Engineering—made a deal with YLB. It was being said that China’s Tianqi Lithium Group, which operates in Argentina, was going to make a deal with YLB. Both Chinese investment and the Bolivian lithium company were experimenting with new ways to both mine the lithium and to share the profits of the lithium. The idea that there might be a new social compact for the lithium was unacceptable to the main transnational mining companies.

Tesla (United States) and Pure Energy Minerals (Canada) both showed great interest in having a direct stake in Bolivian lithium. But they could not make a deal that would take into consideration the parameters set by the Morales government. Morales himself was a direct impediment to the takeover of the lithium fields by the non-Chinese transnational firms. He had to go.

After the coup, Tesla’s stock rose astronomically.

Vijay Prashad is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Chief Editor of LeftWord Books. He is a Writing Fellow and Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He writes regularly for The Hindu, Frontline, Newsclick, and BirGün.

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 4 Nov 2019
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service
31 Oct 2019 – Out of chaos come strange leaders.  Most often they are re-absorbed into the chaos.  Sometimes, they rise above the chaos and impose a momentary order–the classic example being Napoleon arising from the disorder and chaos of the French Revolution.  Out of the chaos of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria arose the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or Daesh in its Arabic initials).  The figurehead of ISIS was Abou Bakr Al-Baghdadi, a good example of strange and unlikely leadership.  Although his death has been reported a number of times before, this time, the announcement by President Trump and General Mark Milley, head of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, is likely to be correct and has been confirmed  by Al-Fargar, the ISIS news agency on 31 October.   His body had DNA samples taken, and then “disposed of appropriately.”  The chaos continues in both Iraq and Syria, but it is worth asking what might be the lasting impact of the Islamic State.
Al-Baghdadi was an unlikely leader, coming from a poor family, educated in Islamic theology but not really a theologian, something of an ideologue but looked down upon by the fundamentalist ideologues of political Islam.  He had enough theological training to have his biographer write that his clan, the Badri, was descended from the tribe of the prophet Mohammed, a necessity to justify his claim to be the caliph of the Muslim world, of which the Islamic State was the purest example.
As the Islamic State took increasing territory, he was able to draw upon the talents of Iraqi military men who had been in the intelligence units under Saddam Hussein and who were used to administration.  In its 31 October announcement it was stated that the new leader of ISIS was Abdullah Qurdash, taking the name of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi. He had been jailed with al-Baghdadi by the U.S. forces in 2003-2004 when the two men became close.  However, ISIS was administered largely through fear and threats of violence.
The disappearance of Al-Baghdadi, probably by a blast of explosives that he always had on him, will change little in the direction of ISIS.  From the start, he was largely unseen, a mythic figure, very occasionally speaking on radio but never seen.  Who provided operational leadership is largely unknown.  In fact, there may have been no overall operational leadership.  Thus, ISIS will continue as a multitude of organizations related to the specific geographic area of action, not very different from what it was when it started operations first in Iraq and then Syria.
I believe that there are two lasting impacts of the Islamic State. One is to bind together in a common fate of chaos Iraq and Syria.  The second is to add to an ideological framework that is spreading to different parts of the world.
One of the first symbolic gestures of ISIS was to destroy the sign posts marking the frontier between Iraq and Syria – a symbolic return to the period of the Ottoman Empire before the division of the area after World War I between England and France.  The two States, which will not be united officially, are bound together in misery.  The current flight of Kurds from northeast Syria to the Kurdish zone of Iraq is a dramatic symbol of the bonds.
The second lasting, or at least long-range, impact of ISIS is ideological.  Groups in a wide range of countries – West Africa, Afghanistan, Central Asia and Europe – have taken on the name of ISIS to justify their actions.  There is probably little, if any, organizational link, but there are ideological links.
The ideological impact of ISIS which led a good number of people from Western Europe, Russia, and Central Asia to join them, needs to be countered by a strong, positive counter-ideology.  The ISIS effort to destroy the Yazidis religious-based group needs to be met by a strong defense of religious liberty and action at the first signs of a promotion of genocide.  The wide-spread use of sexual violence by ISIS needs to be met with renewed efforts to prevent rape as a weapon of war.  The narrow religious positions of ISIS must be met by a spirit of the unity of humanity across the divides of religion, nationality and gender.  The death of a person, even if in a leadership position, does not kill an ideology.  ISIS’ long-range impact can only be met by strong compassion for all and a positive, inclusive intellectual framework.
______________________________________
René Wadlow is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. He is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues, and editor of Transnational Perspectives.

The west has colonized, exploited, ravaged and assassinated the people of the Global South for hundreds of years.

Up to the mid-20^th Century Europe has occupied Africa, and large parts of Asia.

In Latin America, though much of the sub-Continent was “freed” from Spain and Portugal in the 19^th Century – a new kind of colonization followed by the new Empire of the United States – under the so-called Monroe Doctrine, named after President James Monroe (1817 -1825), forbidding Europeans to interfere in any “American territory”. Latin America was then and is again today considered Washington’s Backyard.

In the last ten years or so, Washington has launched the Monreo Doctrine 2.0. This time expanding the interference policy beyond Europe – to the world. Democratic sovereign governments in Latin America that could choose freely their political and economic alliances in the world are not tolerated. China, entering into partnership agreements with Latin American countries, sought after vividly by the latter – is condemned by the US and the west, especially vassalic Europe.

Therefore, democratically elected center-left governments had to be “regime-changed’ – Honduras, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay. So far, they stumbled over Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua – and maybe Mexico.

Venezuela and Cuba are being economically strangled to exhaustion. But they are standing tall as pillars in defending the Latin American Continent – with economic assistance and military advice from China and Russia.

Latin America is waking up – and so is Africa.

In Latin America, street protests against the US / IMF imposed debt trap and de consequential austerity programs, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, are raging in Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and even in Brazil. In Argentina, in a democratic election this past weekend, 27 October, the people deposed neoliberal President Macri.He wasput in the Presidencyvia“tricked” elections by Washington in 2015. Macri ruined the prosperous country in his 4 year-reign. He privatized public services and infrastructure, education, health, transportation – and more, leading to hefty tariff increases, worker layoffs, unemployment and poverty. Poverty, at about 15% in 2015, when Macri took office, soared to over 40% in October 2019.

In 2018 Macri contracted the largest ever IMF loan of US$ 57.2 billion – a debt trap, if there was ever one. The new, just elected Fernandez-Fernandez center-left Government will have to devise programs to counter the impact of this massive debt.

All over in Latin America, people have had enough of the US / western imposed austerity and simultaneous exploitation of their natural resources. They want change – big style. They seek to detach from the economic and financial stranglehold of the west. They are looking for China and Russia as new partners in trade and in financial contracts.

The same in Africa – neocolonialism by the west, mostly France and the UK, through financial oppression, unfair trading deals and wester imposed – and militarily protected – despotic and corrupt leaders, has kept Africa poor and desolate after more than 50 years of so-called Independence. Africa is arguably still the Continent with the most natural resources the west covets and needs to preserve its luxury life style and continuous armament.

People, who do not conform, especially younger politicians and economists, who protest and speak out, because they see clearly through the western imposed economic crimes committed on a daily basis, are simply assassinated or otherwise silenced.

Africans are quietly seeking to move out of the claws of the west, seeking new relations with China and Russia. The recent Russian-African summit in Sochi was a vivid example.

China is invited to build infrastructure, fast trains, roads, ports and industrial parks – and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is more than welcomed in Africa, as it projects common and equal development for all to benefit. BRI is the epitome for building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind. China also offers a gradual release from the US / western dominated dollar-debt claws. Freeing a country from the dollar-based economy, is freeing it from the vulnerability of US /western imposed sanctions. This is an enormous relief that literally every country of the Global South – and possibly even Europe – is hoping for.

However, as could be expected, the west, led by the US of A, is pouncing China for engaging in “debt trap diplomacy” (https://www.rt.com/op-ed/472185-china-debt-trap-diplomacy-debunked/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email ). Exactly the contrary of what is actually happening.

The truth is, though, countries throughout the world, be it in Africa, Asia, South Pacific and Latin America, are choosing to partner with China by their free will. According to a statement by a high-level African politician “China does not force or coerce us into a deal, we are free to choose and negotiate a win-win situation.” – That says it all.

The difference between the west and east is stark. While anybody and any country that does not agree with the US dictate and doctrine, risks being regime-changed or bombed, China does not impose her new Silk Road – the BRI – to any country. China invites, respecting national sovereignty. Who wants to join is welcome to do so. That applies as much to the Global South, as it does to Europe.

China’s President Xi Jinping launched the BRI in 2013. In 2014 Mr. Xi visited Madame Merkel in Germany, offering her to be at that time the western-most link to the BRI. Ms. Merkel under the spell of Washington, declined. President Xi returned and China continued working quietly on this fabulous worldwide economic development project – BRI – THE economic venture of the 21^st Century, so massive that it was incorporated in 2017 into the Chinese Constitution.

It took the west however 6 years to acknowledge this new version of the more than 2000-year-old Silk Road. Only in 2019, the western mainstream media started reporting on the BRI – and always negatively, of course. The preaching was and still is – beware of the Chinese Dragon, they will dominate you and everything you own with their socialism.

This train of thought is typically western. Aggression seems to be in the genes of western societies, of western culture, as the hundreds of years of violent and despotic colonization and exploitation – and ongoing – are proving. Does it have to do with western monotheistic doctrines? – This is pure speculation, of course.

Again, the truth is multi-fold. – First, China does not have a history of invasion. China seeks a peaceful and egalitarian development of trade, science and foremost human wellbeing – a Tao tradition of non-aggression. Second, despite the “warnings” from the throne of the falling empire, about a hundred countries have already subscribed to participate in BRI – and that voluntarily. And third, China and Russia and along with them the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are in a solid economic and defense alliance which encompasses close to half of the world population and represents about one third of the globes total economic output.

Hence, SCO members are – or may be, if they so choose – largely detached from the dollar hegemony. The western privately run and Wall Street controlled monetary transfer system, SWIFT, is no longer needed by SCO countries. They deal in local currencies and / or through the Chinese Interbank Payment System (CIPS).

It is no secret, that the empire, headquartered in Washington, is gradually decaying, economically as well as militarily. It’s just a matter of time. How much time, is difficult to guess. But Washington’s everyday behavior of dishing out sanctions left and right, disrupting international monetary transactions, confiscating and stealing other countries assets around the world, putsever more nails in the Empire’s coffin. By doing this, America is herself committing economic and monetary suicide. Who wants to belong to a monetary system that can act willy-nilly to a county’s detriment? There is no need for outside help for this US-sponsored pyramid fiat monetary system to fall. It’s a house of cards that is already crumbling by its own weight.

The US dollar was some 20-25 years ago still to the tune of 90% the domineering reserve currency in the world. Today that proportion has declined to less than 60% – and falling. It is being replaced primarily by the Chinese yuan as the new reserve currency.

This is what the US-initiated trade war is all about – discrediting the yuan, a solid currency, based on China’s economy – and on gold. “Sanctioning” the Chinese economy with US tariffs, is supposed to hurt the yuan, to reduce its competition with the dollar as a world reserve currency. To no avail. The yuan is a worldwide recognized solid currency, the currency of the world’s second largest economy. By some standards, like accounted by PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), the most important socioeconomic indicator for mankind, China is since 2017 the world’s number one economy.

This, and other constant attacks by Washington, is a typical desperate gesture of a dying beast – thrashing wildly left and right and above and below around itself to bring down into its grave as many perceived adversaries as possible. There is of course a clear danger that this fight for the empire’s survival might end nuclear – god forbid!

China’s and Russia’s policy, philosophy and diplomacy of non-aggression may save the world from extinction – including the people of the United States of America.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organizationaround the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog,the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

Like a world that rides on the slow and bumpy back of The Turtle, The M.I.T Report on the Work of the Future balances precariously on the four legs of four assumptions. The first of these, as I have discussed in the first part of this article, is that that the decline in the earnings of the working class is the result of the bifurcation of that working class on the basis of education on the one hand, and on the other, the elimination of white collar, middle class work by technology. These two assumptions, although not entirely lacking in validity as education does divide workers, and technology has eradicated, middle class, white collar work, ignores the far more important factor of the decimation of the power and labor of the working class as the result of the slow and multifaceted war on organized labor, which was both been sustained by and sustained globalization.

The third assumption is that those who do manage to get a good education at a good institution of higher education will necessarily go on to have better lives. Thus, the Report gives no consideration to the devastating side effects of getting that education in a capitalist society in which even institutions of higher education function as corporations seeking to derive as much profit as possible from their institutions. A result of this drive for profits has been on the one hand, an increase in the price of their products, and on the other, the globalization of their customer base as increasingly, foreign students come to replace American students at the highest levels of education in the best American institutions. As a result of both factors, when and if Americans do manage to get into the best Universities America has to offer, they have had to complete with individuals from nations around the world which have offered better educational systems to their students throughout their lives, but who as individuals, also come from an upper middle class, and upper class elite, which spares no expense on the education of their children. In turn, Americans, even from the best of families and schools (excluding perhaps members of the upper elite 1%), find themselves not only ill prepared and ill-educated vis a vis their international competitors, but also, not as financially able to afford the university educations they so desperately need to get ahead in life. As a result, even if they are as individuals able to compete with their foreign rivals for entrance, either they or their families find themselves deeply in debt. So it is that even those who manage to pluck the prize of a degree from a prestigious university, many suffer the consequences of having to pay off huge student debts for a good portion of their futures; debts that will shape the course of their lives either as they default and so have their credit devastated, or put aside purchasing the symbols of the good life in America – cars, apartments, homes, vacations and dinners out. They may even put off getting married and having children as perhaps both spouses work diligently to pay off their loans. When my daughter got her MBA and her spouse got a law degree, they were staring down the twin barrels of $300,000 in debt. They are still, nearly twenty years later, their lives not going exactly the way they had planned, paying off that debt. Such are the things that the M.I.T. Report never discusses, just as it never discusses the effects of globalization or the destruction of unions on the condition of the American working class.

Finally, assuring us that technology will never drive the working class into extinction due to demographic factors (the vast number of baby boomers will be gone soon and people are having fewer children} and their belief in education – not at the best institutions, but at community colleges which have open enrollment and so which any one can attend, and which few if any either wealthy Americans or foreigners bother to – will provide the solution for workers who might possibly be displaced. The solution resides, they assure us, in more closely and perfectly aligning the needs of capitalist companies with the training of workers so that in this way, as they see it, workers will not find themselves without work. The do not see it as turning community colleges directly into institutions which service the needs of capitalism by training the workers they need, which in turn, eliminates the need for those corporations to invest in training their own employees. Community colleges will become the “training and development” departments of companies which in turn, will allow those companies to lay off the people who currently perform that function.

Besides these four legs upon which the Report moves along, our turtle has a head and a tail which are the “rational” mind and “logical” balance of the MIT Report. The first assumption, the primary assumption and the glaring bias of their argument is that IT WOULD BE A TERRIBLE THING IF MACHINES REPLACED HUMANS AS WORKERS. After all, how would the labor theory of value apply when there was nearly no labor which must be paid? This is only one of the many questions that arise that challenge the essential foundation of capitalism itself when machines begin to replace labor.

In fact, the replacement of labor by machines, a decline in the need for long hours of work, and in fact a non-human working class which needs no money to subsist, undermines the very existence of capitalism and prepares the way for Communism. Thus, the elimination of labor is not at all a terrible thing; in fact, it is ever Communists final dream. It is the goal of Marx’s humanism that people should become free of the dehumanizing labor which they must perform in order to survive, and which is exploited by others who profit from that labor, realize their fully human natures performing work and labor that is fulfilling to them. Labor in which they realize their own human creativity in a society in which everyone profits from everyone else’s enterprises and no one exploits anyone.

Only a bias towards Capitalism sees the elimination of human labor and its substitution by machines as a BAD thing. Free of the degradation of mind numbing service labor, of being appendages to machines, of engaging in repetitive manual and office labor, combined with life in a society in which profits do not come before people, people can truly become educated and creative beings, and humanity can move towards its absolute realization. No machine could approach us, because we would move faster even more quickly when they are put at our services. The universe will become ours, and no mysteries will be hidden from us, as we realize ourselves as evolutionary beings…. Without capitalism.

The M.I.T. Report, concocted as it is by one of the most famous edio-ideological institutions of Capitalist America, carries the capitalist world on its back and moves it forward on the four bowed and biased legs of its assumptions. It wants and needs to support capitalism even as capitalism undergoes what may be its final phase transition – as falters and gets ready to collapse into the “dustbin of history”. The report is blinded by its own bias towards capitalism, and so sets out to blind us as well. Do not let them do so Comrades – education is not meant to help us out of our misery, but to create new misery, and contrary to what is meant to be drawn from their conclusions, workers and capitalists can never have common interests.

Mary Metzger is a 74 year old semi retired teacher. She did her undergraduate work at S.U.N.Y. Old Westbury and her graduate work In Dialectics under Bertell Ollman at New York University. She has taught numerous subjects, from Public Sector Labor Relations to Philosophy of Science, to many different levels of students from the very young to Ph.D. candidates, in many different institutions and countries from Afghanistan to Russia. She has been living in Russia for the past 12 years where she focuses on research in the Philosophy of Science and History of the Dialectic, and writes primarily for Countercurrents. She is the mother of three, the grandmother of five, and the great grandmother of two.

U.S. Treasury Department figures released Friday show: U.S. public debt has surpassed $23 trillion for the first time in history, rising more than 100 percent in less than a decade and more than a trillion dollars this year alone.

Of the total, less than US$17 trillion is owed to individuals, while the remaining $6 trillion comes from loans within government agencies.

The figure marks a new record after the national debt reached US$22 billion dollars in February this year while the fiscal imbalance as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose from 3.8% in 2018 to 4.6% this year.

According to Michael Peterson, the head of the fiscally conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation, “reaching a debt of US$23 billion on Halloween is a terrifying milestone for our economy and the next generation, but Washington shows no fear.”

“Accumulating debts like this is especially reckless and unnecessary in a strong economy,” he added.

“This is the first time in our history that we are seeing a boom in the economy at the same time deficits are rapidly rising. It’s alarming,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which supports reducing the deficit.

2008 financial crisis

U.S. debt began to rise after the 2008 financial crisis, but after Trump came to power it declined slightly. Thus, in January 2017, the national debt was estimated at $19,899 billion.

However, due to the fiscal reform, at the end of that year, it started to grow again and by the end of 2018, it amounted to 21,974 billion dollars.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who repeatedly criticized the deficit of his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, looks now responsible of the U.S. deficit rising almost 50 percent in his first three years in office.

Growing budget deficits have added to the U.S. debt at a speedy rate since President Trump took office. The debt has grown some 16 percent since Trump’s inauguration, when it stood at $19.9 trillion. It passed $22 trillion for the first time just 10 months ago.

Of the $23 trillion figure, just under $17 trillion was in the category of debt held by the public, which is a more useful gauge of the debt the government has to pay down, and the number typically used in calculating the nation’s debt burden. The other $6 trillion comes from loans within government bodies.

Still, the $23 trillion figure marks a milestone.

High levels of debt can push up borrowing costs and interest rates, “crowd out” private borrowing and weigh down budgets.

In the 2019 fiscal year, the government had to devote $376 billion just to pay the interest on the debt, equivalent to nearly half the defense budget, and more than the amount spent on the combined costs of education, agriculture, transportation and housing.

The deficit for 2019 came in just under $1 trillion, at $984 billion, and is only expected to grow in coming years.

Trump administration officials did not defend the marked deficit increase, but they cast blame on Congress for not doing more to reduce expenditures.

While the main drivers of spending are mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicare and anti-poverty programs, major legislation has grown the deficit considerably since Trump came to office.

Neither Trump nor Congress

Neither Trump nor Congress has done much to cut spending in recent years, with Trump repeatedly backing away from his own budget proposals. Trump has also demanded new spending on the military and for a border wall.

Dramatic rise in military spending

Military spending has risen dramatically under Trump, from about $550 billion annually to more than $700 billion in 2019, and Democrats successfully pushed for increases to other parts of the budget in exchange for their support to boost money for defense.

Republicans are quiet

Though the total national debt has continued to grow under the Trump administration, Republicans have remained quiet over an issue they once championed.

The national debt was formerly a major Republican talking point against “debt king” Obama, so much so that Republicans shut the government down for 16 days in 2013.

“There are very little discussions among Republicans about the deficit and virtually no serious outreach to Democrats for any sort of bipartisan deal,” said Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, and former chief economist for Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “The parties are not talking on this issue.”

The Republican National Committee slammed Obama’s oversight of the federal deficit in 2011, saying that the deficit held “America’s future in the balance” and saying that Democrats failed to recognize “that our mounting debt is one of the biggest threats to our ability to compete with the rest of the world’s economies.”

As late as 2016, the GOP warned that Obama administration was on an “unsustainable path toward crippling debt while raising taxes on middle-class families who can’t afford it.”

GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called the federal debt “the nation’s most serious long-term problem,” on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in 2012, adding that Obama “needs to become the adult” in conversations on debt.

“If we don’t begin to deal with our debt and deficit in a serious way, we’re not going to have many options,” said former Republican House Speaker John A. Boehner in 2012, according to The Washington Post. “I’m not going to apologize for leading. The real issue here is, will the president lead?”

Boehner added in 2013 that the debt was “killing our economy.”

“It’s causing investors to sit on their cash,” Boehner said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “They’re afraid to invest. It’s a wet blanket on top of our economy.”

In 2013, when federal debt totaled $16.7 trillion, Trump tweeted: “Obama is the most profligate deficit & debt spender in our nation’s history.” The federal government is now more than $22 trillion in debt, according to the White House.

Vice President Pence called the debt increases under the Obama administration “atrocious.”

Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, held “Spending, Debt and Deficit” town halls during the Obama administration and repeatedly criticized lawmakers of both parties for increasing the deficit, including through funding relief for Hurricane Sandy.

Spending increases, tax cuts and political apathy fueled the surge in deficit.

The government spent $4.4 trillion on numerous programs and services and brought in $3.5 trillion through taxes and other revenue.

It is unusual for the government to run such a large budget deficit during a period of economic growth, because spending on unemployment and other benefits tends to contract and tax revenue often grows.

But the White House and Congress have contributed to the deficit’s surge by enacting large spending increases and passing the 2017 tax cut law. The budget deficit was $665 billion in 2017.

U.S. debt is considered one of the safest investments in the world and interest rates remain low, which is why the government has been able to borrow money at cheap rates to finance the large annual deficits.

But the costs are adding up. The government spent about $380 billion in interest payments on its debt last year, almost as much as the entire federal government contribution to Medicaid.

The Obama administration and Republicans in Congress enacted measures to reduce the deficit starting in 2011, and those measures — and a growing economy — led the deficit to fall by almost 50 percent.

But those gains were lost by a recent apathy among policymakers about addressing the fiscal imbalance.

The government recorded four straight years of budget deficits that exceeded $1 trillion around the time of the Great Recession, with the worst overrun occurring in 2009 when the deficit reached nearly 10 percent of the U.S. economy, the highest level since World War II.

A growing economy and steps taken by the Obama administration and Congress shrank the deficit to 2.4 percent of the economy in 2015, but it slowly began expanding again, largely because of spending increases. In 2019, the deficit was 4.6 percent of the economy.

Budget experts also say the tax cut has led revenue to come in lower than they normally would during an economic expansion.

U.S. tax revenue remained roughly flat the first year the law was in effect, despite economic growth of nearly 3 percent. Tax revenue was modestly higher in fiscal 2019, aided in part by a 70 percent increase in tariff revenue.

Overall spending is projected to rise by about 16 percent between 2017 and 2020, largely because of bipartisan deals struck by Congress, including a 2018 law that lifted spending limits and disaster relief funding, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The leading Democratic presidential candidates are running on plans for enormous new spending programs that would likely add to the deficit, though some have said they will offset the costs with tax increases.

Republicans have demonstrated little appetite for raising tax revenue after dramatically slashing them in 2017.

U.S. fiscal outlook could deteriorate even further should interest rates rise. The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates relatively low during this recovery, reducing the cost of borrowing and easing concerns that the deficit could trigger runaway inflation.

U.S. expanding federal deficit is an anomaly among developed nations around the world. Nearly all other advanced-economy countries are on track to see their debt shrink as a share of their economy over the next five years, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Some economists, particularly on the left, warn against expressing alarm over the widening deficit, arguing that because inflation remains low there is little reason to fear higher deficits.

Hydroelectric power from dams might be the thorniest question that proponents of the Green New Deal (GND) have to grapple with. Providing more energy than solar and wind combined, dams could well become the backup for energy if it proves impossible to get off of fossil fuels fast enough.

An August 2019 forum on the GND included representatives from the Sunrise Movement, Renew Missouri and three of us in the Green Party. Rev. Elston McCowan asked, “What does the Green New Deal say about rivers and dams?” I said “That’s a dammed good question” and went into some of the issues below. Howie Hawkins and Dario Hunter, both candidates for the Green Party presidential nomination, told of their participation in local efforts to block dam construction. But trying to defeat a single dam begs the question of what policy a political organization has toward them. [1]

GND proposals from the Democratic Party, like those of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ignore both nuclear power and dams. Yet dams have ominous implications for the world’s rivers.

Rivers and lakes are an integral part of human existence, with virtually all major inland cities being located next to one of them. They provide water for drinking, bathing, food, and medicine. Their sustenance is not just for humans but for untold numbers of tiny organisms, insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. Rivers integrate plant and animal life forms and connect human communities to each other.

As capitalism grew, rivers transported huge quantities of lumber from clear cuts, oil from under the ground and coal ripped from mountains. Rivers have been used for trash disposal, as if carrying it somewhere else would make it vanish. Nor can rivers make industrial and agricultural poisons disappear but can only carry them until they create huge dead zones. Victors of battles have let rivers float human bodies to remind those living downstream of their military prowess.

The advent of electricity meant that those seeking to dominate nature found an extraordinary tool at their disposal – hydro-electric power from dams. There are 57,000 large dams in the world and more could be on the way. Thus, it is important that GND advocates clarify whether they support building more dams or endorse a moratorium on their construction.

Dams were an integral part of economic expansion under Franklin Roosevelt’s original New Deal. Building new dams continued past FDR, providing about a third of US electrical power in the 1950s. That has declined in the twenty-first century, mainly because of expanded fossil fuel use. The greatest wave of global dam-building has been since World War II and 80% of their current use is for hydro-power. Dams have fragmented over two-thirds of long rivers.

One of the most infamous is Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River. Planned in 1975, it would be the second largest dam system in Brazil and the fourth largest in the world; but opposition stalled it. It was revived during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and tension over its construction mounted under Dilma Rousseff’s government. In May 2016 the first turbine went online; 16 main turbines were functioning in September 2019, and completion is scheduled for 2020.

Mongolia hopes to use dams as part of a strategy to move away from fossil fuels. It’s action plan is called the “Green Development Policy,” which seems to echo “Green New Deal” proposals of western countries. The Selenge River, a transnational body of water originating in Mongolia, contributes over half the water to Russia’s Lake Baikal which is so huge that it contains about “20% of the worlds unfrozen fresh water.” Area lakes are already shrinking due to water withdrawal and Lital Khaikin writes that “encroachment of heavy industry threatens the fragile balance of the Baikal and the river-systems that are connected to it.”

With many calling for expansion of large dams, it is necessary to consider what this would mean for river life forms, people living next to or downstream from dams, economics of hydro-power, climate change and unforeseen dangers. Here are 10 potential problems with dams.

1. Dams destroy species and disrupt balances between species that make up ecosystems.

According to International Rivers “The number-one cause of species extinction is habitat loss.” Due to the assault on rivers, freshwater ecosystems probably have the highest reduction in biodiversity, higher even than those on land.

The decline of a species often has ripple effects on other species. When salmon reproduction is interrupted on the lower Snake River Dams in the Pacific Northwest orcas may starve because so few reach the ocean. River dolphins of the Yangtze were the first human-caused extinction of dolphins, due to construction of China’s Three Gorges Dam. Less well-known examples abound. The Kihansi Spray Toad of Tanzania became extinct in the wild because of the Kihansi Dam in the southern Udzungwa Mountains. The dam reduced the spray zone around the waterfall by 90%, dooming the toad.

Plants, are likewise threatened by dams. Rowan Jacobsen’s 2019 article describes how the Falls-of-the-Ohio scurfpea, whose habitat was limited to a few Ohio River islets, became extinct in the 1920s due to dam construction. Another 2019 Scientific American article explains that 85% of bugs along the Colorado River lays eggs along its banks. As water levels go up and down according to power needs, the insect eggs often get too dry to survive, upsetting the balance between species in the ecosystem. This is particularly unnerving because a 2017 paper in PLOS ONE documented a greater than 75% decline in flying insect mass in Germany.

The plants and animals mentioned here are a small cross-section of known species rendered extinct by dams. The key phrase is “known species:” It is impossible to know how many reptiles, amphibians insects, microorganisms and even birds and mammals which were never discovered no longer exist due to dams. It is also unclear how these extinctions affect broader ecosystems.

Why do dams have such devastating consequences for life forms? They block fish migration and sometimes “completely separate spawning habitats from rearing habitats.” Still water in a dam’s reservoir is a profoundly different environment than flowing water in a river to which species have adapted over millennia. Sediments are critical for maintaining river life downstream but accumulate at the bottom of the reservoir. As International Rivers explains, “Changes in temperature, chemical composition, dissolved oxygen levels and the physical properties of a reservoir are often not suitable to the aquatic plants and animals that evolved with a given river system.” Industrial and agricultural chemicals that settle and concentrate in the reservoir are not healthy for fish and other living things.

2. Dams drive people out of their homes.

Those of us who grew up watching American TV in the 1950s and 60s had a steady diet of troops driving Indians off the landscape of the country’s West. An even more effective tool of America’s ethnic cleansing was undermining the species on which Indians depended, such as buffalo and fish. Roosevelt’s New Deal promised that building dams would help lift people out of poverty. Unfortunately, the Hoover Dam took reservation land from Yuma Indians during 1933-35. By the early 1940s, 22 dams were planned for North Dakota which required evacuating 20,000 people, including many Indians.

In Mexico, building 4000 dams from 1936 to 2006 involved the removal of 185,000 people. As Brazil built Belo Monte, the government claimed that only 16,000 people were displaced. But those affected indicated that a more realistic number was 40,000. As dams expanded, they pushed an estimated 80,000,000 out of their homes globally.

3. Dams undermine indigenous cultures.

Cultural traditions are often closely connected to specific plants, animals, landmarks and bodies of water. When the New Deal’s Grand Coulee Dam robbed land from Native Americans, it broke their connection to salmon. Little known in the western world are efforts by Mongolia to expand dam construction in its norther provinces on the Selenge River and its tributary Eg River. The proposed Shuren Dam on the Selenge would flood sacred heregsuurs (graveyards) and archaeological sites in neighboring areas. The Egiin Gol Dam on the Eg would cause extensive displacement which would include Mongolian herder communities whose link to (Omul whitefish) would be severed. Though opposition led to both projects’ being canceled in 2017, what remains is Mongolia’s hopes to attract foreign investment from multinational corporations seeking resource extraction and hydro-electricity to power mining operations. Similar projects are reaching their tentacles across the planet.

Re-emergence of stagnant plans is exactly what happened with the Belo Monte Dam, which was only a gleam in investors’ eyes in 1975. Its enormous displacement of native peoples required destroying their ways of life. When it was being massively opposed, a coalition formed between the Munduruku and other Amazonian tribes of Juruna, Kayapo, Xipaya, Kuruaya, Asurini, Parakana, and Arara who occupied the main construction site of the $14 billion undertaking.

In June 2013, Munduruku leaders released a letter (translated by Glenn H. Shepard) which included the following:

“We know how the law of nature works through the teachings of the ancients … animals teach us things that we don’t know, and we can interpret the messages … The animals warn us of dangers that are about to happen… Non-Indians say these are just superstitions but it is for real… You should not play with nature: for us, this is very dangerous… All animals have have mother-spirits, whether fish, or forest animals, birds, plants, fire, earth, wind, waters, even spirit beings, they all have lives… We have sacred places along our Tapajós river and we, the Munduruku, do not disturb these places… What government is this that is speaking against us? And declaring war to finish us off in order to then give our lands to the big landowners, agribusiness, hydro-electric dams and mining companies?”

4. Dams affect far more people than they displace.

People do not have to be pushed out of their homes or watch the flooding of sacred places to be affected by dams. An estimated 400-800 million people in the world who live downstream from dams lose access to clean water, are poisoned by industrial development, and watch resources such as fish shrink along with the quantity of water flowing through rivers. Especially those living in tropical areas can experience an increase in diseases such as malaria, filariasis, yellow fever, dengue, and schistosomiasis.

5. Conflicts over dams result in the arrest and killing of earth protectors.

Since 2009, the massive growth of dams in Mexico led to the arrest of over 250 and at least 8 deaths. Global Witness tabulated that “dams and other water resources” were the third leading industries (behind mining and agribusiness) to be associated with deaths of environmentalists in 2018.

Dams have also been linked to imprisonment and/or killings in many countries, including Burma, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala and Sudan. The greatest number of indigenous people massacred was when 440 were killed “to make way for Gautemala’s Chixoy Dam in 1982.” Extreme civil rights violations will undoubtedly rise in proportion to efforts to expand hydro-electric power.

6. Dams can increase the likelihood of wars over water resources.

Any time a river runs through two or more countries, there is a potential conflict over dam-building, especially if hostile relationships already exist. Shortly after Pakistan was created, on April 1, 1948 India began taking water from canals that went into Pakistan. The following month, the Dominion Accord required Pakistan to pay India in return for removing water. But a permanent solution was stalled until 1960 when Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Mohammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan signed the Indus Water Treaty. Many disputes were settled via the Permanent Indus Commission. But in 2017 India built the Kishanganga Dam in Kashmir and developed the Ratle hydro-power station in the Chenab River despite objections from Pakistan. With Narendra Modi’s siege of Kashmir, dams can only intensify hostilities.

Access to water is central to tensions in the Middle East. The Tigris-Euphrates basin, which includes Turkey, Syria, Iraq and western Iran, is rapidly losing water. Conn Hallihan writes “For Syria and Iraq, the problem is Turkey and Ankara’s mania for dam building. Since 1975, Turkish dams have reduced the flow of water to Syria by 40% — and to Iraq by 80%… Israel also takes 87% of the West Bank aquifers, leaving the Palestinians only 13%.” Water conflicts will get worse over time – by 2030, 4 out of every 10 people in the world may not have access to water.

Rivers cross international borders of 145 countries, not all of whom get along well. Rivers crossing 9 to 11 countries include the Congo, Nile, Rhine and Niger. Like nuclear power plants, dams would be sitting duck targets during a no-hold-barred war, especially for a country deprived of water due to its opponent’s dam.

7. Dams contribute to climate change.

It would be a tragic irony if dams were used to combat climate change because they are a huge source of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Currently, rivers remove about 200 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually, both by carbon absorption and by carrying silt to the sea where it feeds plankton. Yet, dams interfere with rivers’ being a carbon sink and increase their functioning as a carbon source in multiple ways.

Building the giant Hoover Dam required 6.6 million tons of concrete. The larger Grand Coulee Dam required 24.3 million tons. Since enormous heat must be used to produce concrete, each ton manufactured releases one ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. In addition, producing steel to reinforce the concrete and build other dam components requires enormous heat, resulting in CO2 releases. Of the tens of thousands of large dams in the world, these two required creating 30.9 million tons of CO2 just for the concrete: building dams has taken a huge bite out of the carbon sequestered by rivers.

In addition to CO2 release during manufacture of building materials for dams, organic matter rots in their reservoirs and produces the potent GHG methane. Far from being a minor source of carbon, this methane is estimated to “account for 4% of all human-made climate change, equivalent to the climate impact of aviation.”

Third, dams interfere with rivers’ transporting silt and nutrients downstream, which impairs their ability to remove carbon. Finally, some hydro-electric projects can create higher GHG emissions than coal-powered plants producing an equivalent quantity of electricity. Putting these together, dams are hardly a clean, green, carbon-free energy machine.

8. Dams increases differences between rich and poor.

Approval for building dams often begins with investors’ going to politicians who act as a link between them and the population. Politicians promise that the project will bring wealth to all. By the time it becomes clear that this is not happening, the politician is out of office or distracting people with another big promise.

In 1933, construction of the New Deal’s Hoover Dam meant pushing the Yumas off their reservation land so that a boom in energy production could swell corporate profits in the US Southwest. As a sop for losing the reservation, Yumas received five acres apiece with assurance that they could grow more crops due to new irrigation systems. Meanwhile, land was “sold to whites in 40- to 100- acre parcels.”

Construction of the Belo Monte Dam reflects a common occurrence. Though thousands of Indians were displaced, the energy created did not benefit them, but businesses such as aluminum smelters.

Since they can be constructed in small quantities, wind and solar power are often the best source of energy for sparsely populated areas. In contrast, “large hydro-power dams depend on central electric grids, which are not a cost-effective tool to reach rural populations, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Himalayas.”

9. Dams cost much more than promised.

Many factors feed into making dams hyper-expensive. The most obvious is construction costs which amounts to $2 trillion since 1950. A small country persuaded to use hydro-power as its major source of energy can find that the average cost overrun of 96% leaves it more indebted to and controlled by international lenders than it ever anticipated.

Dams lead to more dams. As investors and industrial manufacturers and mine owners reap riches from one dam, they have an incentive to construct more. This contributed to the US Colorado River’s being fragmented by at least 60 dams. Awareness that the Belo Monte Dam would make more upstream dams economically viable was a major source of opposition to it.

A third reason for dams’ being more expensive than promised is that maintenance is hardly, if ever, fully accounted for. Silt eventually interferes with the dam’s functioning. Turbines malfunction, cracks occur, design flaws appear and maintenance can be insufficient. For a combination of reasons, over 1000 dams have been removed in the US and the price of removal is rarely mentioned in cost projections.

The fourth, and most costly source of expense overruns for dams, is when they break. This brings us to the last of 10 problems. When negotiating over price, the construction company is highly unlikely to admit its life expectancy.

10. Dams break.

Unlike the extinction they cause, dams are not forever. And with today’s standards for privatized construction, they can be expected to last for shorter time periods than Roman coliseums and vastly less than Egyptian pyramids. As Worster wrote:

“Steel penstocks [structures that carry water from the forebay tunnel to the power house to run the turbines] and headgates must someday rust and collapse. Concrete, so permanent-seeming in is youth, must turn soft and crumble. Heavy banks of earth, thrown up to trap a flood, must eventually, under the most favorable circumstances, erode away.”

On March 14, 2019, the Spencer Dam on the Niobrara River in Nebraska, which was 90 years old, broke due to heavy rain and flooding. The community was left wondering if a missing person had been drowned.

Americans who are old enough might remember the February 1972 collapse of the Buffalo Creek Dam for coal waste that burst and sent water flowing into nearby mining towns, drowning 125. In June of the same year the Canyon Lake Dam in South Dakota got clogged with debris until it broke and downstream communities around Rapid City lost 238 lives.

Failure to learn from these events led to completion of the Teton Dam in southeastern Idaho. Scientists wrote of dangers of putting a large structure in one of the most active earthquake zones in the US, adjacent to cracked and fragile canyon walls. In less than a year after completion it began springing leaks and in June 1976 it collapsed, killing 11 people and 13,000 cattle and washing away homes and a billion tons of topsoil.

The New England Historical Society documented the first major disaster as the Mill River Dam collapse of 1874 which caused 139 deaths. The worst such disaster in the US happened only 15 years later when warnings regarding the South Fork Dam near Johnstown, Pennsylvania were followed by its collapse, which killed 2209.

Eric Fish penned the disturbing story of the 1975 Banqiao Dam collapse, by far the most deadly the world has experienced to date. As part of the “Harness the Huai River” campaign, the dam was completed in 1952 in China’s Henan Province. By the 1970s, thousands of dams had been built across China. Scientific studies warned that projects could raise Henan’s water tables over safe levels. More warnings were issued that deforestation and mining could further increase the danger of building yet more dams in an earthquake-prone zone already fraught with landslides. Committed to rapid economic growth, the government ignored the warnings.

Cracks appeared almost as soon as the reservoir began filling up. With Soviet help, the structure was reinforced and it was called the “Iron Dam” to assure everyone of its safety. Nevertheless,

“… on Aug 5, 1975, a typhoon collided with a cold front over Henan and dropped the area’s average yearly rainfall in less than 24 hours. The 106 cm of rain that fell that day dwarfed the 30 cm daily limit the dam’s designers had anticipated. Witnesses said that the area was littered with birds that had been pummeled to death by the intense rainfall.

In an effort to mitigate downstream floods that were already severe, Banqiao was ordered not to fully open its sluice gates early in the storm. Then communication lines were knocked out, leaving operators guessing as to how the situation outside was unfolding. By the time the gates were fully opened, it was too late. Water was rising faster than it could escape.”

A hydrologist had recommended building 12 sluice gates (which let water flow out at the base of a dam), but only 5 went into the final design and they were partially blocked by silt. Collapse of the Banqiao unleashed a 50 km/hour tidal wave down the river that knocked out 62 additional dams. Entire villages were swept away within minutes. One survivor recalled “I didn’t know where I was – just floating around in the water, screams and cries ringing in my ears. Suddenly, all the voices died down, leaving me in deadly silence.”

During the six hours that water poured out of the reservoir 26,000 lives were lost. Those living downstream soon envied the dead. The same torrent that flooded the reservoirs also washed out roads and knocked out rescue communication systems. When the rescue teams finally arrived, they found people standing on rooftops, holding onto trees or stranded on bits of dry land. They had kept themselves alive by eating tree leaves, animal carcasses that floated by or scavenged food that was often rotten. Hunger was joined by disease and summer heat.

For every person who died after the initial dam collapse, five more died from disease or plague. The total estimated death count was 171,000.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Banqiao is that the same dynamics for economic growth that laid its foundations continue to flourish. In 2011, Zhang Jinxuan, director of the Nujiang National Development and Reform Commission, spoke of China’s growth: “We must proceed. The resources here are too good. Not to develop is not an option.” China has thousands of dams at risk of breach, either because they are wearing out due to age or they are newer with poor construction. Zhou Fangping, with the Water Resources Department of Guangdong Province, has serious worries about the huge quantity. He told China Economic Weekly:

“We have so many rivers to manage and so many irrigation and water conservancy projects. If there’s only one project, we can handle it, but there are so many… either we promise to complete all the projects but we don’t actually meet the targets, or we finish them all but with sub-standard quality.”

China is hardly the only country which refuses to learn from Banqiao. Scientists still make recommendations that are ignored, either from a corporate desire to make more profits or from a bureaucratic state desire to expand its power. In the US, 24 of every 25 US dams are privately owned, with financial incentives to minimize repairs. Across the globe, more and more industrial plants full of toxic chemicals are located next to rivers, increasing potential hazards of flooding. Decision makers refuse to understand that climate crisis means that weather events which cause dam disasters are becoming more frequent and more extreme. They continue to build multiple dams on the same river. They seek to assure their citizens that past disasters were due to design problems and that “Generation Next” dams will be safe.

After thousands of years of warnings from philosophers and religious prophets that humanity can live prosperously by having less grandiose desires, political leaders insist that happiness flows from a fountain of possessions, which, in the 21^st century, is a fountain of energy. The more power that leaders have over other people, the more power they seek over nature. Instead of trying to work with nature to strengthen local communities, they cling to technocratic ideologies that “bigger and more complicated” is better. If a previous dam broke, they fail to see the problem as the dam’s existence – they insist that if the next dam is bigger, with more concrete and more electrical parts, then the river can be controlled.

Though efforts to subdue rivers have long caused problems, modern capitalism has transformed this pathological view to cultural psychopathy. Psychopathy reflects a lack of guilt or shame over the damage that one causes. A corporation is a social entity which is unable to feel guilt or shame for undermining the survivability of humans and millions of other life forms.

After thousands of years of disrupting natural water flow, which has been exponentially accelerated during recent decades, it is past time for humanity to restore rivers and streams while maintaining a high quality of life. This is why “500 organizations from 85 countries call on governments, financiers and other institutions to keep large hydro-power projects out of their initiatives to address climate change.”

Given the incredibly destructive consequences of efforts to dominate the free flow of water, supporters of the Green New Deal (GND) should end their silence on policies for dams. Do they agree with the 500 organizations that there should be a moratorium on new dam construction? Or, do they want to improve existing dams with structural supports, such as the Soviet Union did with China’s Banqiao Dam? Do GND advocates call for existing dams to be dismantled or partially decommissioned?

An even more critical question addresses what would happen if the goal of eliminating fossil fuels usage within 10 years cannot be accomplished with solar and wind power. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the massive growth of solar/wind technology cannot expand at such an enormous rate in this time period, and, if it were seriously attempted, it would cause disastrous ecological and human health problems. Though every source that provides data on sources of energy assigns different percentages to each sector, a reasonable estimate is that in 2018, global energy was supplied by 85% fossil fuels, 7% hydro-power, 4% nuclear power and 4% solar and wind power. Hydro-electric power from dams and nuclear power are obviously next in line for huge increases in sources of energy if solar/wind cannot replace fossil fuels rapidly enough.

There is another option; but GND plans are silent on it also. That option is called “energy conservation.” It includes using vastly less energy by having compact communities that require less transportation, smaller home space that requires less heating and cooling, less production of energy-absorbing gadgets designed to fall apart or go out of style and a shorter work week via manufacturing less junk.

GND enthusiasts need to say which road they advocate traveling. Should we build more dams and nuclear plants even if that means sacrificing biodiversity and human health? Or, would it better to abandon the dream of infinite economic growth? Are GND proponents willing to consider the possibility that life would be better for all species, including humans, if corporations and governments are not allowed to increase energy production? If so, we might even save a few aquatic ecosystems.

Don Fitz has taught Environmental Psychology at Washington University and Fontbonne University in St. Louis. He is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought, newsletter editor for the Green Party of St. Louis and was the 2016 candidate of the Missouri Green Party for Governor.

Note

1. Neither the web site for Howie Hawkins nor Dario Hunter mentions dams nor does the Green Party statement on the GND. However, the program of the Green Party of the US says in part “B Energy. 2g: We call for a ban on the construction of large-scale and inappropriately-located, hydro-electric dams.” The loophole in this statement is that financiers of a dam are no more likely to admit that its location is “inappropriate” than a power company is to label its nuclear plant as “unsafe.”

Originally published in Green Social Thought

Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela, said: People across the Latin America region are rising against “savage capitalism” especially the neoliberal model pushed by the International Monetary Fund.

Maduro was delivering his closing statement at the III Anti-Imperialist Congress against Neoliberalism held in Havana Sunday.

Maduro said that although neoliberalism seems to have taken the reins in Latin America, it is exciting to observe the Chilean people are rising against a constitution forged by the Pinochet’s dictatorship.

“[There is a continental] insurgency of the people against the model of exclusion, privatization, impoverishment, [and] the individualism of savage neoliberal capitalism of the International Monetary Fund,” said Maduro.

He specifically mentioned the recent leftist electoral victories in Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and parts of Colombia, and the anti-austerity protests in Chile and Ecuador.

More than 1,200 delegates from 95 countries attended the conference to meet and discuss six main themes such as solidarity with Cuba, people before free trade and transnational corporations, decolonization, cultural warfare, strategic communication, and social struggle.

They also discussed youth strategies for the continuity of struggles, democracy, sovereignty and anti-imperialism as well as and integration, identities, and common struggles.

Maduro and the Cuban head of state Diaz Canel recalled their nation’s alternative projects to capitalism.

“In Venezuela, an alternative project to neoliberalism will never be reversed. The Bolivarian Revolution emerged as an early response to demonstrate that a society can be built that guarantees social rights to its people,” said Maduro.

He went on to describe Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Argentine President-elect Alberto Fernandez as the “brilliant heads” of this “anti-neoliberal wave.”

Venezuela’s delegation to the Congress included members from the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV), the allied Communist Party (PCV), and political movements including the Bolivar-Zamora Revolutionary Current (CRBZ), the Francisco de Miranda Front (FFM) and the International Solidarity Committee (COSI).

At the congress, Maduro announced new investment to complete the halted construction of two oil tankers, the Juana Arzuduy and the Eva Peron, which were commissioned for construction in Argentina in 2005.

Maduro reportedly heard of the incomplete project after speaking with two Argentine trade unionists who informed him of a local funding deficit preventing the ships’ completion.

“There is a new governor [in Buenos Aires] and a new president [in Argentina], and Venezuela is ready to invest,” he said from Havana.

The Venezuelan leader did not offer any further details concerning the amount of the investment or timetables for completion.

The tankers, which are being built at Buenos Aires Rio Santiago shipyard, were supposed to be operational in 2009, but bilateral bureaucracy, local labor disputes, and deteriorating bilateral relations halted the project, with the Eva Peron tanker allegedly 98 percent completed.

Recent US-led sanctions have targeted third-party shipping firms in a bid to deter them from filling up at Venezuelan ports. The resulting bottlenecks in crude stockpiles have forced Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA and its joint ventures to reduce or cease production altogether, further crippling the country’s crisis-ridden economy.

An excellent article “The Inescapable Casino”, written by a professor of mathematics is definitely worth reading.   https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/   The article shows how-physics and mathematics can describe the distribution of wealth in modern economies with unprecedented accuracy.  Oxfam estimates that today some 26 individuals possess as much household wealth as the lower half of the world’s population combined—over 3.5 billion people!  Statistics indicate that the rich are increasingly concentrating more wealth.  Between 1989 and 2016, the US has become more unequal and now has the highest inequality in the “developed” world.  Presently 14 European countries also fall into an oligarchy state (power in the hands of the top 1%).

“The free market is essentially a casino that you can never leave.”  The longer you stay in the casino the more likely you are to lose, and inequality inevitably grows due to the well documented multitude of systemic biases favoring the wealthy. If the economy is unequal to begin with the wealth of the poorer will decrease and be transferred to the wealthier.  Mathematical models demonstrate that the natural inclination of wealth is to flow upward in a “free” market capitalist economy.  Once there is some variance in wealth, NO MATTER HOW SMALL, wealth will move from poorer to richer. Inequality INEVITABLY grows more pronounced.  There is a systematic inherent unfairness as the top 1% takes a greater and greater share of social wealth, and only redistribution sets the limits on inequality.

The professor of mathematics at Tufts University writes that conflating the concept of the free market with the notion of Freedom is a mistake.  The “free” market gives rise to economies that are anything but free and fair. In fact, the inequality in free market economies INEVITABLY grows more pronounced.

The Physics of Inequality:

Water has a dual state, either water or water vapor, depending on temperature.  At the boiling point water turns into steam (water vapor) this sudden and dramatic change is called a “phase transition”.  Such jumping from one state to another is also known as quantum phase transitions which play a role in other areas of physics.

“Free” market capitalist economic systems exhibit quantum phase transition.  If the wealth of society is substituted for the water, then wealth can quantum phase from a steam state—democracy, to a water state–oligarchy (Power in the hands of a small dominant class, the 1%). Mathematics demonstrates that this quantum phase occurs when the ratio of the wealth bias over the wealth redistribution (WB/WR) is greater than one. In other words, when the forces of wealth attained advantages (bias), exceeds the forces of democratic wealth redistribution.  Wealth attained advantages are: privatization, deregulation, lower taxes for corporations and the rich, tax loopholes, corporate subsidies, inheritance, etc. Forces of redistribution are: Public services, debt forgiveness, government programs, subsidies, progressive taxation, regulations, higher wages and benefits etc.

At a particular cooling of political temperature, when the inevitable forces of inequality sufficiently weaken the forces of democratic redistribution there will be a sudden condensation of wealth to the top 1%–a phase transition to a state of oligarchy.  For example in 1991 Russia suffered the politics of shock therapy economics with sudden privatization and deregulation.  Russia became an oligarchy almost overnight, plunging the working class into poverty.  The author states that it is “only redistribution that sets limits on inequality”.  The question is:  Can we escape the limits of inequality?

Continuous heat can boil away all the water resulting in a complete state of steam.  The same holds true for economies of class inequality.  Sustained political heat from the working classes has the potential to push not only for greater wealth redistribution, but also to reduce the wealth bias to zero and abolish any wealth advantage. This would be a quantum leap to a qualitatively new economic system of social, economic and political equality.—an Egalitarian Society.

Mathematics and Physics point the way to the possibility of —the greatest escape of all, the escape from inequality.

Dr. Gordon is a California Physician who has written many articles on health and politics.  He may be reached at gordonnayvin@yahoo.com

It is now clear that on 14 April 2018, the three Governments of U.S., UK, and France, fired over a hundred missiles against Syria, on no more ‘justification’ than staged videos that had been done by those regimes’ own proxy boots-on-the-ground fighters in Syria, who are trying to overthrow Syria’s existing, non-sectarian Government and replace it by a Sharia-law regime that would be selected by agents of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family. In other words: the fighters whom the U.S., UK, and France, had been arming and training, had themselves created this pretext of a faked ‘gas attack’ having been perpetrated against civilians, as an excuse in order for those three national regimes (which Governments are those jihadists’ own foreign supporters and backers — the real  international “Deep State” imposing the empire of which they themselves are already a part as the empire’s proxy boots-on-the-ground army) to, additionally and now directly, invade Syria, by means of over a hundred missiles against Syria, on that date: 14 April 2018. The U.S.-and-allied Deep State worked in conjunction with these jihadists in order to wage their war against Syria. This international war-crime, of “aggression” against a sovereign state — or, in common parlance, unprovoked aggression, for conquest — is now clear, and will be fully documented in the following news-report, providing the evidence for prosecution of those three Governments, in an appropriate forum:

On 27 October 2019, Caitlin Johnstone posted to Twitter a 2:18-long audio clip from the BBC World Service in which Jonathan Steele, who specializes in reporting on the Midddle East, reported that now a second whistleblower from within the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) (the U.N.-authorized agency to investigate possible chemical-weapons attacks) is alleging that the OPCW’s final report, regarding the alleged 7 April 2018 chemical attack against Douma Syria, had lied in some significant ways in order to avoid concluding that the ‘attack’ (which had been the excuse for the 14 April 2018 invasion) had been staged and never actually occurred. Johnstone then posted to the American Herald Tribune and other non-mainstream online news-media, an article “The USA’s History Of Controlling The OPCW To Promote Regime Change”, saying:

When the Courage Foundation and WikiLeaks published the findings of an interdisciplinary panel which received an extensive presentation from a whistleblower from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation of an alleged 2018 chlorine gas attack in Douma, Syria, it was left unclear (perhaps intentionally) whether this was the same whistleblower who leaked a dissenting Engineering Assessment to the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media this past May or a different one. Subsequent comments from British journalist Jonathan Steele assert that there are indeed two separate whistleblowers from within the OPCW’s Douma investigation, both of whom claim that their investigative findings differed widely from the final OPCW Douma report and were suppressed from the public by the organization.

The official final report aligned with the mainstream narrative promulgated by America’s political/media class that the Syrian government killed dozens of civilians in Douma using cylinders of chlorine gas dropped from the air, while the two whistleblowers found that this is unlikely to have been the case. The official report did not explicitly assign blame to Assad, but it said its findings were in alignment with a chlorine gas attack and included a ballistics report which strongly implied an air strike (opposition fighters in Syria have no air force). The whistleblowers dispute both of these conclusions.

On 28 May 2019, I had posted “SUPPRESSED OPCW FINDING: War-Crime Likely Perpetrated by U.S. Against Syria on 14 April 2018”, about what one can reasonably presume had been the first of those two whistleblowers, and linking through directly to the actual suppressed OPCW document. That article also described and documented the fact that the U.S.-and-allied allegations, which said that there had been a 21 August 2013 sarin-gas attack by the Syrian Government against its town of East Ghouta, had likewise been faked, though that attack actually had occurred — but not by Syria’s Government: it had been perpetrated instead by the fighters whom the U.S. and its allies had armed (America’s jihadist proxy boots-on-the-ground there).

As I had already reported on 30 September 2015, under the headline “Obama Lied When He Said This”, Trump’s immediate predecessor Barack Obama had lied repeatedly about the alleged sarin gas attack by Syria’s Government against the town of East Ghouta on 21 August 2013, and Obama stopped his planned bombing of Syria as America’s alleged ‘retaliation’ or ‘punishment’ of Syria’s Government for that, only because he couldn’t obtain even one ally to go along with him in an overt invasion, on that occasion. They knew that he was lying about it, though the U.S. press (except for Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books — not even a U.S. publication) refused to publish the fact. Americans were kept (and are kept) ignorant of the reality. Obama, within the United States, became widely criticized as weak for failing to invade Syria for having ‘crossed his own red line against chemical attacks’, but Obama knew that the jihadists whom he and his allies had armed had actually done the attack, and the only reason why he failed to invade Syria on that occasion is that none of his allies would join him in it. There was no other reason. It wasn’t because he was ‘weak’.

So, now there’s even more certainty than ever that Trump and his allies had committed an international war-crime on 14 April 2018. The U.S. regime’s pattern of lying is clear and consistent, even across U.S. Presidencies. It’s not the quirk of a dictator, but it certainly could be a quirk of a dictatorship.

Fox News headlined on November 3rd “Poll: Bipartisan majorities want some U.S. troops to stay in Syria”, and reported that, “Sixty-six percent of Republicans think the U.S. should keep troops in Syria” and “Among Democrats, 73 percent want the U.S. to stay in Syria.” This is how bipartisanly deceived, by the lying press, Americans are, into supporting and continuing to support a military invasion, aggression and occupation, against a sovereign nation that never had invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States. (Americans don’t even know what international war-crimes are.) Syria’s Government has been at war against ISIS, which the U.S. regime has been sometimes against and sometimes secretly for and arming; and the U.S. regime’s main boots-on-the-ground fighters to overthrow and replace Syria’s Government have been primarily Al Qaeda but also Kurds. Al Qaeda fights for the Saud family and other Arabic royals, but the Kurds fight for the establishment of a Kurdistan in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, which breakup of those countries would weaken each one of them. Perhaps most of what Americans think is true is false, and most of what Americans think is false is true, but certainly Americans are an enormously deceived and misinformed people. This nation’s military-industrial-press complex or Government (i.e., America’s billionaires, who control all of that) have seen to it, and nobody will tell the American public. (This news-report has been offered to virtually all of them for publication.) How can a nation be a democracy if the public never learn the truth about the Government that rules them?

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

The terrible and terrifying conditions of wind and fire devastating parts of California are showing us what happens when Earth Trauma approaches critical mass. We are not yet at global critical mass, but we do continue to move ever closer. Critical mass relative to environmental trauma or environmental catastrophe would be when either one of two major developments occur, both of which result in cataclysm. One would be so many environmental disasters happen at or near the same time in approximate geography that the emergencies exceed social capacity to respond or recover. Two would be a convergence of catastrophic conditions resulting in a mega catastrophe, or global cataclysm, also a condition exceeding human capacity to adequately respond, if even to respond at all. Think of the California fire-storm condition or the hurricane in Haiti taking place in multiple locations simultaneously, overwhelming not only impoverished communities and nations but the wealthy and deeply resourced as well.I speak here of structures deteriorating beyond recovery and systems collapsing.

Nobody cares for such thoughts, but we keep driving toward the event horizon of ultimate trauma and must wake up and stand up to the oncoming reality.  Ominous events accelerate and the time for people empowerment and unified action is now.  And now is a late hour on the world clock.

I do not mean to be an alarmist here.  Those who know me know I am not.  But the alarms are sounding all around us and this is no time to play at being deaf or to refuse to connect the dots, foolishly thinking that one thing after another will pass, be forgotten and not be revisited in kind upon us.  Being forgetful about what is true is dangerous and a society that encourages diversion and forgetfulness is endangering to its citizens, international relationships and down to the eco and biotic intricacies fundamental to planetary stability.  It has taken billions of evolutionary years to arrive at levels favorable to mammalian life, including human life, and while our species collectively causes havoc and is forcing large scale extinctions, we barely understand the dynamic processes and structures that made and maintain the condition with which we are familiar.

I find myself growingly convinced that we cannot assume that maintaining any form of status quo will suffice.  I believe we are already moving rapidly beyond that and even the phrase “addressing climate change” will shortly prove seriously inadequate.  Rather we need to bring ourselves to recognizing the fullest possible realities and necessities of this earth-humanity crisis syndrome of life on a trauma planet and ask ourselves within this most serious confrontation two questions: how much human impact becomes too much and what needs to be done to avoid reaching the terrestrial blackhole that crushes every possibility?  This is a point of no return or more correctly points of no return down the labyrinth to endgame of confusion, suffering, chaos, and ultimately omnicide.

What point of no return have we already passed, what point are we currently passing, what is just ahead and nearly upon us?  Perhaps it is past due to treat such questions with seriousness and to provide a partial while yet cumulative answer each time we drive a car, waste food, trivialize existence, uselessly consume, adding to the world of junk, or cast a vote?  A decision to turn in the right direction—the direction of affirmation, enrichment and evolutionary enlightenment, opposed to the direction of reduction, negation and destruction—is deciding to live within what Duane Elgin has identified as Voluntary Simplicity, which is marked similar if not the same as my own advocacy for a Prosperity of Appreciation.

There is much in the human condition and within human identity that deserves to be changed.  High speed inner or spiritual evolution is one possible answer.  An answer paradoxically that we might only be able to reach within a small population, and that by slowing down and stepping back or even away from the frantic, death-wish culture of capitalistic consumer civilization.  But let us assume that human beings in terms of who we are cannot become a higher, more enlightened species of humanity within the limited time frame that is in play.  Then we are left with changing how we are as life forms on an endangered planet, with a steady view (focusing on intergenerational education) to a radicalization of bringing about sustainable alternatives in the who of an Earth-humanity future, where Earth is Living Earth and Living Earth is a life place of good habitation, sustainable within the healing and flourishing of atmospheric stability and bio-diversity.

Greta Thunberg and all who live by her example and even add content are in process of demanding new standards of right living and living that is not a furthering destruction of life.  There is much to be encouraged in this, for the young are not yet fossilized in the sediment of corruption, indifference and inertia.  They possess flexibility and their personalities, naturally keyed into growth, have not yet become neurosis.

The raging, wind powered fires currently uncontrolled in both the north and south of California are adjacent disasters in and of themselves.  But they are also only singular examples among many.

These two statements, the youth movement which Greta gives a face to and the present or “just next” natural disaster; as the planet warms, ocean levels rise with plastic toxicity, planetary wind currents shift, weather patterns alter, the magnitude of storms increases in intensity and frequency, world economy depends on fossil fuel and world power on war, etc. etc.; are  at the two ends of the reality spectrum.  The world’s people, the vast majority, the 99% of us, are between these poles, as at a crossroads, and in dire need of facing and forging the right direction.  The pioneering adventure that begins with thinking outside of the box.

After all, choices made at pivot points, before crucial challenges, throughout a life, accumulate and bring introspective and interpersonal changes to the person making the choices. I recall Nikos Kazantzakis writing that we should each examine and decide what from the past continues to live into the future and what is laid to rest.

David Sparenberg is a world citizen, environmental & peace advocate & activist, actor, poet-playwright, storyteller, teacher and author.

 As the concentration of atmospheric CO₂has risen to 408 ppm and the total greenhouse gas level, including methane and nitrous oxide, combine to near500 parts per million CO2-equivalent, the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, currently melting at an accelerated rate, has been exceeded. The consequent expansion of tropics and the shift of climate zones toward the shrinking poles lead to increasingly warm and dry conditions under which fire storms, currently engulfing large parts of South America (Fig. 1), California,Alaska, Siberia, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Angola, Australiaand elsewherehave become a dominant factor in the destruction of terrestrial habitats.

Fig. 1.Sensors on NASA satellites Terra and Aqua captured a record of thousands of points of fire in Brazil in late August. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Since the 18^th century, combustion of fossil fuels has led to the release of more than 910 billion tons of carbon dioxide (GtCO₂) by human activity, raising CO₂ to about 408.5 ppm (Fig. 2), as compared to the 280-300 ppm range prior to the onset of the industrial age. By the early-21^st century the current CO₂ rise rate has reached of 2 to 3 ppm/year.

Fig. 2.  Global temperature and carbon dioxide. Climate Central.

Allowing for the transient albedo enhancing effects of sulphur dioxide and other aerosols, mean global temperature has potentially reached ~2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. Current greenhouse gas forcing and global mean temperatures are approaching Miocene-like (5.3-23 million years-ago) composition.

The current carbon dioxide rise rate exceeds the fastest rates estimated for the K-T asteroid impact (66.4 million years-ago) and the PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Temperature Maximum) hyperthermal event (55.9 million years ago) by an order of magnitude (Fig. 3). The current growth rate of atmospheric greenhouse gases, in particular over the last 70 years or so, may appear gradual in our lifetime but it  constitutes an extreme event in the recorded history of Earth.

Fig. 3.Cenozoic CO₂ and temperaturerise rates. Current rise rates of CO₂ (2.86 ppm CO₂/year) and temperature (0.15-0.20°C per decade since 1975) associated with extreme weather events raise doubt regarding gradual linear climate projections. Instead, chaotic climate conditions may arise from the clash between northward-shifting warm air masses which intersect the weakened undulating Arctic jet stream boundary and freezing polar air fronts penetrating Siberia, North America and Europe.

The definition of a “tipping point”in the climate system is a threshold which, once exceeded, can lead to large changes in the state of the system, or where the confluence of individual factors combines into a single stream. The term “tipping element” describes subcontinental-scale subsystems of the Earth system that are susceptible to being forced into a new irreversible state by small perturbations. In so far as a tipping point can be identified in current developments of the climate system, the weakening of the Arctic boundary, indicated by slowing down and increased disturbance of the jet stream heralds a likely tipping point, an example being the recent ‘Beast from the East” freeze in northern Europe and North America (Fig. 4).

A report by the National Academy Press 2011 states: “As the planet continues to warm, it may be approaching a critical climate threshold beyond which rapid (decadal-scale) and potentially catastrophic changes may occur that are not anticipated.”

Direct evidence for changing climate patterns is provided by the expansion of the tropics and migration of climate zones toward the poles, estimated at a rate of approximately 56-111 km per decade. As the dry subtropical zones shift toward the poles, droughts worsen and overall less rain falls in temperate regions. Poleward shifts in the average tracks of tropical and extratropical cyclones are already happening. This is likely to continue as the tropics expand further. As extratropical cyclones move, they shift rain away from temperate regions that historically rely on winter rainfalls for their agriculture and water supply. Australia is highly vulnerable to expanding tropics as about 60 percent of the continent lies north of 30°S.

Low-lying land areas, including coral islands, delta and low coastal and river valleys would be flooded due to sea level rise to Miocene-like (5.3-23 million years ago) sea levels of approximately 40±15 meters above pre-industrial levels. Accelerated flow of ice melt water flow from ice sheets into the oceans is reducing temperatures over tracts in the North Atlantic and circum-Antarctic oceans. Strong temperature contrasts between cold polar-derived fronts and warm tropical-derived air masses lead to extreme weather events, retarding habitats, in particular over coastal regions. As partial melting of the large ice sheets proceeds the Earth’s climate zones continue to shift polar-ward (Environmental Migration Portal, 2015). This results in an expansion of tropical regions such as existed in the Miocene, reducing the size of polar ice sheets and temperate climate zones.

Fig. 4.The cold fronts penetrating Europe from Siberia and the North Atlantic and North America from the Arctic, 2018. UK Met Office.

According to Berger and Loutre (2002) the effect of high atmospheric greenhouse gas levels would delay the next ice age by tens of thousands of years, during which chaotic tropical to hyper-tropical conditions including extreme weather events would persist over much of the Earth, until atmospheric CO₂ and insolation subside. Humans are likely to survive in relatively favorable parts of Earth, such as sub-polar regions and sheltered mountain valleys, where cooler conditions would allow flora and fauna to persist.

To try and avoid a global calamity abrupt reduction in carbon emissions is essential, but since the high level of CO₂-equivalent is activating amplifying feedbacks from land and ocean, global attempts to down-draw about of 50 to 100 ppm of CO₂ from the atmosphere, using every effective negative emissions, is essential. Such efforts would  include streaming air through basalt and serpentine, biochar cultivation, sea weed sequestration, reforestation, sodium hydroxide pipe systems and other methods.

But while $trillions continue to be poured into preparation of future wars, currently no government is involved in any serious attempt at the defense of life on Earth.

Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and climate scientist, Australian National University

Governments are failing to address the climate crisis, says a new study, which is based on 40 years of data on a range of measures. Another team said: Paris carbon-cutting pledges are “too little, too late”.

The alarming assessments came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump formally notified the UN of the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, triggering concerns of how other nations might react.

The new study warns: Without deep and lasting changes, the world is facing “untold human suffering”.

The scientists say they have a moral obligation to warn of the scale of the threat.

“We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” it states. “To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.”

There is no time to lose, the scientists say: “The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.”

The statement is published in the journal BioScience (William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw, World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency, BioScience, biz088,  https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088, published: November 5, 2019) on the 40th anniversary of the first world climate conference, which was held in Geneva in 1979. The statement is a collaboration of dozens of scientists and endorsed by further 11,000 from 153 nations.

The scientists say the urgent changes needed include ending population growth, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, halting forest destruction and slashing meat eating.

The new study, released on the day that satellite data shows that last month was the warmest October on record, said: simply measuring global surface temperatures is an inadequate way of capturing the real dangers of an overheating world.

So the scientists include a range of data, which they claim represents a “suite of graphical vital signs of climate change over the past 40 years”.

These indicators include the growth of human and animal populations, per capita meat production, global tree cover loss, as well as fossil fuel consumption.

Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University and the lead author of the statement, said he was driven to initiate it by the increase in extreme weather he was seeing. A key aim of the warning is to set out a full range of “vital sign” indicators of the causes and effects of climate breakdown, rather than only carbon emissions and surface temperature rise.

“A broader set of indicators should be monitored, including human population growth, meat consumption, tree-cover loss, energy consumption, fossil-fuel subsidies and annual economic losses to extreme weather events,” said co-author Thomas Newsome, of the University of Sydney.

Other “profoundly troubling signs from human activities” selected by the scientists include booming air passenger numbers and world GDP growth. “The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle,” they said.

As a result of these human activities, there are “especially disturbing” trends of increasing land and ocean temperatures, rising sea levels and extreme weather events, the scientists said: “Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have largely failed to address this predicament. Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points. These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.”

“We urge widespread use of the vital signs [to] allow policymakers and the public to understand the magnitude of the crisis, realign priorities and track progress,” the scientists said.

“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to look at the graphs and know things are going wrong,” said Newsome. “But it is not too late.” The scientists identify some encouraging signs, including decreasing global birth rates, increasing solar and wind power and fossil fuel divestment. Rates of forest destruction in the Amazon had also been falling until a recent increase under new president Jair Bolsonaro.

Warmest ever October

The European Union (EU) has confirmed that last month was the warmest October ever registered, fast on heels of a record September and the hottest month ever in July.

Three-quarters of national commitments under the Paris climate accord to curb greenhouse gases will not even slow the accelerating pace of global warming, according to a report from five senior scientists.

“With few exceptions, the pledges of rich, middle-income and poor nations are insufficient to address climate change,” said Robert Watson, who chaired both the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN’s science body for biodiversity.

Robert Watson said: “As they stand, the pledges are far too little, too late.”

Five-bell alarm

The scientists sounded a five-bell alarm in the peer-reviewed BioScience, noting that the world had failed to act on global warming despite the accumulation of evidence over 30 years.

“We declare, clearly and unequivocally, that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” the statement said.

“Failing to reduce emissions drastically and rapidly will result in an environmental and economic disaster,” said James McCarty, a professor of oceanography at Harvard University, and co-author of the analysis of voluntary Paris pledges to reduce carbon pollution.

Emissions of the gases warming Earth’s surface must drop 50 percent by 2030 and to “net zero” – with no additional carbon entering the atmosphere by mid-century –  if the Paris treaty’s goal of capping warming at 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius is to be met, the IPCC concluded last year.

But 2018 saw unprecedented global carbon pollution of more than 41 billion tonnes, two percent higher than 2017, also a record year.

Global temperatures have increased 1 C above pre-industrial levels – enough to boost the impact of deadly heatwaves, floods and superstorms – and are on track to rise another two or three degrees by the end of the century.

Just over half of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power, industry, agriculture and deforestation – the main drivers of global warming – came from four countries last year: China, the U.S., India and Russia.

Accounting for 13.1 percent of the total, the U.S. has turned its back on the Paris deal.

“China and India could say ‘damn it, we’re going to demonstrate to the world that we are climate leaders’,” Watson told AFP.

“Or they could say ‘if the U.S. is not going to do it, we’re not going to either’. It could go either way.”

China has said it will lower carbon intensity and peak emissions by about 2030.

But the size and staggering growth of its economy will likely overwhelm such marginal improvements, the scientists said.

China

At 29 percent of the global total, China alone pumps out more CO2 than the next three nations combined, though about 13 percent of those emissions are generated by exports destined for rich nations, recent research has shown.

India

India, which is ramping up both renewable energy and carbon-intensive coal-fired power, accounted for seven percent in 2018, and Russia – which has made no pledge at all – added 4.6 percent.

The efforts of the world’s top four emitters were deemed “insufficient”, according to the report.

All told, nearly three-quarters of 184 registered pledges were judged inadequate to stop climate change from continuing to accelerate in the next decade.

All but a handful are unchanged since being submitted in 2015 and 2016.

EU

Among major economic blocs, only the EU, with its 28 member states, got a passing mark.

“The EU is clearly in the lead in trying to address the climate crisis,” Watson said.

The emissions of the world’s poorest nations have been and continue to be negligible, but steps must be taken today to shape their energy futures.

“Sooner or later, they will start to grow, and we don’t want them to become dependent on cheap fossil fuel energy,” Watson noted. “They need financial and technical assistance.”

Under the Paris treaty, developing nations are to receive $100 billion annually from next year to help curb climate change and cope with its impacts.

Actions urgently needed

The scientists have set out a series of urgently needed actions, which include:

Use energy far more efficiently and apply strong carbon taxes to cut fossil fuel use.

Stabilize global population – currently growing by 200,000 people a day – using ethical approaches such as longer education for girls.

End the destruction of nature and restore forests and mangroves to absorb CO2.

Eat mostly plants and less meat, and reduce food waste.

Shift economic goals away from GDP growth.

The good news

“The good news is that such transformative change, with social and economic justice for all, promises far greater human well-being than does business as usual,” the scientists said.

The recent surge of concern was encouraging, they added, from the global school strikes to lawsuits against polluters and some nations and businesses starting to respond.

The scientists said:

“As the Alliance of World Scientists, we stand ready to assist decision-makers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future. We urge widespread use of vital signs, which will better allow policymakers, the private sector, and the public to understand the magnitude of this crisis, track progress, and realign priorities for alleviating climate change. The good news is that such transformative change, with social and economic justice for all, promises far greater human well-being than does business as usual. We believe that the prospects will be greatest if decision-makers and all of humanity promptly respond to this warning and declaration of a climate emergency and act to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home.”

The planet is coming apart at the seams right before the eyes of scientists at work in remote fringe areas of the North where permafrost crumbles and collapses. It’s abrupt climate change at work in real time,but the governing leaders of the world either don’t care or don’t know. If they did, there would already be a worldwide Climate Marshall Plan to save civilization from early warning signals of utter chaos.

“Across 9 million square miles at the top of the planet, climate change is writing a new chapter. Arctic permafrost isn’t thawing gradually, as scientists once predicted. Geologically speaking, it’s thawing almost overnight.” (Source: Arctic Permafrost Is Thawing Fast. That Affects Us All, National Geographic, September 2019 Issue)

After all, collapsing permafrost is the leading edge of cataclysmal global warming as it precedes additional catastrophes that follow one after another, and then another. All of which happen unannounced, known as abrupt climate change events.

The modern world’s First Near-Catastrophe, the Ozone Hole (1980s), was luckily avoided 40 years ago, more on this fascinating story later. It was the planet’s closest brush with nearly total extinction ever since the Permian-Triassic event took down 95% of all life 252 million years ago.

Meanwhile,the concern is whether cascading permafrost will end up as the world’s Second Near-Catastrophe, meaning it gets attended to, or will it lead to something much worse, as in “catastrophes that follow one after another, and then another?”

Cherskiy, Russia, which is home to the Northeast Science Station at 69°N, far above the Arctic Circle,is a year-round base for an international research station that studies Arctic biology and climate change. It is 60 miles inland from the East Siberian Sea (another high risk area in the Arctic).

In January of 2018 something unheard of happened at Cherskiy. The topsoil that has maintained frozen permafrost for eons was not refreezing like it had every year for as long as records were kept. Whereas, January in Siberia is normally so brutally cold that human breath can freeze with a “tinkling sound” that locals refer to as “the whisper of stars.”

“Three years ago, the temperature in the ground above our permafrost was minus 3 degrees Celsius (-27 degrees Fahrenheit),’ Sergey Zimov (an ecologist) said, ‘Then it was minus 2. Then it was minus one. This year, the temperature was plus 2 degrees,” Ibid.

The aforementioned example of abrupt climate change in Siberia is a beckoning out of the North, warning that the past 10,000 years of the Holocene era, earmarked by a Goldilocks Wonder World “not too hot, not too cold,” has ended, as excessive heat tears apart regions of the planet, piece by piece. Thereby sounding the alarm and threatening comfy lifestyles in every country in existence today, but is it a warning signal with a short fuse or a long fuse?

Human-generated greenhouse gases have kicked nature into high gear,competing with humanity by emitting tons of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, even in the winter in Siberia above the Arctic Circle. It’s earth-shattering news that should cause sleepless nights for world leaders,but it doesn’t alarm them. Otherwise, they’d already be taking emergency measures. They’re not!

As it happens, world leadership is sacrificing their constituencies on the altar of fossil fuel profits and a brand of capitalism that recklessly consumes everything in sight. Therefore emphasizing consequences such as, Alaska’s North Slope has seen temperatures spike 11°F in 30 years as temperatures hit 90°F 240 miles above the Arctic Circle, challenging Florida’s balmy weather.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change struggles to keep up with ever-faster climate change disaster scenarios that unfold right under their noses, the world’s leadership looks like a herd of deer frozen in headlights. Meanwhile, the risks of excessive global warming, or heat, is not properly understood by the public in the following ‘double-scary’ context:

“Large abrupt climate changes have repeatedly affected much or all of the earth, locally reaching as much as 10°C change in 10 years.” (Source: Alley, Richard B. Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, Washington D.C. National Academy Press, 2002)

That description of abrupt climate change (10°C in 10 years) by Richard B. Alley, Evan Pugh Professor, Penn State University,is based upon paleoclimate data. However, that same risk is not considered by the IPCC or included in scientists’ models, thus it qualifies as one of the least expected climate events.But, it has happened in the past…more than once!

Frankly, society can’t handle 10°C in 10 years, whether “locally,” as stated by Dr. Alley, or universally.

Which prompts the daunting notion of what happens when nature is “goosed up”by the sudden advent of the Human Heat Machine: 7,500,000,000 people, 1,400,000,000 cars, 22,500,000 commercial vehicles, 3,500,000 heavy trucks, 425,000 buses, 39,000 commercial and military airplanes, 62,500 power plants, 996,000,000 cattle all simultaneously emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, as CO2 emissions set new records year after year after year?

In all, 80-90% of the above-listed statistics occurred in only 70 years, whereas it took modern humans nearly 200,000 years to reach two billion in population.Today, it’s the Great Acceleration at work as post WWII 5.5 billion newbies forage the planet, all within one lifetime. Amazing!

As a result, we are the biggest experiment the planet has ever encountered. Meanwhile, scientific knowledge that establishes“a firm link” between  (1) carbon dioxide emissions and (2) excessive global heat brings forth far-reaching unknowns for today’s carbon dioxide-fueled world.As such, the climate status/integrity of the planet has become a gamble, a crap shoot.

For example, the temperature/CO2 relationship over the past 400,000 years is saw-toothed, as demonstrated so clearly in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006): When CO2 hits a high of 280 ppm, temperatures, like clock-work, increase by 5°C (hotcycle) and when CO2 hits a low of 180 ppm, like clock-work, temperatures decrease by -5°C (cold cycle) every 100,00 years over the past 400,000.

Although,temperature change (the wild card)is all about timing, meaning does it take centuries or decades or years for temperature to react to CO2 levels in the atmosphere? In that regard, Dr. Alley’s “10°C in 10 years” is not encouraging, but nobody knows for sure what will happen tomorrow.

Speaking of which, today’s CO2 at 410+ ppm has powered through nature’s rhythmic cycles of 180 (low) to 280 (high) over the past 400,000 years. Now what?

Assuming global warming reacts accordingly, one possible scenario:“In a 4°C world, in which local temperature increases of 5 to 10 degrees will affect many areas, the impact on food production may be catastrophic.” (Source: Angus, Ian, Facing the Anthropocene, Monthly Review Press, 2016, pg. 102)

Today’s collapsing permafrost is eerily similar to the circumstances that surrounded the world’s First Near-Catastrophe, the notorious Ozone Hole, as explained in chapter 5 “The First Near-Catastrophe”of Ian Angus’ profoundly brilliant and indispensible book. The world has already faced that First Near-Catastrophe and luckily got through it.

Similar to ignoring abrupt climate change today, back in the 1970s-80s, no one predicted the speed and magnitude of the steep decline in levels of ozone because of damage by CFCs produced by DuPont ever since the 1930s. In fact, back in the day, NASA had predicted that ozone levels might decline 5 to 9 percent by 2050. But, surprise, surprise, surprise! Ozone levels dropped by 60% by the mid 1980s. Scientists were dumbfounded! And scared!

Without the protective ozone layer, 10-20 miles above Earth, which absorbs most of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, life literally burns to a crisp.

In a masterful-less stroke of good luck, a handful of scientists brought the impending disaster of the ozone hole to the attention of the world community. If not for the British Antarctic Survey that worked on a shoestring budget of $18,000/year, the world wouldn’t have known of the threat to all humanity. Since 1957, they monitored the ozone layer from the Halley Bay Observatory in Antarctica but never suspected human-generated chemicals would attack and destroy the ozone layer.

For 50 years the CFC industry was able to avoid a ban on sales of CFCs due to an absence of hard scientific data showing a decline in ozone levels. In 1979, DuPont officials said: “No ozone depletion has ever been detected despite the most sophisticated analysis… All ozone depletion figures to date are computer projections based on a series of uncertain assumptions,” Ibid, pg. 84.

Similar to CO2 in the atmosphere today, “CFCs had been entering the atmosphere in ever-increasing amounts since the early 1930s. The pre-1980 measurements from Halley Bay undoubtedly included their effect on the ozone layer above Antarctica, but in 1979, what had been a gradual linear process crossed a tipping point, becoming rapid and nonlinear,” Ibid, pg. 85.

Thus, giving birth to an Abrupt Climate Change event that could have destroyed life on Earth. Thankfully, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed in 1987. It saved the world from sure-fire destruction, blind-sided by its own chemical devices.

After reviewing the history of CFCs and the ozone layer, Paul Crutzen (Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist) commented: “I can only conclude that mankind has been extremely lucky,” Ibid, pg. 87.

Now: Is permafrost collapse the Second Near-Catastrophe or something worse?

Hopefully, the answer is not “something worse” because dissimilar to the Ozone Hole crisis, which was solved by a handful of companies and industries implementing a technical fix and banning CFCs, the process of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions is universal, requiring decades of transforming the global economy, a gargantuan task when compared to civilization’s First Near-Catastrophe.

Similar to the Ozone Hole, which hit a tipping point 40 years after CFCs began emitting, collapsing permafrost first happens by inches, then by feet, then by portions of miles, when it is finally recognized as exceeding a tipping point, likely what’s happening today in Siberia, and throughout the far reaches of the Northern Hemisphere where massive levels of permafrost cover 25% of the hemisphere buried in frozen soil for eons, holding more than twice the amount of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere.

Permafrost collapse is as alarming, maybe more so, as the Ozone Hole threat, but only a handful of scientists see it and believe it. Sound familiar?

Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 articles published, including several translated into foreign languages, appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He has been interviewed on numerous FM radio programs, as well as television.

It’s a tale for all time. What might be the greatest scam in history or, at least, the one that threatens to take history down with it. Think of it as the climate-change scam that beat science, big time.

Scientists have been seriously investigating the subject of human-made climate change since the late 1950s and political leaders have been discussing it for nearly as long. In 1961, Alvin Weinberg, the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, called carbon dioxide one of the “big problems” of the world “on whose solution the entire future of the human race depends.” Fast-forward nearly 30 years and, in 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), promising “concrete action to protect the planet.”

Today, with Puerto Rico still recovering from Hurricane Maria and fires burning across California, we know that did not happen. Despite hundreds of scientific reports and assessments, tens of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers, and countless conferences on the issue, man-made climate change is now a living crisis on this planet. Universities, foundations, churches, and individuals have indeed divested from fossil fuel companies and, led by a 16-year-old Swedish girl, citizens across the globe have taken to the streets to express their outrage. Children have refused to go to school on Fridays to protest the potential loss of their future. And if you need a measure of how long some of us have been at this, in December, the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC will meet for the 25th time.

Scientists working on the issue have often told me that, once upon a time, they assumed, if they did their jobs, politicians would act upon the information. That, of course, hasn’t happened. Anything but, across much of the planet. Worse yet, science failed to have the necessary impact in significant part because of disinformation promoted by the major fossil-fuel companies, which have succeeded in diverting attention from climate change and successfully blocking meaningful action.

Making Climate Change Go Away

Much focus has been put on ExxonMobil’s history of disseminating disinformation, partly because of the documented discrepancies between what that company said in public about climate change and what its officials said (and funded) in private. Recently, a trial began in New York City accusing the company of misleading its investors, while Massachusetts is prosecuting ExxonMobil for misleading consumers as well.

If only it had just been that one company, but for more than 30 years, the fossil-fuel industry and its allies have denied the truth about anthropogenic global warming. They have systematically misled the American people and so purposely contributed to endless delays in dealing with the issue by, among other things, discounting and disparaging climate science, mispresenting scientific findings, and attempting to discredit climate scientists. These activities are documented in great detail in How Americans Were Deliberately Misled about Climate Change, a report I recently co-authored, as well as in my 2010 book and 2014 film, Merchants of Doubt.

A key aspect of the fossil-fuel industry’s disinformation campaign was the mobilization of “third-party allies”: organizations and groups with which it would collaborate and that, in some cases, it would be responsible for creating.

In the 1990s, these allied outfits included the Global Climate Coalition, the Cooler Heads Coalition, Informed Citizens for the Environment, and the Greening Earth Society. Like ExxonMobil, such groups endlessly promoted a public message of denial and doubt: that we weren’t really sure if climate change was happening; that the science wasn’t settled; that humanity could, in any case, readily adapt at a later date to any changes that did occur; and that addressing climate change directly would wreck the American economy. Two of these groups — Informed Citizens for the Environment and the Greening Earth Society — were, in fact, AstroTurf organizations, created and funded by a coal industry trade association but dressed up to look like grass-roots citizens’ action organizations.

Similar messaging was pursued by a network of think tanks promoting free market solutions to social problems, many with ties to the fossil-fuel industry. These included the George C. Marshall Institute, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heartland Institute. Often their politically motivated contrarian claims were presented in formats that make them look like the scientific reports whose findings they were contradicting.

In 2009, for instance, the Cato Institute issued a report that precisely mimicked the format, layout, and structure of the government’s U.S. National Climate Assessment. Of course, it made claims thoroughly at odds with the actual report’s science. The industry also promoted disinformation through its trade associations, including the American Legislative Exchange Council, the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

Both think tanks and trade organizations have been involved in personal attacks on the reputations of scientists. One of the earliest documented was on climate scientist Benjamin Santer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who showed that the observed increase in global temperatures could not be attributed to increased solar radiation. He served as the lead author of the Second Assessment Report of the U.N.’s prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, responsible for the 1995 conclusion that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human impact on the climate system.” Santer became the target of a vicious, arguably defamatory attack by physicists from the George C. Marshall Institute and the Global Climate Coalition, who accused him of fraud. Other climate scientists, including Michael Mann, Jonathan Overpeck, Malcolm Hughes, Ray Bradley, Katharine Hayhoe, and, I should note, myself, have been subject to harassment, investigation, hacked emails, and politically motivated freedom-of-information attacks.

How to Play Climate Change for a Fool

When it came to industry disinformation, the role of third-party allies was on full display at the House Committee on Oversight hearings on climate change in late October. As their sole witness, the Republicans on that committee invited Mandy Gunasekera, the founder and president of Energy45, a group whose purpose, in its own words, is to “support the Trump energy agenda.”

Energy45 is part of a group known, bluntly enough, as the CO₂ Coalition and is a perfect example of what I’ve long thought of as zombie denialism in which older players spouting industry arguments suddenly reappear in new forms. In this case, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the George C. Marshall Institute was a leader in climate-change disinformation. From 1974-1999, its director, William O’Keefe, had also been the executive vice president and later CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. The Marshall Institute itself closed in 2015, only to re-emerge a few years later as the CO₂ Coalition.

The comments of Republican committee members offer a sense of just how deeply the climate-change disinformation campaign is now lodged in the heart of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans as 2019 draws to an end and the planet visibly heats. Consider just six of their “facts”:

1) The misleading claim that climate change will be “mild and manageable.” There is no scientific evidence to support this. On the contrary, literally hundreds of scientific reports over the past few decades, including those U.S. National Climate Assessments, have affirmed that any warming above 2 degrees Centigrade will lead to grave and perhaps catastrophic effects on “health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth.” The U.N.’s IPCC has recently noted that avoiding the worst impacts of global warming will “require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy… infrastructure… and industrial systems.”

Recent events surrounding Hurricanes Sandy, Michael, Harvey, Maria, and Dorian, as well as the devastating wildfire at the ironically named town of Paradise, California, in 2018 and the fires across much of that state this fall, have shown that the impacts of climate change are already part of our lives and becoming unmanageable. Or if you want another sign of where this country is at this moment, consider a new report from the Army War College indicating that “the Department of Defense (DoD) is precariously unprepared for the national security implications of climate change-induced global security challenges.” And if the Pentagon isn’t prepared to manage climate change, it’s hard to imagine any part of the U.S. government that might be.

2) The misleading claim that global prosperity is actually being driven by fossil fuels. No one denies that fossil fuels drove the Industrial Revolution and, in doing so, contributed substantively to rising living standards for hundreds of millions of people in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia. But the claim that fossil fuels are the essence of global prosperity today is, at best, a half-truth because what is at stake here isn’t the past but the future. Disruptive climate change fueled by greenhouse gas emissions from the use of oil, coal, and natural gas now threatens both the prosperity that parts of this planet have already achieved and future economic growth of just about any sort. Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank and one of the foremost experts on the economics of climate change, has put our situation succinctly this way: “High carbon growth self-destructs.”

3) A misleading claim that fossil fuels represent “cheap energy.” Fossil fuels are not cheap. When their external costs are included — that is, not just the price of extracting, distributing, and profiting from them, but what it will cost in all our lives once you add in the fires, extreme storms, flooding, health effects, and everything else that their carbon emissions into the atmosphere will bring about — they couldn’t be more expensive. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the cost to consumers above and beyond what we pay at the pump or in our electricity bills already comes to more than $5 trillion dollars annually. That’s trillion, not billion. Put another way, we are all paying a massive, largely unnoticed subsidy to the oil, gas, and coal industry to destroy our civilization. Among other things, those subsidies already “damage the environment, caus[e]… premature deaths through local air pollution, [and] exacerbat[e] congestion and other adverse side effects of vehicle use.”

4) A misleading claim about poverty and fossil fuels. That fossil fuels are the solution to the energy needs of the world’s poor is a tale being heavily promoted by ExxonMobil, among others. The idea that ExxonMobil is suddenly concerned about the plight of the global poor is, of course, laughable or its executives wouldn’t be planning (as they are) for significant increases in fossil-fuel production between now and 2030, while downplaying the threat of climate change. As Pope Francis, global justice leader Mary Robinson, and former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon — as well as countless scientists and advocates of poverty reduction and global justice — have repeatedly emphasized, climate change will, above all, hurt the poor. It is they who will first be uprooted from their homes (and homelands); it is they who will be migrating into an increasingly hostile and walled-in world; it is they who will truly feel the heat, literal and figurative, of it all. A fossil-fuel company that cared about the poor would obviously not be committed, above all else, to pursuing a business model based on oil and gas exploration and development. The cynicism of this argument is truly astonishing.

Moreover, while it’s true that the poor need affordable energy, it is not true that they need fossil fuels. More than a billion people worldwide lack access (or, at least, reliable access) to electricity, but many of them also lack access to an electricity grid, which means fossil fuels are of little use to them. For such communities, solar and wind power are the only reasonable ways to go, the only ones that could rapidly and affordably be put in place and made available.

5) Misleading assertions about the costs of renewable energy. The cheap fossil fuel narrative is regularly coupled with misleading assertions about the allegedly high costs of renewable energy. According to Bloomberg News, however, in two-thirds of the world, solar is already the cheapest form of newly installed electricity generation, cheaper than nuclear, natural gas, or coal. Improvements in energy storage are needed to maximize the penetration of renewables, particularly in developed countries, but such improvements are happening quickly. Between 2010 and 2017, the price of battery storage decreased a startling 79% and most experts believe that, in the near future, many of the storage problems can and will be solved.

6) The false claim that, under President Trump, the U.S. has actually cut greenhouse gas emissions. Republicans have claimed not only that such emissions have fallen but that the United States under President Trump has done more to reduce emissions than any other country on the planet. One environmental reporter, who has described herself as “accustomed to hearing a lot of misinformation” about climate change, characterized this statement as “brazenly false.” In fact, U.S. CO2 emissions spiked in 2018, increasing by 3.1% over 2017. Methane emissions are also on the rise and President Trump’s proposal to rollback methane standards will ensure that unhappy trend continues.

Science Isn’t Enough

And by the way, when it comes to the oil companies, that’s just to start down a far longer list of misinformation and false claims they’ve been peddling for years. In our 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt, Erik Conway and I showed that the strategies and tactics used by Big Energy to deny the harm of fossil-fuel use were, in many cases, remarkably similar to those long used by the tobacco industry to deny the harm of tobacco use — and this was no coincidence. Many of the same PR firms, advertising agencies, and institutions were involved in both cases.

The tobacco industry was finally prosecuted by the Department of Justice, in part because of the ways in which the individual companies coordinated with each other and with third-party allies to present false information to consumers. Through congressional hearings and legal discovery, the industry was pegged with a wide range of activities it funded to mislead the American people. Something similar has occurred with Big Energy and the harm fossil fuels are doing to our lives, our civilization, our planet.

Still, a crucial question about the fossil-fuel industry remains to be fully explored: Which of its companies have funded the activities of the trade organizations and other third-party allies who deny the facts about climate change? In some cases, we already know the answers. In 2006, for instance, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom documented ExxonMobil’s funding of 39 organizations that promoted “inaccurate and misleading” views of climate science. The Society was able to identify $2.9 million spent to that end by that company in the year 2005 alone. That, of course, was just one year and clearly anything but the whole story.

Nearly all of these third-party allies are incorporated as 501(c)(3) institutions, which means they must be non-profit and nonpartisan. Often they claim to be involved in education (though mis-education would be the more accurate term). But they are clearly also involved in supporting an industry — Big Energy — that couldn’t be more for-profit and they have done many things to support what could only be called a partisan political agenda as well. After all, by its own admission, Energy45, to take just one example, exists to support the “Trump Energy Agenda.”

I’m an educator, not a lawyer, but as one I can say with confidence that the activities of these organizations are the opposite of educational. Typically, the Heartland Institute, for instance, has explicitly targeted schoolteachers with disinformation. In 2017, the institute sent a booklet to more than 200,000 of them, repeating the oft-cited contrarian claims that climate science is still a highly unsettled subject and that, even if climate change were occurring, it “would probably not be harmful.” Of this booklet, the director of the National Center for Science Education said, “It’s not science, but it’s dressed up to look like science. It’s clearly intended to confuse teachers.” The National Science Teaching Association has called it “propaganda” and advised teachers to place their copies in the recycling bin.

Yet, as much as we know about the activities of Heartland and other third-party allies of the fossil-fuel industry, because of loopholes in our laws we still lack basic information about who has funded and sustained them. Much of the funding at the moment still qualifies as “dark money.” Isn’t it time for citizens to demand that Congress investigate this network, as it and the Department of Justice once investigated the tobacco industry and its networks?

ExxonMobil loves to accuse me of being “an activist.” I am, in fact, a teacher and a scholar. Most of the time, I’d rather be home working on my next book, but that increasingly seems like less of an option when Big Energy’s climate-change scam is ongoing and our civilization is, quite literally, at stake. When citizens are inactive, democracy fails — and this time, if democracy fails, as burning California shows, so much else could fail as well. Science isn’t enough. The rest of us are needed. And we are needed now.

Naomi Oreskes is professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University. She is coauthor, with Erik Conway, of Merchants of Doubt. Her latest book is Why Trust Science?

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Originally published by TomDispatch

Nick Hanauer, a self-professed capitalist billionaire, spoke at a TED conference only recently. He exposed neoliberalism’s brand of capitalism getting away with murder in plain sight.

Mr. Hanauer described himself: “After a 30-year career in capitalism spanning three dozen companies, generating tens of billions of dollars in market value, I’m not in the top one percent (1.0%), I’m in the top zero-point-one percent (0.1%) of all earners… rich capitalists like me have never been richer… how do we manage to grab an ever-increasing share of the economic pie every year?”

According to Hanauer: “It all comes down to just one thing: Economics.”

There was a time, for example in the 1950s, when economics worked on behalf of everybody in the country. At the time CEO pay was 20xs the average worker. In stark contrast, today’s neoliberal brand of capitalism only works for big corporations and billionaires, nobody else, and CEO pay has skyrocketed to 360xs rank-and-file worker pay.

Neoliberalism is a made-to-order-get-rich-scheme but reserved for the already rich. No outsiders allowed, other than the few that suddenly appear out of nowhere, like apparitions coming to life out of Silicon Valley.

As a consequence of neoliberal ideology over the past 30-40 years, in the USA alone, according to Hanauer: The top 1% has grown 21 trillion dollars richer while the bottom 50% have grown 900 billion dollars poorer.”  That pattern of widening inequality has largely repeated across the world. It is the Grand Slam of Neoliberalism, and it just keeps on going and growing.

Politically, the neoliberal agenda is a kissing cousin to Republican talking points, arguing(1) raising taxes always kills growth (wrong- see next paragraph). And,(2) any form of government regulation is inefficient (wrong- see next paragraph).And, (3) raising wages always kills jobs, as businesses cannot afford to pay higher wages (wrong- see following paragraphs). These timeworn myths have hung in there like some kind of universal stamp of Good-Housekeeping approval ever since the Reagan administration. But, all three are stale myths, meaningless, false, make-believe storylines.

President Clinton’s administration raised the top income tax bracket for the first time since the 1950s. The economy posted slightly above average growth for the ensuing 5 years.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, between 2000 and 2010, the benefits of governmental regulations substantially exceeded the costs, “in fact, on average, the value of the benefits was about seven times the costs.” (Source: Is Government Regulation Really So Bad For Business? The Business Journal, Mar. 7, 2016)

Not only that, neoliberalism’s knee-jerk fix for middle class struggles coping with stagnate wage growth for 40 years is:(1) globalization (code word for moving jobs to the lowest common wage denominator) and (2) more austerity (code word for cutting social programs to finance tax cuts for the rich). According to Hanauer, the twin forces of globalization and austerity were the problem in the first instance, undermining the entire middle class.

Therefore, with neoliberalism ingrained into the world economic fabric, as it beats down labor while celebrating corporate over-lordship’s legal status as a “person”, what is a society to do?

Hanauer argues that America needs new economics. Toss out neoliberalism. For starters, he claims a growing number of academics and practitioners have concluded that neoliberal economic theory is “dangerously wrong.” Thus, for decades “bad economic theory”has resulted in massive inequality throughout the world accompanied by disruptive political instability. As such, neoliberalism is inherently self-destructive and, by default, it morphs into a replica of 18^th century absolutism with power vested in one or more rulers or despots as a final remaining beachhead for its survival.

Further to the point, neoliberalism is a“backwards approach to economics because it isn’t capital that creates economic growth.” It’s people that create economic growth. And, “it isn’t self-interest that promotes the public good.”It’s reciprocity. And, “it isn’t competition that creates prosperity.” It’s cooperation. Yet, neoliberalism is tethered to capital creation as the engine for growth, self-interest as the fuel for growth, and competition as the determinate of success.

Hanauer’s list of neoliberal mistaken assumptions:

1. The market is an efficient equilibrium system, which means if one thing like wages goes up, then something else in the same economy like jobs must go down. Not true. In 2015 in Seattle when they passed the first $15/hr. minimum wage, the neoliberals “freaked out.” But, thereafter the unemployment rate fell dramatically. Restaurant businesses in Seattle, which neoliberal advocates said would collapse, boomed (restaurant employment increased by 24,000, post 2015). More people with more money to spend increased businesses across the board. Seattle’s $15/hr. minimum wage lifted all boats.
2. The price of something is always equal to its value. Which means if one person earns fifty thousand per year and another person earns fifty million per year;person number two produces 1,000 more value. However, people are not paid what they are truly worth. In point of fact, they are paid based upon “the power they have to negotiate.” Workers shrinkage of a share of GDP is not because workers have become less productive. It’s because employers have become more powerful politically amidst a tornado of behind the scenes manipulations cutting labor off at the knees, as well as disgraceful examples of union busting by the nation’s highest court, e.g., Janus v. AFSCME taking aim at the heart of public-sector unions in America, by a 5-4 decision the C0urt ruled against union fees in the public sector as a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech, overturning 40 years of established law.
3. Humans are homo economicus, meaning they are (1) perfectly selfish, (2) perfectly rational, and (3) relentlessly self-maximizing. This goes to the heart of a crude, cruel neoliberal economics. But, homo economicus fails, as it is both “morally corrosive and scientifically wrong.” In contrast, the latest empirical science describes humans as (1) highly cooperative,(2) reciprocal, and (3) intuitively moral creatures.

A new economics brings innovation as the process by which we solve human problems, and according to Hanauer, it involves five rules:

1. Successful economies are not jungles where survival of the fittest rules. Rather, they’re gardens. Thus, markets, like gardens, must be tended. The market isa vehicle to realize innovation and prosperity, but markets left untended, unconstrained by social norms or without regulations, create more problems than they solve.
2. Inclusion creates economic growth. So,including more people in more ways brings growth.
3. The purpose of the corporation is not solely to enrich shareholders. The purpose of the corporation should be to improve all stakeholders, including customers, workers, communities, and shareholders.
4. Greed is not good. “Being rapacious does not make you a capitalist; it makes you a sociopath.”
5. The laws of economics involve the principals of“choice.” Neoliberal economics has sold the public on the idea that neoliberalism is immutable, natural law and unchangeable. In fact, economics are social norms and constructive narratives based upon those norms that offer alternative choices. People have a choice but don’t realize it.

“The credibility of neoliberalism’s faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on life-support these days. And well it should be. The simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence or mere correlation. Neoliberalism has undermined democracy for 40 years.” (Source: Joseph E. Stiglitz, The End of Neoliberalism and the Rebirth of History, Nov. 4, 2019)

According to Stiglitz, the only way forward to “save our planet and our civilization” is a rebirth of history by revitalizing the Enlightenment and recommitting to its essential value propositions of freedom, respect for knowledge, and democracy. After all, the Enlightenment provided the philosophical basis of the American Revolution as a blueprint for a democratic society. It’s the rebirth of history that Stiglitz prescribes to fix the failures of neoliberalism.

Otherwise, very powerful political consequences of the neoliberal world will continue on a path of self-destructive absolutism with people ultimately pushing back by hitting the streets, like today in Chile, Hong Kong, France, Iraq, Haiti, Lebanon, Spain, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

What do these global protests have in common?

In all cases, price increases for key basic services have proven to be the final straw for people who have long felt shut out of opportunity. For example, in Ecuador protestors stormed parliament over discontinuation of decades-old fuel subsidies as part of an austerity program to cut public spending, insisted by the IMF. A hike in transport prices also sparked massive protests in Chile. In Lebanon a plan to tax WhatsApp prompted wider protests about general economic issues of inequality and corruption, an interesting feature found in all street protests these days as single issues blossom into full-blown universal demands for a fair share.

As it happens, the world has become a tinderbox with seemingly minor changes in policies such as transport taxes prompting massive demonstrations. Ordinary citizens hit the streets in outpourings of years of pent-up economic oppression, tired of “just getting by” or “not getting by atall.” Massive, continuous demonstrations in the streets around the world bespeak a universal threat that neoliberalism’s self-immolation will grow worse and worse if it continues its horribly stale rotted emphasis on globalization and austerity of social programs as the answers for progress. It’s backfiring.

Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 articles published, including several translated into foreign languages, appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He has been interviewed on numerous FM radio programs, as well as television.

Tech titans Google and Facebook employ “surveillance-based business models” that threaten human rights and erode privacy worldwide, said Amnesty International (AI) in its new report Surveillance Giants: How the Business Model of Google and Facebook Threatens Human Rights (Peter Benenson House, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW, UK).

The AI in its report called for an end to the data-grabs.

Published on Wednesday, the report outlines how Facebook and Google, and their many affiliated platforms, operate in ways that are simply incompatible with the right to privacy and pose a “systemic threat” to free expression on the internet.

“Despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost”, said the report.

While other large technology companies have also obtained significant power in other areas of the internet landscape, AI singled out Facebook and Google for their increasing dominance over the “new global public square,” controlling the main channels that netizens around the world use to communicate, transact and “realize their rights online.”

Kumi Naidoo, Amnesty’s Secretary General, said in a press release: “Google and Facebook dominate our modern lives – amassing unparalleled power over the digital world by harvesting and monetizing the personal data of billions of people.”

Naidoo called for a “radical overhaul of the Big Tech operates.

He also called to create an internet that puts human rights front and center.

The report has only confirmed what has long been a poorly guarded secret, as both tech giants have been caught red-handed countless times.

Last week, a report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that Google partnered with healthcare provider Ascension to secretly collect and store medical records on millions of patients across 21 states – all after the company failed to convince customers to hand over their medical data voluntarily through its Google Health venture, which folded in 2011 for lack of participation.

In addition to an inability to keep stored data safe from hacks and breaches, Facebook has also come under fire for the way it shares data with other companies, coming under investigation earlier this year for over 150 potentially illegal partnerships that allowed other tech firms to access information on Facebook users, even when they disabled all data sharing on their account.

Half of the world’s population

The AI report said:

The internet has revolutionized our world on a scale not seen since the invention of electricity. Over half of the world’s population now relies on the web to read the news, message a loved one, find a job, or seek answers to an urgent question. It has opened social and economic opportunities at a scale and speed that few imagined fifty years ago.

Recognizing this shift, it is now firmly acknowledged that access to the internet is vital to enable the enjoyment of human rights. For more than 4 billion people, the internet has become central to how they communicate, learn, participate in the economy, and organize socially and politically.

Just 2 corporations

Yet when these billions participate in life online, most of them rely heavily on the services of just two corporations. Two companies control the primary channels that people rely on to engage with the internet. They provide services so integral that it is difficult to imagine the internet without them.

Facebook is the world’s dominant social media company. If you combine users of its social platform, its messenger services, WhatsApp and Messenger, and applications such as Instagram, a third of humans on Earth use a Facebook-owned service every day. Facebook sets terms for much of human connection in the digital age.

A second company, Google, occupies an even larger share of the online world. Search engines are a crucial source of information; Google accounts for around ninety percent of global search engine use. Its browser, Chrome, is the world’s dominant web browser. Its video platform, YouTube, is the world’s second largest search engine as well as the world’s largest video platform. Google’s mobile operating system, Android, underpins the vast majority of the world’s smartphones.

Android’s dominance is particularly important because smartphones have replaced the desktop computer as the primary way people access and use the internet.

Smartphones reveal information about us beyond our online browsing habits — such as our physical travel patterns and our location. They often contain thousands of intimate emails and text messages, photographs, contacts, and calendar entries.

To realize human rights

The report added:

Google and Facebook have helped to connect the world and provided crucial services to billions. To participate meaningfully in today’s economy and society, and to realize their human rights, people rely on access to the internet — and the tools Google and Facebook offer.

Surveillance-based business model

But despite the real value of the services they provide, Google and Facebook’s platforms come at a systemic cost. The companies’ surveillance-based business model forces people to make a Faustian bargain, whereby they are only able to enjoy their human rights online by submitting to a system predicated on human rights abuse.

Firstly, an assault on the right to privacy on an unprecedented scale, and then a series of knock-on effects that pose a serious risk to a range of other rights, from freedom of expression and opinion, to freedom of thought and the right to non-discrimination.

Dominant power

This isn’t the internet people signed up for. When Google and Facebook were first starting out two decades ago, both companies had radically different business models that did not depend on ubiquitous surveillance. The gradual erosion of privacy at the hands of Google and Facebook is a direct result of the companies establishing dominant market power and control over the global “public square”.

The report sets out how the surveillance-based business model works: Google and Facebook offer services to billions of people without asking them to pay a financial fee. Instead, citizens pay for the services with their intimate personal data. After collecting this data, Google and Facebook use it to analyze people, aggregate them into groups, and to make predictions about their interests, characteristics, and ultimately behavior – primarily so they can use these insights to generate advertising revenue.

This surveillance machinery reaches well beyond the Google search bar or the Facebook platform itself. People are tracked across the web, through the apps on their phones, and in the physical world as well, as they go about their day-to-day affairs.

What we read and say

These two companies collect extensive data on what we search; where we go; who we talk to; what we say; what we read; and, through the analysis made possible by computing advances, have the power to infer what our moods, ethnicities, sexual orientation, political opinions, and vulnerabilities may be. Some of these categories — including characteristics protected under human rights law — are made available to others for the purpose of targeting internet users with advertisements and other information.

Intrusion into private life

The report sets out how this ubiquitous surveillance has undermined the very essence of the right to privacy. Not only does it represent an intrusion into billions of people’s private lives that can never be necessary or proportionate, but the companies have conditioned access to their services on “consenting” to processing and sharing of their personal data for marketing and advertising, directly countering the right to decide when and how our personal data can be shared with others.

Shape our own identities

The Amnesty report said:

The companies’ use of algorithmic systems to create and infer detailed profiles on people interferes with our ability to shape our own identities within a private sphere.

Advertisers, the original beneficiaries

The report said:

Advertisers were the original beneficiaries of these insights, but once created, the companies’ data vaults served as an irresistible temptation for governments as well. This is for a simple reason: Google and Facebook achieved a degree of data extraction from their billions of users that would have been intolerable had governments carried it out directly. Both companies have stood up to states’ efforts to obtain information on their users; nevertheless, the opportunity to access such data has created a powerful disincentive for governments to regulate corporate surveillance.

Abuse of privacy

The abuse of privacy that is core to Facebook and Google’s surveillance-based business model is starkly demonstrated by the companies’ long history of privacy scandals.

Despite the companies’ assurances over their commitment to privacy, it is difficult not to see these numerous privacy infringements as part of the normal functioning of their business, rather than aberrations.

Companies’ interests

The report looks at how Google and Facebook’s platforms rely not only on extracting vast amounts of people’s data, but on drawing further insight and information from that data using sophisticated algorithmic systems.

These systems are designed to find the best way to achieve outcomes in the companies’ interests, including finely-tuned ad targeting and delivery, and behavioral nudges that keep people engaged on the platforms.

As a result, people’s data, once aggregated, boomerangs back on them in a host of unforeseen ways. These algorithmic systems have been shown to have a range of knock-on effects that pose a serious threat to people’s rights, including freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of thought, and the right to equality and non-discrimination.

These risks are greatly heightened by the size and reach of Google and Facebook’s platforms, enabling human rights harm at a population scale.

Moreover, systems that rely on complex data analytics can be opaque even to computer scientists, let alone the billions of people whose data is being processed. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which data from 87 million people’s Facebook profiles were harvested and used to micro-target and manipulate people for political campaigning purposes, opened the world’s eyes to the capabilities such platforms possess to influence people at scale – and the risk that they could be abused by other actors.

However, although shocking, the incident was the tip of the iceberg, stemming from the very same model of data extraction and analysis inherent to both Facebook and Google’s business.

Power concentration

The report shows how vast data reserves and powerful computational capabilities have made Google and Facebook two of the most valuable and powerful companies in the world today.

Google’s market capitalization is more than twice the GDP of Ireland (both companies’ European headquarters); Facebook’s is larger by a third.

The companies’ business model has helped concentrate their power, including financial clout, political influence, and the ability to shape the digital experience of billions of people, leading to an unprecedented asymmetry of knowledge between the companies and internet users – as scholar Shoshana Zuboff states “They know everything about us; we know almost nothing about them.”

This concentrated power goes hand in hand with the human rights impacts of the business model and has created an accountability gap in which it is difficult for governments to hold the companies to account, or for individuals who are affected to access justice. Governments have an obligation to protect people from human rights abuses by corporations.

World’s largest ungoverned space

But for the past two decades, technology companies have been largely left to self-regulate – in 2013, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt described the online world as “the world’s largest ungoverned space”.

However, regulators and national authorities across various jurisdictions have begun to take a more confrontational approach to the concentrated power of Google and Facebook — investigating the companies for competition violations, issuing fines for infringing Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), or introducing new tax regimes for big technology companies.

Businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights in the context of their business operations that requires them to carry out “human rights due diligence” to identify and address their human rights impacts.

Google and Facebook have established policies and processes to address their impacts on privacy and freedom of expression – but evidently, given that their surveillance-based business model undermines the very essence of the right to privacy and poses a serious risk to a range of other rights, the companies are not taking a holistic approach, nor are they questioning whether their current business models themselves can be compliant with their responsibility to respect human rights.

The AI gave both Google and Facebook an opportunity to respond to the findings of this report in advance of publication.

Amnesty International had a conversation with senior Google staff, who subsequently provided information around its relevant policies and practices.

The report has incorporated both responses.

No more self-regulation

The AI report said:

Ultimately, it is now evident that the era of self-regulation in the tech sector is coming to an end: further state-based regulation will be necessary, but it is vital that whatever form future regulation of the technology sector takes, governments follow a human rights-based approach. In the short-term, there is an immediate need for stronger enforcement of existing regulation.

Governments must take positive steps to reduce the harms of the surveillance-based business model—to adopt digital public policies that have the objective of universal access and enjoyment of human rights at their core, to reduce or eliminate pervasive private surveillance, and to enact reforms, including structural ones, sufficient to restore confidence and trust in the internet.

The first article I confronted when I opened my email this morning was F. William Enghdahl’s short but extremely informative piece in “Global Research” titled “China, USA and the Geopolitics of Lithium”.  In it he elaborates in far greater detail the point also brought out by Vijay Prashad in his article, “After Evo, the Lithium Question Looms Large in Bolivia” (https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/11/13/after-evo-the-lithium-question-looms-large-) and which I later took up in my article, “Evo Morales: Victim of the Longing for Lithium and Yes, the Chinese American Trade War” published in “Countercurrents” just this week.  Our articles, following as they do one after the other, can be treated as three steps each leading to a deeper more comprehensive understanding of the great confrontation between great capitalist forces that lie at the heart of the overthrow of Bolivia’s elected leader, Evo Morales.  Prashad took the first step in illuminating the why of Morales forced separation  from his people – Lithium.  I went on to note the fact that it was China which had been chosen by Morales to extract the lithium from Bolivia’s vast resources of the mineral, and to place that fact in the framework of the current economic tensions between America and China.  Enghdahl takes it a step further, and in greater detail, explores the geopolitical implications that have been provoked by the longing for lithium.  I think it is imperative for anyone who wants to understand the changing nature of geopolitical forces to read Enghdahl’s article, not only for his detailed explanation of the struggle of the economic powerhouses of the world to secure adequate supplies of lithium for the future, but also because he points out that their hunger for lithium reflects a revolution in the international forces and relations of capitalist production that are underway today – a revolution every bit as important as the information technology revolution.  Enghdahl states:  For several years since the global push to develop mass-scale Electric Vehicles, the element Lithium has come into focus as a strategic metal. Demand is enormous in China, in the EU and in the USA at present, and securing control over lithium supplies is already developing its own geopolitics not unlike that for the control of oil.”   It is only by viewing his insightful statement from a dialectical perspective that we can fully understand all that it implies.

For those who understanding nothing of the dialectical method I would like to begin by saying that it is a way of looking at the world which, more than any other method of inquiry, such as statistical analysis, mathematical modelling, or even systems analysis, of which it might be considered a type, provides us with an accurate understanding of our selected objects of inquiry, whether they be natural or social.  This method had its origins in the ancient philosophy/logic of the Pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus.  It was elucidated in all its detail by the German philosopher Hegel in the 18^th Century, and first put into practice by Karl Marx who first employed it as a method of social and economic analysis.  It differs from other “philosophies” in that it is considered by its practitioners to be a “science” which reflects the basic structure of material reality itself and so can be proven by science and social science.  To think dialectically is to follow the most basic laws underlying creation; laws present at the moment of creation (the big bang) which have guided creation.  They are manifestations of the structure of reality itself  first of the the four dimensions of space, which as a result of minute fluctuations in the essential smoothness of the newborn universe, gave rise to time, as time is contingent on differences and the measuring and counting of difference.  These same fluctuations are the source of gravity and so begin to “clump” the three essential components of the early universe: helium, hydrogen, and yes, lithium.  We thus find arising the unity of the polar opposites time/space which Einstein noted.  From its inception the universe was defined as well by the unity of the polar opposites energy and matter, which are the essence of the universe and unlike time/space present from the very beginning.  In turn, as the unity of opposites, they are the source and essential nature of all changes.  We may say that energy and matter, existing in the dimension of time/space and moving at the maximum speed which is the speed of light, define reality, and that things like speed, momentum, direction, distance, location, etc. are their derivatives.  Thus, it is the structure and nature of reality which shapes our perceptions and any true understanding of that realty must proceed accordingly. 

 The laws of the dialectic, which are also the laws of creation, in their most simplified form, thus state that the essence of the world, deriving from the fact that all has a common point of origin, is internally related unity.  Moreover, the unity of energy and matter demonstrates that the essence at the core of that unity is the unity of polar opposites.  These opposites also manifest themselves as the unity of differences as for example, matter transforms into various forms of energy, and energy expresses itself in various forms of matter.  There is also one more “law” which bears mentioning in relation to our current analysis of the revolution in global politics vis a vis lithium, and that is the law often referred to as the “transformation of quantity into quality.”  At a give point in time, an increase (or decrease) in quantity produces a “phase transition” which gives rise to a change in quality.  We can consider this to be a revolutionary transformation as opposed to an evolutionary one.

Thus, when we examine the increasingly important role of lithium in world geopolitics we can conclude the following: that from approximately the turn of the 20^th C, we witness the world mode of production undergoing a phase transition from the use of human/animal energy to that dependent upon machines which in turn, are powered by energy in the form of electricity and ever increasingly, carbon fuels.  The use of these carbon fuels in turn, produced forms of matter (pollutants, most significantly  CO2), which having grown quantitatively produced qualitative changes in the earth’s environment and affected its forms of life.  This phase transition became so challenging to human life, that human beings began to revolt against the companies that produced those things that produced the pollution.  We can say, that revolutionary energy manifested as the demand for a phase transition in the means and forces of production, and anger (which is itself both a manifestation and source of energy) at those who controlled them, arose.  It was this revolutionary energy, itself a manifestation of the instinctual drive to exist and replicate the first purpose of all creation, or “beingness” which exists as becoming, which was the final impetus for the phase transition in energy to occur.   Thus, the need arose for a new source of energy to drive the forces and means of production that was not fossil fueled based.  So, the hunger lithium came into being, and with it a shifting in the global power structure.  Sooner or later, all those nations whose influence in the world has derived from little more than their possession of oil and their military power-the destructive energy-which they have been able to purchase as a result of their oil, will find their powers and influence greatly diminished.  In turn, those countries that today possess the new form and source of energy that will move the future of the world, most specifically lithium, but also China, Australia, and of course, Bolivia, will find themselves playing an increasingly powerful role in the world.  And yes, Enghdahl is so right, the wars that were once waged for oil, will be waged for lithium.  Perhaps the first of these is being waged in Bolivia, where people’s lives have already been sacrificed for that precious commodity. 

Mary Metzger is a 74 year old semi retired teacher. She did her undergraduate work at S.U.N.Y. Old Westbury and her graduate work In Dialectics under Bertell Ollman at New York University. She has taught numerous subjects, from Public Sector Labor Relations to Philosophy of Science, to many different levels of students from the very young to Ph.D. candidates, in many different institutions and countries from Afghanistan to Russia. She has been living in Russia for the past 12 years where she focuses on research in the Philosophy of Science and History of the Dialectic, and writes primarily for Countercurrents. She is the mother of three, the grandmother of five, and the great grandmother of two.

China has by far the largest lithium market. China produces already today the most electric cars, about 1 million in 2018, and will at least triplicate their production by 2025 – and in the following decade or two, demand is expected to increase exponentially.

Bolivia has the world’s largest – by far – known lithium reserves. A long-term win-win contract between China and Bolivia was under preparation since early 2019 and being negotiated as a 51% Bolivia – 49% China share-arrangement, with manufacturing of batteries and other lithium-related products foreseen in Bolivia – added value, job creation in Bolivia – with an initial investment of US$ 2.3 billion – was about to be signed, when the US-instigated Bolivian military coup occurred. It was immediately followed with the usual US-style intimidating, violent and murderous oppression, particularly directed at protests by indigenous people.

They – the indigenous people, 70% to 80% of the Bolivian people – didn’t want to lose their President, Evo Morales, who has improved their lives enormously, like nobody else before since Bolivia’s independence from Spain some 200 years ago. Evo has drastically reduced poverty and provided most Bolivians with jobs and with a decent living. President Evo Morales had to seek asylum in Mexico to protect himself and his family from threats to his life and that of his loved ones, as well as to his political associates and members of Congress, who were in line to succeed him. The CIA, its handlers and their paid assets work with impunity, without scruples.

A day after Evo Morales left Bolivia, the opposition, led by the self-proclaimed neofascist, racist President, Jeanine Añez, ransacked and looted the Central Bank of its gold and large amounts of cash reserves. The loot was seen to be transported to the airport to be flown out of the country, presumably to the US. Madame Añes said she needed the money to buy weapons, of course, from America to keep oppressing and killing the indigenous protesters.

After the long-prepared and US- orchestrated ‘civic-military’ coup on 10^th November, Bolivia is being ruled by a self-appointed, illegal, temporary (they say), neofascist government which is not only supported by the United States – the “putsch-maker” – but also by the abysmally shameful European Union, as well as by the Organization of American States – OAS (boasting, the US pays 60% of OAS’ budget…).

Bolivians have been plunged into a violent military-police dictatorship knowing no restraint beating up indigenous protesters and shooting them with live ammunition. At least 25 have already been killed and hundreds wounded. Añez has signed a decree exonerating police and military from criminal prosecution for crimes and murders committed on protesters,giving the police and military a direct license to kill. Evo Morales, was forced to resign by top military brass which has been secretly trained by the School of the Americas, now called The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).Evo has been bitterly betrayed by Washington-corrupted and trained officers.

About 20 of Evo’s closest entourage, including members of congress, who according to the Bolivian Constitution would have been in line to take up temporarily the Presidency until new elections are organized – a fact Evo proposed before being forced to resign, hardly reported by the western media – were also ordered to resign. They were all granted asylum in Mexico. They were told by the new, illegal self-appointed Government, that they were not allowed to run for the Presidency in upcoming elections. This is the type of “Democracy” exported by Washington. Its more aptly called dictatorship.

The power and fervor of pro-Morales protests in Bolivia is increasing day-by-day. Evo was the first indigenous President of the plurinational Andean country. Indigenous Bolivians, the vast majority, are strong supporters of Evo’s and his MAS party (MAS = Movimiento al Socialismo, or movement towards socialism).

US President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he does not tolerate socialist governments in the world, let alone in his backyard, Latin America. Congratulating the US-trained putsch leaders, he warned Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua of what might soon happen to them. He doesn’t lose an opportunity dishing out threats to world leaders who do not follow his orders. Indeed, the CIA via locally trained and bought agents is also causing havoc and bloody uprisings in Iran, Hong Kong, Lebanon. He, Mr. Trump the Great, a President in the process of being impeached himself for corruption and other misdeeds by the US Parliament. Bravo.

Having a socialist Government was certainly a reason for the coup d’état, but not the only one, perhaps not even the key reason. Bolivia, like Venezuela, is rich in natural resources, gas, oil, minerals and metals – and lithium, a light metal, used in car batteries, especially batteries for electric cars. They are ideal assets to be privatized by a neoliberal government for the benefit of a few local oligarchs and of foreign corporations – mostly US, of course. Stealing natural resources from developing countries is a key objective for the empire’s attempting to establish monetary and territorial world hegemony.

Already before Evo Morales first took office in January 2006, he pledged to the Bolivian people that the vast and rich natural resources treasures of Bolivia belong to Bolivia, to the Bolivian people. Among the first actions of his Presidency was the partial nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry – gas and petrol. Evo inherited from his predecessors, Goni Sanchez and Carlos Mesa an absurd arrangement, whereby the foreign corporations would receive on average 82% of the profits from hydrocarbon exploitation and the remaining 18% would stay in Bolivia. It is precisely for this reason that both Goni and Mesa were thrown out by the people in bloody people’s rebellions in 2003 and 2005, respectively.

When Evo was elected President in 2005 and took office in January 2006, he reversed this proportion: 82% for Bolivia and 18% for the transnationals. The western world screamed and hollered and warned him that all the foreign investors will abandon Bolivia – and Bolivia will be alone and her economy will collapse miserably. None of this happened, of course. Because even under this new arrangement foreign corporations made enough profit for them to stay in Bolivia. They are there as of this day.

In comes lithium, a soft, light and highly flammable mineral – what some call the gold of the 21^st Century. The world’s total known lithium reserves are about 15 million tons, with a potential of up to 65 million tons. Bolivia has arguably the world’s largest single known lithium deposits with a projected 9 million tons, about 60% of all known reserves.

Bolivia’s lithium has so far remined largely untapped, whereas major current producers are Chile, Argentina, Australia and China. Bolivia’s reserves are located in the Uyuni salt flats, the world’s largest salt desert (some 10,000 km2) in the remote southern tip of Bolivia, about 4,000m above sea level. Lithium is contained in salt brine pools below the Uyuni salt flats.

Access is complicated because of altitude and remoteness and lithium mining has also environmental issues. Finally, and maybe most importantly, Evo Morales has promised his people that this valuable resource will not just be exported as raw material, but processed in Bolivia so that added value and major benefits remain in Bolivia. The general manager of state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) assures that “Bolivia will be a relevant actor in the global lithium market within four or five years.”

Lithium is mainly used for the production of car batteries, cell phones, electronic devices in sophisticated weapons systems. In the age of growing environmental consciousness and electric cars, the car battery market is expected to explode in the coming years. China’s President, Xi Jinping, recently said that as of 2030, all new cars on China’s roads will be electric. Though, this may be optimistic, it speaks for a huge market. It is expected that the use of lithium in car batteries alone could triple – or beyond – in the coming 5 to 10 years.

In the last few weeks, the Bolivian Government was about to sign a contract with ACI Systems Alemania (ACISA), a small German mining company. On November 4, the deal was canceled, due to local protests over profit sharing. The local population wanted an increase of royalty payments from 3% to 11%. The deal would have brought a US$ 1.3 billion investment in the Salar del Uyuni (the Uyuni Salt Flats) over time for a vehicle battery factory and a lithium hydroxide plant. Similar deals with Tesla and other US and Canadian battery producers also failed, because of unacceptable profit-sharing arrangements.

China has the World’s largest lithium market. By far. And the one with the fastest growth potential. With a million Chinese electric cars sold in 2018 alone, demand is expected to increase almost exponentially. President Xi’s predictions may be slightly optimistic, but according to a Chinese thinktank, by 2040 all new vehicles on China’s roads will be electric. Already today, almost 100% of all scooters roaming major cities are electric.

In February 2019, the Chinese company Xinjiang TBEA Group Co Ltd. And the Bolivian state company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) negotiated a deal that would have given Bolivia 51% and the Chinese 49% shares of a lithium extraction investment, an initial US$ 2.3 billion investment venture, expandable according to market demand. The project would have included manufacturing of vehicle batteries – and more – thus, adding value in Bolivia and creating thousands of jobs.

The Chinese Ambassador to Bolivia estimates that China would need some 800,000 tons of the light metal by 2025. Electric cars with today’s technology require massive amounts of lithium, about 63 kilograms for a single 70 kWh Tesla Model S battery pack.Officially known reserves in the Salar Uyuni of some 9 million tons, correspond to about a quarter of total known world reserves, according the US Geological Survey. Countrywide lithium deposits in Bolivia, but not yet proven, may reach 21 million tons, mostly in the Uyuni salt flats, according to government projections.  World Bank projections see global demand for lithium skyrocketing in the coming years, reaching more than 1,000% of present demand by 2050.

A huge proportion of this multi-multibillion-dollar market would be Chinese. It is therefore not too far-fetched to believe that the US-induced military coup itself, and particularly its timing – has something to do with Bolivia’s lithium – and more precisely with the China-Bolivia partnerhsip deal.

Since the beginning of this year Bolivia has been negotiating with China, Bolivia’s linking up to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The lithium extraction and industrial development was part of it. Under Evo’s guidance it could have lifted this still most impoverished country of South America out of poverty, to a level of “living well” for most Bolivians. China, with her win-win approach for the BRI expansion around the globe and for such bilateral deals, as would have been lithium development in and with Bolivia – would have contributed greatly to the improvement of living conditions for this landlocked Andean country.

With China being lambasted, thrashed and aggressed on every occasion, clearly, such a multiple billion-dollar long-term arrangement, for a market the west wants to claim for itself, is not allowed by the true axis of evil, the United States, the vassalic Europeans, Canada and Australia. So, President Evo Morales and his close MAS party allies – and potential successors – had to go. Unarmed indigenous people had to be intimidated by bought police and military forces. They are beaten up and shot at with live ammunition. As of today, the dead toll has reached at least 25, since the police-military violence began when Evo was forced to resign, about a week ago.

It is predictable that the current “interim” government will call a State of Emergency, meaning a de facto military-police dictatorship. The natural riches of a poor country that wants to use reserves for the betterment of her people, can be a curse – and especially if that country has a socialist regime.But – as a positive glare of hope, the Bolivian people are known to be headstrong and staunch defenders of their rights. So, with the support and solidarity of neighboring countries’ people protesting for their lost civil rights, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and maybe soon also Brazil, not all may be lost.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

When the chief investment officer (CIO) at one of the world’s largest asset managers, PIMCO, publically admits what you have been saying and writing for the past 10 years then it is both a time of worry and hope.

Worry: because when the present economic system – built on greed, deception and speculation – will collapse then it will spread social and economic mayhem beyond our imagination.

And Hope: because a more balanced, equitable and just socio-economic order is long overdue. So whenever it is ushered in at a global scale, it is likely to bring much needed respite to those 99% who have been hammered to the bottom of the economic pyramid as a result of rampant globalization fueled by unlimited debt and heavy speculation.

PIMCO’s CIO Dan Ivascyn manages US$ 1.5 trillion in assets. At a Global Investment Summit in New York recently, he acknowledged “the impact of globalization, wealth inequality and climate change creating political uncertainty over the next five to 10 years.” I have been in the corporate banking business for well over two decades. Having built and managed a multi-billion dollar portfolio, I have seen from close quarters in the financial markets how “financial creativity” and “over leveraging” enhances economic risks which inevitably leads to social tension.

Every crisis has some early warning indicators. This is why we must not rush to the market to buy fire extinguishers after the fire sets in. More so when the price of that imminent crisis is expected to be global and catastrophic. And at the moment, we are seeing a much gloomier scenario than what the numbers looked like on the eve of 2008 global financial crisis. The US government debt has doubled since the 2008 financial crisis. While the global debt stands at US$ 188 trillion – the biggest debt bubble the world has ever seen. This numbers, which is equivalent to 230% of world output, has risen by US$ 24 trillion in just the last 3 years. On this amount, global financial elites are extracting US$ 500 billion annually in interest income alone. That is the singular reason why rich are getting richer (and poor, poorer) at an extremely alarming pace over the last 10 years.

Post 2008 crisis, I wrote in a piece “This is Not a Credit Crisis” in The Banker’s magazine that ‘a financial system based on justice and fairness will survive now and thrive in future’. And I highlighted the fact that ‘there is no “financial economy” in Islam, only real economy. Islam does not permit debt to be traded, discounted or securitized.’ Similarly, speculative trading is completely prohibited under the system which invariably results in high level of economic volatility. For instance, we often witness billions of dollars of investors wealth wiping out in a matter of hours in stock markets.

At a time, when civil unrest is gathering pace like a wildfire from Hong Kong and Beirut to Chile and beyond, another high profile player of the present financial system, Michael Novogratz, the hedge fund manager turned crypto-currency and blockchain investor expresses deep concerns about the future and admits “we’re waiting till the new narrative shows up.” Well the new (and more stable) narrative is already up and running. There are over 500 Islamic banks across five continents managing over two trillion dollars in Islamic financial assets – covering banking, capital markets, and Islamic insurance products. This industry is primarily catering to the faithful for the past four decades. The time is fast approaching when it will need to step up and serve the humanity, in general. The template is ready.

But idealism apart, the global elites who have been benefitting from the existing financial system will not allow “an orderly transition” at any cost. So practically speaking, the social unrest is likely to grow and envelope a much larger territory than what we see today. For weathering through such turmoil, it may be advisable to minimize personal investments in financial assets and maximize investments in hard assets – preferably small plots of agriculture lands that serve basic human needs like food and dairy products. Because survive we must, to experience better times!

Mansoor Durrani is Senior Vice President and Head of Project Finance at the largest bank in the Middle East. Views are personal.

China’s vision for the future is “Give Peace a Chance”. It is also the title of one of John Lennon’s most prominent songs. It became the anthem for the anti-war movement, at the time of the US-waged war against Vietnam. John Lennon was a peace activist. No wonder he was ostracized, considered enemy number one by the US establishment, was followed and surveyed by the FBI – and was eventually assassinated. October 9, 1940 is his birthday.

“Give Peace a Chance” is the key motto for China’s peace philosophy throughout her 70-years Revolution, often against challenging situations, especially in the last decade with almost permanent aggressions of one kind or another by the United States and their coopted allies in Europe. China is a tremendous challenge for the west, not only because of her sheer size and economic and technological advances, but also because China seeks peaceful cooperation and development around the globe.

The West does not seek Peace. Peace is bad for business. War is good and profitable, as such renown mainstream journals as the Washington Post have openly propagated in their op-ed columns time and again. Anecdotally, both world wars were initiated in the west. This is the premise under which the permanent western aggressions against the east, especially the leadership of the east, China and Russia, are being waged.

The motto of non-aggression and Peace – a Tao doctrine – prevails in China’s foreign policy as the top principle, as of this date. And there is no indication that China will depart from this Peace dogma which has brought her internal stability, international recognition – and has made China over the last decades to one of the world’s foremost economies, as well as a leader in technological and environmental advances. This, despite constant western castigating for pirating western technology and destroying the environment. The demonization is like a propaganda tool to deviate the world’s attention from western capitalist disasters around the world. But China moves on, undisturbed, generously, with a vision for a common future for mankind all mankind, not just China.

On 1 October, China celebrated the 70^th Anniversary of her Revolution. China’s vision began with the Chinese Revolution,when China’s leader of the Communist Party, Mao Zedong, declared the Independent People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949, succeeding the Republic of China (1912). In fact, China’s Revolution already began just after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), at the end of WWII, with the Chinese Civil war (1945 – 1949), also called the War of Liberation.

The International Forum on “China’s 70-Year Development and the Construction of the Community with a Shared Future for Mankind”– 5-6 November in Shanghai, is part of the celebration. It is a forward-looking event with a Chinese vision for the future. To better grasp that vision for the future, here is a quick look at the past.

History with Foresight

Visionary Chairman Mao Zedong wanted to finally free the people of China from hundreds of years of western colonization and oppression, from the calamities of Opium Wars I and II (British imposed 1839-1842, and 1856-1860) and engaged the Chinese Communist Party (CPC – Communist Party of China) in an all-out confrontation with the Kuomintang (KMT), or the second phase of the Civil War (1945 – 1949).  The KMT, also called the Nationalist Party, was led by General Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded KMT’s founder, Sun Yat-sen, after his death in 1925.

Chiang Kai-shek had the support of the United States, whose main objectives were stopping the “spread” of communism and maintaining continuous access to China’s riches, mostly in the form of natural resources, but also by exploiting the Chinese labor force. Washington ordered Chiang to break all relations with the Soviet Union – and to eliminate the threat of a communist leadership in China. This led to a lingering on and off conflict from the 1920s onwards between KMT and the CPC (also considered the first phase of the Civil War).

Hostilities began shortly after the foundation of the KMT in 1919 which was ‘helped’ by the United States. While Mao and his Communist Party emerged as the winner of the Civil War in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his followers took over the Chinese Province of Taiwan, where Kuomintang is still the ruling party. China’s non-aggression against the occupation of Taiwan is one of the many demonstrations of China’s peaceful diplomatic approach to conflict.

The current President of the Republic of China, as Taiwan calls itself, although it is a part of China, is Tsai Ing-wen, a politician and professor, in office since 2016. He caters entirely to the interests of Washington and the west in general, even vying to buy independently – and totally illegally – weapons from the US. While part of the PRC, Taiwan enjoys a certain autonomy, again compliments of China’s non-belligerent approach to conflicts.

Today, Taiwan is still recognized by 14 countries out of 193 UN members as the official representative of China. This, despite the fact that the UN declared the People’s Republic of China already in 1971 as the official representative of China with one of the five permanent seats in the UN Security Council (UNSC). Countries recognizing Taiwan as official China, still bending over to please Washington, are becoming fewer and fewer, as China is emerging as the number one economy of the world; call it socioeconomy, because China’s advancements are not just measured by the western standards of linear economic growth, but promote distributive growth, encompassing also vast improvements of people’s quality of life.

Mao’s victory brought a new era to the Chinese people. With what he called the Great Leap Forward (1958 – 1962), Mao and the CPC led a social and economic campaign converting the rural agrarian areas into a socialist industrialized economy through communal farming or agricultural cooperatives. This 4-year effort was constantly attacked and disrupted by infiltrated anticommunist saboteurs at a high social and monetary cost for China. But it served as a learning phase. China’s flamboyant rise to the second (by some accounts the first) world economy, proved that the lessons helped defeat US interference then and today.

The ten-year Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976) was Mao’s sociopolitical movement aiming at cleaning socialist China from infiltrated capitalist elements and influences. Then, and to some extent still today, China was full with so-called Fifth Columnists, a term coined during the Spanish Civil war, when General Franco’s Nazi-party, the “Falange”, were able to defeat the legitimately elected Republicans, because the “Falange” had what they called a “Fifth Column” clandestinely embedded among the Republican defense forces in Madrid. Today Fifth Columnists are everywhere. They come in all shapes and forms, including disguised as western NGOs, in every country that Washington and its western allies want to dominate and provoke ‘regime change’.  It was clear that the west, predominantly the emerging US empire, wanted to disrupt Mao’s revolution; they would not let China flourish under her own political, communist values and believes.

Foreign meddling in China’s Revolution came at a huge cost for China. As a consequence, Mao’s revolutions are often portrayed by the west as failures, the usual western tarnishing the success of other nations, of other socioeconomic systems, in order to hide the west’s own disastrous failures. From a Chinese and humanitarian perspective, Mao’s Revolutions have drastically improved the public education and health system, have eradicated endemic deadly diseases inherited from the western dominated colonial and KMT times – and, foremost, poverty was largely eradicated. As of these days, about 750 million people have been lifted out poverty. Alleviation of poverty was an emphasis under both of Mao’s Revolutions. These Revolutions also taught valuable lessons to Chinese scholars and future leaders – and have drastically advanced China towards food self-sufficiency which she reached by 2018.

It is thanks to these lessons that, after Mao’s death in 1976, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, led China through a far-reaching economic reform, including elements of a market economy, however always under central government control – a principle that is maintained as of today. Deng called the new Chinese economic model “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, a principal that continues today. He helped develop China into the world’s fastest-growing economy, improving the lives of hundreds of millions of citizens. Deng also masterminded the return of Hong Kong from a UK colony to China in 1997, and Macau from Portugal in 1999. The transition was completed by Deng’s successor, Jian Zemin.

Deng retired in 1992. His successor, Jian Zemin, had several high-ranking positions in previous governments and was President of the PRC from 1993 – 2003. Jian opened China further for foreign investments and trade. He visited the US in 1997, where he met with President Clinton. Jian followed a non-confrontational foreign policy, like his predecessors, strengthened relations with western partners, especially the United States – and maintained at home an economic annual growth of at least 8%. This led to an explosion of wealth, but also initially to a less than optimal distribution of wealth, most of which concentrated along China’s eastern shores, risking conflicts with the lesser developed Chinese “hinterland”.

Hu Jintao followed Juan Zemin as China’s Paramount Leader from 2002 to 2012. Hu, as a rather modest leader, along with his Premier, Wen Jiabao, and his Vice-President, Xi Jinping, continued the policy of economic growth and development, achieving more than a decade of double-digit growth, however shifting the economy gradually more to non-consumption growth, fostering, instead, socioeconomic equality, aiming at building a “Harmonious Socialist Society”.

Hu was seeking a prosperous China, free of internal social conflicts and pursued internally and externally a “peaceful development policy” – with ‘soft power’ meaning a diplomatic approach to foreign policy issues, that was never confrontational. During Hu’s rule China increased its influence in Africa and Latin America, laying the groundwork for future closer relationships with these regions. Hu was also known for shared and consensus-based leadership. Hu was succeeded in 2013 by Xi Jinping.

The Vision

Enter the era of President Xi Jinping. He is a lawyer, chemical engineer, philosopher – and visionary. On 7 September 2013, President Xi Jinping gave a speech at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University, in which he spoke about ‘People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. He referred to the Ancient Silk Road of more than 2,100 years ago, that flourished during China’s Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

Referring to this epoch of more than 2,000 years back, Xi Jinping pointed to the history of exchanges under the Ancient Silk Road, saying,

“they had proven that countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.”

Xi’s vision may be shaping the world of the 21^st Century. He designed and engineered the Belt and Road Initiative, loosely modeled according to the Ancient Silk Road, soon after assuming the Presidency in 2013. He launched this ground-breaking “project”, a fabulous idea to connect the world with transport routes, infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, teaching and research institutions, cultural exchange and much more. Enshrined in China’s Constitution, BRI has become the flagship for China’s foreign policy.

BRI is literally building bridges and connecting people of different continents and nations. The purpose of the New Silk Road is “to construct a unified large market and make full use of both international and domestic markets, through cultural exchange and integration, to enhance mutual understanding and trust of member nations, ending up in an innovative pattern with capital inflows, talent pool, and technology database”.

During the 19^th National Congress in 2017, BRI was included in the Chinese (CPC) Constitution as an amendment to promote the BRI’s objective of “shared interests” and “shared growth” which are major political objectives for China. This amendment to the Constitution for raising international cooperation through a multifaceted socioeconomic development endeavor is unique in China’s history. It fits precisely the theme of the present Forum, “The Construction of the Community with a shared Future for Mankind”.

The BRI is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese Government, eventually with investments in more than 150 countries and international organizations – and growing – in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. BRI is a multi-trillion investment scheme, for transport routes on land and sea, as well as construction of industrial and energy infrastructure, energy exploration, cultural exchange and integration facilities, education and research institutions – as well as trade among connected countries; and, unlike WTO (World Trade Organization), BRI is allowing nations to benefit from their comparative advantages, creating win-win situation. In essence, BRI is to develop mutual understanding and trust among member nations, allowing for free capital flows, a pool of experts and access to a BRI-based technology data base.

At present, BRI’s closing date is foreseen for 2049 which coincides with new China’s 100^th Anniversary. The size and probable success of the program indicates, however, already today that it will most likely be extended way beyond that date. It is worth noting, though, that only in 2019, six years after its inception, BRI has become a news item in the West. Remarkably, for six years BRI was denied, or ignored by the western media, in the hope it may go away. But away it didn’t go. To the contrary, many European Union members have already subscribed to BRI, including Greece, Italy, France, Portugal – and more will follow, as the temptation to participate in this projected socioeconomic boom is overwhelming.

Germany is mulling over the benefits and contras of participating in BRI. The German business community, like business throughout Europe, is strongly in favor of lifting US-imposed sanctions and reconnecting with the East, in particular with China and Russia. But the official Berlin is still with one foot in the White House – and with the other trying to appease the German – and European – world of business. This balancing act is in the long run not sustainable and certainly not desirable. At present BRI is already actively involved in over 80 countries, of which at least half of the EU membership.

To counteract the pressure to join BRI, the European Union, basically run by NATO and intimately linked to Washington, has initiated their own ‘Silk Road’, to connect Asia with Europe through Japan. In that sense, the EU and Japan have signed a “free trade agreement” which includes a compact to build infrastructure, in sectors such as energy, transport and digital devices. The purpose is to strengthen economic and cultural ties between the two regions, boosting business relations between Asia and Europa. It is an obvious attempt to compete with or even sideline China’s BRI. But it is equally obvious that this response will fail. Usually initiatives taken in ill-fate are not successful. And China, non-belligerent China, is unlikely to challenge this EU-Japan competitive approach.

China’s New Silk Road is creating a multipolar world, where all participants will benefit. The idea is to encourage economic growth, distributed in a balanced way, so as to prioritize development opportunities for those most in need. That means the under-developed areas of western China, eastern Russia, Central Asia, Central Europe – reaching out to Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, as well as to South East Asia and the Pacific. BRI is already actively building and planning some six to ten land and maritime routes, connecting Africa, the Middle East, Europe and South America (see map, above).

The expected multi-trillion-dollar equivalent dynamic budget is expected to be funded by China, largely, but not exclusively, by the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), by Russia – and by all the countries that are part of BRI and involved in singular or multi-country projects.

Implementing BRI, or the New Silk Road, is itself the realization of a vision of nations: Peaceful interconnectivity, joint infrastructure and industrial development, as well as joint management of natural resources. For example, BRI may help with infrastructure and management advice resolving or preventing conflicts on transboundary water resources. There are some 263 transboundary lake and river basins, covering almost half the earth’s surface and involving some 150 countries. In addition, there are about 300 transboundary aquifers serving about 2 billion people who depend on groundwater.

Water resources, life depends on them. If these resources are not properly managed, by, say, one or several parties taking advantage of the other users, a conflict is born. Often such conflicts can become violent. BRI may turn this source of potential hostilities around into a source for peace. Water is among the most shared resources on earth, and as such it may serve as an instrument for peaceful connectivity.

The Chinese government calls the Silk Road Initiative “a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future”. With freshwater resources rapidly diminishing for ready use in the public domain, because of industrial and human pollution and privatization, management of water resources and transboundary water in particular, may be constructed into a “Shared Future for Mankind.” The Belt and Road Initiative may provide the guiding principles for this shared future of life’s essential resource – water.

Today, “Give Peace a Chance” is more relevant than ever. And China is a vanguard in promoting peaceful development across the globe. During the Cuban Conference “For a World in Equilibrium” of January 2019, one of the Chinese representatives said very unequivocally in his presentation, “we are building bridges between people and nations to connect the world peacefully”. Undoubtedly, he is right and was referring to President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, or the New Silk Road.

The same can unfortunately not be said about the West which is, instead, building walls, predominantly the US, followed by her European vassals, either physical walls, or walls by conflicts, wars and – walls by “economic sanction”, by which they strangle and kill people en masse. Whenever a government does not share the US neoliberal doctrines, or refuses to bend to their dictate and efforts to plunder a country of natural resources, it is first subject to atrocious sanctions, then to military intervention with the goal of regime change. All that is possible, because the western world is run by the fiat dollar system, under which all international transactions have to transit through an American bank, foremost a Wall Street bank. That’s how they block transfers, confiscate and steal money in banks all over the world.

In Venezuela sanctions started soon after President Hugo Chavez was elected as President in 1998. They were severely enhanced under Obama in 2014, and President Trump squeezed the country even more in 2017. In August 2019 Trump tightened the noose of economic strangulation to the maximum, “the most that any country has been sanctioned”, he proudly proclaimed, blocking and confiscating government accounts, including national reserve accounts and gold all around the western world. They are seizing Venezuelan assets in the US and internationally, intercepting ships and otherwise interrupting trade, for example blocking crucial medication and food stock from entering the country, while also threatening sanctions on countries that are trading with Venezuela.

According to Venezuelan officials, the financial losses since 2017 amount to at least 130 billion dollars. These funds represent goods and services, the absence of which compromises not only wellbeing but real lives of Venezuelans. The 130 billion dollars could amply supply food and medication for Venezuelans to live well and for hospitals to function with the necessary medication and equipment. In addition, the US was directing mercenaries and members of the government opposition to sabotage the countries electric system, which caused days, in some regions weeks of black-outs, a disaster for hospitals depending on electricity for refrigeration and lighting of operating theaters. Indeed, a recent study by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), in Washington, concluded that sanctions of the US and their European allies may have cost the lives of up to 40,000 Venezuelans. But Venezuela will not cave in and will survive, largely thanks to the support from China and Russia.

At this time could also be mentioned the 60 years blockade of Cuba, the US instigated wars on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the civil wars in Central America, Central Africa, the hostilities towards North Korea – and of course the constant aggressions vis-à-vis China and Russia – and much more. All for eradicating any “threat” of socialism that might spread as a positive alternative to boundless turbo-capitalism which is currently running the western world.

But enough about the west and its drive for world hegemony in flagrant disrespect of international law and Human Rights. It just goes to illustrate a few examples to juxtapose the west and the east, foremost China in alliance with Russia, whose approach is a multipolar socioeconomic development scheme, generous and peaceful, connecting people through trade and through BRI.

“The future is in the East” – so goes a progressive axiom. It is also my strong believe. By the East is meant China, Russia, most of Central Asia; now all represented by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or the Shanghai Pact. SCO is a Eurasian political, economic, and security alliance, the creation of which was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai, China by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The Pact was signed in June 2002 and entered into force in September 2013. SCO’s headquarters are in Beijing

Today, the SCO counts 8 members, including the member India and Pakistan. Iran and Mongolia are on a “waiting list”, on the verge of becoming members. Turkey, already a dialogue partner, is increasingly vying gaining SCO access, either through association or full membership. And this, despite the conflict it may create with Turkey’s NATO partners, mainly the US. Clearly, were Turkey to join the SCO, exit from NATO would be imminent – and disastrous for NATO, perhaps he stumbling block that would bring NATO down. Especially, since popular anti-NATO pressure from Italy to Germany, Greece, Spain and Portugal is steadily growing. Turkey is also the most strategically located NATO partner between East and West; between Europe and Asia, controlling the Bosporus, access to the Black Sea.

The SCO has also several observer and dialogue partners which eventually, it is assumed, may become full-fledged SCO members. The SCO is also called the alliance of the east and is considered a security pillar in more ways than one: SCO members account for almost half of the world population and for about one third of the world’s economic output. In other words, this eastern alliance is politically and economically autonomous and to a large extent detached from the western dollar based “sanction-prone” economy.

The SCO, a visionary Chinese initiative of the early 2000s, was overlaid and expanded in 2013 by another brilliant Chinese Initiative, the BRI. May also be added to this powerhouse another association of countries, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), primarily a trading partnership. The members are located in central and northern Asia, and include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. The treaty was formally established in January 2015.

This block of eastern countries and associations is seeking against all odds, a multi-polar world, a world of Peace and Prosperity for All – a big challenge given the current socioeconomic disequilibrium – but feasible with mutual respect and a will to cooperate, to apply the forces of synergy and solidarity, as is inherent in the Belt and Road approach. The stakes are high. As Russia’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Lavrov pointed out during the 74^th UN General Assembly, in September 2019: “The West ignores reality by trying to prevent the formation of a multi-polar world by imposing its narrow “liberal” rules on others.” But, he added, “Western dominance is on the wane, ‘we’re liberals, so everything’s allowed’ just isn’t working anymore.” These words are the basis for a strong pillar and union of eastern associations.

Outlook and Vision

Economy

China has registered during the past decades a phenomenal economic growth rate, at times exceeding 12% per year. Today it has been on purpose reduced to about 6%, so as to allow a better distribution of the growth benefits, and also spread wealth more horizontally to create greater equality of wellbeing.

In figures and facts:

China’s GDP measured in US-dollars amounts to $14.2 trillion (nominal; 2019 est.), which corresponds to $27.3 trillion in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP; 2019 est.). This corresponds to US$ 10,153 / capita, in nominal term (2019 est.), to US$ 19,520 / capita measured by PPP.

Compare this with the US GDP of US$ 21.345 trillion in nominal terms (2019 est.) and $64,767 / per capita (2019 est.) This makes China the world’s second largest economy in nominal terms, expected to exceed the US by 2026. However, when comparing the two GDPs by their PPP values, China is number one; having surpassed the United States in 2016.

Measured by PPP, China is already today de facto the world’s largest economy, because the only figures that have any significance in economic production and consumption, are those that reflect the output’s purchasing power.

Examples of Economic Efficiency

New Airport in Beijing: In only 4 years China built by far the world’s largest airport in Beijing, Daxin International Airport. It was ready for China’s 70^th Birthday on 1 October 2019, when it was inaugurated by President Xi Jinping. It has been operational the week after inauguration. This airport, an architectural wonder, covers some 700,000 m2 (almost 100 football fields) and carries passengers by fast train in 20 minutes to the center of Beijing. It is expected to accommodate in 2021 already 45 million passengers and can easily be expanded to receive and serve 100 million passengers as the need requires. This airport is a sign that China is capable of realizing extraordinary achievements – it signals a visionary future.

China’s Rapid Urbanization: When in 2017, Beijing was faced with a housing shortage for low-wage migrant workers, they built 100,000 low-rent apartments in twelve months. The speed of China’s infrastructure development, the rapid urbanization, providing millions of new subsidized housing for migrant workers, is a model that has worked and is being replicated throughout China. In fact, pays off socially and economically. People who do not have to worry about shelter, are healthier and live and work better. China has been building homes for a million people–the entire housing stock of San Francisco – every month since 1950. This policy aims at and creates wellbeing among the workers, among the people – and is at the same time a solid tool for China’s economic development – and people’s happiness. China’s successful and rapid housing development is being closely watched by Australia, as her major cities, Sydney and Melbourne face similar problems.

Trade

China has been the world’s largest exporter of goods since 2009. Official estimates suggest Chinese exports amounted to about $2.1 trillion in 2017. The total annual value of the country’s exports equates to approximately $1,500 for every Chinese resident. Since 2013, China has as well become the world’s largest trading nation.China is also a significant importer and accounts for about 10% of total global imports, i.e., about US$ 1.7 trillion, leaving China as a net exporter with a trade surplus of about US$ 400 billion. – Trade war with the US– see below.

Monetary Policy

China’s Yuan, is a solid currency, backed by China’s economy and by gold. In 2017 the Yuan was admitted into the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) basket of reserve currencies, which constitute the SDR – or Special Drawing Rights. The SDR basket consists of five currencies and their respective weights are: US-Dollar $41.73%, Euro 30.93%, Renminbi (Chinese Yuan) 10.92%, Japanese Yen 8.33%, British Pound 8.09%. The Yuan is clearly undervalued in the SDR basket, as it is rapidly replacing the dollar as reserve currency. Treasurers around the globe realize that the US-dollar is fiat money, backed by nothing, whereas the Yuan is a solid currency, based on a solid economy, plus backed by gold.

The decline of the US dollar as a world reserve currency means that the US dollar hegemony is fading. This is inadmissible for the US. Therefore, Washington along with the major western allies are considering to abandon the key reserve role of the dollar and replacing it with some kind of an SDR, in which the dollar would maintain a prominent role, but its Ponzi-scheme characteristics would no longer be openly visible.

The current US debt to GDP ratio is about 105%. However, what the General Accounting Office calls “unmet obligations” amounts to about 700% of GDP (net present value – total outstanding obligations discounted to today’s value). According to former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, responding to a journalist’s question, “we will never pay back our debt; we will just print new money”. This is a dangerous pyramid, or Ponzi-scheme, of which most governments are aware, and yet many of them hold on to the dollar as key reserve currency. With the yuan rising, this may change rapidly. In fact, the conversion from dollar to yuan as reserve currency has already started.

Regarding the western foreseen reserve basket to “save” the dollar, it is not clear yet what the other currencies and their respective weight in the new “Reserve SDR” would be, but let’s assume the same five currencies. The Yuan, if still in the reserve basket would probably still be under-valued. If so, this might be a good reason for China to exit the Reserve SDR and continue with the Yuan by its own economic and monetary value as a reserve currency. The Yuan has made its reputation of stability and does no longer need the backing of a (western coined) SDR to prove its strength as a reserve currency.

The War on Tariffs

In June 2018, US President Trump started an unprovoked Trade War with China, then expanded it to other countries, including his European allies. But it is most ferocious with China. As usual, China’s response was not hostile. Retaliation, yes; but still an approach of seeking negotiations and compromise. In reality, the US market for China may be important, but not that important to be humiliated as was the case with the American bulldozer approach to impose not just tariffs, but tariffs that were nothing but a new form of economic sanctions.

The real meaning and purpose behind these tariffs was not reducing China’s exports in the first place, but harming the Yuan, as it was gaining strength and, as mentioned before, gradually taking over the US-dollar’s role as world reserve currency. Some 20 years ago the US dollar accounted for more than 90% of all reserve assets in nations’ treasuries around the globe. Today, that percentage has shrunk to less than 60% and is fading rapidly. Much of the lost territories by the US dollar was made up by the Chinese Yuan. And as the importance of the Yuan rises, the US hegemony of the world’s economy, resources and people will fade. This does not go down in Washington without a fight.

Future Economic Growth

China, in the near future, will most likely keep to a “modest” growth rate, around 5% to 7%, concentrating on horizontal distributive growth, with a focus on improved public wellbeing for all, universal access to affordable housing, basic infrastructure, water supply, sanitation, public transportation, rural higher education, as well as internal cultural exchange and harmonization. Two areas of economic development, ”horizontal growth”, may be singled out; (i) Artificial Intelligence (AI), and (ii) Environmental Improvement.

Technological Innovation

China is a Power House of new technologies and no doubt the world’s number one in Technological Innovation. Just to mention a few, not in order of priority:

• Rapidly progressing robotization of construction and manufacturing, as well as of medical interventions, like surgeries and localized cancer treatment;
• 3-D construction of serving a myriad of sectors, including manufacturing in the medical sector, medical equipment, human body replacement parts, production of construction materials – and more. China predicts in 20 to 30 years everybody (in China) will have access to individualized 3D building capacity;
• Face recognition technology, making traditional ID and bank account access cards obsolete and identity protection more secure;
• High-speed train systems, a domain where China has bypassed Japan and is the world’s number one; i.e. the high-speed railways Shanghai Maglev and Fuxing Hao CR400AF/BF;
• A new generation of garbage recycling – into building material, fertilizers, fuel as a source of energy – and more;
• Architecture and building efficiency, only two examples, (i) the new Beijing Daxin International Airport, the world’s largest, built in just 4 years, with a capacity of more than 100 million passengers per year – and a superb architecture; (ii) the “Birds Nest” – the stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics which will also be used for the 2022 Winter Olympics; it was built in less than 5 years and is an architectural masterpiece, and
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – see below.

China’s ambition: Everything is possible – and China has already proven that it can be done.

Artificial Intelligence (AI).China is also moving rapidly towards leadership in Technical Innovation for Artificial Intelligence, with plans to invest considerable resources into research. In 2017, the State Council (CCP) issued a “Next Generation Intelligence Development Plan”, including a US$ (equivalent) 2.1 billion AI industrial park. By 2025 the State Council predicts China to be a leader in AI research and predicts that China’s AI core industry will be worth some US$ 60 billion, amounting to about US$ 700 billion equivalent, when accounting for related industries. By 2030, the State Council expects China to be the global leader in development of AI.

Environmental Improvement. China has made leaps in improving her environment, by far exceeding efforts of western countries. China’s environmental policies are developing BRI at home and abroad in shades of green. New parks with trees and areas for recreation are emerging in every major city in China. According to an expert at the School of Regulation and Global Governance of the Australian National University, Beijing has improved its air quality by 30% in the last five years.

A study of the University of Chicago demonstrates that Chinese cities have reduced the concentrations of fine particulates in the air on average by 32 % between 2014 and 2018.

The Chinese people and government are putting utmost importance to protecting the environment and ecosystems. Green development makes for improved public health, but is also attractive for investments.

China has a three-year “green” plan to improve air quality and tighten regulations. Air quality is one of the key environmental issue besetting China. In that sense, the government is accelerating the electrification of vehicles and has pledged that by 2030 all new cars will be powered by electricity.The government is also tackling drinking water quality and shortages, as well as improving urban and rural sanitation. These are longer-term propositions. Cost estimates for China’s overall environmental programs are not readily available but may easily reach into hundreds of billions of US-dollar equivalents over a ten-year period.

Conclusion

A few years ago, China, Russia and other SCO countries have started trading among themselves in their local currencies with a non-western monetary transfer system, using mostly the Chinese Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS). It is out of control of the western SWIFT transfer system, thereby escapes the sanctions regime of the US. Gradually, the SCO and associated countries are detaching themselves from the western dollar-based fiat system.

In terms of trading, the SCO countries, mainly China, control most of the Asian markets, even making rapid inroads into Japan and Australia, and are evermore present in Latin America and Africa. Before long Europe will see the light and turn eastwards. It would be a wise decision. Dealing first within the confines of the huge Eurasian landmass, including the Middle East and parts of Africa – has been the logical way of trading since the Ancient Silk Road, more than 2,000 years ago.

China has a great visionary future that had already begun 70 years ago, and was enhanced six years ago with President Xi Jinping’s launching of the Belt and Road Initiative. BRI will continue spanning the globe for the next at least 50 to 100 years, spreading development in a multi-polar world, stressing equality and wellbeing for all. BRI investments may be counted in the multi-multi trillions and will be funded by China and the participating countries, with a socio-economic return that cannot be expressed in sheer monetary terms, as investments will also bring unfathomable social benefits, poverty reduction, improved health, higher and better education and, generally improving people’s wellbeing.

The bright side of this initiative, is the Chinese philosophy of non-aggression, of diplomacy to resolve conflicts and of promoting peaceful economic coexistence and development around the globe.

China’s determination to develop with a “green” economy, a “green” BRI and a horizontal distributive growth that emphasizes equality and inclusion is a landmark model for the world to embrace. It is a model to construct a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

The date 11 November is well known and commemorated in many parts of the world because it marks the Armistice ending World War I – ‘the Great War’ – in 1918.

In the evocative words used by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., an atheist humanist, in his novel Breakfast of Champions, the day is remembered thus:

‘When I was a boy … all the people of all the nations which fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was at that minute in nineteen-hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields at that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.’

And what, exactly, did God (by whatever name: Allah, Krishna, Yahweh…)or the Gods say? we might ask. Well even those who profess little more than scant knowledge of religious texts that purport to represent the word of God might suggest that s/he simply breathed a (silent) sigh of relief that the insanity of mass warfare had ended. For now at least.

For those of us concerned with the struggle to create cultures of peace or, even, a world culture of peace, there are some fundamental questions to consider including the classic question discussed by two of humanity’s greats – Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud – when they tackled the question ‘Why War?’

Of course, as many people now understand it, peace entails far more than simply a state without military (including terrorist) violence and war. Beyond these forms of violence, many exponents of peace seek the end of other dimensions of what I call ‘visible’ violence, including:

1. Direct violence that goes beyond military violence, such as ‘biological violence’ (that is, violence against the body) in the family home and as a result of violent crime as well as ‘physical violence’ (that is, constraints on movement). See ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’.

2. Institutional violence: socially endorsed violence including that inflicted by parents, teachers, police, legal and prison systems – see ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’ and ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’ – and which now manifests in a myriad other forms with the emergence of the surveillance state that spies on and gathers endless data on individuals to build substantial personal profiles on each – linking many personal records including those related to health and financial matters with political activities and consumption patterns – in violation of any basic understanding of, or commitment to, human rights in their many political, economic, social, cultural and other forms.

3. Structural violence which Mohandas K. Gandhi originally identified when making his observation that ‘exploitation is violence’ and Professor Johan Galtung – see ‘A Structural Theory of Imperialism’ and ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’ – later elaborated as violence built into structures, such as capitalism and imperialism, that deprive some people of the opportunities to live full and meaningful lives and manifest, for example, as poverty, homelessness and the economic exploitation of people who live in Africa, Asia and Central/South America. And

4. Ecological violence: those activities ranging from destruction of the climate and rainforests to the killing of insects and wildlife that constitute destruction of the biosphere.

Of course, these categories are not mutually exclusive but they serve to illustrate categories of violence not always recognized as such.

Apart from these forms of ‘visible’ violence Professor Johan Galtung also identified the importance of psychological violence – ‘lies, brainwashing, indoctrination of various kinds, threats, etc. that serve to decrease mental potentialities’ see ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’ – and coined the term ‘cultural violence’ to describe ‘those aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere of our existence – exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science (logic, mathematics) – that can be used to justify or legitimize direct or structural violence’. See ‘Cultural Violence’.

Beyond these and other categories of violence – including patriarchy and racism as specific manifestations of violence that are, arguably, simultaneously direct, structural and cultural – which stand between humanity and a culture of peace, there are two other categories of violence which I will argue it is necessary to end before we can make profound inroads in ending those mentioned above.

These two categories – which I have labeled ‘invisible’ violence and ‘utterly invisible’ violence – describe vitally important categories of violence which human adults inflict on children. Moreover, complemented by the ‘visible’ violence that adults inflict on children, it is this ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence which destroys the unique human individual who was created during a nine-month gestation period and turns them into a ‘socially constructed delusional identity’ who submissively fulfils the extraordinarily limited expectations of their particular adult world and, with only rare exceptions, willingly participates in many if not all of the other forms of violence that torment our world and certainly includes inflicting invisible and utterly invisible violence on their own children. Which is why the cycle of violence goes on.

Why is this?

Becausesociety is preoccupiedwith producing submissively obedient students, workers, soldiers, citizens (that is, taxpayers and voters) and consumers. Hence, the last thing society wants is powerful individuals who are each capable of searching their conscience, feeling their emotional response to events, thinking critically and behaving strategically in response. For that reason our parenting and education models use a ruthless combination of visible, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence to ensure that our children become terrified, self-hating and powerless individuals like virtually all of the adults around them.

How does this happen? What is this ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence?

Perpetrators of violence learn their craft in childhood. If you inflict violence on a child, they learn to inflict violence on others. The political leaders who decide to wage war, the military leaders who plan and conduct it, as well as the soldiers, sailors and aircraft personnel who fight war each suffered violence as a child. The terrorist suffered violence as a child. The man who inflicts violence on his partner suffered violence as a child. The corporate executive who exploits working class people and/or those who live in Africa, Asia or Central/South America suffered violence as a child. The racist or religious bigot suffered violence as a child. The individual who perpetrates violence in the home, in the schoolyard or on the street suffered violence as a child. The individual who overconsumes, or even consumes certain products, and/or otherwise destroys the biosphere, suffered violence as a child.

If we want to end violence in all of its manifestations and create a culture of peace, locally and globally, then we must finally end our longest and greatest war: the adult war on children. And here is an additional incentive: if we do not tackle the fundamental cause of violence, then our combined and unrelenting efforts to tackle all of its other symptoms must ultimately fail. And extinction at our own hand is inevitable.

How can I claim that violence against children is the fundamental cause of all other violence? Consider this. There is universal acceptance that behaviour is shaped by childhood experience. If it was not, we would not put such effort into education and other efforts to socialize children to ‘fit into’ their society. And this is why many psychologists have argued that exposure to war toys and violent video games shapes attitudes and behaviours in relation to violence.

But it is far more complex than this and, strange though it may seem, it is not just the ‘visible’ violence (such as hitting, screaming at and sexually abusing) that we normally label ‘violence’ that causes the main damage, although this is extremely damaging. The largest component of damage arises from the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family home and at school. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So what is ‘invisible’ violence? It is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, mothers, fathers, teachers, religious figures and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (for example, by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by their feelings (for example, by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards themself, others and/or the Earth.

From the above, it should also now be apparent that punishment should never be used. ‘Punishment’, of course, is one of the words we use to obscure our awareness of the fact that we are using violence. Violence, even when we label it ‘punishment’, scares children and adults alike and cannot elicit a functional behavioural response. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

If someone behaves dysfunctionally, they need to be listened to, deeply, so that they can start to become consciously aware of the feelings (which will always include fear and, often, terror) that drove the dysfunctional behaviour in the first place. They then need to feel and express these feelings (including any anger) in a safe way. Only then will behavioural change in the direction of functionality be possible. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

‘But these adult behaviors you have described don’t seem that bad. Can the outcome be as disastrous as you claim?’ you might ask. The problem is that there are hundreds of these ‘ordinary’, everyday behaviors that destroy the Selfhood of the child. It is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and most children simply do not survive as Self-aware individuals. And why do we do this? As mentioned above, we do it so that each child will fit into our model of ‘the perfect citizen’: that is, obedient and hardworking student, reliable and pliant employee/soldier, and submissive law-abiding citizen (that is, one who pays their taxes and votes and/or lobbies politicians).

Moreover, once we destroy the Selfhood of a child, it has many flow-on effects. For example, once you terrorize a child into accepting certain information about themself, other people or the state of the world, the child becomes unconsciously fearful of dealing with new information, especially if this information is contradictory to what they have been terrorized into believing. As a result, the child will unconsciously dismiss new information out of hand.

In short, the child has been terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning (or their learning capacity is seriously diminished by excluding any information that is not a simple extension of what they already ‘know’). If you imagine any of the bigots you know, you are imagining someone who is utterly terrified. But it’s not just the bigots; virtually all people are affected in this manner making them incapable of responding adequately to new (or even important) information. This is one explanation why some people are ‘climate deniers’, most people do nothing in response to the climate catastrophe and even those people who do take action usually do so ineffectively. See ‘The Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why?’

But the same can be said for those working to end war – see ‘The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War’– end the nuclear weapons race or engage in other struggles, including liberation struggles, that are vital parts of the global struggle to create a culture of peace. See ‘Why Activists Fail’.

To briefly reiterate this vital point (that each child has been terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning or their learning capacity is seriously diminished): The multifaceted violence inflicted throughout childhood and adolescence ensures that the adult who emerges is suppressing awareness of an enormous amount of fear, pain, sadness and anger (among many other feelings) and must live in delusion to remain unaware of these suppressed feelings. This ensures that, as part of their delusion, the individual develops a strong sense that what they are doing already is functional and working (no matter how dysfunctional and ineffective it may actually be)while unconsciously suppressing awareness of any evidence that contradicts their delusion. They do this because, unconsciously, people learn to identify obedience with ‘functional and working’ (because they do not get punished for being obedient). See ‘Why Violence?’,‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’,‘Do We Want School or Education?’and ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

As an aside, if you want to read more evidence of humanity’s ‘love’ for our children and get a clearer sense of just how deeply violence is buried in human society, see ‘Humanity’s “Dirty Little Secret”: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children’.

Just one horrific outcome of this violence against children is that our planet is run by a global elite that is completely insane. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’. And this elite plays a key role in driving many of the more obvious manifestations of violence in our world.

Responding to Violence Strategically to Create a World Culture of Peace

However we define the many positive elements of a culture of peace – which will presumably include an inclusive philosophy of society, a cooperative set of social relations, nonviolent methods for dealing with conflictand sustainable patterns of matter-energy use while allowing universal human access to the resources necessary to maintain health and well-being, opportunities for meaningful political and economic engagement as well as cultural opportunities in art, literature and music among its many other forms, while engaging sustainably with the biosphere to enhance life-opportunities for all other species – this culture of peace can only be achieved if we respond strategically to the violence in our world.

And this means that we must address the fundamental cause of human violence because this drives violence in each and all of its other dimensions. For those adults powerful enough to do this, there is an explanation in ‘Putting Feelings First’. And for those adults committed to facilitating children’s efforts to realize their potential and become self-aware (rather than delusional), see ‘My Promise to Children’.

Creating a culture of peace, therefore, relies fundamentally on understanding the critical role of suppressed feelings (emotions) in shaping deep culture and generating conflicts, including violent conflicts, and then taking action that addresses this cause.

This includes the need to understand and deal effectively with those emotions that are being acted out dysfunctionallyand/or being projected – see ‘The Psychology of Projection in Conflict’– in a particular context, which is standard human behaviour in many situations. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’. Otherwise, that most fundamental of emotions – fear – will continue to drive most cultural predispositions and conflicts in all contexts and make genuine resolution of conflicts virtually impossible. This is because it is only if people are not afraid that discussions about ideas in relation to making culture evolve as we plan (rather than unconsciously or as elites direct) and to resolve conflict nonviolently, become easily possible.

Fundamentally, our parenting and education models fail utterly to produce people of conscience, people who are emotionally functional, people who are capable of critical analysis, people who care and people who can plan and respond to violence strategically. As Professor Galtung noted just recently, ‘While we are busy exploring whether there is intelligent life on other planets, we might spend more time – and intelligence – exploring whether there is [intelligent life] on ours.’ See ‘United States vs Moby Dick’.The problem is that once we terrorize a child, the terrified adult who emerges from childhood behaves as guided by their (unconscious) fear, not by any intelligence they may possess. Again, this is routinely illustrated by the failure of even those who self-label as ‘activists’ to think, plan and act strategically. See ‘Why Activists Fail’.

Of course, we do not need to work on ending violence against children in isolation. We can campaign to end other manifestations of violence – such as war, nuclear weapons and power, economic exploitation, ecological violence in its many forms including geoengineering and the deployment of 5G, violence against women and indigenous peoples, occupations and dictatorships – at the same time. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategyand Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

But if we work to end the many manifestations of violence while failing to address the fundamental cause then, ultimately, we must fail, even if we elongate our timeframe a little. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

If you are also interested in working locally to reduce your consumption and become more self-reliant, in order to reduce your ecological violence, consider participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

Alternatively, if you want something simpler, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children(see explanation above)
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, includingby minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not buy rainforest timber
8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
11. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

And you might wish to join the worldwide movement of people working to end all violence by signingthe online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Conclusion

The foundation of our violent world is the unending visible, invisible and utterly invisible violence that human adults inflict on our children. For that reason, it does not matter what superstructure we build on top of this foundation. Whether we use capitalism (and ‘democracy’), socialism or any other political-economic-social model, tack on a New Green Deal or a Just Transition, while the violent foundation on which society is built – violence against children – remains unaddressed, a culture of peace cannot be created.

So we need to raise children in a culture that does not involve terrorizing them so that they end up perceiving violence as the primary way to address conflict because they are too scared to simply perceive the power of, and use, principled nonviolent options.

Hence, until our parenting and teaching models are radically altered, a culture of peace will remain an impossible dream. And human extinction in the near term is inevitable.

 Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Co-Written by Ryan Summers and Ben Freeman

Foreign influence in America is the topic du jour. From the impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s request that a foreign power investigate a political opponent to the indictment of associates of his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, for illegally funneling foreign money into U.S. elections, the nation has been transfixed by news of illegal foreign influence in the political process. While such efforts to subvert American elections garner headlines, there remains a treasure trove of perfectly legal ways foreign powers are subverting American democracy. And they’re not waiting for election day — they’re doing it every single day of the year.

“Legislation Is Prepared by Lobbyists All the Time”

Foreign powers have a remarkably direct way of making sure their voices are heard in Washington: let their lobbyists script what various members of Congress say. That may sound wild, but it’s actually commonplace. Lee Fang of the Intercept reported a typical example of this recently. He discovered that, on November 13, 2017, Representative Ed Royce (R-CA), then chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, read verbatim into the congressional record a set of talking points given to his office by lobbyists working for the Saudi government. As Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) and a bipartisan group of lawmakers debated invoking the War Powers Act to end U.S. support for the war in Yemen, Ari Fridman, a lobbyist working for Hogan Lovells, itself representing Saudi Arabia, distributed Saudi talking points to Royce and others. In a C-SPAN video from the debate on the floor, Royce can be seen parroting these very talking points, word for word.

This might seem like an extraordinary success for any lobbyist of a foreign power, but it’s actually quite common. A report by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), co-authored by Ben Freeman, for instance, documented multiple examples of foreign agents writing speeches, even legislation, for members of Congress. Most notably, their investigation unearthed documents showing a foreign agent had provided track-change edits on a proposed bill to a staffer working for Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI). When the legislation was finally introduced by the senator, it included the exact language the lobbyist had suggested. Asked about this, that agent responded, “It’s not unusual for us to comment back and forth” with Congressional staff about legislation. He added, “Proposed legislation is prepared by lobbyists all the time.”

In our post-Citizens United world where, thanks to that 2010 Supreme Court decision, money is considered speech when it comes to campaign finance, agents working on behalf of foreign governments regularly “speak” with their pocketbooks. The Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy (CIP), where we work, has repeatedly reported on how agents of foreign governments make campaign contributions to the congressional representatives they’re contacting on behalf of foreign powers.

Sometimes they even make such donations on the very day they meet with the member of Congress. In investigating the Saudi lobby in 2018, we found at least five instances when lawmakers received campaign contributions on the day they or their staff spent time with someone working for the Saudis. Firms representing Saudi Arabia gave this way to Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Senator Tina Smith (D-MN), Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Representative Mike Conaway (R-TX). Even more striking are contacts (and contributions) made just prior to important votes on Capitol Hill. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), for instance, received a total of $3,000 from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a firm representing the Saudis, in the four days before a March 20th, 2018, vote on a War Powers Resolution introduced to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. (One of those contributions came on the day of the vote.) Nelson, who has since lost his Senate seat, ended up voting against the Yemen resolution in line with Saudi interests.

While foreign nationals are prohibited from making campaign contributions — exactly what presidential lawyer and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Ukrainian associates are accused of orchestrating — nothing prohibits citizens working on their behalf from such donations. Some would argue that gestures of this sort look remarkably like bribery, but they are perfectly legal, according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), as long as any contributions an agent reports are “from your own funds and on your own behalf.”

Buying Think-Tank Thinking

Foreign powers have ample ability, through their lobbyists, to directly influence congressional legislation. They also have at least three indirect, perfectly legal avenues for trying to shift U.S. foreign policy in their favor: think tanks, the media, and academia.

As CIP’s recent report on the influence of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in America documented, lobbyists hired by foreign powers often work directly with influential think tanks to shape the narrative about the countries they represent. They meet with think-tank experts, provide them with talking points, offer research assistance, and sometimes even give them all-expense-paid trips to the country in question.

Such talking points are disseminated to think-tank pundits in part to influence what they’ll write or say. Their work, in turn, is often shared by various congressional offices. This process is effectively talking-point laundering. A foreign power’s message is communicated to sympathetic think-tank experts who then echo the talking points in their work, speeches, or even testimony before Congress without having to disclose their connections to that country.

For example, as our UAE report documented, Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has an extremely close relationship with lobbyists working on behalf of the UAE and his public comments often echo their talking points. An article Knights wrote on June 14, 2018, on the UAE’s move to “liberate” the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, deeply embroiled in the Saudi-UAE war in that embattled land, closely mirrored an article disseminated by Hagir Elawad & Associates, a firm working on behalf of that country. It, in turn, had been written by Anwar Gargash, the current UAE minister of state for foreign affairs.

FARA filings show as well that Knights has a very close relationship with Richard Mintz, managing director of the Harbour Group, which also represents the UAE in Washington. He reportedly coordinated with Knights on four separate trips to visit UAE forces in Yemen. Afterward, Knights would write a distinctly uncritical analysis about UAE operations in Yemen, never, for instance, mentioning the targeted-assassination program that UAE officials oversaw there or the fact that those same forces gave U.S.-supplied weapons to al-Qaeda and other militant groups in that country. He also dismissed accusations of war crimes by UAE forces as just the work of “local proxies.”

While registered foreign agents legally have to declare anything they distribute on behalf of a foreign power, there is no such requirement for think-tank experts. In fact, such institutions don’t even have to disclose that they receive funding from foreign powers. Under current law it’s perfectly legal for scholars whose work is funded by a foreign government to craft an article with that government’s registered foreign agents without disclosing any of their ties.

This can become particularly problematic when such experts testify before Congress without disclosing their potential conflicts of interest. The House of Representatives requires witnesses to fully reveal foreign funding before testifying, but in many instances, such experts don’t disclose the money their institutions receive from foreign governments. A POGO report found that the existing House rule relating to testimonial transparency is remarkably weak, allowing many witnesses to adopt a particularly narrow interpretation of the “issues related” to their testimony. In the process, they simply don’t disclose their foreign ties.

Experts from the Atlantic Council, which received at least $2,585,000 in foreign funding in 2018, for example, failed to disclose this funding when appearing before Congress. Perhaps most notably, two Atlantic Council experts who testified on “reforming the National Security Council” and “defeating terrorism in Syria” didn’t reveal the more than $1 million dollars the Atlantic Council received from the United Arab Emirates embassy in Washington, even though the UAE undoubtedly had an interest in each of those issues.

Shaping the Media Narrative

Media outlets are another prime target of foreign influence operations. Some governments, of course, run their own media outlets in America and many of these are required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. China’s CCTV and Russia’s RT, which was deemed “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet” in the Director of National Intelligence’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, are obvious examples. And, of course, foreign powers continue to engage in a number of illegal Twitter and Facebook activities meant to influence domestic politics, as well as American views of their own countries. In early November, for example, two former Twitter employees were charged with spying for Saudi Arabia and accessing the private information of the Kingdom’s critics in the U.S.

Generally ignored, however, are the ways in which foreign powers often engage in legal media manipulation that neither they, nor such outlets, are required to tell viewers or listeners about. One of the most common tactics is simply to work closely with reporters covering issues of importance to them. No surprise then that the Center for International Policy’s investigations have consistently found journalists among the top targets of registered foreign agents. In some cases it’s fairly easy to see how this influence gets converted into extremely positive spin on their behalf.

Take, for example, OZY, which brands itself as “news for the disruptive.” Its reporters were contacted repeatedly by UAE agents in late 2017 and early 2018 regarding “story ideas” and to arrange interviews. This courtship culminated in two extraordinarily flattering OZY pieces, one describing Dubai’s “Museum of the Future” and the other portraying Dubai as “one of the world’s new fashion capitals,” ignoring the fact that you can face up to three years in prison, especially if you’re a woman, for dressing inappropriately there.

Foreign Influence in the Ivory Tower

While foreign influence in Washington has consistently made front-page headlines, it’s arguably just as pervasive at American universities. Chinese influence has, for instance, garnered considerable attention in recent years. That country’s Confucius Institutes, ostensibly language and cultural centers at American colleges paid for by the Chinese government, have been the focus of eye-opening congressional investigations on the role foreign governments can play on campus. As a Senate investigation reported in early 2019, “Confucius Institute funding comes with strings that can compromise academic freedom,” allowing the Chinese government to play censor at academic conferences on U.S. soil and even censor course materials critical of China.

Chinese influence on campus has garnered headlines, but that country is just one of more than 100 that have funneled $9-plus billion in foreign money to U.S. college campuses in the past five years, according to the Department of Education — and China isn’t even the biggest player among them. That honor, believe it or not, goes to little (but wealthy) Qatar, which has given more than $1.3 billion to American universities since 2014, nearly three times as much as the Chinese. Its officials, in turn, have gone to great lengths to ensure that the strings attached to such funding aren’t known to the public. They even sued the state of Texas to prevent Texas A&M, one of its top grantees, from having to disclose the details of its relationship with Qatar.

While at least two dozen universities are severing ties with Confucius Institutes, schools have been far more reluctant to cut ties with other authoritarian governments. After the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, for example, universities and think tanks faced considerable pressure to sever ties with Saudi Arabia, but few did. Since 2014, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the most prestigious universities in the country, has received the most money from the Saudis — at least $77 million, according to Department of Education records.

Following outrage after Khashoggi’s brutal murder, MIT began a reassessment of its financial ties with the Kingdom. However, in February, when that assessment was finished — and outrage over Khashoggi’s murder was no longer front-page news — a letter sent to the school’s students and teachers concluded that the faculty should be able to “continue their current engagements with colleagues, students, and public and private research sponsors in Saudi Arabia… as long as these projects remain consistent with MIT policies and procedures and U.S. laws and regulations.”

Saudi influence on campus can be even more direct than funding. In at least one case, a registered foreign agent working on behalf of that country was a professor on a college campus. According to a report by Brian McGlinchey, an expert on Saudi influence in America, in 2018 Bill Smullen, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, was more recently a registered agent working on behalf of Saudi Arabia while serving as director of the Maxwell School of National Security Studies at Syracuse University. FARA filings show that Smullen was paid to provide “public relations support” for the Saudis, while serving as the head of that prestigious national-security program. When asked if the Saudi money might lead him to show them in a more favorable light at Syracuse, Smullen quickly dismissed the idea, saying, “I don’t think there is any conflict of interest.”

Expanding the Spotlight to Perfectly Legal Foreign Influence

The scrutiny placed on malign actors like Rudy Giuliani’s associates and their alleged dealings with Ukrainian elites to compromise an American election is certainly warranted. We live in a world in which the ability of foreign powers to undermine American democracy (as this country once undermined democracies elsewhere) remains a genuine threat. Seldom, however, does anyone even think about the influence operations of foreign powers — operations that are perfectly legal and don’t garner headlines.

The American political system, which has always been vulnerable to outside influence, is arguably more susceptible to foreign meddling now than it has been in decades — and most of it is perfectly legal. From woefully inadequate disclosures regarding conflicts of interest by witnesses testifying before Congress to foreign agents filling campaign coffers and literally writing our laws, as well as influencing think tanks, media outlets, and universities, there remain a host of legal ways for foreign powers to try to bend our policies and thinking to their will. While it’s imperative that we be vigilant in rooting out illegal foreign influence, if American democracy is to remain “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” a bright light should be directed onto all forms of influence that seek to undermine it.

Ryan Summers is a research associate with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy.

Ben Freeman, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy and co-chair of its Sustainable Defense Task Force.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Originally published by TomDispatch

The changes from a pretension of secularism to a majoritarian Hindutva culture within the mainstream psyche was slow and steady during the post independent India. The growth of Islamophobia from the partition period to the destruction of Babari Masjid was one stage in this. The destruction of Babari Masjid and its justification changed the pace in which communal forces acted on the ground, through media, through legislative bodies, through the executive machinery and finally through the judiciary. The verdict on the Ayodhya issue seemed to keep the pretension of being within the parameters of a `secular State’. But in its essence, the verdict was a sell-out to the Hindutva forces.

The real conflict has not been for the land to construct a temple after the destruction of a mosque. The real conflict was for the establishment of the superiority of Hindutva forces over not only Muslims but all those who believed in secular values in India. The real conflict was for the invasion over the right to faith as enshrined in the Indian Constitution. The real conflict was to treat a segment of Indian society as secondary citizens. The real conflict was to redefine Indianness’ of the Indians. We have seen this in its brutal forms during Gujarat and Kandhamal genocides and many communal attacks by the Hindutva forces during the post Babari Masjid era in India. The nature of brutality varied in its quantity and quality during every communal attack. But it is for the first time itslegalisation’ has been publicly accepted by the mainstream psyche. With this verdict, the Supreme Court made the secondary citizenship of the minorities in India as legally’ acceptable also. The question which remained is:If the Babari Masjid was not destroyed, would the Supreme Court announce a similar judgement?’ What did the existence of a place of worship really mean to supreme legal institution in India? If the present verdict is according to the secular principles of Indian Constitution, then would the court have ordered the Government of India to construct a temple on the land where a mosque stood, with the same `legal’ logic? In addition, is it the job of a Government administered by a secular constitution to build such a temple?

The other question which disturbs me as a human being placed in secular India is : `What role should moral values and ethical standards of any society play in shaping its notion of legal justice?’ One may argue that the verdict has failed in all these three standards, but since I believe that the Supreme Court even today with all its limitations can and must play a role in preserving the secular fabric of the society, I would argue that if the legal institutions fail to play a fair role, it is the responsibility of the civil society to reshape the notions of justice beyond its narrow legalistic frameworks. It is time now for the civil society to discuss and find ways and means to reshape justice itself for the welfare of all communities in this country, in order to protect and reinstall the structure of Indian democracy.

There are thousands of constructions which violated the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) in India. Very few such constructions were stopped due to the involvement of the civil society and social activists. In some cases, the Government itself has ordered to destroy such illegal constructions. But was Babari Masjid an illegal construction? It was constructed centuries before the formation of Supreme Court of India itself. Can such a construction be measured by the legalistic measures of the present law, and if so, to what extent and at whose cost? Has the Supreme Court overstepped on the archeological, cultural, historic and spiritual parameters of this site? Was the Babari Masjid just a construction’ or abuilding of stones’ or illegal as per the logic of Indian Constitution? If so, how many structures of different faiths must be destroyed?

Among the hundreds of Ramayanas in the world today, including Muslim Ramayana, Adivasi Ramayana, interpretations of different Dalit communities and Ramayanas of many other countries like Thai Ramayana or Arab Ramayana there have been many variations of the story of Ramayana as well as existence of sites referred in such stories. Therefore, it would be good to ask which Ramayana did the court rely upon and why?

Jesus Christ was a part of history and there was a definite historical period of his existence. So was Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, Mahavir Jain and many others who became instrumental in the formation of different religions in the world. But the presence of Ram was more as a myth than history, followed by people in different places with many sites referred in all these myths. Therefore, the verdict of the Supreme Court was in that sense not a justification of the historical’ truth of Ramayana, but a violation ofhistorical’ truths of hundreds of Ramayanas including the Ramayana in Thailand. It is a violation of the spiritual belief systems of many communities including those who still believe and worship Ravana in India since they would prefer to worship the site of birth of Ravana than Ram.

The verdict does not justify the destruction of Babari Masjid. But by denying the right to faith of a community, the verdict indirectly justifies the culprits of destruction. It is here that the public discourse in India must see that the notion of justice is not merely legalistic’, it is also historical, spiritual, cultural, anthropological, sociological and economic. No verdict which does not represent the cultural and spiritual diversities of Indian society can be termed as ajust verdict’ in the test of times.

But the most significant question today is what role does the civil society have to reshape harmony, justice, democracy and secular values of this sub-continent? Apart from analysing the drainage of values, the civil society has a major role to play and reshaping harmony, so that such dark chapters do not cross our future anymore. Where do the mainstream media and our political machineries fit in, when we discuss on reshaping and reasserting the values of harmony and secularism? Is the civil society prepared to reshape a mainstream psyche which functions within the framework of democratic values in such instances in future? This becomes the most challenging question of our own times.

If the verdict respected a true history of spiritualities in this subcontinent called India, no court can ever produce any evidence of any Ram temple before the emergence of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism or Sikhism in this landscape.Moreover, we can find many records of religious tolerance and religious harmony, not just conflicts of faiths. The challenge for the civil society in India for a peaceful existence in future, is to rebuild and strengthen the notions of harmony, between all faiths as well as between faith and no religious faith. Atheism was also an ancient segment of people of this region. It is not `tolerance’ of multiple belief systems which can take us to a civilised future, but strengthening of values of mutual respect between the belief systems of every section of our society. The Indian society would not have evolved as a civilisation without such meaningful values.

Secondly, as a pro-active model of thought process, it is of crucial significance that the people of this country should be measured not as numbers in the calculations of electoral gains but as breathing souls who survive with specific needs in life. Unfortunately, the political parties in India as well as the mainstream media look at people as statistical figures rather than their inherent needs. Even in such calculations, unfortunately, the arguments of majoritarian and minoritarian interests do not satisfy my sense of logic. For Indian society is still segmented as various minoritarian’ faith mechanisms rather than onemajoritarian’ faith. If you analyse the election results carefully, you will find that the upper caste logic of `majoritarianism’ is still extremely weak. What we have today is a majoritarian power system rather than majoritarian numbers. When it comes to numbers, the numbers of the marginalised identities as a whole become much more than any majoritarian force. However, the power structures facilitate a notion of majoritarianism.

For the future evolution of a civilised society which functions with peace, justice and harmony, it is crucial that we look into the above argument very seriously. For the total statistical number’ of the marginalised identities in India is certainly much higher than the non-marginalised identities. Thus, it must be argued vehemently that a peaceful existence of the future in India is determined by the united actions of all marginalised identities. Therefore, coalitions of marginalised identities like Dalits, Adivasis, women, religious minorities, sexuality minorities, marginalised races, colours and nationalities are of crucial importance for the future history. The expressions of power due to caste, class, gender, sexuality, faith, region, language etc can be controlled and regulated only with such a unity. And for this, it is of utmost importance that the representatives of all such marginalised identities come together in a common struggle for justice, with common and minimum programmes of understanding. In isolation, no oppression can be dealt with. This reality has to be understood by all activists and intellectuals who express their energies for the rights of one oppressed section or the other. And if this logic is pursued, then we will find that the real power lies with the marginalised sections as a whole, even if they appear to be aminority’.

Such a unity will naturally dissolve the sectarianism which may manifest within at least a small section of activists who focus only on the oppression of their identity. Such a unity will not just force the institutions of the mainstream like media, legislature, executive machineries, judiciary, education system and social organisations in general to think in terms of more democratic principles, but also purify the minds of the mainstream sections for a more humanitarian existence rather than celebrating the violence promoted by all sections of communal forces.

K.P. Sasi is a film maker, writer and cartoonist

Over 11,000 scientists have signed up to a World scientists’ warning of a Climate Emergency that sets out trends in 24 climate-related  areas over the last 40 years.  Scientists became aware of the climate change threat from greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in the 1980s,  but in 23 of these 24 areas the trends are (a) huge, (b) in the wrong direction, and (c) linear or quasi-linear functions of time , with this allowing extrapolation from the present climate emergency to a climate catastrophe in 2030.

The 2019 paper by William Ripple et al.,  and co-signed by over 11,000 scientists   from around the world [1], is a successor to a similar warning issued by William Ripple et al. in 2017 and co-signed by over 15,000 scientists [2, 3]. The 2017 warning presented data for the 56 year period of 1960-2016 showing a quasi-linear change as a function of time of increasing CO2 emissions, increasing temperature, the number of ocean dead zone regions, increasing population increase, and increasing ruminant population.  Paralleling these changes were quasi-linear decreases over recent decades of freshwater resources per capita, reconstructed annual marine catch, total forest area, and vertebrate species abundance (as a % of the 1970 abundance). In stark contrast to this worsening disaster in 8 areas was a decrease since 1992 of emissions of ozone depletors (in Mt CFC-11 equivalents per year) , this demonstrating clearly that global action on serious environmental pollution was actually possible [2, 3].

In 2017 Ripple et al. stated; : “Twenty-five years ago [in 1992], the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the 1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”… These concerned professionals called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” In their manifesto, they showed that humans were on a collision course with the natural world…Since 1992, with the exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse… Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels,… deforestation,…  and agricultural production – particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption… Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century” [2].

2017 WARNING  DATA.

Figure 1 of the 2017 Ripple et al. warning paper [2] showed  trends over time for environmental issues identified in the 1992 scientists’ warning to humanity. Percentage [quasi-linear] change since 1992 for the variables in each panel are as follows, noting that because these changes were roughly linear with time one can extrapolate to roughly estimate the situation in 2030. All trends except for the decrease in ozone depletors (*) were in the wrong direction from the perspective of Humanity and the Biosphere.

*(a) Ozone depletors (Mt CFC-11-equivalent per year): 1.05 (1992) to 0.345 (2016), -62.3% overall, -26.0% per decade,  -0.029 per year; all ozone depletors gone before 2030.

(b) Freshwater resources per capita (1,000 metre³ ): 8.0 (1992) to 5.9 (2014), -25.4% overall, – 12.0 % per decade, -0.095 per year; 4,400 metre³ in 2030.

(c) Reconstructed marine catch (Mt per year): 121 (1992) to 113 (2011), -6.6%, overall, – 3.5% per decade, -0.42 per year; 105 million tonnes marine catch per year in 2030.

(d) Dead zones (number of affected regions): 360 (1992) to 660 (2008), +83.3% overall, +52% per decade, +11.5 per year; 913 ocean dead zones by 2030.

(e) Total forest (million hectares): 4.110 (1992) to 3.990 (2016), –2.9% overall, -1.2% per decade,  -0.005 per year; 3.92 million hectares by 2030.

(f) Vertebrate species abundance (% of 1970): 59.5 (1992) to 43.5 (2010), – 26.9% overall , -14.9% per decade, -0.89 per year; 27.5% of 1970 level  by 2030.

(g) CO2 emissions (Gt CO2 per year): 22.5 (1992) to 36.0 (2014), + 60.0% overall, +27.3% per decade,  + 0.84 per year; 49.4 Gt CO2 emitted in 2030.

(h) Temperature change (^oC): 0.30 (1992) to 0.90 (2016), +200% overall, +83.3% per decade,  0.0033 per year; + 0.95 ^oC by 2030.

(i) (a). Human population (billion individuals): 5.50 (1992) to 7.45 (2016), + 35.5% overall, +14.8% per decade, 0.081 per year; 8.58 billion human individuals in 2030.

(i) (b). Ruminant population  (billion individuals): 3.25 (1992) to 3.90 (2014), +20.0% overall,  +9.1% per decade, +.03 per year; 4.38 billion ruminant individuals in 2030 [2, 3].

2019 WARNING FIGURE 1 DATA.

Figures 1 and 2 of the 2019 Ripple et al. warning paper [1] sets out trends in 24 areas within  a 40 year period from 1979 to 2019. Because the changes were quasi-linear as a function of time one could reasonably extrapolate the data to 2030 to (a) roughly estimate the seriousness of the situation in a mere decade’s time , (b) compare the data with that of the prior 2017 study, and (c) provide absolute estimates for the various parameters. Most trends were in the wrong direction except for those asterisked (*).

Figure 1 (a). Human population (billions): 4.35 (1979) to  7.65 (2018), +75.9% overall, +19.5% per decade, + 0.085 billion per year, and an  estimated  9.07 billion human population  in 2030  (assuming  an average increase  of +84.6 million per year, noting that the increase in population was linear over the period 1979-2018).

Comments. This result is similar to that of the 2017 paper (8.58 billion) [2].The  UN Population Division World Population Prospects 2019 estimates a human population of  8.55 billion in 2030 [4]. Drastic decrease in population is required for cessation of the present appalling level of ecosystem destruction (ecocide) that is associated with catastrophic species loss (speciescide) and leading to omnicide and terracide.  If we take  world coral  as a “canary in the coal mine” then the 320 ppm CO2 at which coral reefs started to decline [5] was reached in 1965 [6], at which time the world’s population was 3.340 billion as compared to the present 7.5 billion [4]. One can therefore plausibly suggest that given the present carbon economy the world’s population needs to roughly halve for a safe and sustainable environment for all peoples and all species [7] . However a number of climate scientists  and demographers have variously estimated a 0.5-1.0 billion  sustainable human population in 2100 with this implying 10 billion premature deaths in a Climate Genocide this century [8-11]. UN Population Division projections show that this century  the population of rich Europe will fall  from 742 million (2018) to 653 million (2100) whereas the population of impoverished Africa will explode from 1,274 million (2018) to 4,468 million (2100) [4]. However in terms of relative carbon footprint,  the per capita  GDP (nominal) is $25,596 for Europe versus $1,753 for Africa (2016), this translating to a total GDP of $19.3 trillion for Europe and $2.2 trillion for Africa [12]. For carbon footprint equality the European population would need to decrease 10-fold or the African per capita income would have to increase 10-fold. However Professor Dabo Guan  (School of International Development, University of East Anglia, UK) (2016) has commented thus on inescapable limits to growth:  “For everyone in the world to have an American lifestyle, we would need seven planets, and three to live as Europeans” [13]. Clearly the rich European population is not declining fast enough and the impoverished African population is expanding impossibly.

*Figure 1 (b). Total fertility (births per woman): 3.78 (1979) to 2.70 (2008) to  2.44 (2017). Births per woman per decade were 0.37 (1979-2008) to  0.24 (2008-2017) and an average  of  0.35 (1979-2017) (about  – 10.9% per decade, -1.1% per year and 0.035 per year). Extrapolation from the  2008-2017 trend of – 0.024 per year yields 2.13 average births per woman in 2030.

Comments. Births per woman per decade fell into 2 quasi linear periods of 1979-2008 and 2008-2017, with the rate in the latter period being 64.9% of that in the earlier period. This is a useful trend but it disguises a continuing  resource-utilization disaster in which (a) the GDP per capita is about 10 times greater  in low  birth rate, rich and mainly European countries than in impoverished, Developing World countries (minus China) [7, 12], and (b)  while many prosperous countries have attained or are approaching zero population growth (ZPG), some areas (notably Africa) are out of control as discussed above for Figure 1 (b). The replacement  fertility rate depends upon the death rate and thus is  2.1 in rich Developed World (zero avoidable mortality annually from deprivation) and about 3.0 in Developing countries (minus China) in which avoidable deaths from deprivation total 15 million each year [14, 15].

Figure 1 (c).  Ruminant livestock (billion individuals): 2.86 billion (1979) to  3.93 billion (2017) (+ 8.72% per decade, +0.87% per year and +0.028 per year), noting an apparent,  short, low-growth period in the middle 1990s.  Assuming the 1979-2017 average trend yields a value from   extrapolation of 4.29 billion individual ruminants  in 2030.

Comments. The ratio of livestock to human individuals has decreased from 0.66 (1979) to 0.52 (2017) but is predicted to flatten to 0.48 (2030) (presumably as more Chinese join the meat-eating middle class). However ruminant livestock are methanogenic and methane  (CH4) has a Global  Warming Potential (GWP) relative to the same mass of CO2 of 105  on a 20 year time frame taking aerosols into account [16], this being 5 times higher than the 21 with a 100 year timeframe [17, 18]. When World Bank analysts took land use and a 20 year-based GWP for CH4 into account, the global annual greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution rose from 41.8 gigatonnes  CO2-equivalent (Food and Agricultural  Organization, FAO) to 63.8 gigatonnes  CO2-equivalent [19]. One notes that Figure 1 (k) confusingly cites the 2018 global CO2 emissions as 34 gigatonnes  CO2-equivalent per year [1].  The German WBGU (that advises the German Government) (2009) and the Australian Climate Commission (2013) have estimated that no more than 600 billion tonnes of CO2 can be emitted between 2010 and zero emissions in 2050 if the world is to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature  rise [20, 21]. However the upwardly revised estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution properly taking land use and methane (CH4) into account means  an annual GHG pollution of 63.8 Gt CO2-equivalent and hence 638 GtCO2-equivalent  over the next decade i.e. the world will have exceeded  this Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget by 2020. Of course,  one can well ask whether  you would board a plane with a 75% chance of it crashing. A major imperative (as indeed perceived by Ripple et al [1]) is for the word to adopt a vegetarian diet [22].   Australia is among world leaders in 15 areas of climate criminality, including export of methanogenically-derived meat [23, 24]. Climate criminal Australians (and other rich,  meat-eating Westerners) would be well-advised to adopt vegetarianism or, failing that, urgently return to the up to 65,000 years old Indigenous Australian cultures that supplemented their sustainably-derived diets with non-methanogenic kangaroo meat [25].

Figure 1 (d). Per capita meat production (kg per year): 30 (1979) to 44 (2018) (+11% per decade, +1.1% per year, +0.36 per year ) . This yields  an estimated 62.3 kg per capita  in 2030, noting that the remarkably linear progression from 1979 onwards gives greater confidence to this extrapolation.

Comments. This remarkable rise in per capita meat production  contrasts with the roughly static ratio of livestock to human individuals  (Figure 1 (c) [1] data considered above).  This data reflects (a) the meat eating of the growing middle classes of the Developing World (including China) and (b) the rise in chicken production (especially in Asia). Chicken meat production in 2014- 2023 will increase at 2.3%  per year to 134.5 million tonnes in 2023. By way of comparison, the growth  rates are 1.2% per year for beef and pig meat, 2.3%  per year for sheep meat and 1.6% per year for meat overall [26]. The conversion efficiency (kg grain to produce 1 kg gain in live weight) is as follows  herbivorous farmed fish (e.g. carp, tilapia, catfish; less than 2), chicken (2), pork (4), and beef (7). In 2003, 37% of the world grain harvest, or nearly 700 million tons, was used to produce animal protein [27]. A vegetarian diet   is a must for an increasingly  resource-challenged  Humanity  [22].

Figure 1 (e). World GDP (trillion current US$/year). The data appear to fall into to 2 successive upward linear phases with an upward inflection in about 2000: 10.0 (1979) to 32.5 (1998) and 37.5 (2001) to 86.3 (2018),  with  growth rates of $1.18 trillion per year and  $2.87 trillion per year, respectively, and  an overall growth of  + 80.5% /10 years ( +8.1% per year and +$1.96 trillion per year).   Assuming that the latter faster rate applies over the next dozen years (+ $2.87 trillion peryear),  one can predict  a World GDP of $120.7 trillion in 2030.

Comments. As discussed in relation to  Figure 1 (a) [1] above,   there needs to be a halving of population, and a consequent  halving of the global economy through economic de-growth (negative economic growth). The major burden of  such negative economic growth would have to be borne  by rich Western countries  to allow the global  South to achieve a modest increase to permit a modestly decent life  and cessation of the horrendous Global Avoidable Mortality  Holocaust in which 15 million people die avoidably each year from imposed deprivation [15].

Figure 1 (f). Global tree cover loss (million hectares per year): The data fall into 2 successive upward linear phases with an apparent short low-rate period in the late 2000s: 14 (2001) to 18 (2005) and   18 (2010) to 27.5 (2018) with corresponding rates of loss  of 1.0 and 1.2 million hectares per year, respectively.  Extrapolation using the latter faster latter rate yields an estimated loss  rate of  41.9 million hectares of tree cover loss per year by 2030.

Comments. This asserted tree loss would be happening in biodiverse tropical forests.  However Xiao-Peng Song and colleagues in a 2018 paper in the  prestigious journal   Nature: “We analyse 35 years’ worth of satellite data and provide a comprehensive record of global land-change dynamics during the period 1982–2016. We show that—contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally^, tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km² [224 million hectares] (+7.1% relative to the 1982 level [3.155 million hectares]. This overall net gain is the result of a net loss in the tropics being outweighed by a net gain in the extratropics. Global bare ground cover has decreased by 1.16 million km² [116 million hectares] (−3.1), most notably 2009-2018 in agricultural regions in Asia. Of all land changes, 60% are associated with direct human activities and 40% with indirect drivers such as climate change” [28]. One Tree Planet states: “Scientists have always speculated about how trees can help end the current climate crisis, but the question has always been how many. A new study from the Crowther Lab out of Swiss University ETH Zurich, has finally come up with an answer: 1 trillion more trees on Earth could sequester more than 60% of anthropogenic carbon emissions… Other technology like direct-air capture or CO2 separation have proven to be comparatively ineffective and far exceed the costs of just planting more trees. In their study titled The Global Tree Restoration Potential, Crowther Lab determined our planet could support 4.4 billion hectares of continuous tree coverage. With current global tree coverage sitting around 2.8 billion hectares, that means Earth could sustain 1.6 billion more hectares of forest. Of those 1.6 billion hectares, Crowther Lab discovered just under a billion hectares, excluding land occupied by agriculture and cities (about 1 trillion trees worth), inherently suitable for supporting reforestation efforts – that’s a land area almost the size of China” [29].

Figure 1 (g). Brazilian Amazon forest loss (millions hectares per year) was in the range 1-3 million hectares per year  in the period 1988-2008 (very scattered data) and then fell to about 0.7- 0.9 million hectares per year in the period  2009-2018 (- 24.3% /10 years, -2.4% per year).

Comments. One could tentatively assume that Brazil  might keeps to this rate of Amazon forest destruction of about 1 million hectares per year by 2030, increased by the current burning of the Amazon forest under neoliberal and neofascist President Jair Bolsonaro and decreased by the consequent international outcry.

Figure 1 (h). Energy consumption (Gt oil equivalent/year). Annual oil, coal and gas exploitation increased in a quasi-linear fashion from 1979-2018 with overall increases of  +11.9%/decade, + 22.5%/decade and +30.1% /decade, respectively. Oil usage rose from 3.0 Gt oe (1979) to 4.6 Gt oe (2018), coal rose from 1.8 Gt oe (1979) to 3.9 Gt oe (2018) and gas rose from 1.1 Gt oe (1979) to 3.2 Gt oe (2018). Extrapolation based on these numbers would indicate usage in 2030 totalling 6.2 Gt oe for oil, 5.73 Gt oe for coal and 5.0 Gt oe (gas).

Oil ((CH2)n) is oxidized thus on combustion: (CH2)n + 1.5n O2 -> nCO2 + nH20 i.e. 14 Gt oil yields 44 Gt CO2 and 1 Gt oil yields 3.14 Gt CO2. Accordingly, CO2 from burning   oil, coal and gas in 2030 is projected to be 19.5 Gt CO2 (oil), 18.0 Gt CO2 (coal),  15.7 Gt CO2 (gas)  and 53.2 Gt CO2 in total, as compared to the figures for 2018 of 14.4 Gt CO2 (oil), 12.2 Gt CO2 (coal) and 10.0 Gt CO2 (gas) with a total of  36.6 Gt CO2 (similar to the 34.0 Gt CO2-equivalent of emissions in 2018 according to Figure 1(k)). Solar and wind use started to increase substantially in about 2000,  and by 2018 had reached 0.45 Gt oe/year (Gt 1.4 Gt CO2 emissions replaced in 2018) (+373%/decade) i.e. solar and wind renewable energy was only 3.7% of the total energy mix in 2018.

Comments. Public comments about the serious threat of global warming due to greenhouse gases (GHGs) like CO2 have been made publicly by scientists  since the mid-1980s. It is accordingly quite shocking that oil, coal and gas usage has nevertheless s remorselessly increased at a constant rate over this 40 year period. Indeed in 2017 the pro-coal Treasurer  (and now present PM) of climate criminal Australia, Scott Morrison,   brought a lump of coal into Parliament, idiotically declaring “This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared” [30]. A slightly more optimistic assessment of this bleak data is that annual  coal use remained constant at 3.85 Gt oe (12.1 Gt CO2)  per year in the period 2011-2018, suggesting that global  coal use, if not decreasing, may actually be finally flattening out.  Further on the positive side, Frontier Group reports (2019):  “America produces almost five times as much renewable electricity from the sun and the wind as in 2009, and currently wind and solar energy provide nearly 10 percent of our nation’s electricity” [31]. Renewable Energy reports re China (2019): “Power generation from renewable energy sources reached 1,870 TWh in 2018, an increase of 170 TWh and making up 26.7 percent of the country’s total. Hydro contributed 1,200 TWh (up 3.2 percent), wind – 366 TWh (up 20 percent), PV – 177.5 TWh (up 50 percent) and biomass – 90.6 TWh (up 14 percent)” [32]. Of course many companies, towns, cities and countries  have already achieved 100% renewable energy [33]. The Germany-based Energy Watch Group: “The new study by the Energy Watch Group and [Finnish] LUT University is the first of its kind to outline a 1.5°C scenario with a cost-effective, cross-sectoral, technology-rich global 100% renewable energy system that does not build on negative CO₂ emission technologies. The scientific modelling study simulates a total global energy transition in the electricity, heat, transport and desalination sectors by 2050. It is based on four and a half years of research and analysis of data collection, as well as technical and financial modelling by 14 scientists. This proves that the transition to 100% renewable energy is economically competitive with the current fossil and nuclear-based system, and could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the energy system to zero even before 2050” [34].

Figure 1 (i). Air transport (billion passengers carried per year) was biphasic linear,  rising from 0.6 (1979) -> 1.60 (2000) (0.048 per year) to 2.3 (2007) -> 4.0 (2017)  (0.170 per year) with a transition in the 2000s (overall + 63.3% per decade). Extrapolating  from the  most recent, faster rate of change in 2007-2017 yields an estimated  6.2 billion passengers carried per year  in 2030.

Comments. This peripatesis is  a scandalous profligacy. Thus, for example,  I am domiciled in remote Melbourne Downunder in the Southern Hemisphere en route to Antarctica but am interviewed by a  progressive  North American  radio station by Skype for free. Indeed Australia’s Nobel Prize-winning writer Patrick White commented thus on public events to celebrate the bicentenary of the British invasion of Australia in 1788: “They are flogging camels from East to West and from West to East, and running from City to Surf and from Surf to City. Why don’t they just stay home, cook themselves a nice meal and curl up with a good book?”.    One notes that our climate  heroine, 16 year old  Greta Thunberg,  recently travelled from Sweden to New York to attend the 2019  UN Climate Summit on a high-technology yacht.   Energy use in megajoules  per person per kilometre (MJ/passenger-km)  is about 0.1 (bicycle), 0.2 (walking person),  1 (train), plane (2) , and car (5) (a 2 tonne car transporting an 80kg person is highly inefficient) [35].

*Figure 1(j). Total institutional assets divested (trillion US dollars) linearly increased  from  0.2 (2014) to  7.5 (2018), an average of $1.8 billion /year (+28,100,000 % per decade for the period 2013 to 2018). Extrapolating from this linear increase  yields an estimate of $28.9 trillion in assets divested in 2030.

Comments. To put this excellent outcome in context, world GDP  was $86.3 trillion in 2018, extrapolates to $120.7 trillion in 2030 (see discussion about Figure 1 (e) [1] above), and thus total institutional assets divested as a per cent of GDP are estimated to rise  from 8.7% in 2014 to 23.9% in 2010. These divestment decisions are not “political’ or “ideological” as the climate change denialist Trumpists assert (notably in climate criminal Coalition-ruled Australia) but are made not just for saving the planet and “corporate image” reasons but also for critical, hard-headed, market-based reasons connected with avoidance of “stranded assets” e.g.  coal reserves that will be unusable if a proper Carbon Price is applied [36-41]. Thus the fundamental  3 Laws of Thermodynamics state (1)  the energy of a closed system remains constant, (2) the entropy (disorder, chaos, lack of information content) increases to a maximum,  and (3) zero entropy for a perfect crystal at absolute  zero. Polya’s  3 Laws of Economics  correspondingly declare that (1) Profit equals Price minus Cost of Production, (2) deception about Cost of Production rises to a maximum, and (3) no jobs, production, price or  profit on a dead planet [42]. The extraordinary deception about the Cost of Production in the World’s present Carbon Economy is illustrated by the determination by International Monetary fund (IMF) that the average global Carbon Price is presently a paltry circa  $2 per tonne CO2-equivalent [43, 44] whereas Dr Chris Hope of 90-Nobel Laureate Cambridge University has estimated a damage-related Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent [45]. The resultant global Carbon Debt (to be inescapably met by future generations) is about $200 trillion and  increasing at about S$10 trillion per year [37].

Figure 1(k), CO2 emissions (gigatonnes CO2 equivalent per year),  showed  a triphasic linear increase from 18.0 (1979) to 22.5 (1997) (0.25 per year) , through  22.5 (1997) to 30.0 (2009) (0.63 per year) and thence 30.0 (2009) to 34.0 (2018) (0.44 per year). The overall increase was +17.9% per decade, 1.7% per year). Extrapolating using  the most recent rate of 0.44 gigatonnes CO2-equivalent per year yields emissions of  39.3 gigatonnes CO2 equivalent per year in 2030.

Comments. As discussed above (Figure 1 (c)), when World Bank analysts took land use and a 20 year-based GWP for CH4 into account, the global annual greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution rose from 41.8 gigatonnes  CO2-equivalent (Food and Agricultural  Organization, FAO) to 63.8 gigatonnes  CO2-equivalent [19].  Applying a correction factor of 63.8/41.8 = 1.5 to the data of Ripple et al. (2019) gives a present rate of increase of GHG pollution of 0.44 x 1.5 = 0.66 gigatonnes CO2-equivalent per year. Applying this revised rate of increase to  an estimated annual  GHG pollution of 63.8 gigatonnes  CO2-equivalent in 2009 provides a revised estimate of 69.7 Gt CO2-equivalent per year in 2018 and  77.7 Gt CO2-equivalent per year in 2030.  On  this basis we can see that the 2010 onwards Terminal Carbon Pollution Budget for a 75% chance of avoiding +2C was exceeded in 2018 (602 Gt CO2-equivalent emitted in the period  2010-2018).

Figure 1(l),  Per capita emissions (tonnes CO2 equivalent per year) fell from 4.23 (1979) to 3.83 (1997) ( – 0.022 per year) , then rose from 3.83 (1997) to  4.47 (2010) (+ 0.049 per year) and have remained roughly constant at 4.50 since 2006) (the overall average being  2.15% per decade, 0.2% per year ). One could guess than if the post-2006 trend continues then  per capita emissions would remain at about  4.5 tonnes CO2 equivalent per person per year in 2030 i.e. with increases in GHG pollution (Figure 1 (k) )  matching  an increase in population (Figure 1(a) ).

Comments. As discussed above in relation to Figure 1 (k),  these per capita emissions estimates understate actual GHG pollution with land use and CH4 properly considered. Thus taking such considerations into account increases annual GHG pollution from 41.8 gigatonnes CO2-equivalent per year to 63.8 gigatonnes CO2-equivalent per year in 2009 [19] and a world average GHG pollution in 2009 of 63.8 gigatonnes CO2-equivalent per year /6.9 billion = 9.2 tonnes CO2-equivalent  per person [46, 47]. Annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution per se is a flawed measure of national culpability for this because it ignores rich countries outsourcing  industrial pollution to China, and impoverished countries compelled to pollute to barely survive.  A better measure of culpability is weighted annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution taking relative per capita income into account, this revealing that the worst polluters on this basis  include  the rich Anglosphere countries of  the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland [47].

*Figure 1(m). GHG emissions covered by carbon pricing  (%) rose linearly from 3.0 (2007) to 15.0 (2017) (+ 1.2% per year)  (with an overall increase of 256% per decade or 25.6% per year). Extrapolating this linear increase yields 30.6% of GHG emissions covered by carbon pricing  in 2030.

Comments. Of course the crucial matter is the magnitude of the carbon pricing. Thus Dr Chris Hope of 90-Nobel-Laureate University of Cambridge  has estimated a damage-related Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent [44] whereas the IMF recently estimated that the global average Carbon Price is a paltry circa  $2 per tonne CO2-equivalent [43, 44].

Figure 1(n). Carbon Price ($ per tonne CO2 emissions)  was assertedly about 53 (1990-2005) and then decreased  to a steady circa about 15 (2012-2018) (overall -33% per decade, -3.3% per year).

Comments. I have no idea how they arrived at these estimates. Thus as discussed above in relation to Figure 1(j),  the IMF in 2019 noted an average global Carbon Price of about $2 per tonne CO2-equivalent [43, 44].

Figure 1(o). Fossil fuel subsidies (billion US$ per year) increased from 440 (2010) to 550 (2012) (+55/year), thence decreased from 550 (2012) to 260 (- 73 /year) and then increased from 260 (2016) to 430 (+85/year). The overall change was -1.08% per decade (-0.1% per year).

Comments. Again it is not clear how exactly these numbers were arrived at but  one assumes that they are an amalgam of such things as transport subsidies and tax relief  components. However  the IMF recently stated that the global average Carbon Price is a mere $2 per ton of CO2 [43, 44] as compared  to the estimated damage-related Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2 [45]. The difference – $198 per tonne CO2 – represents a  huge direct subsidy of fossil fuel. In 2018 the carbon emissions  were 69.7  gigatonnes per year (properly taking land use and CH4 into account (see discussion re Figure 1(k))  and thus the subsidy in 2018 (ignoring transport subsidies and tax relief) was  $198 per tonne CO2 x 69.7 gigatonnes CO2 per year = $13,800 billion per year or about 35 times greater than the mean fossil fuel subsidy of about $400 per year claimed in Figure 1(o).

2019 WARNING FIGURE 2 DATA.

Figure 2(a). Carbon dioxide (CO2 parts per million)  rose from 339 (1980) to 407 (2018) for an average of 1.79 ppm CO2 per year (+ 4.98% per decade, +0.5% per year) and an extrapolation-derived 427 ppm CO2 in 2030.

Comments. Numerous climate scientists, coral scientists , biologists and science-informed commentators argue that we need to draw down atmospheric  CO2 from the present deadly and dangerous 410 parts per million to  the pre-Industrial  Revolution level of about 300 ppm CO2 for a safe and sustainable planet for all peoples and all species [48, 49].   Thus, for example, coral scientists inform us that world coral started dying when the atmospheric CO2 reached 320 ppm CO2 and that a return to about 300 ppm CO2 is needed for sustainability  of world coral reefs [48-51].  However while it is technically possible in all kinds of ways to drawdown atmospheric CO2 to 300 ppm CO2, the cost of doing so  is enormous [41, 52-54].   Professor James Hansen (of 96 Nobel Laureate Columbia University): “One ppm of CO2 is 2.12 billion tons of carbon or about 7.77 billion tons of CO2. Recently Keith et al. (2018) achieved a cost breakthrough in carbon capture, demonstrated with a pilot plant in Canada. Cost of carbon capture, not including the cost of transportation and storage of the CO2, is $113-232 per ton of CO2. Thus the cost of extracting 1 ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere is $878-1803 billion. In other words, the cost, in a single year, of closing the gap between reality and the IPCC scenario that limits climate change to +1.5°C is already about $1 trillion. And that is without the cost of transporting and storing the CO2, or consideration of whether there will be citizen objection to that transportation and storage. This annual cost will rise rapidly, unless there is a rapid slowdown in carbon emissions… cost of CO2 storage… has been estimated as $10-20/tCO2” [52].Taking Professor Hansen’s  data, and including  his estimates of the cost of transport and storage of CO2, indicates that this “best so far”  cost of  atmospheric CO2 draw-down is $123-252/tCO2. Accordingly, the upper estimate of the cost of reducing the atmospheric CO2 by 1 ppm = 1 ppm  x 7.77 billion ton  CO2/ppm x $252/ton CO2 = $1,958 billion. Thus the upper estimate of the cost of the present  1.79 ppm /year increase in atmospheric CO2 is about $3,500 billion. Of course the GHGs include  not just CO2 but also methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) [17]. While the atmospheric CO2 is presently about 412 ppm CO2, the CO2-equivalent (taking other GHGs into account) is about 500 ppm CO2-equivalent [55].

Figure 2(b). Methane (CH4 parts per billion) increased in a quasi-linear fashion from 1648 (1984) to 1854 (2017) for an average of 6.2 ppb per year (+3.65% per decade, 0.37% per year). Extrapolating from this average yields 1,935 ppb CH4 in 2030.

Comments. There are huge amounts of CH4 present as frozen H2O -CH4 clathrates in the  Arctic tundra and Arctic ocean sea bed . It is estimated that 50 Gt of CH4 will be released in the Arctic in coming decades [56]. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CH4 on a 20 year time frame and with aerosol impacts considered is 105 times that of CO2 [16]. The German WBGU (2009) and the Australian Climate Commission (2013) have estimated that no more than 600 billion tonnes of CO2 can be emitted between 2010 and zero emissions in 2050 if the world is to have a 75% chance of avoiding a catastrophic 2C temperature  rise [20, 21]. The 50 Gt (billion tonnes) CH4 in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is thus equivalent to 50 billion tonnes CH4 x 105 tonnes  CO2-equivalent/tonne CH4 = 5,250 tonnes CO2-e or about nine (9) times more than the world’s Terminal Carbon (GHG) Pollution Budget. We are doomed unless we can stop this Arctic CH4 release [57]. CO2 and CH4 are the major GHG contributors to the atmospheric 500 CO2-equivalent [59].

Figure 2 (c). Nitrous oxide (N2O parts per billion) increased in a quasi-linear fashion from 301 (1979) to 331 (2018) for an average of 0.77 ppb per year (+2.46% per decade, +0.28% per year). Using this average, extrapolation yields a 2030 value of 340 ppm N2O .

Comments. N2O is derived from oxidation of nitrogenous agricultural fertilizers and  has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) relative to the same mass of CO2 of 289 on a 20-year time frame  (298 on a 100 year time frame) [17]. Nitrous oxide (N2O, “laughing gas”), like other GHGs,  is not a laughing matter.

Figure 2(d). Surface temperature change (^oC) increased in a quasi-linear fashion from 0.21 (1979) to 0.91 (2018) for an average of 0.18 ^oC per decade (0.018 ^oC per year).  Conservatively extrapolating this 4-decade trend yields + 1.13 ^oC in 2030.

Comments. The global average surface temperature increase relative to 1880 is about +1.1 ^oC but according to the IPCC it will reach 1.5 ^oC in 10 years’ time on the present pollution trajectory  []. Indeed David Spratt and Ian Dunlop: “Another example [of scientific reticence] is the recent IPCC 1.5°C report, which projected that warming would continue at the current rate of ~0.2°C per decade and reach the 1.5°C mark around 2040. However the 1.5°C boundary is likely to be passed in half that time, around 2030, and the [catastrophic] 2°C boundary around 2045, due to accelerating anthropogenic emissions, decreased aerosol loading and changing ocean circulation conditions” [58]. Burning sulphur-containing  coal generates sulphur dioxide (SO2) which forms global dimming sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere – on cessation of coal burning, the washing out of sulphate aerosols from the atmosphere will result in a rapid increase in temperature. Paleoclimatologist and Earth scientist Dr Andrew Glikson (2019: “The planetary consequences of injecting > 910 billion tons CO2 into the atmosphere are playing in real time. The Arctic Circle is suffering from an unprecedented number of wildfires in the latest sign of a climate crisis…  As the globe warms, to date by a mean of near ~1.5 ^oC, or ~2.0^oC when the masking effects of sulphur dioxide and other aerosols are considered, and by a mean of ~2.3^oC in the Polar Regions, the expansion of warm tropical latitudes and the polar-ward migration of climate zones ensue in large scale droughts in subtropical latitudes such as in inland Australia and southern Africa” [59].

Figure 2 (e). Minimum Arctic sea ice (million km²) decreased from 7.4 (1979) to 4.5 (2018) for an average of –0.074 km2 per year (- 11.7% per decade, -1.2% per year ). Extrapolation using this 4 decade average yields 3,612km² by 2030. If this rate of loss was maintained then there would be zero (0) minimum (Summer) sea ice in 2076.

Comments. The melting of the high albedo (reflectivity) Arctic sea ice generates black, low albedo sea which absorbs more solar radiation, warms  and thence melts more sea ice in a positive feed-back loop. In addition, broken ice enables further sea ice break-up in storms.  I painted a huge painting called “Terra” that included the Arctic and Antarctic polar ice caps [60], but unfortunately  the Arctic ice cap will be gone in coming decades. The Arctic summer sea ice will be gone before 2050 with Professor James Anderson of Harvard University predicting that the summer sea ice will disappear in the 2020s [61]. This sea ice loss has a big ecological impact (notably on polar bears) and the warming  of the Arctic Ocean impacts ocean currents.

Figure 2(f). Greenland ice mass decrease (gigatonnes, Gt) was quasi-linear and went from – 200 Gt (2003) to -3,700 Gt (2016) for an average of -269 Gt per year (-2,610 Gt per decade as estimated by the paper). Extrapolating yields an ice loss of 7,466 Gt by 2030.

Comments. The Guardian  has summarized consonant recent research findings (2019): “Greenland lost about 280bn tons of ice per year between 2002 and 2016, enough to raise the worldwide sea level by 0.03 inches annually. If all of Greenland’s vast ice sheet, 3km thick in places, was to melt, global sea levels would rise by seven meters, or more than 20ft, drowning most coastal settlements. The rate of loss hasn’t been even, however, with the ice melting four times faster in 2013 compared with 2003’ [62].

Figure 2(g). Antarctic ice mass change (gigatons) decreased quasi-linearly from -150 (2002) to – 1,750 (2018) for an average loss of -100 Gt per year (-1,230 Gt per decade estimated by the paper). Assuming an average loss of  -100 Gt ice per year , extrapolation yields -2,950 Gt ice by 2030.

Comments. Madeleine Stone writing in National Geographic (2019): “The frozen mountains and icy plains of Antarctica hold enough water to raise global sea levels nearly 200 feet. Thankfully, over three-quarters of the continent is girded by ice shelves, the floating extensions of glaciers that protect the land-bound ice behind them… in rapidly-melting parts of West Antarctica, “upside down rivers” of warm water are gnawing away at the ice shelves’ weak spots from below… [blue] lakes are bad news for ice. Because of their dark color, they absorb more of the sun’s energy, triggering further warming. And under certain conditions, clusters of lakes can drain rapidly into the ice below them, causing it to break apart in a process known as “lake-induced hydrofracturing”… many of them [East Antarctica blue lakes] seemed to be clustered in regions of ice shelves that could be vulnerable to collapse via hydrofracturing” [63]. Georgia Rose Grant and Timothy Naish writing in Phys.Org (2019): “We know that our planet has experienced warmer periods in the past, during the Pliocene geological epoch around three million years ago. Our research, published today, shows that up to one third of Antarctica’s ice sheet melted during this period, causing sea levels to rise by as much as 20 meters above present levels in coming centuries… The Pliocene was the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were above 400 parts per million and Earth’s temperature was 2°C warmer than pre-industrial times.” [64]. The melting of Antarctic sea ice has the successive ecological impacts of a decrease in ice-associated phytoplankton, a  decrease in krill and thence a decrease in krill-eating whales and penguins [65, 66]. Most of  the Earth’s ice resides in the East and West Antarctic ice sheets  that comprise  about 90 percent of Earth’s fresh water in 26.5 million cubic kilometers of ice,  and that if melted would raise sea level by  60 meters [67, 68]. Some scientists  fear that the  tipping point for long-term and irreversible West Antarctic ice sheet melting  may have been reached [69].

Figure 2(h). Glacier thickness change (meter of water equivalent) was -1 (1979) to  -21 (2018) for an overall   average change of -0.15 /year . The  quasi-linear change in the 2100s was -14 (2010) to -21 (2018) , this yielding a change of -0.88 meters per year. Using the latter estimate , extrapolation yields a decrease by 2030 of 31.6 meters.

Comments. Glaciers are melting around the world [70]. The  tipping point for long-term, centuries time-frame  and irreversible West Antarctic ice sheet  melting  may have already been reached [69].

Figure 2(i). Ocean heat content change (10²² joules) monotonically increased from 0 (1979) to 21.75 (2016) for a change of 0.59 per year (+ 6.18 x 10²² joules per decade). However the change was  quasi-linear from  7.75 (2000) to 21.75 (2016)  for a change of 0.875 per year. Extrapolating this latter rate yields an increase in ocean heat content by 2030 of 34.0 x 10²² joules .

Comments. 90% of the extra  heat has ended up  in the ocean.  We have great trouble grasping large and small numbers . Thus  1 joule is the heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 g of water by 0.24 °C [71] (e.g. roughly the warming of the dregs of a glass of cold water in 10 seconds at room temperature). 34.0 x 10²² joules is the energy of 10 million 1 megaton thermonuclear bombs [72]. The Guardian has estimated that the total heat taken up by the oceans in the last 150 years is equivalent to about 5 Hiroshima size (10 kiloton) atomic  bombs exploding per second [73].

Figure 2(j).  Ocean acidity measured as pH (log₁₀ of H+ concentration in moles per litre) declined in a linear fashion from pH 8.114 (1979) to pH 8.064 (2017) i.e. by 0.0013 pH per year (+4.12% acidity increase per decade, +0.4% acidity increase per year). Extrapolation yields  a pH of  8.047 in 2013.

Comments. Ocean acidification impacts all ocean organisms with calcareous exoskeletons.  About one-third of the carbon dioxide (CO2)  released into the atmosphere as a result of human activity has been absorbed by the oceans, where it partitions into the ionized forms of  carbonic acid,  this leading to ocean acidification, one of the major threats to marine ecosystems and particularly to calcifying organisms such as corals (animals with photosynthetic zooanthellae  symbionts) , foraminifera (single-celled eukaryote amoeboid protists with a calcareous external shell ), coccolithophores (photosynthetic algae that generate calcareous plates) and  lobster, crab, shrimp and krill  crustaceans with food chain implications) [17].

Figure 2 (k). Sea level change relative to the 20-year mean (mm) increased linearly from – 34 (1993) to + 46 (2017) to give a rise of 3.33 mm per year (+31.4 mm per decade or +3.14 per year according to the paper). Extrapolation yields a sea level rise in 2030 of 89  mm (relative to that in  2005) and   123 mm (relative to that in 1993).

Comments. US NOAA Climate.org: “Since the start of the satellite sea level record in 1993, the average rate of sea level has been about one-eighth of an inch (3.1 mm) per year. The rising water level is mostly due to a combination of meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion of seawater as it warms… Scientists are very confident that global mean sea level will rise at least 8 inches (0.2 meter), but no more than 6.6 feet (2.0 meters) by 2100, depending on the energy decisions we make” [74].  At the present about +1.1C low-lying Island Nations and low-lying parts of mega-delta nations (e.g. Bangladesh and India) are already being devastated by a combination of higher sea level, warming-exacerbated and energized severe storms and storm surges [75, 76]. US Climate Central has estimated  that 190 million people will be living in areas that are projected to be below the high-tide mark in 2100, and that 110 million people are presently living in  these lands, protected by sea walls [77, 78].

Dr Andrew Glikson (an Earth and paleo-climate research scientist at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia) (2009): “For some time now, climate scientists warned that melting of subpolar permafrost and warming of the Arctic Sea (up to 4 degrees C during 2005–2008 relative to the 1951–1980) are likely to result in the dissociation of methane hydrates and the release of this powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere (methane: 62 times the infrared warming effect of CO₂ over 20 years and 21 times over 100 years) … The amount of carbon stored in Arctic sediments and permafrost is estimated as 500–2500 Gigaton Carbon (GtC), as compared with the world’s total fossil fuel reserves estimated as 5000 GtC. Compare with the 700 GtC of the atmosphere, which regulate CO₂ levels in the range of 180–300 parts per million and land temperatures in a range of about – 50 to + 50 degrees C, which allowed the evolution of warm blooded mammals. The continuing use of the atmosphere as an open sewer for industrial pollution has already added some 305 GtC to the atmosphere together with land clearing and animal-emitted methane. This raised CO₂ levels to 387 ppm CO₂ to date [412 ppm CO2 in 2019] , leading toward conditions which existed on Earth about 3 million years (Ma) ago (mid-Pliocene), when CO₂ levels rose to about 400 ppm, temperatures to about 2–3 degrees C and sea levels by about 25 +/- 12 metres” [79]. The atmospheric CO2 has now reached about 410 ppm CO2 [5, 6]..

Figure 2 (l). Area burned in the United States (million hectares per year) involves very scattered data.  However , assuming the authors’ quasi-linear best fit  involving an increase from 0.9 (1983) to 3.2 (2018) , one can estimate  an increase of 0.066 million hectares per year  (+ 44.1% per decade, +4.4% per year). Extrapolating from this average yields  an estimate of  4.0 million hectares burned in 2030.

Comments. In 2019 alone there have been massive forest fires in California, the Amazon and continent-wide in Australia. The Guardian Australia: “The link between rising greenhouse gas emissions and increased bushfire risk is complex but, according to major science agencies, clear. Climate change does not create bushfires but it can and does make them worse. A number of factors contribute to bushfire risk, including [elevated] temperature, fuel load, dryness, [and]  wind speed and [decreased] humidity… The year coming into the 2019-20 summer has been unusually warm and dry for large parts of Australia. Above-average temperatures now occur most years and 2019 had the fifth-driest start to the year on record, and the driest since 1970. Australia recorded its hottest month in January 2019, its third-hottest July and its hottest October day in some areas, among other temperature records” [80].  Phys.org has listed 10 ways in which climate change can variously make wildfires worse: (1) hot, dry, windy weather,  (2) more plant fuel, (3) change of plant species to  more flammable, dryness-compatible species, (4)  last-drop transpiration by thirsty plants, (5) more lightning, (6) differential warming of the Arctic and a weakened jet stream (this sinking drier and hotter air),  (7) the periodic El Nino events lead to decreased rainfall, increased  temperatures and increased fire risk in Indonesia and eastern Australia, (8) increase in the intensity of bushfires to unstoppable, (9) increased winter survival of pine beetles  with increased flammable dead wood in Canadian boreal forests, (10) positive feedback from increased CO2 -> increased warming -> increased forest fires -> increased CO2 –  >  increased warming -> … [81]. The link between global warming and more forest fires has been documented  by expert scientists  for many years (e.g. see [82]).

In Australia the risk  of bushfires has been decreased by fuel reduction burning of forest undergrowth, but with global warming the “fire seasons” have been extending into winter,  and fuel reduction burning has been increasingly limited because of conditions being too impossibly  wet or too dangerously dry. The rational alternative is large-scale mechanical harvesting of undesirable  undergrowth, scrub and grasslands  with subsequent  profitable conversion of this cellulosic  biomass into biochar (carbon, C) through renewable energy-driven  anaerobic pyrolysis at 400-700C. The biochar can be either simply safely sequestered  underground or used to add carbon to improve  arable soils. It is estimated that  potential biochar from existing agricultural and forestry waste is equivalent to annual carbon pollution from industry (12 Gt C per year) [83].  Such harvesting for biochar production would be profitable (circa $200 per tonne biochar) and would avoid the disastrous positive feedback loop from uselessly burning biomass (indeed such biomass could be  harvested and used to generate renewable energy). In Australia unharvested grasslands are presently burning (and burning homes) while desperate farmers in drought-ravaged Eastern Australia are  going broke paying for feed for their otherwise  starving [methanogenic] livestock.

Figure 2(m). Extreme weather/climate/hydrological events (numbers per year) have been monotonically increasing in a tri-phasic quasi-linear fashion from  200 (1980) to 400 (1994) (an increase of 14.3 events per year), a constant of circa 400 per year  in the period 1994-2004, and then  a linear increase from 440 (2004) to 800 (2019) (an increase of 32.7 events per year) (+ 43.8% per decade and +4.4%  per year overall). Assuming an increase of 32.7 events per year , extrapolation yields 1,160 events in 2030 or more than 3 such events per day.

Comments. What will it take before the murderously neoliberal One Percenters running the World – and obscenely owning half its wealth [84, 85] – bend before massively deadly in equality?  Presently each year 15 million people die avoidably from deprivation in the Developing World (minus China) [15], 8 million people  die from air pollution, this including  10,000 rich Australians  and 75,000 people dying world-wide from the effects of pollutants from the burning of Australia’s world-leading coal exports [88]. An International Organization for Migration (IOM) report (2008) quoted  estimates of 25 million refugees by the mid-1990s (IPCC, 1990), 50 million environmental refugees by 2010 (Red Cross, 2001) and 200 million climate refugees by 2050 (Professor Norman Myers, University of Oxford). The IOM report (2008)  stated that 192 million people or 3% of the world population now lived outside their place of birth [89]. Dina Ionesco ( Head of the Migration, Environment and Climate Change (MECC) Division at the UN Migration Agency (IOM)) stated: “In 2018 alone, 17.2 million new displacements associated with disasters in 148 countries and territories were recorded (IDMC) and 764,000 people in Somalia, Afghanistan and several other countries were displaced following drought” [90]. Environmental migrants  evidently now total about  200 million people.

Figure 2 (n). Annual losses due to weather/climate/hydrological events ($billions) and excluding 2 exceptional  outlier events,   increased in a quasi-linear fashion from 20 (1980) to 196 (2018) for a rate of 4.63 per year (+83.7% per decade, 8.4% per year). Extrapolation yields an annual cost  of $2,452 billion in 2030.

Comments. These estimates of annual costs of pollution are in reality huge under-estimates. Thus we should be  decreasing atmospheric CO2 pollution rather than increasing it. In the discussion about Figure 2(a)  the upper estimate of the cost of reversing a 1 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 is about $1,958 billion. Accordingly the cost of reversing the present annual increase  of 1.79 ppm CO2 is  $3,500 billion.   The upper estimate of draw-down of atmospheric CO2 from the present observed monthly mean of 412 ppm CO2 to a safe and sustainable 300 ppm CO2 is 412 ppm CO2 x $1,958 per ppm CO2 = $807 trillion or about the 2 times the accumulated wealth of the world [86, 87].  Approaching the problem from the estimate of a damage-related carbon price of $200 per tonne CO2 [45], one can estimate that the World has a Carbon Debt of about $200 trillion that is increasing at about $10 trillion per year.  Australia has a Carbon Debt of $5 trillion that is increasing at $400 billion per year and at $40,000 per head per year for under-30 year old Australians [37]. This is an inescapable Carbon Debt that will have to be repaid by future generations. Unlike conventional debt (that can be variously evaded by default, bankruptcy, or printing money), this enormous Carbon Debt is inescapable. Thus unless sea walls are built, cities, towns and arable  land will be inundated, and unless forests are protected by instant dousing of ignition points, global forests will disappear in unstoppable fire storms.  In general, unless this Carbon Debt is met by requisite protective measures,  human assets from homes, buildings  and  infrastructure to farms and forests will be uninsurable.

What needs to be urgently done.

This Second Warning to the World [1] concludes  with suggested actions under 6 headings that are summarized below [with my numerically-based amplifications comments appended].

(1). Energy. There should be a rapid transition away from dirty energy (coal, oil, gas and other carbon fuels) to 100% renewable energy, with this associated with assistance to developing economies , cessation of fossil fuel exploitation,  and application of proper Carbon Prices.

Comment. There must be a rapid transition within about 10 years to 100% renewable energy, coupled with cessation of fossil fuel exploitation, carbon fuel-based public and private transport, and of deforestation and land clearing. The environmental and social cost of carbon pollution should be “fully borne” by the polluters  with a damage-related Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent).

(2). Short-lived pollutants.  Short-lived pollutants such as methane (CH4), deadly carbon particles (e.g. PM2.5) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) need to be eliminated.

Comment. Major sources of CH4 (notably anaerobic swamps from deforestation and methanogenic livestock), deadly carbon particulates (from carbon fuel burning including fossil fuel burning and forest fires) and man-made HFCs  (as well as other man-generated GHGs such as  SF6 and NF3) must be eliminated. 8 million annual pollution deaths from the long-term impacts of air pollution will be progressively eliminated in coming decades through elimination of all carbon fuel burning. The relatively long-term GHG pollutant CO2 must be urgently drawn down from the present damaging and dangerous 412 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere to yield a circa 300 ppm CO2 that is  a safe and sustainable for all peoples and all species [48, 49].

(3). Nature. “We must protect and restore Earth’s ecosystems. Phytoplankton, coral reefs, forests, savannas, grasslands, wetlands, peatlands, soils, mangroves, and sea grasses contribute greatly to sequestration of atmospheric CO₂” [1].

Comment. The presently ongoing and massive speciescide and  ecocide of the Anthropocene Era is associated with an extinction rate 100-1,000 times greater than normal [91] and heads the world towards man-made omnicide and terracide. Any species is irreplaceable and accordingly priceless. There must be cessation of deforestation and land clearing with massive re-afforestation and ecosystem restoration. Dr Andre Balmford and colleagues have stated that “We estimate that the overall benefit:cost ratio of an effective global program for the conservation of remaining wild nature is at least 100:1”[92].

(4). Food. “Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products” [1].

Comment. There must be global vegetarian diet and replacement of cow-derived milk with plant substitutes (soybean and almond milk). The deadly food-for-fuel Biofuel  Genocide obscenity must be stopped. Food adequacy involves  cessation of global inequity, population growth, economic growth, GHG pollution,  sea level rise, soil salinization, deforestation and damaging land use.

(5). Economy. “Our goals need to shift from GDP growth and the pursuit of affluence toward sustaining ecosystems and improving human well-being by prioritizing basic needs and reducing inequality” [1].

Comment. There must be rapid halving of economic output (economic de-growth) with the burden overwhelmingly borne by the rich global North  to permit the global South [7].  “For everyone in the world to have an American lifestyle, we would need seven planets, and three to live as Europeans” [13].

(6). Population. “Still increasing by roughly 80 million people per year, or more than 200,000 per day (figure 1a–b), the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity.” [1].

Comment. The rich European population is declining, but not  fast enough,  and the impoverished African population is expanding impossibly. The world population needs to halve as soon as possible [7]. Present projections are for a sustainable human population of only 0.5-1.0 million by 2100 [8].

Final comments.

The 2019 “World scientists’ warning of a climate emergency” [1] sets out disastrous, quasi-linear  trends in 21 out of 24 “parameter versus time plots” variously covering the 1979-2019 time period. The only hopeful trends were decline in human fertility (Figure 1(b)), an increase in institutional divestment from fossil fuels (Figure 1(j) and an increase in GHG emissions covered by carbon pricing  (Figure 1(m)). Because  these trends were quasi-linear it was possible to plausibly extrapolate to estimate levels of all these parameters in 2030.

Despite scientists being aware of the greenhouse effect for 150 years,  and having warned politicians of the increasing seriousness of global warming since the mid-1980s, the World is now in a dire situation in which  catastrophic plus 2C temperature rise is now effectively unavoidable [93-99]. Thus paleoclimatologist and earth  scientist Dr Andrew Glikson: “As the globe warms, to date by a mean of near ~1.5 ^oC, or ~2.0^oC when the masking effects of sulphur dioxide and other aerosols are considered, and by a mean of ~2.3^oC in the Polar Regions” [59].

Nevertheless  decent people are obliged to do everything they can to make the  future “less bad’ for future generations. Eminent physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has succinctly  warned  [my emphasis added]: “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action NOW to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [93, 94].

What can people do? Informed by the science [1], decent people around the world must (a) inform everyone they can about the worsening Climate Emergency, Climate Genocide and Intergenerational Inequity, (b) urge a climate revolution (peaceful and non-violent  of course) with hundreds of millions out in the streets inspired by the likes of teenage activist Greta Thunberg, and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against all  people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries disproportionately  involved in the worsening Climate Genocide that is presently set to kill 10 billion people this century en route to a sustainable human population of merely 0.5-1.0 million in 2100 [8].

The Situation Room, October 2039: the president and vice president, senior generals and admirals, key cabinet members, and other top national security officers huddle around computer screens as aides speak to key officials across the country. Some screens are focused on Hurricane Monica, continuing its catastrophic path through the Carolinas and Virginia; others are following Hurricane Nicholas, now pummeling Florida and Georgia, while Hurricane Ophelia lurks behind it in the eastern Caribbean.

On another bank of screens, officials are watching horrifying scenes from Los Angeles and San Diego, where millions of people are under mandatory evacuation orders with essentially nowhere to go because of a maelstrom of raging wildfires. Other large blazes are burning out of control in Northern California and Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State. The National Guard has been called out across much of the West, while hundreds of thousands of active-duty troops are being deployed in the disaster zones to assist in relief operations and firefighting.

With governors and lawmakers from the affected states begging for help, the president has instructed the senior military leadership to provide still more soldiers and sailors for yet more disaster relief. Unfortunately, the generals and admirals are having a hard time complying, since most of their key bases on the East and West Coasts are also under assault from storms, floods, and wildfires. Many have already been evacuated. Naval Station Norfolk, the nation’s largest naval base, for example, took a devastating hit from Monica and lies under several feet of water, rendering it inoperable. Camp Pendleton in California, a major Marine Corps facility, is once again in flames, its personnel either being evacuated or fully engaged in firefighting. Other key bases have been similarly disabled, their personnel scattered to relocation sites in the interior of the country.

Foreign threats, while not ignored in this time of domestic crisis, have lost the overriding concern they enjoyed throughout the 2020s when China and Russia were still considered major foes. By the mid-2030s, however, both of those countries were similarly preoccupied with multiple climate-related perils of their own — recurring wildfires and crop failures in Russia, severe water scarcity, staggering heat waves, and perpetually flooded coastal cities in China — and so were far less inclined to spend vast sums on sophisticated weapons systems or to engage in provocative adventures abroad. Like the United States, these countries are committing their military forces ever more frequently to disaster relief at home.

As for America’s allies in Europe: well, the days of trans-Atlantic cooperation have long since disappeared as extreme climate effects have become the main concern of most European states. To the extent that they still possess military forces, these, too, are now almost entirely devoted to flood relief, firefighting, and keeping out the masses of climate refugees fleeing perpetual heat and famine in Asia and Africa.

And so, in the Situation Room, the overriding question for U.S. security officials in 2039 boils down to this: How can we best defend the nation against the mounting threat of climate catastrophe?

The Unacknowledged Peril

Read through the formal Pentagon literature on the threats to American security today and you won’t even see the words “climate change” mentioned. This is largely because of the nation’s commander-in-chief who once claimed that global warming was a “hoax” and that we’re better off burning ever more coal and oil than protecting the nation against severe storm events or an onslaught of wildfires. Climate change has also become a hotly partisan issue in Washington and military officers are instinctively disinclined to become embroiled in partisan political fights. In addition, senior officers have come to view Russia and China as vital threats to U.S. security — far more dangerous than, say, the zealots of ISIS or al-Qaeda — and so are focused on beefing up America’s already overpowering defense capabilities yet more.

“Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security,” the Department of Defense (DoD) affirmed in its National Defense Strategy of February 2018. “Without sustained and predictable investment to restore readiness and modernize our military to make it fit for our time, we will rapidly lose our military advantage.”

Everything in the 2018 National Defense Strategy and the DoD budget documents that have been submitted to Congress since its release proceed from this premise. To better compete with China and Russia, we are told, it’s essential to spend yet more trillions of dollars over the coming decade to replace America’s supposedly aging weapons inventory — including its nuclear arsenal — with a whole new suite of ships, planes, tanks, and missiles (many incorporating advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and hypersonic warheads).

For some senior officers, especially those responsible for training and equipping America’s armed forces for combat on future battlefields, weapons modernization is now the military’s overriding priority. But for a surprising number of their compatriots, other considerations have begun to intrude into long-term strategic calculations. For those whose job it is to house all those forces and sustain them in combat, climate change has become an inescapable and growing concern. This is especially true for the commanders of facilities that would play a critical role in any future confrontation with China or Russia.

Many of the bases that would prove essential in a war with China, for example, are located on islands or in coastal areas highly exposed to sea-level rise and increasingly powerful typhoons. Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, a major logistical and submarine base in the Indian Ocean, for example, is situated on a low-lying atoll that suffers periodic storm flooding and is likely to be submerged entirely well before the end of the century. The Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, focused on preparing American defenses against the future use of nuclear missiles by either North Korea or China, is located on Kwajalein Atoll in the midst of the Pacific Ocean and is also destined to disappear. Similarly, the country’s major naval base in Asia, at Yokosuka, Japan, and its major air facility, at Kadena on the Japanese island of Okinawa, are located along the coast and are periodically assaulted by severe typhoons.

No less at risk are radar facilities and bases in Alaska intended for defense against Russian Arctic air and naval attacks. Many of the early-warning radars overseen by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canadian operation, are located on the Alaskan and Canadian shores of the Arctic Ocean and so are being threatened by sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and the thawing of the permafrost on which many of them rest.

Equally vulnerable are stateside bases considered essential to the defense of this country, as well as its ability to sustain military operations abroad. Just how severe this risk has become was made painfully clear in late 2018 and early 2019, when two of the country’s most important domestic installations, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, were largely immobilized by extreme storm events — Hurricane Michael in one case and a prolonged rainfall in the other.

Tyndall, located on a narrow strip of land projecting into the Gulf of Mexico, housed a large fraction of America’s F-22 “Raptor” stealth fighter jets along with the 601st Air and Space Operations Center (601st AOC), the main command and control unit for aerial defense of the continental United States. In anticipation of Michael’s assault, the Air Force was able to relocate key elements of the 601st AOC and most of those F-22s to other facilities out of the hurricane’s path, but some Raptors could not be moved and were damaged by the storm. According to the Air Force, 484 buildings on the base were also destroyed or damaged beyond repair and the cost of repairing the rest of the facilities was estimated at $648 million. It is, in fact, unclear if Tyndall will ever again serve as a major F-22 base or house all the key military organizations it once contained.

Offutt Air Force Base plays a similarly critical role in America’s defense operations, housing the headquarters of the Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), which is responsible for oversight of all U.S. nuclear strike forces, including its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Also located at Offutt is the 55th Wing, the nation’s premier assemblage of reconnaissance and electronic-warfare aircraft. In March 2019, after a severe low-pressure system (often called a “bomb cyclone”) formed over the western plains, the upper Missouri River basin was inundated with torrential rains for several days, swelling the river and causing widespread flooding. Much of Offutt, including its vital runways, was submerged under several feet of water and some 130 buildings were damaged or destroyed. USSTRATCOM continued to operate, but many key personnel were unable to gain access to the base, causing staffing problems. As with Tyndall, immediate repairs are expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and full restoration of the base’s facilities many millions more.

Wildfires in California have also imperiled key bases. In May 2014, for example, Camp Pendleton was scorched by the Tomahawk Fire, one of several conflagrations to strike the San Diego area at the time. More than 6,000 acres were burned by the blaze and children at two on-base schools had to be evacuated. At one point, a major munitions depot was threatened by flames, but firefighters managed to keep them far enough away to prevent a catastrophic explosion.

An even more dangerous fire swept through Vandenberg Air Force Base, 50 miles north of Santa Barbara, in September 2016. Vandenberg is used to launch satellite-bearing missiles into space and houses some of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense missile interceptors that are meant to shoot down any North Korean (or possibly Chinese) ICBMs fired at this country. The 2016 blaze, called the Canyon Fire, burned more than 12,000 acres and forced the Air Force to cancel the launch of an Atlas V rocket carrying an earth-imaging satellite. Had winds not shifted at the last moment, the fire might have engulfed several of Vandenberg’s major launch sites.

Such perils have not (yet) been addressed in Pentagon documents like the National Defense Strategy and senior officers are normally reluctant to discuss them with members of the public. Nonetheless, it’s not hard to find evidence of deep anxiety among those who face the already evident ravages of climate change on a regular basis. In 2014 and 2017, analysts from the U.S. Government Accountability Office visited numerous U.S. bases at home and abroad to assess their exposure to extreme climate effects and came back with startling reports about their encounters.

“At 7 out of 15 locations we visited or contacted,” the survey team reported in 2014, “officials stated that they had observed rising sea levels and associated storm surge and associated potential impacts, or mission vulnerabilities.” Likewise, “at 9 out of 15 locations we visited or contacted, officials stated that they had observed changes in precipitation patterns and associated potential impacts,” such as severe flooding or wildfires.

Look through the congressional testimony of top Pentagon officials and you’ll find that similar indications of unease abound. “The Air Force recognizes that our installations and infrastructure are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including those from weather, climate, and natural events,” said John Henderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy, at a recent hearing on installation resiliency. “Changing climate and severe weather effects have the potential to catastrophically damage or degrade the Air Force’s war-fighting readiness.”

Threats to the Home Front

At a time when U.S. bases are experiencing the ever more severe effects of climate change, the armed forces are coming under mounting pressure to assist domestic authorities in coping with increasingly damaging storms, floods, and fires from those same climate forces. A prelude to what can be expected in the future was provided by the events of August and September 2017, when the military was called upon to provide disaster relief in the wake of three particularly powerful hurricanes — Harvey, Irma, and Maria — at the very moment California and the state of Washington were being ravaged by powerful wildfires.

This unprecedented chain of disasters began on August 26th, when Harvey — then a Category 4 hurricane — made landfall near Houston, Texas, and lingered there for five agonizing days, sucking up water from the Gulf of Mexico and dumping it on that area in what proved to be the heaviest continuous rainfall in American history. With much of Houston engulfed in flood waters, the DoD mobilized 12,000 National Guard and 16,000 active-duty Army troops to assist in relief operations.

Such cleanup operations were still under way there when Irma — a Category 5 storm and one of the most powerful hurricanes ever detected in the Atlantic Ocean — struck the eastern Caribbean, Puerto Rico, and southern Florida. Guard units sent by Florida’s governor to assist in Texas were hastily recalled and the Pentagon mobilized an additional 4,500 active-duty troops for emergency operations. To bolster these forces, the Navy deployed one of its aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln, along with a slew of support vessels.

With some Guard contingents still involved in Texas and cleanup operations just getting under way in Florida, another Category 5 storm, Maria, emerged in the Atlantic and began its fateful course toward Puerto Rico, making landfall on that island on September 20th. It severed most of that island’s electrical power lines, bringing normal life to a halt. With food and potable water in short supply, the DoD commenced yet another mobilization of more than 12,000 active-duty and Guard units. Some of them would still be there a year later, seeking to restore power and repair roads in remote, harshly affected areas.

If finding enough troops and supply systems to assist in these relief operations was a tough task — akin to mobilizing for a major war — the Pentagon faced a no less severe challenge in addressing the threats to its own forces and facilities from those very storms.

When Hurricane Irma approached Florida and the Keys, it became evident that many of the Pentagon’s crucial southern installations were likely to suffer severe damage. Notable among them was Naval Air Station (NAS) Key West, a major hub for U.S. operations in the Caribbean region. Fearing the worst, its commander ordered a mandatory evacuation for all but a handful of critical personnel. Commanders at other bases in the storm’s path also ordered evacuations, including at NAS Jacksonville in Florida and Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia. Aircraft at these installations were flown to secure locations further inland while Kings Bay’s missile-carrying submarines were sent to sea where they could better ride out the storm. At least a dozen other installations were forced to relocate at least some personnel, planes, and ships.

Clusters of Extreme Events

While the extremity of each of these individual climate disasters can’t be attributed with absolute certainty to climate change, that they occurred at such strength over such a short time period is almost impossible to explain without reference to it. As scientists have indicated, the extremely warm waters of the Atlantic and Caribbean contributed to the fury of the three hurricanes and extreme dryness in California and the American West has resulted in severe recurring wildfires. All of these are predictable consequences of a warming planet.

That means, of course, that we can expect recurring replays of summer 2017, with multiple disasters (of ever-increasing magnitude) occurring more or less simultaneously. These, in turn, will produce ever more demands on the military for relief services, even as it is being forced to cope with the impact of such severe climate events on its own facilities. Indeed, the National Research Council (NRC), in a report commissioned by the U.S. Intelligence Community, has warned of just such a future. Speaking of what it termed “clusters of extreme events,” it noted that warming temperatures are likely to generate not just more destructive storms, but also a greater concentration of such events at the same time.

“Given the available scientific knowledge of the climate system,” the report notes, “it is prudent for security analysts to expect climate surprises in the coming decade, including… conjunctions of events occurring simultaneously or in sequence, and for them to become progressively more serious and frequent thereafter, and most likely at an accelerating rate.”

Combine the ravages of Harvey, Irma, Maria, Katrina, and Sandy with the wildfires recently blasting across California and you get some sense of what our true “national security” landscape might look like. While the Pentagon, the National Guard, and local authorities should be able to cope with any combination of two or three such events, as they did in 2017 (although, according to critics, the damage to Puerto Rico has never been fully repaired), there will come a time when the climate assault is so severe and multifaceted that U.S. leaders will be unable to address all the major disasters simultaneously and will have to pick and choose where to deploy their precious assets.

At that moment, the notion of focusing all our attention on managing military rivalries with China and Russia (or other potential adversaries) will appear dangerously distracting. Count on this: U.S. forces sent to foreign bases and conflicts (as with the never-ending wars of this century in the Greater Middle East and Africa) will undoubtedly be redeployed homeward to help overcome domestic dangers. This may seem improbable today, with China and Russia building up their arsenals to counter American forces, but scientific analyses like those conducted by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the NRC, suggest that those two countries are then no less likely to be facing multiple catastrophes of their own and will be in no position to engage in conflicts with the United States.

And so there will come a time when a presidential visit to the Situation Room involves not a nuclear crisis or the next major terrorist attack, but rather a conjunction of severe climate events, threatening the very heartbeat of the nation.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, including the just-published, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (Metropolitan Books), on which this article is based.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Originally published by TomDispatch

The effects of encroaching deserts andof fire storms onterrestrial forests, originally developed under moderate conditions distinct from those emerging under rapid global warming and extreme weather events, may have been underestimated. Average global temperatures do not tell the story — it is the increasingly frequent weather anomalies which do. Powerful psychological factors prevent many scientists from expressing their worst fears,a phenomenon dubbed as “scientific reticence”.

As the tropical climate zones expand toward the poles,moderate climate zones shift polar-ward and are contracting where they clash with polar-derived cold air and ice melt water flow through weakened jet stream boundaries. As climate zones are shifting at a rate of 56-111 km per decadeand ecosystems have only a short time to adapt, arid zones expand and draughts of fires consume the moderate-climate forests and formerly fertile habitats.Allen et al. (2012) suggest the increase in black carbon aerosols and tropospheric ozoneconstitute significant factors generating a polar-ward shift of moderate climate zones.

Global fire maps by NASA document the progression of wild fires since about 2000, including major fires in Siberia, northwest Europe, southern Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, central and southern America, California and elsewhere (Fig. 1).Some of the global patterns that appear in the fire maps are the result of natural cycles of rainfall, dryness, and lightning. For example, naturally occurring fires are common in the boreal forests of Canada in the summer. In other parts of the world, the patterns are the result of human activity. For example, the intense burning in the heart of South America from August-October is a result of human-triggered fires, both intentional and accidental.

Fig. 1.The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite showing fires around the world. Credit: NASA

Many scientists and the IPCC have underestimated the scale and rate of global warming and its consequences. With exceptions, the need for excessive caution and absolute certainty in science is often manifested in reticence from the mainstream science (‘Down to Earth’ 2019). However, the available evidence suggests that scientists have in fact been conservative in their projections of the impacts of climate change and at least some of the key attributes of global warming from increased atmospheric greenhouse gases have been under-predicted, particularly in IPCC assessments of the physical science by Working Group I.

By contrast, at a speed hardly anticipated about 20 years ago,wild fires have been spreading around the globe over large parts of the continents.

Nor do averageglobal land-ocean temperatures tell the whole story. It is the increasingly frequent anomalies which underlieextreme weather events (Fig. 2), including rapid Arctic melt, heat waves, fires, storms and cyclones, which underpin the fundamental shift in the state of the terrestrial climate.

Fig 2.Temperature anomaly distribution: The frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-1980 mean) in units of local standard deviation (horizontal axis). Area under each curve is unity. Image credit: NASA/GISS.

It has been stated “What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic”.Temperatures in the Arctic have reached34^oC in July 2019, affecting melting over700,000 km² in Greenland late May 2019. The weakening of the circum-Arctic jet stream ensues in its undulation and intersection by warm air masses moving north and by cold air masses moving south, along with ice melt from the Greenland ice sheet forming cold regions in the North Atlantic Ocean.

According to the Australian Climate Council climate change has contributed to a southward shift in weather systems that typically bring cool season rainfall to southern Australia. As the cold humid spirals of the Antarctic vortex (Fig. 3) recede to the south, since the 1970s late autumn and early winter rainfall has decreased by 15 percent in southeast Australia, and Western Australia’s southwest region. Current drought conditions come after a 2016/2017 and 2018 summer characterized by record breaking temperatures, followed by a record dry winter. Rainfall over southern Australia during autumn 2018 was the second lowest on record (Fig. 4). The drought has reached extreme level, accompanied by wild fires.Australia, like other parts of the world, is paying the price of climate change in terms of growing damage to its agriculture, communities and way of life.

Fig. 3. Weather systems driven by the strong westerly winds of the Antarctic polar vortex curl over the southern continents (NASA, Galileo)

Fig. 4.Australia: Current effects of global warming.A. 2018 annual mean temperatures compared to historical temperature observations.B. 2018 annual rainfall compared to historical rainfall observations

The global rise rate in CO₂ has reached 2 to 3 ppm/year, the fastest rate since 66 million years ago, and a level of CO₂-equivalent (a value including the radiative forcing of methane and nitrous oxide) near-500 ppm. According to the IMF in (2017), the world is subsidizing fossil fuels by $5.2 trillion, equal to roughly 6.5 percent of global GDP. By contrast the loss of wealth due to reduced agricultural productivity due to climate change is projected to exceed $19 billion by 2030, $211 billion by 2050 and a pprojected$4 trillion by 2100.

As stated by Hansen et al. (2012) “Burning all fossil fuels would create a different planet than the one that humanity knows. The palaeoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes”.

Andrew Glikson is an Earth and climate scientist

Propaganda is essential to the Deep State’s operation.

The Deep State is the small number of people who control the organizations that donate the majority of the funds which finance the political careers of national officials, such as Presidents, Prime Ministers, and members of the national legislature. Almost always, the members of the Deep State are the controlling stockholders in the international corporations that are headquartered in the given nation; and, therefore, the Deep State is more intensely interested in international than in purely national matters. Since most of its members derive a large portion of their wealth from abroad, they need to control their nation’s foreign policies even more than they need to control its domestic policies. Indeed, if they don’t like their nation’s domestic policies, they can simply relocate abroad. But relocating the operations of their corporations would be far more difficult and costly to them. Furthermore, a nation’s public know and care far less about the nation’s foreign than about its domestic policies; and, so, the Deep State reign virtually alone on the nation’s international issues, such as: which nations will be treated as “allies” and which nations will instead be treated as “enemies.” Such designations are virtually never determined by a nation’s public. The public just trust what the Government says about such matters, like, for example, the U.S. regime’s standard allegation, for decades, that “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism”, which is clearly a blatant lie.

Iran, of course, is the world’s leading Shia nation, whereas Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading Sunni nation; and the U.S. aristocracy are bonded to the aristocracies of both Saudi Arabia and Israel, against Iran. This allegation against Iran has always been promoted by the royal family who own Saudi Arabia, the Saud family, and also by the billionaires who control Israel, as well as by the billionaires who control the U.S. So: this allegation is by the Deep State, which controls at least these three countries: U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

But, as was just said, this allegation by the Deep State is false: On 9 June 2017, I headlined “All Islamic Terrorism Is Perpetrated by Fundamentalist Sunnis, Except Terrorism Against Israel” and listed 54 terrorist attacks which had been prominent in U.S.-and-allied media during 2001-2017, and all of them except for a few that were against Israel were attacks by Sunni groups — not affiliated with Iran. Subsequently, Kent R. Kroeger’s 16 May 2019 study “Is Iran the biggest state sponsor of terrorism?” concluded that overwhelmingly the majority of terrorist attacks ever since 1994 have been by Sunni groups, but he attributed the attacks by Yemen’s Shiite Houthis against Sunni Saudi Arabia as being “terrorist” attacks, even though these were instead actually responses to the Sauds’ war against, and to eliminate, Houthis in Yemen. Also, Kroeger attributed those Houthi actions to “Iran,” which is absurd. (The Houthis simply did not like being exterminated. And the U.S., of course, supplied the weapons and the military planning, for this attempted ethnic cleansing operation.) There were many other methodological flaws. And yet, still, even with its methodological flaws, Kroeger, concluded: “The distorted U.S. propagandized image of Iran’s aggression looming over the Middle East is, frankly, ‘fake news.’” This is how untrustworthy the Deep State’s ‘news’ actually is. The term “fake news” is, in fact, misleading (or itself fake news) if it is not referring to the Deep State’s propaganda. In my 27 November 2017 “How the U.S. Came to Label Iran the Top State Sponsor of Terrorism”, I described specifically the Deep State’s operation that had created the phrase “Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism”. But this is the way the Deep State operates, routinely, on all international issues. It operates by deceit. This is how it achieves the consent of the public, whom it actually rules. This is entirely consistent with the scientific findings about the United States, that it is a dictatorship, not a democracy. All of the evidence is consistent.

The Deep State here is the U.S.-and allied Deep State, no merely national organization. It consists mainly of America’s billionaires, plus of the billionaires in U.S.-allied countries such as UK, France, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel — but many more (including, for example, in Honduras, Brazil, etc.). These people number fewer than 2,000 in total, and they do deals together, and their contacts with one-another are both direct person-to-person, and indirect by means of representatives or agents. However, America’s billionaires lead the U.S.-and-allied Deep State. That’s to say, the leaders are among the 607 U.S. billionaires, the people who mainly fund American national political campaigns and candidates — and these 607 individuals determine who will get an opportunity to become a U.S. President or member of Congress, and who won’t. For example: these individuals don’t necessarily select the politician who will become America’s President, but they do select who will get the opportunity to be among the serious contenders for that position. (Basically, what the mullahs do in Iran, these super-rich do in America. Whereas in Iran the clergy rule, in America the aristocracy rule.)

One, in particular, is George Soros, and this article will detail the views of one of his many beneficiaries. Another of these billionaires is Charles Koch, but he will not be discussed here, and inside the United States he is popularly considered to be an enemy of George Soros, only because the two men oppose each other on domestic issues. (Billionaires tend to be much more concerned with, and united about, foreign affairs than about domestic affairs, though they do oppose both their taxation and their regulation — they are for ‘free markets’, both domestically and abroad, and yet they also favor imposition of economic sanctions against countries which resist becoming controlled by them, and so they don’t really favor free markets except to the extent that free markets favor their own increase in power and thus tend toward oligopoly and away from competition.) Both men are much more alike than different, and both represent what’s called “neoliberalism,” which is the universal ideology of billionaires, or at least of all billionaires who donate to (i.e., invest in) politicians. Only few billionaires don’t invest in politicians; and, though politicians disagree with one-another, almost all of them are neoliberals, because politicians who aren’t that are not funded by the Deep State (the billionaires). The foreign policies of neoliberals are called “neoconservative” and this means supporting regime-change in any country that’s labeled by billionaires and their government an “enemy” nation. So, “neoconservative” is merely an extension of “neoliberal”: it favors extending neoliberalism to other nations — it is internationally aggressive neoliberalism; it is imperialistic neoliberalism. It is fascism, but so is neoliberalism itself fascist; the difference between the two is that neoconservatism is the imperialistic extension of fascism — it is the imperialistic fascism that, in World War II, was represented by the three Axis powers — Germany, Italy, and Japan — not by the purely domestic fascism that was represented by Spain. Whereas Spain was merely neoliberal, the Axis were also neoconservative (expansionist neoliberal), and the latter is what the Allies in WW II were warring against. But now the U.S. has emerged as the world’s leading neoconservative regime, invading and occupying country after country, none of which had ever invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States. Propaganda is necessary in order to ‘justify’ doing that. This article will describe how that’s done.

The Deep State doesn’t concern domestic issues, because virtually all of its members control international corporations, and the Deep State is almost entirely about international issues: foreign policies, diplomacy, military issues, and international spying agencies called “intelligence agencies” — extending the empire. The Deep State controls all of that, regardless of what Party is nominally in power. (The public care little about foreign policy, pay little attention to it, and believe the government when it alleges that “national security” is about protecting them, and not about expanding the power and wealth of the billionaires.)

The dictatorship of the U.S. Deep State really is more international than national; it provides the continuity in international relations, when it chooses and defines which nations (which foreign governments) are “allies” (meaning “we sell arms to them”) and which are instead “enemies” (meaning “we  should sanction them and maybe even bomb them”). Both allies and enemies are essential in order for the military-industrial-press-government complex (here: “MIPGC”) to thrive, and the Deep State controls the entire MIPGC. In other words: the Deep State is an international empire, and, as such, its supreme aspiration is to conquer (via subversion, sanctions, coups, and/or invasions) all countries that it labels as “enemies.”

The way that the Deep State views things, there is no need for an ‘enemy’ to threaten or invade the United States in order for it to be “an enemy,” but, instead, the United States and its allies possess a God-given right to impose sanctions against, or coups overthrowing, or invasions of, any country they choose, so long as they can criticize that other country for being a ‘dictatorship’, or for ‘violating human rights’, or for otherwise doing what the Deep State itself actually does more than any other government on this planet does (and particularly does it to its selected ‘enemies’ — such as were Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and any other country that’s either friendly toward, or else an ally of, Russia, which is the other nuclear super-power, and the Deep State’s central target).

However, though those few super-wealthy individuals (in addition to the general public’s taxes) fund its operations, their many operatives are true-believing followers (believers in neoliberalism-neoconservatism), and this is the reason why the masters fund those individuals’ careers. It’s why these masters provide the platforms and personal connections and employment which enable the true-believers to advance, while opponents of the Deep State (i.e., opponents of the billionaires’ collective dictatorship) cannot find any billionaires to patronize them. In a society that has extremely concentrated wealth, this means that there will be virtual penury for opponents of the billionaires’ collective dictatorship. Especially the major politicians need patrons amongst the aristocracy, the billionaires, in order to have successful careers.

The beneficiary of the Deep State who will be exemplified, discussed, and finally quoted, here, will be Jacek Rostowski, who is also known as Jan Anthony, and as Jan Anthony Vincent-Rostowski. Wikipedia’s article on him opens:

Jan Anthony Vincent-Rostowski, also known as Jacek Rostowski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈvint͡sɛnt rɔsˈtɔfskʲi]; born 30 April 1951, London) is a British-Polish[1] economist and politician who served as Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland.

He was a candidate for Change UK in London at the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom.[2]

It also says:

From 1995 he has been Professor of Economics and was the head of the Department of Economics at the Central European University in Budapest during the periods: 1995–2000 and 2005–2006.[9] …

Later career[edit]

Rostowski  was a member of Britain’s Conservative Party. In the beginning of 2010, it was announced that two months prior[15] he has become member of the Civic Platform party (PO). In the wake of the Parliamentary Elections of 2011, he became Member of Parliament, being elected from the list of Civic Platform Party (PO).[16]

In late 2015, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz appointed Rostowski as her top political adviser.[17]

Vincent-Rostowski has published around 40 academic papers on European enlargement, monetary policy, currency policy and the transformation of post communist economies. He is the author of academic books including Macroeconomic Instability in Post-Communist Countries published by Oxford University Press.

On November 3rd, the Ukrainian ‘news’-medium Apostrophe interviewed him, and published the interview in Ukrainian. (The interviewee isn’t fluent in Ukrainian, but the article’s translator into Ukrainian isn’t identified.) What will be posted here is an English translation of that Ukrainian original.

The English “About” page on Apostrophe’s site

says:

Apostrophe started in August 2014.

The site was aimed to prepare informational and analytical materials, presentations of important events in politics, economics, society and culture. Apostrophe’s editorial policy is based on principles of impartiality, precision and veracity, velocity, objectivity and balance in the presentation of information. Apostrophe sticks to journalism ethical standards. That is why published materials should not propagate violence, cruelty, cause racial, national or religious hatred. Apostrophe is a proponent of the common humanism values, peace, democracy, social progress and human rights. 

The project functions with the direct participation and use of the resources of the International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS). Apostrophe’s idea lies within the framework of synergy between journalists and analysts.

The “About” page on the International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS)

says:

ICPS was founded in 1994 upon the initiative of the Prague-based Open Society Institute (OSI). At that moment, ICPS was the first independent think-tank in Ukraine.

The Open Society Institute was founded by George Soros. He also founded the Central European University in Budapest, where the interviewee was employed for five years.

Those are just the obvious ways in which the interviewee had been funded and advanced by Mr. Soros.

Soros also had helped to fund the overthrow of the democratically elected and internationally non-aligned President of Ukraine in 2014 and to replace him with a nazi anti-Russian regime which serves as a terrific asset for the U.S.-and-allied Deep State, because of Ukraine’s having a 1,625-mile border with the country that the U.S.-installed regime in Ukraine hates: Russia (hates it because the Deep State craves, above all, to control also the other nuclear super-power; so, this is hatred-on-command).

A basic presumption of that interview, both by the interviewer and by the interviewee, is the Russian Government’s being wrong in everything, and the Ukrainian Government’s — the regime which Obama (another of Soros’s beneficiaries) had installed — being right in everything. Here is this interview, as an illustrative example of how propaganda is professionally done:

——

https://apostrophe.ua/ua/article/politics/2019-11-03/idet-vozvrat-k-potentsialnomu-voennomu-konfliktu-s-rossiey—ekspert-sipri/28922

ORIGINAL OF THIS ARTICLE (in Ukrainian) (now translated here into English):

——

Apostrophe: How would you describe the current state of security in the European region?

Jan Anthony: Since 2014, military security has become a more important topic of discussion in Europe. After all, the events in Crimea and Donbass caused shock. After a long period of time, when defence issues were put on the back burner, they are now again becoming an important factor in the European security environment. Now there are serious problems requiring high priority and serious solutions. And, of course, there are other problems that relate to the same issue — the fight against terrorism, for example.

The EU and NATO work very closely together to prepare for different types of threats. Now there is a return to a potential military conflict with Russia. In addition, there is an unsustainable security situation in the south, in Africa, because of the conflict in Libya, and in the Sahara. They can also pose a terrorist threat. Therefore, the issue of European security has become more complex than it was 5-10 years ago.

“You specialize in managing military conflicts. How do you think the conflict in Ukraine can be solved?

“Conflict management and conflict resolution are different things. Now I see attempts to create a more positive context in the Donbass issue. We need to return to the Minsk agreements as a basic resolution on the conflict. As you know, discussions are under way on the so-called Steinmeier formula. Therefore, now there is an opportunity to return to the discussion of how the Minsk agreements should be implemented. There are serious questions about the sequence of points — what should be done in the first place. And there is also the question of how to confirm the parties’ compliance with their obligations, because now there is a very low level of trust among the participants. Therefore, everything that will be done, it is necessary to immediately demonstrate — behold, it is fulfilled.

“How about the implementation of Minsk? Especially given that it has not worked for almost 5 years. 

“As I see it, no one is discussing any alternatives now. Perhaps among the people discussing ways to implement the agreements, there are other options, but I have no idea what they can be. The Minsk agreements are still in the spotlight.

“Let’s talk about Crimea. What are the threats on the peninsula?

“With Crimea it’s a different story than with Donbass. In Crimea there are facilities that can be a base for Russian nuclear weapons, including the Russian navy, capable of carrying nuclear weapons in the Black Sea. [NOTE HERE: Obama’s takeover of Ukraine was originally aimed at taking over Russia’s naval base in Crimea and installing an even larger U.S. naval base there, against Russia.]

“So the main threat is nuclear weapons?

“Of course, it is an extremely serious threat by its nature. Any use of it would be disastrous.

“Will the Kremlin decide to use these weapons in the near future? Or is it just a way to intimidate the West?

“The primary objective of nuclear weapons is deterrence. This is the main goal with which Russia placed it in Crimea.

“Is it possible to compare the situation with the Cuban crisis?

“I would not say that these two situations are similar. There the crisis came very, very close to escalating into an armed conflict. I don’t think we’re going to get to that level of confrontation. [NOTE HERE: Both the interviewer and the interviewee ignore that instead of the Soviet Union’s 1962 attempt to place nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba 95 miles from America’s border, the U.S. ploy now is to place its nuclear missiles right on Russia’s 1625-mile border with Russia — the discussants’ assumption reverses the actual threat, and thus insults their readers’ — or else their own — basic intelligence.]  But now it is a very dangerous situation. We need to find more stable mechanisms that cannot be developed by comparing the situation to the Cuban crisis.

“How can the Western world force Russia to take its weapons from Crimea?

“Of course, the sanctions have had an effect. I’m sure they’ll stay — I don’t see any reason to take them off. International pressure on Russia will continue. Normalization of relations with it is impossible as long as the current situation in Crimea remains. And since Russia has no intention of leaving the peninsula, we will live for a long time in difficult relations with it, including sanctions, as well as cooperation of Western countries, taking into account possible military confrontation.

“Let’s recall the attack on Ukrainian military vessels in the Kerch Strait, which occurred almost a year ago. How can we avoid the threat of further Russian attacks on Ukrainian and foreign ships?

“Ukraine has lost control of part of its navigation, as well as guaranteed access to the Sea of Azov — and this is a complex problem. This issue must therefore remain the focus of international attention. Ukraine should have access to the water area and carry out commercial operations in ports. Georgia faced the same problem — the loss of control over navigation in a certain area. A special mechanism is needed to address these issues. But I have no suggestions on what it should be.

“Russia recently blocked international waters in the Black Sea and thus blocked trade routes. How should the international community respond to such behaviour?

“We must respect the International Convention on Navigation. We must continue to conduct military exercises in the Black Sea and it is important that NATO countries participate in them. Of course, there remains a risk that Russia will also organize its exercises. I think the ships will enjoy the freedom of navigation established by the International Convention. Some issues may need to be discussed more broadly for the sake of a future long-term convention. We need to make it more relevant to modern security requirements. It is important to revise time limits on stay in the Black Sea for NATO ships. Nato’s defence and deterrence plans should also be changed. NATO must have greater access to the Black Sea and its naval forces spend more time there.

“Does the need to renegotiate international agreements on the weakness of international institutions, as well as their unpreparedness for strikes by Russia, speak?

“Many countries have entered into bilateral agreements with Russia to ensure their confidence in the use of the sea. I think such deals need to be modernized, as well as add another agreement, which spells out a mechanism for discussing maritime incidents on the basis of international organizations, for example, under the OSCE umbrella. This will avoid misunderstandings that may arise from disregard for the rules.

In the case of deliberate violations, for example, when military exercises block part of the Black Sea, other measures of influence will have to be used. And in that case, there must be a clear international response. If you look at the 2014 NATO summit at Brussels, there have been decisions that have had a very tough response in the event of any crisis. The only question is what to do to Ukraine, which is not a member of the Alliance and does not obey its decisions.

“Regarding Russian military power. During the “Grom-2019” exercises, which were held recently under the personal guidance of Vladimir Putin, the nuclear submarine cruiser K-44 “Ryazan” fired only one ballistic intercontinental missile R-29R. The other missile just didn’t come out of the mine. This is not the first time that the Russian army has failed. So the question arises, is Russia really a threat to peace, all this is just a demonstration?

“Russia can solve the problems that you have named. But no one doubts that it has an extremely powerful nuclear arsenal. Despite some problems with weapons, Russia is still very strong.

“The Kremlin has promised to develop short- and medium-range missiles and deploy them to confront the West (in fact, they already exist — Iskanders). Does this mean that now the situation in Europe is close to the state of the Cold War, when the USSR and the West deployed iCBM for mutual deterrence?

“Yes, Russia has already developed and deployed the ICBM. We don’t know if they’re all equipped with nuclear weapons. But for the balance of power, NATO must have a significant force with nuclear weapons.

There are differences with the Cold War. Then there was complete separation and no contact between East and West. And now we have significant economic cooperation. It is still possible to hold political discussions, including with the participation of intergovernmental organizations. So now the situation is not quite the same as during the Cold War. But, as I said, the security situation in Europe is very difficult and relations with Russia deteriorate. The absence of signs that this deterioration is coming to an end is worrying. There are no very effective ways to improve relations with Russia. Therefore, there are different reasons for concern.

“The Kremlin sent the S-400 division and the Panzir-S battery to Serbia to the Russian Air Defense Forces. This is, in fact, Russian military exercises near the EU. [NOTE HERE: The problem isn’t that Russia is moving too close to the EU — such as the discussants imply — but that NATO has moved right up to Russia’s borders. Again, the presumption insults readers’  — and/or their own — basic intelligence.] Is this preparation for a strike against the West?

“Serbia’s position is that they want to have good relations with both their neighbors and NATO countries, but also with Russia. Serbia is also training with NATO countries. Serbia wants a balance of power, but in the event of a conflict it will support EU membership. It is politically and economically related to Western countries. Therefore, I do not believe that such exercises are the Kremlin’s preparation for an attack on the EU.

“How would you assess the military threats to Europe in Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova?

“It is difficult to answer because these are three different countries and the situation in each of them is completely different from the other.

“Ukraine and Moldova have similar situations. Russian soldiers are still in Transnistria – the only difference is that the conflict there is frozen.

“Yes, they are there, but they do not fight like in Ukraine.

Do you believe that this frozen conflict can continue?

“Today we think it’s not very likely.

“Is Europe expecting a military strike from Russia?

“No, we don’t expect it and we don’t expect it. But we do not rule it out, we allow it in our defense plans. Preparations are under way for these attacks, which means that their probability is reduced.

“Russia invests heavily in European political parties like the French National Front or the League of the North in Italy. Is there any evidence that the Kremlin is investing in “militia” in EU countries and supplying weapons to Europe to shake up the situation. Perhaps it is funding crime to influence the situation in the EU?

“There have been many investigations into ties with the Kremlin, in particular financial ties from politicians. The EU discusses a lot of cyber threats, the possibility of attacks on infrastructure, as well as information attacks. But I have never seen the Kremlin supply weapons to non-state organizations, especially criminal groups.

“Russia has taken up the settlement of the issue in Syria. What’s going on out there now?

“Officially, Russia is helping Bashar al-Assad’s forces gain control over Syrian territory. But what is happening now is, from the Kremlin’s point of view, the formation of a single strategic space, including the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. Russia has free access to the Black Sea and now the Russian Navy has gained much greater access to the waters of the eastern Mediterranean. They plan to use this strategic space for a possible confrontation with NATO forces.

“How can this affect Europe?

“It’s a very difficult question. One issue of concern is the influx of refugees and temporarily displaced persons to Turkey and Europe. On the other hand, again, Russia’s creation of a single strategic space, interference in the Mediterranean.

“Let’s go back to Ukraine. You are a nuclear safety expert. We have many nuclear power plants, can they pose a threat to the world in the event of full-scale aggression?

“Yes, this is a very big threat, first of all for Ukraine itself, then for the rest of the world. One of the Ukrainian officials stated that this is why there was a significant revision of the concept of Ukraine’s security. It includes so-called “internal threats” to nuclear equipment and the creation of national protection, will protect and defend nuclear reactors. I think that the threat to the infrastructure of the nuclear power plant in Ukraine is real. But the Ukrainian government takes this seriously and takes the necessary measures.

—

CLOSE:

As can be clearly seen there, the basic method of the Deep State’s propagandists is to ask questions which have assumptions that are the reverse of reality, and to answer these questions in ways that confirm those falsehoods. This is what many millions of people get paid to do. And it creates “Big Brother” or the Deep State here, just as, in 1948, George Orwell might have been thinking that it would do in 1984. And a good example of how the Deep State ‘justifies’ itself in America, is shown here.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Originally posted at strategic-culture.org

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Many throughout the world are beginning to understand that our continuance on this planet will require recognition of the presence of an underlying planetary and cosmic “implicate order.” (David Bohm) And they are beginning to understand that humanity is not now living in a harmonious relationship with that order. These many are beginning to recognize that it will call for a transition from our present state of political, economic, social and religious dysfunction to a new way of thought and behavior. The good news is that these many have become aware of this and they are now asking for changes in world society. And they are being joined world-wide by the millennial generation. The worrisome news, however, is that world power remains in the hands of a political moneyed elite autocracy that has chosen not to comprehend this reality.

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Beginning in the 1990’s I sensed a feeling of doubt building throughout the world centered on the survival of our species. The scientific community had begun to release peer reviewed studies indicating the onset of dangerous ecological “tipping points.” This was confirmed by activist and Nobel Peace Laureate John Scales Avery, theoretical chemist noted for his research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics and evolution. In response to one of my Blogs he wrote to me about a 2012 World Bank warning of resultant high temperatures in the Arctic from CO2 that could trigger a Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop and lead to a repeat of an extinction event like the Permian Triassic one. That 2012 warning had left many scientists like him as well as many others in the world worried about the future of our species. It worried me too. It left me with these questions: How could we humans have brought this upon ourselves? How can we overcome it?

I too, like many others, was becoming extremely pessimistic. Our society appeared to be confused as to whether the scientific information had validity and even if so what action to take to avert disaster. Also even in the scientific community there was an academic reluctance to emphasize the extremes. (I had a book published about this concern. It was entitled: Q Will Human Species Survive? A NO!

As the years passed the same feeling of depression that many others were having came over me. And the more I researched the dimmer the future became.

Then at some point I began to view this information not as a predictor of our end but possibly – and I emphasize here that word “possibly” – as a sign of the beginning of a New Age. This led me to interpret our future as a part of an uneven yet upward evolutionary process. I had a sense that in all of our awkwardness we may be moving into a higher form of understanding and complexity.

Yet the question remained: Could we be progressing fast enough from our present Age of planetary dysfunction and self-destruction to a state of cosmic and planetary unity? And if we are progressing in such a way, what are the signs?

In an attempt to find an answer, I began to look for evidence that our species is moving forward as a part of its natural post Cambrian Age evolutionary upward continuum, or as David Bohm once described it; within an implicate order toward a process of cosmic “enfoldment” and “unfoldment.” He spoke in terms of an unbroken cosmic wholeness, with everything animate and inanimate having, as he described it; “an inseparable quantum interconnectedness.”

Given this change in my perspective, I was able to sense the possibility of a new Age for humans. Questions however remained: Could one prove that there is, as Bohm described it, inseparable quantum interconnectedness? Are we humans integral to a continuing part of it? And then the one not thought about today: If not us, why not another species on this planet a million or so years from now?

Approaching this academically anthropologically, I found that Homo sapiens among all other bipedal forms emerged from the evolutionary birth canal superior in terms of survival over the bonobos, apes, Neanderthals, Hobbits of Flores and the many others that anthropologists have discovering through DNA and carbon dated testing. And along the way we had overcome every pitfall imaginable. Also it left us with the highest level of intellectual capacity. Today no other species can match it.

Our superiority and toughness was very well expressed by one of America’s greatest writers, William Faulkner. In his book The Sound and The Fury he wrote:

“I decline to accept the end of man. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Faulkner’s view rose out of an era of extreme pain and suffering in the America. Over 600,000 Americans had died in the Civil War. Viewing this in a broader historical context, we can see that humans have suffered much self-inflicted pain from our beginnings and most notably during with the Post Mesopotamian Age. From Babylon onward our history has been horrific, with example after example of man’s inhumanity to man. Yet, as Faulkner reminds us; man (and woman) have prevailed.

So, I decided that Bohm’s “inseparable quantum interconnectedness” may be an underlying positive force in play and something far deeper may be going on. My conclusion therefore was that we seem to be moving synchronistic-ally toward some sort of “interconnectedness” in the direction of some greater purpose to our existence. We have a chance of being here tomorrow.

This at least gave me some hope. We would in all probability survive. But I struggled with one caveat; given our current behavior after how much pain and suffering?

My thoughts on the timeline then began to take shape. This will be the scenario:

With advancements in the physical and cosmological sciences, many throughout the world in those and the other sciences as well as out of the sciences will come to understand that our continuance on this planet will require us all to recognize that there is an underlying implicate order and that a transition from our present state of planetary dysfunction and destruction into a state of hominid/planetary unity is required. This will lead to a universal call for the abandonment of much of our present thought and behavior.

It will require a change in those political, economic, social and religious certitudes now imbedded in our culture that are working against our planetary survival.

We must however keep in mind that even with such a change in thought and behavior it will be too late to reverse many of the adverse ecological forces already set in motion. Some “tipping points” in fact have already begun. (I write about these in my new book OVERCOMING THE THREAT TO OUR FUTURE) However, human ingenuity through the invention of new forms of technology will play a large part in overcoming parts of the damage ‑ but not all.

So my conclusion is that it will be a difficult road for our society. We will have to abandon much of what we have all these years believed to be sacred.

Humans at large will be learning about the great delusive flaw that empowered this their Age; the belief that Nature is something separate from them, something that they can exploit according their own desires.

Now to the bad news:

Overcoming our flaws will require a learning process brought on by enormous pain and suffering. (Read my Blog # 7 A World Without Ice)

Here is a quote from my new book that presents the CO2 CH4 reality:

“Acidification will have destroyed much of the fish and crustacean food stock in the oceans. Weather patterns will be extremely damaging to agricultural production. In order for humans to exist away from the harsh climatic and atmospheric conditions, self-contained enclosed structures such as Buckminster Fuller tetrahedron domes will need to be used on parts of the planet. Even space stations just above the earth housing humans and capturing the Sun’s energy are a possibility, although they remain with inherent problems of their own in the realm of science fiction. We must keep in mind the fact that biologically we are earth creatures gravitationally.”

And finally a quote from the great American poet Robert Frost as it appeared on the back page of my book Q Will Human Species Survive? A NO!

“Great waves looked over others coming in,

And thought of doing something to the shore,

That water had never done before.”

David Anderson brings together a wide range of interests in his writings, namely; theology, history, evolutionary anthropology, philosophy, geopolitics, and economics. He has written four books. The fourth is about a necessary geo political, social, religious, economic paradigm shift for human survival.

For Bio see: http://inquiryabraham.com/bio-lectures.html

Sources

Extrapolating 11,000 Scientists’ Climate Emergency Warning To 2030 Catastrophe in Climate Change — by Dr Gideon Polya —           November 14, 2019

https://countercurrents.org/2019/11/extrapolating-11000-scientists-climate-emergency-warning-to-2030-catastrophe

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Citizens participating in preservation of environment are an important aspect of fighting decay of environment.

Scientists have proposed (“Researchers explore how citizens can become agents of environmental change: A blueprint for how to educate people to maximize their impact.”) a blueprint for methods of educating people to maximize impact of people’s participation.

By walking in the woods, rafting a river, digging in a garden or looking at butterflies, any citizen could become an agent of change.

Science and policy are not enough to solve complex environmental challenges that range from species extinction to water pollution.

But actively engaged citizens could tip the balance, according to a new Stanford-led study that provides a blueprint for empowering people to turn the tide of environmental destruction.

In Biological Conservation, the scientists have outlined four key facets of programs that have been successful in motivating and training people to have a meaningful impact.

The scientists have pointed to citizen science as an example of the four principles at work. At its best, citizen science involves members of the public participating in aspects of science initiatives from design to implementation. Their hands-on engagement in the conservation effort yields reliable, usable data.

These initiatives provide community members with avenues for collecting and measuring local-scale data, working directly with scientists and research managers on relevant research and documenting outcomes.

While the rate of climate change and species extinction intensifies, the U.S. outdoor recreation sector is growing more than one-and-a-half-times faster than the overall economy. Historic federal legislation passed earlier this year is opening more than a million acres of wildlands to public access. Increasingly, nonprofit groups and government agencies are harnessing this growing interest in nature as a force for conserving it. The question for them has been what kinds of activities or educational engagement have the most measurable impact.

To get at that question, the researchers analyzed reviews of more than 100 environmental education programs that addressed topics such as habitat protection and restoration, water quality, energy conservation, climate change and recycling. From this, the researchers gleaned four keys to maximizing the chance that programs will help citizens make meaningful environmental impacts: focus on locally relevant issues; collaborate with experts; incorporate action-oriented learning strategies and approaches, such as hands-on experiments and policy recommendations; and measure outcomes.

Incorporating the study’s findings into new environmental education programs could help more conservation organizations and agencies involve the public effectively in improving environmental quality. It could also help cyclists, river rafters, hikers and others contribute directly to the nature they enjoy.

Environmental education: Keys to success

(1) Focus on local environmental issues or locally relevant dimensions of global issues

Example: Students in a reforestation project created nurseries, improved their abilities to serve as custodians, and participated in plantings on school grounds, as well as in other deforested parts of the community, with the goal of reconnecting with local ecosystems and enhancing student capabilities to serve as custodians.

(2) Collaborate with scientists and resource managers

Example: A program brought together prison inmates with scientists, students and natural area managers to encourage lifelong learning, support ecological research and promote habitat restoration through plant production and captive rearing of animals in correctional facilities. Conservation practitioners provided the knowledge that resulted in raising and releasing approximately 550 frogs, 4,000 butterflies and 1 million plants.

(3) Incorporate action elements into programs

Example: University students’ sea turtle research and habitat assessment resulted in a proposal to the Mexican government for a marine protected area, with recommendations for fishing activity zones for resource and ecotourism uses.

(4) Measure and report program outcomes

Example: Researchers in a reforestation education initiative reported not only the number of trees planted but also provided data on the survival rates of planted trees.