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Global Civilizational State: Global Protection Agency (GPA) essential services.

GPA animation

Governance of the Earth by Global Parliament will make the rule of arbitrary power--economic (WTO, FTAA, TPPA, BRICS, EU, etc.), political, or military (NATO)-- subjected to the rule of law within the global civil society, the human family. Justice is for everyone and is everywhere, a universal constant. Justice is without borders.

Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA); World Trade Organization (WTO); North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA; 1994); the USMCA which took effect on July 1, 2020, replacing NAFTA; Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA); Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (1988, suspended by NFTAA); Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS); European Union (EU); and many more international trade agreements between nations. All international trade agreements must be administered by the Global Trade and Resources Ministry and the Global Ministry of Essential Services as institutionalized by Global Parliament. Today's international trade agreements are obsolete and primitive. They are formed to make a few people on the planet rich and creating a world of overconsumption and wastfully degrading the planet's resources and environment. Let us walk into a sustainable future. Let us first define what we mean by "Global Community" and of course what we mean by "essential services" in the global context of humanity.

Today, we are presenting once more the Scale as the best educating tool to bring about the change the people of the world need to achieve for their own survival. Now the Scale of Global Rights is a long term solution and is also a part of the Global Movement to Help of Global Community. In itself the Scale was designed to help all life on Earth. What would be preferable is that nations unite amongst themselves to help. Over time, we have seen the creation of the United Nations, the European Union, the South American Community of Nations, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Except for the UN, these organizations are mainly concerned with trade and economics. Global Civilizational State offers a more meaningful union in the form of nine or more Global Governments. For instance the South American Community of Nations can be a Global Government by simply accepting the Global Constitution as a way of dealing between member nations. A Global Government is concerned not only with economics and trade, but also with the environment, health, agriculture, energy, food, social, cultural and many other essential aspects. The Federation of Global Governments would be the place of meeting between Global Governments. The very first step of the Federation, and maybe the only one, would be the approval of essential services amongst the participating member nations. Global Community has researched and developed such services and listed them here. All of them are already in operation on a small scale.

To act as a global policing force, as the GPA aspires to do, many foundations must be laid, especially regarding the move from wielding power derived from Global Civilizational State to legitimate global leadership. There are many required characteristics that are prerequisite for legitimate leadership: 

• 1.     Legitimate leadership is built upon trust. Those who are led must largely believe that the leader is committed to integrity, honesty, and transparent inquiry into problems. The leader’s actions must align with his words 

• 2.     Legitimate leadership rests upon checks and balances, which are necessary to ensure power is not corrupted.

• 3.     Legitimate leadership is an act of service. Those in power must show a primary interest in the good of the collective ahead of their self-interest. In this way, true leaders are mission-centered rather than self-centered. 

• 4.     Legitimate leadership empowers others appropriately rather than concentrating power disproportionately. In other words, true leaders produce more leaders and empower them as situations demand. 

• 5.     Legitimate leadership is visionary, carrying the torch of a possible future.

• 6.     Legitimate leadership is willing to lead by example, including following a foundation of ethics, performing more than one’s share of work, and making sacrifices where appropriate. 

• 7.     Legitimate leadership is compassionately fierce when something undermines the good of the whole. In a company this might mean the CEO fires a slacking employee. In a city, the police may jail a murderer. On a global level, this might even mean arresting those breaking global law.

The defence function of a leader requires that he safeguard the good of the whole by whatever the most skillful means are to accomplish that defence.  While that is not a comprehensive catalog of leadership prerequisites, I do think those few requirements are foundational and relatively unquestionable. Without at least a solid foundation of those requirements, the GPA’s actions among nation-states will remain those of a unilateralist leader rather than a global leader. We will be, and should be, legitimated in the role of a global leader among nation-states and validated as an enforcer of global law. Global Civilizational State offers a few recommendations for actions that would strengthen and legitimate the GPA’s role as a true global leader by gradually creating an international structure that better safeguards the whole than we can ever do now as a unilateralist leader.  The GPA recommendations: 

• 1.     Ban military action in all parts of the world; 

• 2.     Lead the way in creating legitimate power for Global Parliament , subjecting ourselves and multinational corporations to taxation that generates money for programs that are focused on world betterment and world problems. As a mark of our global leadership, we should commit a greater percentage of our resources to this effort than any other organization.

• 3.     Hold ourselves to a high standard of compliance around global treaties that aim for collective benefit and the redress of economic, environmental, military, and political problems. Our adherence should be exemplary. Or, if we truly question the merit of a global accord, we should lead the way in creating agreements that even better serve the global interest rather than simply ignoring or undermining the existing attempts.

• 4.     Exert strong global leadership on multinational solutions to pressing health, environmental, and other problems. We should propose innovative new solutions and show leadership in carrying them out, especially in areas such as clean energy development. 

• 5.     Take seriously the process of coming clean by exposing corporate interests in politics, lobbying by powerful organizations, subsidies of fringe military groups, etc. When our global government officials commit to be honest and transparent, a much deeper foundation of international trust will be built.

As we enact global law, we will begin to take on a much deeper kind of global leadership, one that earns more respect than envy and more gratitude than hatred, one that can catapult the whole planet forward into a future where war is no longer thinkable between nation-states and a legitimate and beneficial global government is able to cope with global problems.  I believe that there is no greater task in the world today than for GCEG to proceed through the maturation of its leadership, emerging from a more self-interested adolescence as a global leader into a nobler adulthood. We have the potential to act as a torchbearer for a better tomorrow. Do we heed the call? I hope this message has convinced at least a few people that the question of how to proceed with that maturation is of far deeper significance than the reforming of the United Nations. I thus pray that we move with wisdom, grace, clarity, and love in the days, years, and even decades ahead. 

In the past, security was thought as better accomplished through military means. Expanding the military capabilities and forming alliances with other nations were the only way to 'win'. Today wars are unlikely to produce winners. Global Community is all over the planet. Ethnic groups are everywhere. Wars truly make no sense! The world is too crowded and too small nowadays! And weapons too lethal! So security cannot be achieved through the military. The only job the military should be asked to do today is to protect the global life-support systems.

These systems have the highest priority on the Scale of Global Rights and are certainly more important than any of the other rights on the Scale including security. Simply because without life there is no other right possible. Without Oxygen there is no life! Without clean water there is no life! So protect life on Earth at all costs. Wars are the biggest threat to life and the ecosystem of the planet. Primordial human rights come next on the Scale of Global Rights. Without a shelter life will still exist in some places but is not possible in cold place.

So security must be achieved by other means than wars. We might as well shelved the war industry from humanity right now and that means phasing out all nuclear, biological, chemical weapons right now. No waiting! That also means having inspectors verifying the phasing out in all nations of the world. The nature of global security has changed since the rise of Global Community. Security used to be about the protection of the state and its boundaries, people, institutions and values from an outside threat. Global Community emphasizes as a priority the prohibition of external interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

Essential services are the services and functions that are absolutely necessary, even during a pandemic. They maintain the health and welfare of the municipality. Without these services, sickness, poverty, violence, and chaos would likely result.

Once approved, Global Protection Agency will have powers, issued by Executive and Ministerial order, that include the means to secure critical supply chains, ensure people have access to essential goods and services to keep society running, and make sure critical infrastructure and materials are readily available to support response and public safety.

While each community will need to determine what its essential services are, here are some examples:

• Executive governance (the mayor, or his/her designee, who is in charge and has the authority to make executive decisions and enact policies), business regulators and inspectors

• Education and research

• Pharmaceutical and medical supply product production, manufacturing and distribution, and medical research

• Sanitary product manufacturing

• Education institutions, for providing remote learning or other essential functions

• Information and communication technologies

• Healthcare, public health, hospitals, and pandemic control

• Cleaning services necessary to provide and maintain disinfection

• Fire and police protection and other first responders

• Law enforcement and justice

• Provision of clean water

• Businesses that provide materials and services for the operation, maintenance and safety of transportation systems (road, transit, rail, air and marine)

• Basic sanitation, including sewage, garbage removal and wastewater management

• Maintenance of communication infrastructure (e.g., telephone system, radio, internet, and postal)

• Maintenance of utilities (e.g., gas and electricity)

• Facilities critical in supporting certain daily needs steam, alternative energy, industrial recycling, oil and fuel

• Care and residential facilities for seniors, adults, children or individuals with disabilities

• Provision of food and other essential goods, establishment of supply chains, food banks

• Disaster management

• Mining operations, mineral exploration and development, and mining supply and services

• National and cross-border freight carrier intermodal transportation between nations where special standardized containers are used for transport of cargo on trucks, freight trains, and ships.

• Road maintenance/repair

• Natural resources management

• Protection of the global life support sytems and environment

• Environmental cleanup and response

• Earth ecosystems protection

• IT (information technology) workers for certain facilities including medical facilities, governments facilities, banks, employees working from home to manage the transfer or other use of information through computers or computer systems, and to test, build, install, repair, or maintain the hardware and software associated with those complex computer systems in one or more locations.

• Banking

• Professional services including lawyers, paralegals, engineers, accountants and translators

• Payroll departments and public works

• Critical manufacturing,

• Tax collection

  Essential goods are the food and other supplies that a municipality needs to survive, such as medical supplies and gasoline.

  Essential workers are the personnel needed to maintain essential services.

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Proceedings of Global Dialogue 2020

Proceedings of Global Dialogue 2020 (September 1st, 2019 to August 31, 2020) are ready for reading. Please do verify that your articles, comments and papers were correctly published, and that recommendations were appropriate, useful, pertinent, and proper. Authors of research papers and articles on global issues for Global Dialogue 2020 were published in the Dialogue Overview section at

Proceedings of Global Dialogue 2020.
Artwork by Germain Dufour
August 2020
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Global Peace Earth

• Poèmes de paix, Poems of peace, Poemas de Paz
• Meet Peace diplomats
• Contact the Peace Minister
• Work done so far to create peace in the world
• Register your Ministry of Global Peace

Ministry of Global Peace in government

Over the past decades we have shown that peace in the world and the survival and protection of all life on our planet go hand in hand. Asking for peace in the world means doing whatever is necessary to protect life on our planet. Protecting life implies bringing about the event of peace in the world. Let our time be a time remembered for a new respect for life, our determination to achieve sustainability, and our need for global justice and peace.

Our Global Peace Mouvement is about the courage to live a life in a harmonious peace order and showing by example, thus preventing poverty, wars, terror and violence. We need to educate the coming generations with good principles, being compassionate, social harmony and global sustainability being some of them.

Soul of all Life said in Global Peace Earth "Soul of all Life teaching about Peace: Introduction"

Peace is being who you are without fear. It is the "being who you are" who must be taught a value based on principles to live by. Only principles described in Global Law are necessary and required to attain Peace in the world.

Global Community days of celebration or remembering throughout the year.

Cultural Appreciation Day: August 22

Along with all the global communities, the Global Community, all life on Earth, and the Soul of Humanity can rightfully claim ownership of the Earth as a birthright: October 6

Founding of the Global Community organization, Global Community and the Federation of Global Governments: October 6 , 1985

Global Citizenship Day: October 6

Tribute to Virginie Dufour, the first Secretary General of the Global Community organization, who passed away April 28,2000

The Global Exhibition: August 17-22

Nationalization of natural resources: October 6

Global Peace Movement Day: May 26

Global Movement to Help: May 26

Global Justice for all Life Day: October 6

Global Justice Movement: October 6

Global Disarmament Day: May 26

Planetary State of Emergency Day: May 26

Global Community 25 th Anniversary Celebration (1985 - 2010): October 6

Celebration of Life Day: May 26

Planetary Biodiversity Zone Day: September 26

Authors of research papers and articles on global issues since 1985.

• List of all author names in all papers, articles, comments, opinions, recommendations of all Global Dialogues since 1985. Global participants files.
  
  List of all participants and authors with their work from 1985 to 2007.
  All work can be found in Global Proceedings.
  
  Global Information Media (GIM) publishing monthly Newsletters dealing with global issues.



• List of all author names in all papers, articles, comments, opinions, recommendations of Global Dialogue 2020.



• List of all author papers, articles, comments, opinions, recommendations of Global Dialogue 2020.



• List of all Monthly Newsletters with all author names in papers, articles, comments, opinions, recommendations concerning the issues of Global Dialogue 2020.



• We thank authors for their hard work and activism this dialogue. Over the past several decades, they have fought hard for the protection of the global life-support systems. Proceedings of all dialogues are available at:
  http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/GIMProceedings/

Authors of research papers and articles on global issues for this month

David Anderson, John Scales Avery(2), Medea Benjamin, M K Bhadrakumar(2), Farooque Chowdhury, Climate And Capitalism, Jonathan Cook, Stan Cox, Countercurrents Collective(2), Finian Cunningham(3), Bharat Dogra(2), Nicolas J S Davies, Tom Engelhardt, Pepe Escobar(2), Ron Forthofer, Andrew Glikson, Chris Hedges, Michael Hudson, Robert Hunziker, Anthony Mathew Jacob, Irwin Jerome, Caitlin Johnstone(2), Pooja Kalra, Mahboob A Khawaja, Michael T Klare(2), Peter Koenig, Renu Kohli, Sergey Lavrov, Tom Murphy, Sandeep Pandey, Paul Craig Roberts, Yang Sheng, David Sparenberg(2), Li Xuanmin, Bai Yunyi.

David Anderson, Premier Xi Jinping’s Geopolitical Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop Challenge in Climate Change.
John Scales Avery, Ecology And Economics.
John Scales Avery, Water.
Medea Benjamin, How the United States Helps To Kill Palestinians in Palestine.
M K Bhadrakumar, The China-Iran pact is a game changer – III
M K Bhadrakumar, China on the horizon as ‘world’s pharmacy’in World.
Farooque Chowdhury, Language and people.
Climate And Capitlism, Indian monsoons becoming more chaotic.
Jonathan Cook, In our hurry to conquer nature and death, we have made a new religion of science.
Stan Cox, Earth Abuse and the Next Pandemic.
Countercurrents Collective, Climate change will be disastrous even after latest world pledges, says report.
Countercurrents Collective, The Arctic’s greening won’t save us.
Finian Cunningham, Global Britain, Global Delusions.
Finian Cunningham, China & Russia Vaccines Defeat Cold War Virus.
Finian Cunningham, Victory’s Test of Time.
Bharat Dogra, Land May Be A Deeply Philosophical Issue But Must Face Practical Realities of This World.
Bharat Dogra, Narrow Response to Crisis Situations Which Ignores Basic Causes Will Not Resolve The Crisis.
Nicolas J S Davies, Denis Halliday: A Voice of Reason in an Insane World .
Tom Engelhardt, Slaughter Central.
Pepe Escobar, Putin rewrites the law of the geopolitical jungle.
Pepe Escobar, Putin, crusaders and barbarians.
Ron Forthofer, The sad saga continues: occupation and oppression of Palestinians.
Dr Andrew Glikson, The Origin of the Northern Freeze.
Chris Hedges, The Age of Social Murder.
Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts, It Is Time To Remove The Debt Barrier ToEconomic Growth.
Robert Hunziker, Poisoning the Planet’s Web of Life.
Anthony Mathew Jacob, Palestine, to whom does it Belong?
Irwin Jerome, Four Intersecting Pandemics Threaten Continuation of Life.
Caitlin Johnstone, My Experiments With Hacking Capitalism.
Caitlin Johnstone, All Of Humanity's Problems Are Caused By A Lack Of Awareness.
Pooja Kalra, Sheikh Jarrah: History shows that empires have colluded to legalise ‘settler colonialism’ in Palestinian territories in Palestine.
Dr Mahboob A Khawaja, Global Humanity Paralyzed by COVID-19 Pandemic and Politics of Conflicts Looks for Change and Unity.
Michael Klare, Will There Be Resource Wars in a Renewable Future?
Michael T Klare, Will There Be Resource Wars in a Renewable Future?
Peter Koenig, Gaza – US and the West Supports Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity – Understanding the Never-Ending Conflict. in Palestine.
Dr Renu Kohli, Birds and Biodiversity : The Pillar of life on Earth.
Sergey Lavrov, The time has come to do away with medieval and colonial habits.
Tom Murphy, Ultimate Success.
Sandeep Pandey, Change In Worldview Need Of Hour.
Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts, It Is Time To Remove The Debt Barrier ToEconomic Growth.
David Sparenberg, POEM to the EARTH.
David Sparenberg, Every Day Is An Earth Day: Suggestions for Living in an Ecozoic Future.
Yang Sheng, Li Xuanmin and Bai Yunyi, China-Russia partnership 'key to balance US hegemony'

Articles and papers from authors

 

Day data received	Theme or issue	Read article or paper
MAY 24, 2021	My Experiments With Hacking Capitalism. by Caitlin Johnstone, I just realized I've never really written about how I make a living doing what I do, which is odd because it's easily the most interesting aspect of my weird little operation here. I'll put the information out there just in case it's useful to anybody. Like anyone else who criticizes capitalism within earshot of hardcore capitalism enthusiasts, I get the "and yet you participate in capitalism ha ha" line all the time. They claim that because I have links to Patreon and Paypal at the bottom of my articles I am hypocritical for criticizing capitalism, which is silly for a number of reasons. It's silly because we live in a capitalist society which requires participation in capitalism to engage in, so it's a lot like telling prisoners who complain the prison system that they are being hypocritical because they live in prison. It's silly because it implies that the only people who can criticize the status quo are those living in a log cabin in the woods with no electricity eating squirrel meat and yelling their grievances into a hole in the ground. And, in my case, it's also silly because it's less true of me than it is of most people. I make my living entirely from the goodwill of other people. I work as hard as most people, but I don't charge money for my labor; I work for free and demand nothing from anyone who enjoys the fruits of my labor. All my work is free to view, free to republish, free to use, free to alter, on no conditions whatsoever; even my books are comprised entirely of stuff that's free to view online. There is no trade, and there is no exchange; you already have the product. I just have a digital tip jar at the bottom of every article that people can toss a few coins into if they want to. I decided early on in this commentary gig that I wanted to write about the healthiest things I can possibly write about from the healthiest parts of myself, and if I'm going to get paid I want it to be by the healthiest impulses of the healthiest sort of people. In my case that means writing from every angle I can about the ways our society is unhealthy and how it can move toward health, and it means doing so in full dependence on the goodwill of people who care about the same thing. As near as I can tell the major problems with the world I am leaving to my children ultimately boil down to the fact that money tends to elevate the very worst kinds of people: those who are willing to step on anyone to get ahead, even if it means impoverishing everybody else, or starting wars, or destroying the ecosystem we all depend on for survival. My goal has been to try and "hack" this trend by getting money to reward health instead, thereby allowing me to embody the opposite of the disease and proving that a better way is possible. Because money is power and money rewards sociopathy, we wind up ruled by greedy sociopaths. This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that wealth has been shown to kill empathy in those who have it, which makes sense if you consider how money functions as a kind of prosthetic goodwill currency. Without a lot of money you depend on the goodwill of your neighbors to get by; you need to always be attuned to what their needs are, how you can help them, and how they're feeling toward you in order to make sure they'll help you fix your car when it breaks down or whatever. If you are wealthy you don't need to think about goodwill at all, so that attunement to other people's needs and feelings will atrophy. By contrast, in societies that aren't dominated by money, goodwill is the prevailing currency, and sociopaths tend to wind up dead. From Scientific American: In a 1976 study anthropologist Jane M. Murphy, then at Harvard University, found that an isolated group of Yupik-speaking Inuits near the Bering Strait had a term (kunlangeta) they used to describe “a man who … repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and … takes sexual advantage of many women—someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always being brought to the elders for punishment.” When Murphy asked an Inuit what the group would typically do with a kunlangeta, he replied, “Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.” In such tribal cultures your worth is measured not by how much money you have, but by the extent to which you improve the quality of life for those around you. If you make life pleasant for the collective you'll receive plenty of goodwill from them, and if you make life unpleasant for them you run out of goodwill and get pushed off the ice. But in our society a kunlangeta's disregard for goodwill and his willingness to do anything for profit could make him a CEO. My goal here is to get by on goodwill currency instead of kunlangeta currency, while hopefully helping to move us out of our kunlangeta way of life. This is why I don't have any tiers or rewards on my Patreon page; it's important to what I'm doing here that it be an entirely goodwill relationship on both ends, because in my experience the healthiest relationships all come from a mutual desire to give freely while the unhealthiest are "you give me that I'll give you this" transactional relationships. I put just as much effort into my work whether I get a lot of money on a given day or none at all, and patrons get the same whether they give me two dollars or two hundred. That way we're all operating entirely from intrinsic motivation, driven by the inner rewards of having done something helpful and advancing something we value, rather than the extrinsic motivation model of capitalism that is driving our world toward disaster. And that's ultimately what I'd like to see for humanity going forward: a world where we're not stepping on each other and our ecosystem in pursuit of profit, but collaborating with each other and with our ecosystem out of intrinsic motivation toward the common good of all beings. My way of life is the best personal testament I can offer that such a world is possible. And seeing that it is possible is the first step. Watching Children of Men, we are inevitably reminded of the phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. That slogan captures precisely what I mean by ‘capitalist realism’: the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it. I am trying to help us all imagine a coherent alternative to it. I don't know precisely to what extent my path can be traveled by other people, much less by the entirety of our species. But walking this path for myself has given me a lot of hope that I can leave my children a much healthier world. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.	Read
May 20, 2021	Will There Be Resource Wars in a Renewable Future? by Michael Klare, TomDispatch Note for TomDispatch Readers: A last reminder that you can get a signed, personalized copy of Andrew Bacevich's new book, After the Apocalypse: America's Role in a World Transformed, by donating at least $100 ($125 if you live outside the U.S.) to TD. Peter Beinart calls it "a timely, angry, deeply necessary book about the habits of mind that have damaged America, and how to change them." Check out our donation page for the details. The offer, however, may not last much longer, given the number of requests that came in with Bacevich's recent piece. The book (which you should definitely get your hands on) is due out on June 8th and he'll send a signed copy to you as soon as he receives it himself. As ever, my thanks for supporting TomDispatch through such increasingly grim years! Tom These days in Washington, it's competition with and hostility to China all the way to the bank. The political class in Congress and the Biden White House, as well as the punditariat that goes with them, seem increasingly swept up in a new-cold-war mentality. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about the latest bipartisan Senate bill to support technological development in this country -- that, by the way, House conservatives are already critiquing as not faintly anti-Chinese enough -- or the CEO of Lockheed Martin fanning the anti-China flames in order to acquire rocket-engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne without running into antitrust problems. If you want something in Washington, whatever it might be, the most obvious way to frame getting it is as a response to the dangers of, or the need to compete better with, China. And the Pentagon has certainly taken note.  Despite its ongoing wars elsewhere, it seems to have its "near-peer" competitor in its sights 24/7. And yet, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change and founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy, makes clear today, such a new-cold-war framework is likely, among other things, to significantly undermine the path to Joe Biden's renewable energy future. If the two greatest greenhouse-gas emitters on this planet can't work together, we're all going to be living in a more or less literal hell (as the E.P.A. suggested just the other day in reference to this already overheating country of ours). If we can't cooperate, whatever our differences, it will be a disaster for China -- and for the U.S. In that context, consider the ways in which Biden's focus on a green future will, in the most literal sense imaginable, need the support of that country, a reality Klare illuminates in a way I've not seen before. Tom	Read
February 28 2021	Putin, crusaders and barbarians by Pepe Escobar, Information Clearing House. Moscow is painfully aware that the US/NATO “strategy” of containment of Russia is already reaching fever pitch. Again. This past Wednesday, at a very important meeting with the Federal Security Service board, President Putin laid it all out in stark terms: We are up against the so-called policy of containing Russia. This is not about competition, which is a natural thing for international relations. This is about a consistent and quite aggressive policy aimed at disrupting our development, slowing it down, creating problems along the outer perimeter, triggering domestic instability, undermining the values that unite Russian society, and ultimately to weaken Russia and put it under external control, just the way we are witnessing it transpire in some countries in the post-Soviet space. Not without a touch of wickedness, Putin added this was no exaggeration: “In fact, you don’t need to be convinced of this as you yourselves know it perfectly well, perhaps even better than anybody else.” The Kremlin is very much aware “containment” of Russia focuses on its perimeter: Ukraine, Georgia and Central Asia. And the ultimate target remains regime change. Putin’s remarks may also be interpreted as an indirect answer to a section of President Biden’s speech at the Munich Security Conference. According to Biden’s scriptwriters, Putin seeks to weaken the European project and the NATO alliance because it is much easier for the Kremlin to intimidate individual countries than to negotiate with the united transatlantic community … The Russian authorities want others to think that our system is just as corrupt or even more corrupt. A clumsy, direct personal attack against the head of state of a major nuclear power does not exactly qualify as sophisticated diplomacy. At least it glaringly shows how trust between Washington and Moscow is now reduced to less than zero. As much as Biden’s Deep State handlers refuse to see Putin as a worthy negotiating partner, the Kremlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have already dismissed Washington as “non-agreement capable.” Once again, this is all about sovereignty. The “unfriendly attitude towards Russia,” as Putin defined it, extends to “other independent, sovereign centers of global development.” Read it as mainly China and Iran. All these three sovereign states happen to be categorized as top “threats” by the US National Security Strategy. Yet Russia is the real nightmare for the Exceptionalists: Orthodox Christian, thus appealing to swaths of the West; consolidated as major Eurasian power; a military, hypersonic superpower; and boasting unrivaled diplomatic skills, appreciated all across the Global South. In contrast, there’s not much left for the deep state except endlessly demonizing both Russia and China to justify a Western military build-up, the “logic” inbuilt in a new strategic concept named  NATO 2030: United for a New Era. The experts behind the concept hailed it as an “implicit” response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s declaring NATO “brain dead.” Well, at least the concept proves Macron was right. Those barbarians from the East Crucial questions about sovereignty and Russian identity have been a recurrent theme in Moscow these past few weeks. And that brings us to February 17, when Putin met with Duma political leaders, from the Liberal Democratic Party’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky – enjoying a new popularity surge – to United Russia’s Sergei Mironov, as well as State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. Putin stressed the “multi-ethnic and multi-religious” character of Russia, now in “a different environment that is free of ideology”: It is important for all ethnic groups, even the smallest ones, to know that this is their Motherland with no other for them, that they are protected here and are prepared to lay down their lives in order to protect this country. This is in the interests of us all, regardless of ethnicity, including the Russian people. Yet Putin’s most extraordinary remark had to do with ancient Russian history: Barbarians came from the East and destroyed the Christian Orthodox empire. But before the barbarians from the East, as you well know, the crusaders came from the West and weakened this Orthodox Christian empire, and only then were the last blows dealt, and it was conquered. This is what happened … We must remember these historical events and never forget them. Well, this could be enough material to generate a 1,000-page treatise. Instead, let’s try, at least, to – concisely – unpack it. The Great Eurasian Steppe – one of the largest geographical formations on the planet – stretches from the lower Danube all the way to the Yellow River. The running joke across Eurasia is that “Keep Walking” can be performed back to back. For most of recorded history this has been Nomad Central: tribe upon tribe raiding at the margins, or sometimes at the hubs of the heartland: China, Iran, the  Mediterranean. The Scythians (see, for instance, the magisterial The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe, by Barry Cunliffe) arrived at the Pontic steppe from beyond the Volga. After the Scythians, it was the turn of the Sarmatians to show up in South Russia. From the 4th century onward, nomad Eurasia was a vortex of marauding tribes, featuring, among others, the Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries, the Khazars in the 7th century, the Kumans in the 11th century, all the way to the Mongol avalanche in the 13th century. The plot line always pitted nomads against peasants. Nomads ruled – and exacted tribute. G Vernadsky, in his invaluable Ancient Russia, shows how “the Scythian Empire may be described sociologically as a domination of the nomadic horde over neighboring tribes of agriculturists.” As part of my multi-pronged research on nomad empires for a future volume, I call them Badass Barbarians on Horseback. The stars of the show include, in Europe, in chronological order, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Khazars, Hungarians, Peshenegs, Seljuks, Mongols and their Tatar descendants; and, in Asia, Hu, Xiongnu, Hephtalites, Turks, Uighurs, Tibetans, Kirghiz, Khitan, Mongols, Turks (again), Uzbeks and Manchu. Arguably, since the hegemonic Scythian era (the first protagonists of the Silk Road), most of the peasants in southern and central Russia were Slav. But there were major differences. The Slavs west of Kiev were under the influence of Germania and Rome. East of Kiev, they were influenced by Persian civilization. It’s always important to remember that the Vikings were still nomads when they became rulers in Slav lands. Their civilization in fact prevailed over sedentary peasants – even as they absorbed many of their customs. Interestingly enough, the gap between steppe nomads and agriculture in proto-Russia was not as steep as between intensive agriculture in China and the interlocked steppe economy in Mongolia. (For an engaging Marxist interpretation of nomadism, see A N Khazanov’s Nomads and the Outside World). The sheltering sky What about power? For Turk and Mongol nomads, who came centuries after the Scythians, power emanated from the sky. The Khan ruled by authority of the “Eternal Sky” – as we all see when we delve into the adventures of Genghis and Kublai. By implication, as there is only one sky, the Khan would have to exert universal power. Welcome to the idea of universal empire. Kublai Khan as the first Yuan emperor, Shizu. Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). Album leaf, ink and color on silk. National Palace Museum, Taipei. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/National Palace Museum, Taipei In Persia, things were slightly more complex. The Persian Empire   was all about Sun worship: that became the conceptual basis for the divine right of the King of Kings. The implications were immense, as the King now became sacred. This model influenced Byzantium – which, after all, was always interacting with Persia. Christianity made the Kingdom of Heaven more important than ruling over the temporal domain. Still, the idea of Universal Empire persisted, incarnated in the concept of Pantocrator: it was the Christ who ultimately ruled, and his deputy on earth was the Emperor. But Byzantium remained a very special case: the Emperor could never be an equal to God. After all, he was human. Putin is certainly very much aware that the Russian case is extremely complex. Russia essentially is on the margins of three civilizations. It’s part of Europe – reasons including everything from the ethnic origin of Slavs to achievements in history, music and literature. Russia is also part of Byzantium from a religious and artistic angle (but not part of the subsequent Ottoman empire, with which it was in military competition). And Russia was influenced by Islam coming from Persia. Then there’s the crucial influence of nomads. A serious case can be made that they have been neglected by scholars. The Mongol rule for a century and a half, of course, is part of the official historiography – but perhaps not given its due importance. And the nomads in southern and central Russia two millennia ago were never properly acknowledged. So Putin may have hit a nerve. What he said points to the idealization of a later period of Russian history from the late 9th to early 13th century: Kievan Rus. In Russia, 19th century Romanticism and 20th century nationalism actively built an idealized national identity. The interpretation of Kievan Rus poses tremendous problems – that’s something I eagerly discussed in St. Petersburg a few years ago. There are rare literary sources – and they concentrate mostly on the 12th century afterwards. The earlier sources are foreigners, mostly Persians and Arabs. Russian conversion to Christianity and its concomitant superb architecture have been interpreted as evidence of a high cultural standard. In a nutshell, scholars ended up using Western Europe as the model for the reconstruction of Kievan Rus civilization. It was never so simple. A good example is the discrepancy between Novgorod and Kiev. Novgorod was closer to the Baltic than the Black Sea, and had closer interaction with Scandinavia and the Hanseatic towns. Compare it with Kiev, which was closer to steppe nomads and  Byzantium – not to mention Islam. Kievan Rus was a fascinating crossover. Nomadic tribal traditions – on administration, taxes, the justice system – were prevalent. But on religion, they imitated Byzantium. It’s also relevant that until the end of the 12th century, assorted steppe nomads were a constant “threat” to southeast Kievan Rus. So as much as Byzantium – and, later on, even the Ottoman Empire – supplied models for Russian institutions, the fact is the nomads, starting with the Scythians, influenced the economy, the social system and most of all, the military approach. Watch the Khan Sima Qian, the master Chinese historian, has shown how the Khan had two “kings,” who each had two generals, and thus in succession, all the way to commanders of a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand men. This is essentially the same system used for a millennia and a half by nomads, from the Scythians to the Mongols, all the way to Tamerlane’s army at the end of the 14th century. The Mongol invasions – 1221 and then 1239-1243 – were indeed the major game-changer. As master analyst Sergei Karaganov told me in his office in late 2018, they influenced Russian society for centuries afterwards. For over 200 years Russian princes had to visit the Mongol headquarters in the Volga to pay tribute. One scholarly strand has qualified it as “barbarization”; that seems to be Putin’s view. According to that strand, the incorporation of Mongol values may have “reversed” Russian society to what it was before the first drive to adopt Christianity. The inescapable conclusion is that when Muscovy emerged in the late 15th century as the dominant power in Russia, it was essentially the successor of the Mongols. And because of that the peasantry – the sedentary population – were not touched by “civilization” (time to re-read Tolstoy?). Nomad Power and values, as strong as they were, survived Mongol rule for centuries. Well, if a moral can be derived from our short parable, it’s not exactly a good idea for “civilized” NATO to pick a fight with the – lateral – heirs of the Great Khan. Pepe Escobar is correspondent-at-large at Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook.- - "Source"	Read
March 07, 2021	All Of Humanity's Problems Are Caused By A Lack Of Awareness by Caitlin Johnstone, Information Clearing House. I write about humanity's problems as a species in all sorts of ways in this space, but really if you want to get straightforward about things all we're ever actually talking about here is a lack of awareness of what's true and the need to eliminate that lack. A lack of awareness is the source of all our major problems, whether we're talking about war, poverty, ecocide, corruption, exploitation, authoritarianism, prejudice, or even much smaller-scale problems like abusive family dynamics or the psychological suffering of the individual. If there were sufficiently widespread and penetrating awareness of the contributing factors in any of these problems, these problems would cease to exist. All you'd have left would be the odd natural disaster and the inevitability of sickness and death, which would also become far less problematic with the introduction of more awareness.  Yes, from a certain point of view it is true and accurate to say that many of our large-scale problems are due to the fact that humans whose brains lack functioning empathy centers are most well-equipped to manipulate their way into positions of power and influence, and that the amoral nature of capitalism ensures that it will be dominated by those willing to do whatever it takes to climb to the top. From a certain point of view it is true and accurate to say that our problems are caused by the fact that things like war, oppression, ecocide and exploitation will necessarily continue as long as our world is dominated by a system where those things are profitable and human behavior is driven by profit. But it is also true that underlying every single part of the dynamics I just listed is a fundamental lack of human awareness. Why are psychopaths allowed to manipulate their way into power and influence? Because people aren't sufficiently aware that it is happening. Manipulation only works if its target isn't aware that they're being manipulated, whether you're talking about individual manipulation or collective manipulation via propaganda. If people were able to clearly perceive abusive power dynamics, their awareness of what's going on would render manipulation ineffective, and they would use the power of their numbers to dissolve those abusive power dynamics. If people were sufficiently aware of what their government is doing, what oligarchs are doing, what banks are doing, what the military is doing, those power structures would be unable to operate in the way that they do, because a sufficient number of people would rise up collectively to stop them. This is why so much energy goes into protecting government secrecy, circulating mass media propaganda, promoting internet censorship and jailing journalists who reveal too much: they are preventing awareness of the truth from spreading so that they can continue operating in the darkness. If people were sufficiently aware of the horrors of imperialist aggression and of how much military expansionism is costing them personally, they would never stand for it, and they would force it to end. If people were sufficiently aware of the insanity of stockpiling armageddon weapons on our planet, nuclear weapons would be eliminated everywhere. If people were sufficiently aware of how aggressively and unjustly they are being robbed by the ruling class, they would use the power of their numbers to take back what was stolen from them and create a more equitable system. If people were sufficiently aware of what we are doing to our environment and what will happen to us in the near term if we don't stop, ecocide for profit would cease to be an option. If people were sufficiently aware of how much wealth, information and freedom is being taken from them every day for no other reason than to benefit the powerful, existing power structures would not be permitted to exist any longer. If people were sufficiently aware of the way mass-scale narrative control is being used to manipulate the thoughts they think about their nation and their world, those narratives would no longer be imbued with the power of belief. If people were sufficiently aware of how completely artificial our system of money and economics actually is, they would change it to a system that doesn't let human beings starve and die for not having enough imaginary numbers in their bank account. If people were sufficiently aware of the injustices caused by racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice, and sufficiently aware of the humanity possessed by those who are different from them, all the injustices and inequalities caused by those prejudices would dissipate. If people were sufficiently aware of the cruelty and unsustainability of factory farming, new food systems would quickly replace it. If people were sufficiently aware of the abusive power dynamics in their nation, in their community, in their family, in their interpersonal relationships, those abusive power dynamics would not be permitted to continue. If people were sufficiently aware of their early childhood trauma and the inner conditioning patterns which were set in place within them to cope with it, they would heal that trauma and begin moving harmoniously in the world. If people were sufficiently aware of the way their personal suffering is caused by harmful mental habits arising from false identity constructs, their personal suffering would cease. All our major problems are caused by a lack of awareness and can be solved by an increase in awareness. This is why fighting propaganda, opposing censorship, protecting press freedoms and exposing the truth of what's really going on in our world is so important. It's also why inner work on bringing consciousness to our inner processes is so important. Expanding awareness, both inwardly and outwardly, is the most important thing that a human being can do in this life. If we had such awareness collectively, our few remaining problems would be easy to address. Without a system where all the resources are sucked away from the most needful for the benefit of the most powerful, the sick could be far more effectively cared for, and natural disasters far more efficaciously responded to. If we had sufficient awareness of what's true, in ourselves and in our world, we would have paradise on earth. Psychopathic manipulators would be no more capable of operating in such a world than a predator covered in glowing neon signs and clanging bells would be capable of hunting. All dysfunction would be seen as clearly as a black smudge on a white tile, and addressed just as easily. From there, our potential as a species would be limitless. Caitlin's articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast, throwing some money into her hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying her book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. https://caitlinjohnstone.com	Read
March 7, 2021	The Age of Social Murder by Chris Hedges, Information Clearing House. The ruling elites, despite the accelerating and tangible ecological collapse, mollify us, either by meaningless gestures or denial. The two million deaths that have resulted from the ruling elites mishandling of the global pandemic will be dwarfed by what is to follow. The global catastrophe that awaits us, already baked into the ecosystem from the failure to curb the use of fossil fuels and animal agriculture, presage new, deadlier pandemics, mass migrations of billions of desperate people, plummeting crop yields, mass starvation and systems collapse.  The science that elucidates this social death is known to the ruling elites. The science that warned us of this pandemic, and others that will follow, is known to the ruling elites. The science that shows that a failure to halt carbon emissions will lead to a climate crisis and ultimately the extinction of the human species and most other species is known to the ruling elites. They cannot claim ignorance. Only indifference. The facts are incontrovertible. Each of the last four decades have been hotter than the last. In 2018, the UN International Panel on Climate Change released a special report on the systemic effects of a 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in temperatures. It makes for very grim reading. Soaring temperature rises — we are already at a 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.16 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels — are already baked into the system, meaning that even if we stopped all carbon emission today, we still face catastrophe. Anything above a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius will render the earth unhabitable. The Arctic ice along with the Greenland ice sheet are now expected to melt regardless of how much we reduce carbon emissions. A seven-meter (23-foot) rise in sea level, which is what will take place once the ice is gone, means every town and city on a coast at sea level will have to be evacuated.  Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, whose nonviolent acts of mass civil disobedience offer the last, best chance to save ourselves, lays it out in this video: As the climate crisis worsens, the political constrictions will tighten, making public resistance difficult. We do not live, yet, in the brutal Orwellian state that appears on the horizon, one where all dissidents will suffer the fate of Julian Assange. But this Orwellian state is not far away. This makes it imperative that we act now. The ruling elites, despite the accelerating and tangible ecological collapse, mollify us, either by meaningless gestures or denial. They are the architects of social murder.   Social murder, as Friedrich Engels noted in his 1845 book “The Condition of the Working-Class in England,” one of the most important works of social history, is built into the capitalist system. The ruling elites, Engels writes, those that hold “social and political control,” were aware that the harsh working and living conditions during the industrial revolution doomed workers to “an early and unnatural death:”  “When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.”  — Friedrick Engels, “The Condition of the Working-Class in England” The ruling class devotes tremendous resources to mask this social murder. They control the narrative in the press. They falsify science and data, as the fossil fuel industry has done for decades. They set up committees, commissions and international bodies, such as UN climate summits, to pretend to address the problem. Or they deny, despite the dramatically changing weather patterns, that the problem even exists.  Scientists have long warned that as global temperatures rise, increasing precipitation and heat waves in many parts of the world, infectious diseases spread by animals will plague populations year-round and expand into northern regions. Pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, which has killed approximately 36 million people, the Asian flu, which killed between one and four million, and COVID-19, which has already killed over 2.5 million, will ripple across the globe in ever more virulent strains, often mutating beyond our control. The misuse of antibiotics in the meat industry, which accounts for 80 percent of all antibiotic use, has produced strains of bacteria that are antibiotic resistant and fatal. A modern version of the Black Death, which in the 14th century killed between 75 and 200 million people, wiping out perhaps half of Europe’s population, is probably inevitable as long as the pharmaceutical and medical industries are configured to make money rather than protect and save lives. Even with vaccines, we lack the national infrastructure to distribute them efficiently because profit trumps health. And those in the global south are, as usual, abandoned, as if the diseases that kill them will never reach us. Israel’s decision to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to as many as 19 countries while refusing to vaccinate the 5 million Palestinians living under its occupation is emblematic of the ruling elite’s stunning myopia, not to mention immorality.   What is taking place is not neglect. It is not ineptitude. It is not policyfailure. It is murder. It is murder because it is premeditated. It is murder because a conscious choice was made by the global ruling classes to extinguish life rather than protect it. It is murder because profit, despite the hard statistics, the growing climate disruptions and the scientific modeling, is deemed more important than human life and human survival.  The elites thrive in this system, as long as they serve the dictates of what Lewis Mumford called the “megamachine,” the convergence of science, economy, technics and political power unified into an integrated, bureaucratic structure whose sole goal is to perpetuate itself. This structure, Mumford noted, is antithetical to “life-enhancing values.” But to challenge the megamachine, to name and condemn its death wish, is to be expelled from its inner sanctum. There are, no doubt, some within the megamachine who fear the future, who are perhaps even appalled by the social murder, but they do not want to lose their jobs and their social status to become pariahs.   The massive resources allocated to the military, which when the costs of the Veterans Administration are added to the Department of Defense budget come to $826 billion a year, are the most glaring example of our suicidal folly, symptomatic of all decaying civilizations that squander diminishing resources in institutions and projects that accelerate their decline.   The American military — which accounts for 38 percent of military spending worldwide — is incapable of combating the real existential crisis.  The fighter jets, satellites, aircraft carriers, fleets of warships, nuclear submarines, missiles, tanks and vast arsenals of weaponry are useless against pandemics and the climate crisis. The war machine does nothing to mitigate the human suffering caused by degraded environments that sicken and poison populations or make life unsustainable.  Air pollution already kills an estimated 200,000 Americans a year while children in decayed cities such as Flint, Michigan are damaged for life with lead contamination from drinking water.  The prosecution of endless and futile wars, costing anywhere from $5 to $7 trillion, the maintenance of some 800 military bases in over 70 countries, along with the endemic fraud, waste and mismanagement by the Pentagon at a time when the survival of the species is at stake is self-destructive.  The Pentagon has spent more than $67 billion alone on a ballistic missile defense system that few believe will actually work and billions more on a series of dud weapons systems, including the $22 billion Zumwalt destroyer. And, on top of all this, the U.S. military emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon emissions between 2001 and 2017, twice the annual output of the nation’s passenger vehicles. A decade from now we will look back at the current global ruling class as the most criminal in human history, willfully dooming millions upon millions of people to die, including those from this pandemic, which dwarf the murderous excesses of the killers of the past including the Europeans that carried out the genocide of the indigenous peoples in the Americas, the Nazis that exterminated some 12 million people, the Stalinists or Mao’s Cultural Revolution. This is the largest crime against humanity ever committed. It is being committed in front of us. And, with few exceptions, we are willfully being herded like sheep to the slaughter. It is not that most people have faith in the ruling elites. They know they are being betrayed. They feel vulnerable and afraid. They understand that their misery is unacknowledged and unimportant to the global elites, who have concentrated staggering amounts of wealth and power into the hands of a tiny cabal of rapacious oligarchs.  The rage many feel at being abandoned often expresses itself in a poisoned solidarity. This poisoned solidarity unites the disenfranchised around hate crimes, racism, inchoate acts of vengeance against scapegoats, religious and ethnic chauvinism and nihilistic violence. It fosters crisis cults, such as those built by the Christian fascists, and elevates demagogues such as Donald Trump.  Social divisions benefit the ruling class, which has built media silos that feed packaged hate to competing demographics. The greater the social antagonisms, the less the elites have to fear. If those gripped by poisoned solidarity become numerically superior — nearly half of the American electorate rejects the traditional ruling class and embraces conspiracy theories and a demagogue — the elites will accommodate the new power configuration, which will accelerate the social murder.  The Biden administration will not carry out the economic, political, social or environmental reforms that will save us. The fossil fuel industry will continue to extract oil. The wars will not end. Social inequality will grow. Government control, with its militarized police forces of internal occupation, wholesale surveillance and loss of civil liberties, will expand. New pandemics, along with droughts, wildfires, monster hurricanes, crippling heat waves and flooding, will lay waste to the country as well as a population burdened by a for-profit health care system that is not designed or equipped to deal with a national health crisis. The evil that makes this social murder possible is collective. It is perpetrated by the colorless bureaucrats and technocrats churned out of business schools, law schools, management programs and elite universities. These systems managers carry out the incremental tasks that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death work. They collect, store and manipulate our personal data for digital monopolies and the security and surveillance state. They grease the wheels for ExxonMobil, BP and Goldman Sachs. They write the laws passed by the bought-and-paid-for political class. They pilot the aerial drones that terrorize the poor in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan. They profit from the endless wars. They are the corporate advertisers, public relations specialists and television pundits that flood the airwaves with lies. They run the banks. They oversee the prisons. They issue the forms. They process the papers. They deny food stamps and medical coverage to some and unemployment benefits to others. They carry out the evictions. They enforce the laws and the regulations. They do not ask questions. They live in an intellectual vacuum, a world of stultifying minutia. They are T.S. Eliot’s “the hollow men,” “the stuffed men.” “Shape without form, shade without color,” the poet writes. “Paralyzed force, gesture without motion.” These systems managers made possible the genocides of the past, from the extermination of Native Americans to the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians to the Nazi Holocaust to Stalin’s liquidations. They kept the trains running. They filled out the paperwork. They seized the property and confiscated the bank accounts. They did the processing. They rationed the food. They administered the concentration camps and the gas chambers. They enforced the law. They did their jobs.  These systems managers, uneducated in all but their tiny technical specialty, lack the language and moral autonomy to question the reigning assumptions or structures. Hannah Arendt in “Eichmann in Jerusalem” writes that Adolf Eichmann was motivated by “an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement.” He joined the Nazi Party because it was a good career move. Arendt continued: “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.”  Hannah Arendt, “Eichmann in Jerusalem” The Russian novelist Vasily Grossman in his book “Forever Flowing” observed that “the new state did not require holy apostles, fanatic, inspired builders, faithful, devout disciples. The new state did not even require servants — just clerks.” This metaphysical ignorance fuels social murder. We cannot emotionally absorb the magnitude of the looming catastrophe and therefore do not act.  In Claude Lanzmann’s Holocaust documentary “Shoah,” he interviews Filip Müller, a Czech Jew who survived the liquidations in Auschwitz as a member of the “special detail., ” “One day in 1943 when I was already in Crematorium 5, a train from Bialystok arrived. A prisoner on the ‘special detail’ saw a woman in the ‘undressing room’ who was the wife of a friend of his. He came right out and told her: ‘You are going to be exterminated. In three hours, you’ll be ashes.’ The woman believed him because she knew him. She ran all over and warned to the other women. ‘We’re going to be killed. We’re going to be gassed.’ Mothers carrying their children on their shoulders didn’t want to hear that. They decided the woman was crazy. They chased her away. So, she went to the men. To no avail. Not that they didn’t believe her. They’d heard rumors in the Bialystok ghetto, or in Grodno, and elsewhere. But who wanted to hear that? When she saw that no one would listen, she scratched her whole face. Out of despair. In shock. And she started to scream.   Filip Müller to Claude Lanzmann, “Shoah” How do we resist? Why, if this social murder is inevitable, as I believe it is, do we even fight back? Why not give in to cynicism and despair? Why not withdraw and spend our lives attempting to satiate our private needs and desires? We are all complicit, paralyzed by the overwhelming force of the megamachine and bound to its destructive energy by our allotted slots within its massive machinery.”  Yet, to fail to act, and this means carrying out mass, sustained acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in an attempt to smash the megamachine, is spiritual death. It is to succumb to the cynicism, hedonism and numbness that has turned the systems managers and technocrats that orchestrate this social murder into human cogs. It is to surrender our humanity. It is to become an accomplice. Albert Camus writes that “one of the only coherent philosophical positions is revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his obscurity. It is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. That revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it.”  “A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object,” Camus warns. “But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.”  The capacity to exercise moral autonomy, to refuse to cooperate, to wreck the megamachine, offers us the only possibility left to personal freedom and a life of meaning. Rebellion is its own justification. It erodes, however imperceptibly, the structures of oppression. It sustains the embers of empathy and compassion, as well as justice. These embers are not insignificant. They keep alive the capacity to be human. They keep alive the possibility, however dim, that the forces that are orchestrating our social murder can be stopped. Rebellion must be embraced, finally, not only for what it will achieve, but for what it will allow us to become. In that becoming we find hope. Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. "Source"	Read
March 15 2021	It Is Time To Remove The Debt Barrier ToEconomic Growth. by Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts, Information Clearing House. Out of habit, American economists worry about federal debt. But federal debt can be redeemed by the Federal Reserve printing the money with which to retire the bonds.  The debt problem rests with individuals, companies, and state and local governments.  They have no printing press.  We have explained that the indebtedness of the population means there is little discretionary income with which to drive the economy.  The offshoring of middle class jobs lowered incomes, and after paying debt service—mortgage interest, car payments, credit card interest, student loan debt—Americans’ pockets are empty.   This situation has been worsened by Covid lockdowns.  In the US the federal government has sent out a few Covid payments to help keep people’s heads above water as they face expenses without income.  The financial press refers to these Covid checks as “fiscal stimulus,” but there is no stimulus.  The Covid checks do not come close to replacing the missing wages, salaries and business profits from lockdowns.  Corporations have indebted themselves and impaired their capitalization by borrowing money with which to repurchase their stock. This has built up their debt in the face of stagnant or declining consumer discretionary income.   We propose to deal with the debt crisis by forgiving debts as was done in ancient times.  Our basic premise is that  debts that cannot be paid won’t be. Widespread foreclosures and evictions would further worsen the distribution of income and wealth and further contrain the ability of the economy to grow.  Writing debt down to levels that can be serviced would clear the decks tor a real recovery.  Income that would be siphoned off in debt service would instead be available to purchase new goods and services. A few economists muttered that we were overlooking the “moral hazzard” of absolving people of their debts.  But leaving the economy stagnated in debt is also a moral hazzard. Policymakers did not endorse our proposal, but, in effect, policymakers adopted our policy.  However, instead of forgiving the debt itself, they forgave payment of the debt service.  Individuals and businesses who cannot pay their landlords or lenders cannot be evicted or foreclosed until June.  This doesn’t hurt the lenders or banks, because the loans are not in default, and their balance sheet is not impaired. The banks add the unpaid payments to their assets, and their balance sheets remain sound. When June arrives, the prohibition against eviction and foreclosure will have to be extended as the accrued debt service cannot be paid.  Extending the moratorium on foreclosures and evictions will just build up arrears.  Is the implication a perpetual moratorium? The question is: If policymakers are willing to forgive debt service, why not just forgive the debt.  The latter is neater and clears the decks for an economic renewal. The US economy has been financialized. Debt has been built up without a corresponding gain in productive capital investment in order to carry the mounting debt. In financialized capitalism, the main purpose of bank loans is to refinance existing investments, not to expand productive capacity with which to service the debt.  It is not possible to grow out of debt in a financialized economy, because too much income is used for debt service.  The way to deal with this problem is to write down debts. Michael Hudson is an American economist, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, former Wall Street analyst, political consultant, commentator and journalist. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.	Read
March 20 2021	Global Britain, Global Delusions by Finian Cunningham, Information Clearing House. In a strategic review, the British government says the United States will remain its closest ally because of “shared values” which are allegedly attributed as being democracy, rule of law and human rights. Far more realistic than these panegyrics is the way Britain and the US routinely trash those purported “shared values” by launching illegal wars of aggression (for example, Iraq, Afghanistan); subvert foreign nations for regime change (for example, Syria, Libya); and arm despotic regimes to the teeth which suppress human rights (for example, Saudi Arabia). The 111-page British strategic review makes for painful yet hilarious reading. It is full of delusional self-flattery. Another “shared value” is the way Britain and the US gratuitously label other nations as enemies and security threats. This scaremongering is invoked primarily against Russia and China but also other smaller nations like Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. This preposterous demonization of others is of course a form of psychological projection by the British and American ruling class to distract from the fact they are the biggest security threat to the world. Scaremongering is also an essential precursor for warmongering and the continuance of militarized economies which underpins Anglo-American capitalism. Just imagine if the British and Americans tried to live in peace and cooperation with the rest of the world. Their economies would totally collapse from the absence of militarism and weapons industries. In its so-called strategic review, it is apparent more than ever that the British rulers suffer from delusions of grandeur. Prime Minister Boris Johnson talks fancifully as if Britain is a global dynamo for economic growth and development. No longer content to exaggerate Britain’s international image as “Great Britain”, it is now referred to as “Global Britain”. This is partly about promoting Britain to the rest of the world to make better its post-Brexit isolation from the European Union. And so by talking up its presumed power “to shape the world”, the British ruling class are obliged to pose as flexing muscles. This would explain the policy reversal on decreasing its nuclear arsenal. Britain is now planning to increase its stockpile of nuclear warheads over the next decade from around 180 up to 260. This is in violation of Britain’s obligation to disarm under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Johnson talks about Britain being a “beacon of democracy” to the world when in reality it is a rogue state which is dangerously destabilizing international security by its wanton militarism. Yet the British rulers have the brass neck to accuse Russia and China of jeopardizing global security and to assert that they will “prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon”. On Russia, the British are particularly vociferous, claiming that “Russia will remain the most acute direct threat” to the United Kingdom (Britain’s other fanciful name for itself). The strategic review document states, “we will actively deter and defend against the full spectrum of threats emanating from Russia”. But it does not substantiate what these alleged “full spectrum of threats” from Russia are. For rogue-state Britain it is apparently sufficient to simply make an accusation and then proceed to “justify” plans for increasing its nuclear arsenal. Russia and Iran condemned the British state planners for blatant hypocrisy. So should all other nations. Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, nailed it when she said that Britain’s “imperial ambitions” are based on illusions. It’s as if the arrogant British rulers think they have turned the clock back a 100 years to a time when “the sun never set on their empire”. Even then British power was also over-rated. Today, Britain may have nominally the fifth-biggest economy in the world, but it also is broken-down nation with rampant poverty and inequality. A third of its children struggle with poverty and hunger, and the numbers are increasing. Look at the shambles of its public health service, yet its ruling class is planning to spend £24 billion over the next four years to increase its military forces, including the number of nuclear weapons. The reprehensible and reckless move to increase its nuclear arsenal is an absurd and grotesque waste of public finances. It is criminal in the face of such harrowing social needs among ordinary Britons. But what’s also criminal is that British rulers are undermining global security – all for the vain purpose of posing as a global power instead of actually being a global power. Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.	Read
March 17, 2021	China & Russia Vaccines Defeat Cold War Virus by Finian Cunningham, Information Clearing House. A friend in need is a friend indeed, and several countries which may have previously sniffed at vaccines produced by China and Russia are finding truth in the old adage. China is ramping up supplies of its CoronaVac to Brazil and other Latin American countries where Covid-19 infections are threatening to overwhelm public health services. Brazil has become a new global hotspot for deadly variants of the coronavirus. With nearly 280,000 deaths, the most populous country in Latin America has the second-highest global toll after the United States (533,000). Meanwhile, several European nations are reportedly in discussions to produce Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine after a breakthrough deal last week with Italy – the first member the European Union – to start local production of the Russian jab. Germany, France and Spain are among other EU states considering similar local manufacturing arrangements for Sputnik V. The European need is made all the more acute because of the slow rollout of approved vaccines and recently the pausing of the AstraZeneca jab by several nations owing to concerns about potentially fatal side-effects from blood-clotting. Here’s the thing. China’s and Russia’s vaccines have been shown to be effective against Covid-19 symptoms and safe. The jabs are easily mass produced at an affordable cost compared with Western counterparts, and both China and Russia have said they are willing to provide license agreements for local production which would expedite supply logistics. China has 17 other vaccines reportedly undergoing trial. So far, there appears to be no ill-effects from administering to humans. The global results speak for themselves. Scores of countries have taken orders for the Chinese and Russian shots. Beijing has donated vaccines to over 50 low-income nations. How attitudes have changed. Back in December, a Bloomberg headline stated: “China’s struggling to get the world to trust its Covid vaccines”. Among those expressing disdain previously was the right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who said humans undergoing trials for the Chinese vaccine were “guinea pigs” inferring unsafe risks. Given the crisis that Brazil finds itself in with soaring Covid-19 infections, which critics put down to negligent federal government health policies, Bolsonaro and his cabinet have only been too glad to avail of millions of doses of vaccine from China. So much so that the Brazilian president has scrubbed the earlier antagonistic rhetoric towards Chinese telecoms giant Huawei which he had adopted in deference to Washington’s hostile China policy. Indeed, Huawei is now being considered by the Brazilian government for 5G modernization of its telecoms network. No doubt, a sign of gratitude that China has come to the Covid rescue. Similarly, Europe was rather sniffy in its attitude towards Russia’s Sputnik V. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council chief Charles Michel have insinuated that China and Russia are motivated by “propaganda objectives” above medical and public health interests. Sputnik V was the first government-registered vaccine anywhere in the    world as of last August. Yet it is still awaiting formal approval by the European Medicines Agency, even though it has been proven in large-scale trials to be highly effective and safe to administer among all age groups. In any case, regardless of official approval in Brussels, several European countries have gone ahead with bilateral agreements to order Russian and Chinese vaccines. They include Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic as well as non-EU state Serbia and other Balkan nations. Due to its rapid and rigorous early management of the pandemic, through quarantine and contact tracing, China has succeeded in eradicating the disease. Life among its 1.4 billion population has returned to pre-pandemic normalcy. China’s death toll stands at around 4,600 – less than that of the United States or Europe by a factor of more than 100-fold. Beijing says it wants to rebuild the global economy from renewed emphasis on trade, investment and cooperative partnerships as part of its Belt and Road Initiative of new silk routes. An essential part of realizing that vision requires defeating the Covid-19 pandemic collectively in every region of the world. China and Russia’s outlook contrasts with the “vaccine nationalism” of the United States and Europe which has seen these regions hoard millions of surplus or unused doses. Both China and Russia know that the only way for the planet to recover from this once-in-a-century pandemic is for all nations to unite in solidarity and to share scientific achievements. Public health before private profit is the watchword. In this situation, a Cold War mentality of viewing others as enemies is an odious obstacle to progress. It’s a vile, futile plaything of ideological elites. It is becoming clear that nations, media and politicians who are infected with such a political virus are an anachronism. Common human need is driving international relations of solidarity. Cynics in the West may begrudge China and Russia reaping the success of “vaccine diplomacy”. Others will view it more generously as those two nations showing responsible and ethical leadership to pull humanity out of a global crisis for the greater good. Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.	Read
March 22, 2021	China-Russia partnership 'key to balance US hegemony' by Yang Sheng, Li Xuanmin and Bai Yunyi, Information Clearing House. Promoting settlement of local currency to replace US dollar 'important for risk avoidance'. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in China for his two-day visit on Monday, two days after the China-US meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, Chinese experts said it's totally normal for the two like-minded partners to coordinate crucial information, but it doesn't mean the two major powers are forming an anti-US alliance because this would be unnecessary and outdated.  Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Lavrov in Guilin, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, a popular tourist site, on Monday. The atmosphere of the meeting was different from the intense China-US Anchorage meeting. Lavrov enjoyed a boat ride on Lijiang River, a beautiful scenic spot, before he arrived at the venue for his meeting with Wang. Both sides have informed each other about the latest development of their ties with the US. The two foreign ministers urged the US to rethink the damage it has caused to the international peace. The two foreign ministers said the US should stop its bullying activities, stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs, and stop forming cliques to confront other countries. All countries should follow the principle of the UN Charter, to boost democratization of international relations.   The two foreign ministers also discussed the Iranian nuclear deal, Afghan peace process, Myanmar situation, Syria, climate change and UN reform, according to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Wang also greeted Lavrov with an elbow bump, which replaced a handshake amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but the elbow greetings didn't happen between Chinese and US chief diplomats in Anchorage. Some Chinese netizens guess that choosing Guilin to receive Lavrov and the Russian delegation is because "Guilin" in Chinese is homophonic to the meaning of "honorable neighbor." The development of China-Russia ties does not target any particular country, and the bilateral relationship is open and aboveboard, unlike the cliques with hidden conspiracies seen in a few other countries, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Monday. Spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to a question on whether Lavrov's visit to China is an intentional arrangement made after the China-US high-level strategic dialogue in Alaska. Chinese analysts said China and Russia will exchange their opinions and stances, as well as concerns on many international issues, and will cooperate on diplomacy, politics and security, and China's recent dialogue with the US is one of the topics that both sides share interests.  The more unstable the world is, the greater the need for China-Russia cooperation to continue, Hua noted. "China and Russia, standing shoulder to shoulder with close cooperation and firm opposition to hegemony and bullying, have been a pillar of world peace and stability," she said. After the Alaska meeting with the US, China on Monday not only engaged with Russia but also made an exchange with North Korea, which also pays high attention to US acts and policies on foreign affairs. China has reaffirmed its stance to uphold the political settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue, and to preserve peace and stability on the peninsula. Chinese analysts said the US' policy on the Korean Peninsula and its actions will bring direct and crucial impact to many countries in the region, and when the US treats these countries as threats, the US is also becoming a treat to them, and China, as a trustworthy and powerful partner of these countries, has the responsibility to make sure its partners or neighbors with close ties are informed about its significant dialogue with the US, which had touched upon many international issues. This shows that it's unrealistic for the US to dominate the Korean Peninsula issue by engaging only with its ally South Korea, they said. Anti-US alliance?   Highlights of China-Russia strategic partnership: -Nearly 30 meetings between the two countries' leaders since 2013 -Bilateral trade volume exceeded $10b in 2020 -A joint international scientific research station on the moon to be built 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation, and both sides have agreed to renew the treaty, with the principle of non-alliance.  Ji Zhiye, former head of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Monday that the two countries have agreed to renew the treaty, which means they don't want to sign a new treaty of alliance, so the West should not be oversensitive of the China-Russia strategic partnership. Although the two countries are not going to align with each other, China and Russia still need to deal with their common threats together based on the flexible partnership, as the US has created many challenges, such as sanctions and interference into regional affairs, to interrupt the development of the two countries, experts said. In a group interview with Chinese media ahead of his visit, Lavrov called for strengthening the autonomy of the science and technology industry, promoting the settlement of the local currency and other international currencies that can replace the US dollar and gradually move away from the Western-controlled international payment system, so that the risks posed by US or Western sanctions against Russia and China can be reduced. "Russia's suggestion will receive a positive response from China as both sides have already realized the huge risk of overreliance on the US dollar and Western-controlled payment system" since the financial crisis in 2008, and the latest massive quantitative easing done by the US for boosting its own economy also increased such concern, said Yang Jin, an expert on China-Russia relations with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Promoting the settlement of local currency is a trend for the economies worldwide, and when the US withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal, the EU core members have also considered to establish a new payment system to bypass SWIFT controlled by the US, Yang said. "Washington has been abusing SWIFT to arbitrarily sanction any country at will, which sparked global dissatisfaction. If China and Russia could work together to challenge the dollar hegemony, a laundry list of countries would echo the call and join the new system," Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times on Monday. As the payment system is linked to the trading system, Dong suggested that the new payment system use the yuan as the clearing currency.  A number of Russian banks have joined the China International Payment System to facilitate bilateral trade settlements, the Russia Today reported.  "At first, the system could push forward a trial run in Central Asian countries and countries and regions along the routes of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As its influence grows, the system is poised to draw in other countries in Europe and ASEAN," Dong said.  But he cautioned that Washington may obstruct the move by making SWIFT "exclusive," meaning that the US will force countries already joining SWIFT to take sides. Complementary ties Wang said at a press conference earlier this month that China will cooperate with Russia to fight "color revolutions" and disinformation to better safeguard their national security and political security. Chinese experts said these threats are also mostly incited or created by Western countries, especially the US, and they are not just targeting China and Russia, but also their neighbors and partners. Yang said when China tried to promote its cooperation with other countries along the routes of the BRI, one of the major concerns is that the projects with huge inputs could be ruined by just one "color revolution" or political turmoil within its partner country. Russia is also suffering from such a problem, the similar challenges happen frequently around Russia in regions like Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which seriously affects Russia's interests, experts said. Although the size of the Russian economy is relatively not big, it has inherited the advantages in international security and military from the former Soviet Union, so it has a significant influence on intelligence or military in many regions like the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe, which are all key regions of the BRI proposed by China, Yang said, noting that cooperation with Russia could ensure the safety of Chinese investments and the development of many countries in those regions, "to protect them from the harm of the 'color revolutions' instigated and backed by the US," he said. Not just in diplomacy and security, China and Russia trade ties will also be boosted amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the US sanctions, said Xiao Bin, an associate research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies. He predicted that China-Russia trade will continue to rise in the next few years, with the services trade taking the lead.	Read
May 03, 2021	Putin rewrites the law of the geopolitical jungle by Pepe Escobar, Information Clearing House. Putin’s address to the Russian Federal Assembly – a de facto State of the Nation – was a judo move that left Atlanticist sphere hawks particularly stunned. The “West” was not even mentioned by name. Only indirectly, or via a delightful metaphor, Kipling’s Jungle Book. Foreign policy was addressed only at the end, almost as an afterthought. For the best part of an hour and a half, Putin concentrated on domestic issues, detailing a series of policies that amount to the Russian state helping those in need – low income families, children, single mothers, young professionals, the underprivileged – with, for instance, free health checks all the way to the possibility of an universal income in the near future. Of course he would also need to address the current, highly volatile state of international relations. The concise manner he chose to do it, counter-acting the prevailing Russophobia in the Atlanticist sphere, was quite striking. First, the essentials. Russia’s policy “is to ensure peace and security for the well-being of our citizens and for the stable development of our country.” Yet if “someone does not want to…engage in dialogue, but chooses an egoistic and arrogant tone, Russia will always find a way to stand up for its position.” He singled out “the practice of politically motivated, illegal economic sanctions” to connect it to “something much more dangerous”, and actually rendered invisible in the Western narrative: “the recent attempt to organize a coup d’etat in Belarus and the assassination of that country’s president.” Putin made sure to stress, “all boundaries have been crossed”. The plot to kill Lukashenko was unveiled by Russian and Belarusian intel – which detained several actors backed, who else, US intel. The US State Department predictably denied any involvement. Putin: “It is worth pointing to the confessions of the detained participants in the conspiracy that a blockade of Minsk was being prepared, including its city infrastructure and communications, the complete shutdown of the entire power grid of the Belarusian capital. This, incidentally means preparations for a massive cyber-attack.” And that leads to a very uncomfortable truth: “Apparently, it’s not for no reason that our Western colleagues have stubbornly rejected numerous proposals by the Russian side to establish an international dialogue in the field of information and cyber-security.” “Asymmetric, swift and harsh” Putin remarked how to “attack Russia” has become “a sport, a new sport, who makes the loudest statements.” And then he went full Kipling: “Russia is attacked here and there for no reason. And of course, all sorts of petty Tabaquis [jackals] are running around like Tabaqui ran around Shere Khan [the tiger] – everything is like in Kipling’s book – howling along and ready to serve their sovereign. Kipling was a great writer”. The – layered – metaphor is even more startling as it echoes the late 19th century geopolitical Great Game between the British and Russian empires, of which Kipling was a protagonist. Once again Putin had to stress that “we really don’t want to burn any bridges. But if someone perceives our good intentions as indifference or weakness and intends to burn those bridges completely or even blow them up, he should know that Russia’s response will be asymmetric, swift and harsh”. So here’s the new law of the geopolitical jungle – backed by Mr. Iskander, Mr. Kalibr, Mr. Avangard, Mr. Peresvet, Mr. Khinzal, Mr. Sarmat, Mr. Zircon and other well-respected gentlemen, hypersonic and otherwise, later complimented on the record. Those who poke the Bear to the point of threatening “the fundamental interests of our security will regret what has been done, as they have regretted nothing for a very long time.” The stunning developments of the past few weeks – the China-US Alaska summit, the Lavrov-Wang Yi summit in Guilin, the NATO summit, the Iran-China strategic deal, Xi Jinping’s speech at the Boao forum – now coalesce into a stark new reality: the era of a unilateral Leviathan imposing its iron will is over. For those Russophobes who still haven’t got the message, a cool, calm and collected Putin was compelled to add, “clearly, we have enough patience, responsibility, professionalism, self-confidence, self-assurance in the correctness of our position and common sense when it comes to making any decisions. But I hope that no one will think about crossing Russia’s so-called red lines. And where they run, we determine ourselves in each specific case.” Back to realpolitik, Putin once again had to stress the “special responsibility” of the “five nuclear states” to seriously discuss “issues related to strategic armament”. It’s an open question whether the Biden-Harris administration – behind which stand a toxic cocktail of neo-cons and humanitarian imperialists – will agree. Putin: “The goal of such negotiations could be to create an environment of conflict-free coexistence based on equal security, covering not only strategic weapons such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and submarines, but also, I would like to emphasize, all offensive and defensive systems capable of solving strategic tasks, regardless of their equipment.” As much as Xi’s address to the Boao forum was mostly directed to the Global South, Putin highlighted how “we are expanding contacts with our closest partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the allies of the Collective Security Treaty Organization”, and extolled “joint projects in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union”, billed as “practical tools for solving the problems of national development.” In a nutshell: integration in effect, following the Russian concept of “Greater Eurasia”. “Tensions skirting wartime levels” Now compare all of the above with the White House Executive Order (EO) declaring a “national emergency” to “deal with the Russian threat”. This is directly connected to President Biden – actually the combo telling him what to do, complete with earpiece and teleprompter – promising Ukraine’s President Zelensky that Washington would “take measures” to support Kiev’s wishful thinking of retaking Donbass and Crimea. There are several eyebrow-raising issues with this EO. It denies, de facto, to any Russian national the full rights to their US property. Any US resident may be accused of being a Russian agent engaged in undermining US security. A sub-sub paragraph (C), detailing “actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the United States or abroad”, is vague enough to be used to eliminate any journalism that supports Russia’s positions in international affairs. Purchases of Russian OFZ bonds have been sanctioned, as well as one of the companies involved in the production of the Sputnik V vaccine. Yet the icing on this sanction cake may well be that from now on all Russian citizens, including dual citizens, may be barred from entering US territory except via a rare special authorization on top of the ordinary visa. The Russian paper Vedomosti has noted that in such paranoid atmosphere the risks for large companies such as Yandex or Kaspersky Lab are significantly increasing. Still, these sanctions have not been met with surprise in Moscow. The worst is yet to come, according to Beltway insiders: two packages of sanctions against Nord Stream 2 already approved by the US Department of Justice. The crucial point is that this EO de facto places anyone reporting on Russia’s political positions as potentially threatening “American democracy”. As top political analyst Alastair Crooke has remarked, this is a “procedure usually reserved for citizens of enemy states during times of war”. Crooke adds, “US hawks are upping the ante fiercely against Moscow. Tensions and rhetoric are skirting wartime levels.” It’s an open question whether Putin’s State of the Nation will be seriously examined by the toxic lunatic combo of neocons and humanitarian imperialists bent on simultaneously harassing Russia and China. But the fact is something extraordinary has already started to happen: a “de-escalation” of sorts. Even before Putin’s address, Kiev, NATO and the Pentagon apparently got the message implicit in Russia moving two armies, massive artillery batteries and airborne divisions to the borders of Donbass and to Crimea – not to mention top naval assets moved from the Caspian to the Black Sea. NATO could not even dream of matching that. Facts on different grounds speak volumes. Both Paris and Berlin were terrified of a possible Kiev clash directly against Russia, and lobbied furiously against it, bypassing the EU and NATO. Then someone – it might have been Jake Sullivan – must have whispered on Crash Test Dummy’s earpiece that you don’t go around insulting the head of a nuclear state and expect to keep your global “credibility”. So after that by now famous “Biden” phone call to Putin came the invitation to the climate change summit, in which any lofty promises are largely rhetorical, as the Pentagon will continue to be the largest polluting entity on planet Earth. So Washington may have found a way to keep at least one avenue of dialogue open with Moscow. At the same time Moscow has no illusions whatsoever that the Ukraine/Donbass/Crimea drama is over. Even if Putin did not mention it in the State of the Nation. And even if Defense Minister Shoigu has ordered a de-escalation. The always inestimable Andrei Martyanov has gleefully noted the “cultural shock when Brussels and D.C. started to suspect that Russia doesn’t ‘want’ Ukraine. What Russia wants is for this country to rot and implode without excrement from this implosion hitting Russia. West’s paying for the clean up of this clusterf**k is also in Russian plans for Ukrainian Bantustan.” The fact that Putin did not even mention Bantustan in his speech corroborates this analysis. As far as “red lines” are concerned, Putin’s implicit message remains the same: a NATO base on Russia’s western flank simply won’t be tolerated. Paris and Berlin know it. The EU is in denial. NATO will always refuse to admit it. We always come back to the same crucial issue: whether Putin will be able, against all odds, to pull a combined Bismarck-Sun Tzu move and build a lasting German-Russian entente cordiale (and that’s quite far from an “alliance’). Nord Stream 2 is an essential cog in the wheel – and that’s what’s driving Washington hawks crazy. Whatever happens next, for all practical purposes Iron Curtain 2.0 is now on, and it simply won’t go away. There will be more sanctions. Everything was thrown at the Bear short of a hot war. It will be immensely entertaining to watch how, and via which steps, Washington will engage on a “de-escalation and diplomatic process” with Russia. The Hegemon may always find a way to deploy a massive P.R. campaign and ultimately claim a diplomatic success in “dissolving” the impasse. Well, that certainly beats a hot war. Otherwise, lowly Jungle Book adventurers have been advised: try anything funny and be ready to meet “asymmetric, swift and harsh”. Pepe Escobar is correspondent-at-large at Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook.-	Read
2021	The time has come to do away with medieval and colonial habits by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Information Clearing House. Remarks at the meeting of the UN Security Council, “Maintenance of international peace and security: Upholding multilateralism and the United Nations-centred international system,” held via videoconference, Moscow, May 7, 2021 May 09, 2021 "Information Clearing House" -  First of all, let me thank Mr Wang Yi, State Councillor and Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China, for organising today’s debates. Maintaining multilateralism and the UN-centred international system is as topical as ever and demands the UN Security Council’s constant attention. Today the world finds itself in a critical stage of development. The coronavirus pandemic has posed a grave challenge to everyone without exception. Normal life has been completely upended. It is difficult to predict the long-term or deferred consequences of the crisis, although we can see some positive trends thanks to the massive deployment of coronavirus vaccines. The pandemic broke out in a world that was already far from perfect. In recent years, we have seen growing international tensions, as well as escalating regional conflicts and cross-border challenges and threats. The entire architecture of global governance created after the Second World War is being tested. It is clear that the prospects of the international community’s sustainable and predictable development are directly connected with our ability to find effective solutions to common problems and our readiness to exercise collective leadership in order for true multilateralism to prevail. Russia, like the majority of countries, is convinced that such work must be carried out solely on the basis of universally recognised norms of international law. The United Nations must serve as the key platform for coordinating efforts: it is the backbone of the modern global order, where all independent states are represented. Today, its unique legitimacy and unique capabilities are especially needed. The core tenets of international law enshrined in the UN Charter have withstood the test of time. Russia calls on all states to unconditionally follow the purposes and principles of the Charter as they chart their foreign policies, respecting the sovereign equality of states, not interfering in their internal affairs, settling disputes by political and diplomatic means, and renouncing the threat or use of force. This is especially important at the current stage in the difficult process of forming an international multipolar system. At a time when new centres of economic growth, financial and political influence are gaining strength, it is necessary to preserve the internationally recognised legal basis for building a stable balance of interests that meets the new realities. Unfortunately, not all of our partners are driven by the imperative to work in good faith to promote comprehensive multilateral cooperation. Realising that it is impossible to impose their unilateral or bloc priorities on other states within the framework of the UN, the leading Western countries have tried to reverse the process of forming a polycentric world and slow down the course of history. Toward this end, the concept of the rules-based order is advanced as a substitute for international law. It should be noted that international law already is a body of rules, but rules agreed at universal platforms and reflecting consensus or broad agreement. The West’s goal is to oppose the collective efforts of all members of the world community with other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else. We only see harm in such actions that bypass the UN and seek to usurp the only decision-making process that can claim global relevance. The well-known idea to convene a Summit for Democracy proposed by the US Administration is in the same vein. The establishment of a new club based on interests, with a clearly ideological nature, has the potential to further inflame international tensions and deepen dividing lines in a world that needs a unifying agenda more than ever. Of course, the list of democracies to be invited to the summit will be determined by the United States. Another initiative with the goal of global leadership that bypasses the UN is the French and German idea to create an Alliance for Multilateralism. What could be more natural then discussing the tasks of strengthening multilateralism at the UN? However, Berlin and Paris think differently and issue joint documents declaring that “the European Union is the cornerstone of the multilateral international system” and promote the conclusions of the Council of the European Union under the title “The central role of the European Union and European institutions in promoting multilateralism.” Presumptuous, you might say. The EU does not think so and declares its own exceptionalism despite all its invocations of equality and brotherhood. By the way, as soon as we suggest discussing the current state of democracy not just within states but on the international stage with our Western colleagues, they lose interest in the conversation. New ambitious initiatives to create narrow partnerships are emerging all the time within the Alliance for Multilateralism, on issues that are already being discussed at the UN or its specialised agencies, for example, on cyber security (with 65 member countries), respect for the international humanitarian law (43 member countries), the Information and Democracy Partnership (over 30 countries), etc. This also reveals the West’s true attitude toward multilateralism and the UN, which they do not regard as a universal format for developing solutions acceptable to everyone, but in the context of their claims to superiority over everyone else, who must accept what is required of them. Another example of the dictatorial methods introduced by the West is the practice of imposing unilateral sanctions without any international and legal grounds, with the sole purpose of punishing “undesirable regimes” or sidelining competitors. During the pandemic, such restrictions have limited the capacity of a whole range of developing countries to counter the spread of the infection. Despite UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s call to suspend such unilateral sanctions during the pandemic, we mostly see them becoming harsher. We believe such efforts to impose totalitarianism in global affairs to be unacceptable, yet we see it more and more from our Western colleagues, above all the United States, the European Union and other allies, who reject all principles of democracy and multilateralism on the global stage. As if to say, either it’s our way, or there will be repercussions. It is striking that Western leaders, while openly undermining international law, do not hesitate to argue that the main task of world politics should be to counter the attempts of Russia and China to “change the rules-based order.” Such statements were made the other day following the G7 ministerial meeting in London. In other words, there has already been a substitution of concepts: the West is no longer concerned with the norms of international law and now requires everyone to follow its rules and observe its order. What’s more, US representatives freely admit that the USA and Great Britain have had the biggest hand in shaping these rules. I am not saying all of this to ratchet up the confrontational rhetoric or advance an accusatory agenda. I am simply stating facts. But if we all support multilateralism in word, let us honestly search for ways to ensure that there is fairness in deed, without attempts to prove one’s superiority or infringe on another’s rights. I hope that this approach to maintaining multilateralism and the UN-centred system will guide the activities of the UN Secretary-General and his team. I am convinced that the time has come to do away with medieval and colonial habits and recognise the reality of today’s interconnected and interdependent world. Honest and mutually respectful cooperation based on equal partnership between all states, guided by pragmatism and devoid of any ideology or politicisation, is what is needed now. It is the only way to improve the atmosphere in the world and ensure predictability in the advancement of the human race. That is especially true of such global challenges as the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of WMDs, climate change, new infectious diseases, and protecting human rights, starting with the most important one – the right to life. I agree with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who stressed recently that no country can overcome such global threats to the lives of our citizens alone, not even the United States. The permanent members of the UN Security Council are called on to play a key role in fostering open and direct dialogue about the most pressing problems of our time. According to the UN Charter, they bear special responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. President of Russia Vladimir Putin proposed convening a summit with the leaders of the five permanent members. We hope to make this idea a reality once the epidemiological situation in the world stabilises. In conclusion I would like to emphasise that the UN, as the main multilateral platform, must keep pace with changes on the global stage. The organisation must constantly adapt to ever-changing conditions, while continuing to fully respect the division of labour between the main UN Charter bodies and maintaining the support of all the member states. At every stage of change, our actions must be measured by the improvements made to the United Nations’ real-world effectiveness. Russia stands ready to continue working constructively with all partners who share these approaches in order to bolster the authority and fully unlock the potential of the UN as the true centre of multilateralism. Thank you for your attention.	Read
May 09, 2021	Victory’s Test of Time by Finian Cunningham, Information Clearing House. The Russian people have every right to proudly proclaim victory over Nazi Germany and fascism in Europe. Every year, celebrations of Victory Day remain as vibrant as ever. And for good reason. This weekend marks the 76th anniversary of the Nazi defeat on May 9, 1945. Victory parades are held all across Russia with the most splendid display of honor in Moscow’s Red Square.  What is rather telling is how commemorations in the United States and Britain have become relatively dimmed over time. Every year there seems to be less importance given to the anniversary. Why is that? In Western news media, there are even reminder articles about the history of Victory Day and why events are held to mark the occasion.  The contrast with the vibrant and dedicated celebrations in Russia is down to one main fact: it was the Russian people and the Soviet Red Army that were the main victors over the Nazi regime. It is crucial to reiterate that and to never lose sight of the historical truth because Western politicians and media would have us believe otherwise.  The Soviet Union’s allies during World War II, the US and Britain, played a role in defeating Nazi Germany, but that role was secondary in the achievement. Put in another way: essentially, the defeat of the Third Reich would not have happened without the Red Army hammering the eastern front all the way to Hitler’s Berlin bunker. Whereas the Western allies were more auxiliary in the victory. It was the Hammer and Sickle that flew over the smoldering Reich Chancellery not the Stars and Stripes nor the Union Jack.  © Sputnik / Vladimir Grebnev The Banner of Victory on the Reichstag building in Berlin, May 1, 1945. In short, it was the Soviet people who liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny and fascism. It was the Soviet people who largely brought an end to the infernal death camps.  Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.	Read
Febryary 2, 2021	Four Intersecting Pandemics Threaten Continuation of Life by Irwin Jerome , in Climate Change, Countercurrents.org. AN OVER-HEATED PLANET, UNCONTROLLED HUMAN POPULATION & COVID-19 A triad of intersecting world-wide pandemics simultaneously threatening humanity today are the end results of its own insatiable greedy human desire for endless, unchecked growth. Ugly, profit-based, commercial development, unimaginative high-rise towers or mega-social housing projects continue to destroy everything in their wake in an impossible attempt to try to accommodate the out-of-control millions of human refugees, of one sort or another, who continue to everywhere spread like a deadly virus. The simultaneously-disastrous spreading effects of an out-of-control over-heated planet, with its own endless hosts of mutant variants, each as potentially ugly and menacing as the others before it, continue to adversely impact upon the earth’s flora and fauna. A fourth worldwide pandemic involves the gradual deterioration and loss of democratic principles and rules of law. This combined quartet of pandemics is what the human race now faces in kind because of the particular choice of moral universes it has chosen to create for itself. In the process, a common casualty of this often is the demise of the principles of democracy and democracy itself.   Such principles either begin or end with how much real democracy exists at the local level of every community and the humans who inhabit them, as well as how much latitude and control they collectively have over their ultimate destiny and extent to which they are externally-driven by either the market forces of large entities like Amazon and Facebook, or more local outside development interests, rather than each community’s own collective existential sense of itself and reason for being. THE CAUSE & EFFECTS OF OUR OVER-HEATED PLANET EARTH As the Earth becomes ever-hotter with each passing year; the ever-expanding populations of human societies and cultures, combined with the ever-evolving mutations of Covid-19 viruses; continue to meld into a deadly Mega-Pandemic cocktail mix, none of which show any signs of diminishment or lessening in their intensity. As a result, the consequent accumulative effects of Global Warming have now simply led to long-dormant bacteria and viruses, trapped, for countless centuries, deep within glaciers and layers of permafrost to become revived and awakened as the Earth’s climate continues to heat up. Thus, long hidden viruses like Covid-19 and their endless variety of mutant variants are more and more in the ascendancy. They will only continue to do so the warmer the Earth becomes, with the obvious consequences too frightful to contemplate. Throughout human history it has been a constant race against time between humanity’s conscious awareness of itself as a species and why the species ultimately is here on earth beyond its basic biological drive for survival and self-aggrandizement. However, as human society, as some would say, ‘has become more intelligent and sophisticated’, with the passage of the species mental and intellectual development to so proudly travel to far distant places, like Planet Mars and beyond, there are those who would otherwise contend that as time progresses, humanity’s societies and cultures, in the main, instead have only become more stupid and unsophisticated’, especially in matters of life that really count, such as simply spiritually and materially caring for one another as fellow beings, as well as all their surrounding planetary lifeforms alike, as if it were the actual sacred duty to do so that it is. Allowing Global Warming to continue, virtually unabated, while the debate rages on as to whether humans need ever bigger and more flash SUV’s, or more and more fossil fuelled products or less of them all to reverse it, is one of those as yet still unanswered seminal questions, towards which modern society remains all but at sea to markedly do anything meaningful about as it continues to primarily allow, willy-nilly, its myopic masculine, hegemonial-corporate leaders to continue to basically rule, as they see fit, the course and direction of all life on the planet. The end result is that basic human greed that drives the species continues to facilitate these aggressive, disruptive planetary forces. ONE LOCAL PERSPECTIVE OF HOW THESE INTERSECTING PANDEMICS CONTINUE TO SPREAD   At the risk of daring to state for the record yet another monotonous ‘Let Dead Dogs Lie’, ‘Sour Grapes’ footnote observation about the typical kind of endless commercial development and human expansion that continues to happen everywhere on the planet, some still more expansive commentary must be made here about how the larger scale human and environmental issues of our times always get boiled down and translated at the local level; in this case on British Columbia’s North Shore in Canada, and more specifically in the tiny Lower Capilano Community where this writer resides. In this case, they pertain to a local Lower Capilano/Lower Pemberton green belt tree-cutting issue incident whose lack of ultimate resolution, over the years, from the perspective of some of its community leaders own long-range vision for itself, has come to symbolize, as it always does in every community in Canada, if not the world, the wide gap that perpetually exists between direct community involvement in the health and welfare of the life of their community and that of outsiders who always have a far different goal and perspective in mind. How it directly relates to the overall lofty issues and concerns already mentioned, that one could characterize as ‘the ultimate destiny of life’ that surrounds one’s self, family and neighbors, pertains to the same unresolved, always existant, universal issues of inexorable growth, development and destruction of the natural world. In the specific case of Lower Capilano, it has to do with the original negotiations and dialogue that once-upon-a-time occurred or didn’t occur between members of the then local Lions Gate/Lower Capilano/Norgate/Lower Pemberton home owner/resident associations and their mayor and council politicians over the type/size/quality/extent of commercial, residential and natural green belt development that ultimately was or wasn’t going to become a future reality in and along the nearby Marine Drive/Capilano Rd traffic corridors and surrounding communities; more specifically over what then was the envisioned concept of what was being called the Marine Drive/Capilano Rd High-Rise Village Plan that outside developer interests and politicians alike were heralding at the time as a soon to become an absolutely world-class, singularly-emblematic, ‘Gateway To The North Shore’. In the minds of the leaders among the local District home owner/residents and their representative associations, as well as their counterparts located within the adjoining North Vancouver City itself, they already could nervously see, from their unique local vantage points, yet another ‘shuck and drive’ spiel that was being put to them and what, in the end, was inexorably going to happen to life on the North Shore as they knew and loved it. Reality over the span of years that since have followed have shown that what eventuated has indeed been far less ‘world-class’ or ’emblematic’ then what originally was envisioned by the local people themselves; especially among those who were committed to addressing a wide array of growth issues affecting everything from mega-commercial and high-rise development and expansion to out-of-control climate crisis intervention and sensitive, healthy management of the community’s ‘Bowser Trail’ Green Belt borders along its residential area. What was conceivable back then as well as even now continues to remain markedly different, if not at odds, with what could be called the hegemonic masculine perspectives of what too many local and offshore developers, corporate investors, city planners and the like, back then continue to have locked into their mindset as to where the evolutionary direction of the North Shore, like it or not, must inexorably go. The upshot of it all years later, as all the proverbial dust still continues to settle, is that the reality of the mega development project that originally involved the Marine Drive-Capilano Rd corridor in question still remains in process of development, and, as a result, the legacy and still unknown ramifications of so much unwanted, excess development will inexorably demand the eventual need to create yet another third major bridge crossing from the North Shore into Vancouver, along with the consequent further spread of even more high-rise density, and elaborate traffic egress systems on and off the North Shore. “There goes the Neighbourhood”, as the old saying goes. These major changes to future life on the North Shore, compared to how it once was lived by the local Squamish First Nation people and those early pioneers from other lands who clamored to their shores for the same pristine, untrammeled beauty, were significantly altered back then, when DNV politicians and planners, impatient with the dissenting voices of too many local people who had a very different alternative vision of what the North Shore’s indigenous beauty and untrammeled life still could conceivably become, were essentially ‘cut out of the loop’. Without any fanfare or District-wide community dialogue, debate, or so much as a by-your-leave, the progressive concept of what back then were local community Official Community Plans (OCP’s), that were the product of years of extensive local resident participation, visionary-imagination and direct involvement, along with a lot of blood, sweat and tears, were simply unilaterally, ruthlessly abolished by the politicians, with the single stroke of a pen. It was as if at the time the powers-that-be were officially saying to we residents, “You and your perspectives don’t really count in the same way any more. We will now run everything the way we see fit.” THIS IS HOW REAL DEMOCRACY SILENTLY SUCCUMBS WITH BARELY A WHIMPER What continues to happen in places like British Columbia’s North Shore, as it does everywhere else to grass-roots democracy on a seminal scale in places like Lower Capilano, is small potatoes compared to what continues to happen to the greater demise of democracy and more sweeping and complex, violent reactions to its loss on a larger scale in places like China, Hong Kong, Russia, and the United States Such violent reactions world-wide could be characterized as yet still another long-standing horrific, unchecked, pandemic – A Democratic Pandemic – that continues to sweep through human civilization. One salient case in point is the violent protests and attacks that occurred in the U.S. Capitol in Washington. D.C.. One could simply characterize all such events, whether at a simple local level or more complex national or international level, as microcosms of the macrocosm. Another upshot of all the constant political maneuvering and conflicted visions of what life could be and still become, that continues unabated at whatever planetary level of human activity, is that direct, democratic, activist involvement in the future destined course of life, be it on Canada’s North Shore or the Planet at large, is continually discouraged by the powers-that-be; who seek to replace these democratic longings with ever more centralized, distant and aloof autocratic and authoritarian forms of governmental rule, controlled less and less by the directly impacted-upon local people themselves, and more by a plethora of Napoleon, Hitler or Trump-like megalomaniacal forces of visionless change, whether welcomed or not by the people themselves. The rest is history, as yet another old saying goes. Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American writer who, for decades, has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by excessive mega-development and host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a spiritual odyssey among the native peoples of North America that has led to numerous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & the U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; the many violations constantly being waged by industrial-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul	Read
March 4, 2021	The Origin of the Northern Freeze by Dr Andrew Glikson , in Climate Change, Countercurrents.org. Warnings by leading climate scientists regarding the high sensitivity of the atmosphere in response to abrupt compositional changes, such as near-doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations, are now manifest: According to Wallace Broecker, (the “father” of climate science) “The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts to even small nudges, and humans have already given the climate a substantial nudge”. As stated by James Zachos, “The Paleocene hot spell should serve as a reminder of the unpredictable nature of climate”. As snowstorms the “Beast from the East” (2018) and “Storm Darcy” (2021) sweep the northern continents, reaching Britain and as far south as Texas and Greece, those who still question the reality and consequences of global climate change, including in governments, may rejoice as if they have a new argument to question global warming. However, as indicated by the science, these fronts result from a weakened circum-Arctic jet stream boundary due to decreased temperature polarity between the Arctic Circle and high latitude zones in Europe, Russia and North America. The reduced contrast allows migration of masses of cold Arctic air southward and of tropical air northward across the weakened jet stream boundary, indicating a fundamental shift in the global climate pattern (Figure 1).   Figure 1. (A and B) Extensions from the Arctic polar zone into North America and Eutope; (C) weakening of the Arctic jet stream boundary (NOAA)   The weakening of the Arctic boundary is a part of the overall shift of climate zones toward the poles in both hemispheres, documented in detail in Europe (Figure 2). Transient cooling pauses are projected as a result of the flow of cold ice meltwater from Greenland and Antarctica into the oceans, leading to stadial cooling intervals.   Figure 2. Migration of climate zones in Europe during 1981-2010 and under +2°C. Faint pink areas represent advanced warming. (A, left) Agro‐climate zonation of Europe based on growing season length (GSL) and active temperature sum (ATS) obtained as an ensemble median from five different climate model simulations during the baseline period (1981–2010). (B, right) Ensemble median spatial patterns of agro-climate zones migration under 2°C global surface warming according to model RCP8.5. Gray areas represent regions where no change with respect to the baseline period is simulated. A combination of ice sheet melting and the flow of melt water into the oceans on the one hand, and ongoing warming of tropical continental zones on the other hand, are likely to lead to the following: Storminess due to collisions of cold and warm air masses; As the ice sheets continue to melt, the cold meltwater enhances lower temperatures at shallow ocean levels, as modelled by Hansen et al. (2016) and Bonselaer et al (2018) (Figure 3A), as contrasted with warming at deeper ocean levels over large parts of the oceans. This transiently counterbalances the effects of global warming over the continents arising from the greenhouse effect; The above processes herald chaotic climate effects, in particular along continental margins and island chains. Figure 3. A. 2080–2100 meltwater-induced sea-air temperature anomalies relative to the standard RCP8.5 ensemble (Bronselaer et al., 2018), indicating marked cooling of parts of the southern oceans. Hatching indicates where the anomalies are not significant at the 95% level; B. Negative temperature anomalies through the 21st-22nd centuries signifying stadial cooling intervals (Hansen et al., 2016); C. A model of Global warming for 2096, where cold ice melt water occupies large parts of the North Atlantic and circum-Antarctica, raises sea level by about 5 meters and decreases global temperature by -0.33°C (Hansen et al., 2016). The extreme rate at which the global warming and the shift of climate zones are taking place virtually within a period less than one generation-long, faster than major past warming events such as at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary 56 million years ago, renders the term “climate change” hardly appropriate, since what we are looking at is a sudden and abrupt event. According to Giger (2021) “Tipping points could fundamentally disrupt the planet and produce abrupt change in the climate. A mass methane release could put us on an irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.” Computer modelling does not always capture the sensitivity, complexity and feedbacks of the atmosphere-ocean-land system as observed from paleoclimate studies. Many models portray gradual or linear responses of the atmosphere to compositional variations, overlooking self-amplifying effects and transient reversals associated with melting of the ice sheets and cooling of the oceans by the flow of ice melt. According to Bonselaer et al. (2018) “The climate metrics that we consider lead to substantially different future climate projections when accounting for the effects of meltwater from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. These differences have consequences for climate policy and should be taken into account in future IPCC reports, given recent observational evidence of increasing mass loss from Antarctica” and “However, the effect on climate is not included (by the IPCC) and will not be in the upcoming CMIP6 experimental design. Similarly, the effects of meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet have so far not been considered, and could lead to further changes in simulated future climate”. Depending on future warming the effect of Antarctic ice meltwater may extend further, possibly becoming global. By contrast to ocean cooling, further to NASA’s reported mean land-ocean temperature rise of +1.18°C in March 2020 above pre-industrial temperatures, relative to the 1951-1980 baseline, large parts of the continents, including central Asia, west Africa eastern South America and Australia are warming toward mean temperatures of +2°C and higher. The contrast between cooling of extensive ocean regions and warming of the continental tropics is likely to lead to extreme storminess, in particular along continent-ocean interfaces. The late 20th century to early 21st century global greenhouse gas levels and regional warming rates have reached a large factor to an order of magnitude faster than warming events of past geological and mass extinction events, with major implications for the nature and speed of extreme weather events. For these reasons the term “climate change” for the current extreme warming, which is reaching +1.5°C over the continents and more than +3°C over the Arctic over a period shorter than one century, no longer applies. The world is looking at an extremely rapid shift in the climatic conditions that have allowed civilization to emerge. Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and climate scientist	Read
April 6, 2021	The China-Iran pact is a game changer – III by M K Bhadrakumar, in World, Countercurrents.org. This is Sixth and the last in the series on the flux in the global scene by the seasoned diplomat, an expert on Middle East, Eurasia, Central Asia, South Asia and the Asia-Pacific… Part III: There is no timetable for an official launch  Yuan as the clearing currency?A non-dollar payment mechanism, between China and Iran is under discussion. It remains to be seen how far the US can stomach such an affront. This is Sixth and the last in the series on the flux in the global scene by the seasoned diplomat, an expert on Middle East, Eurasia, Central Asia, South Asia and the Asia-Pacific… See Part I on China-Iran pact : China neutralises the US campaign on Muslim Uighur issue https://countercurrents.org/2021/04/the-china-iran-pact-is-a-game-changer/ Part II: China positions itself on the right side of history  https://countercurrents.org/2021/04/the-china-iran-pact-is-a-game-changer-2/ ***   The China-Iran joint statement of March 27 Saturday has made waves in the international media and among regional analysts from Israel to India. Israel is anxious that there is going to be security cooperation between China and Iran. Indians are brooding over the fate of their Chabahar port project in eastern Iran, integral to its “regional connectivity”. The devil lies in the details. And the point is, the final document negotiated by Beijing and Tehran still remains under wraps. Both sides are noticeably coy. Surely, all attention in Tehran is still on reading President Joe Biden’s lips — how he frames the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)  in the few remaining crucial weeks remaining before the IAEA inspectors are booted out of Iran next month. The media statement by Wang Yi, State Councilor and Foreign Minister, on Tuesday surveying the outcome of his regional tour does not even mention the pact with Iran. Wang said “the expected goals have been achieved” and underscored that the most important gain, from Beijing’s perspective, is the projection of China’s five-point initiative on achieving peace and security in West Asia by building up the capacity by the regional states “to stay impervious to external pressure and interference, to independently develop paths suited to regional realities” and most important, “break free from the shadows of big-power rivalry and resolve regional conflicts and differences as masters of the region.”  Wang urged the countries he visited — Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, UAE and Bahrain (plus a “working visit to Oman) — to accommodate each other’s core interests. Looking ahead, Wang listed out the following areas of “practical cooperation”: alignment of the Belt and Road Initiative with the national development plans of the regional states; export and distribution of China’s Covid-19 vaccines regionally and creation of an international mechanism for “mutual health code recognition”; achieving a two-state solution to the Palestine question; political settlement of regional disputes; creating “a road map and timetable” for resuming the JCPOA and resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue; promotion of the China-Arab Reform and Development Forum as well as the Middle East Security Forum; high- and new-technology cooperation, such as 5G, big data and artificial intelligence; and, development of a China-Arab states “community with shared future in the new era” opposing the politicisation of human rights issues. To be sure, Beijing is positioning itself as a troubleshooter to break the stalemate over JCPOA. On the eve of Wang’s arrival in Tehran, the US special envoy Robert Malley had a call with the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu during which the latter affirmed that Beijing “will continue to play a constructive role” in bringing the JCPOA back on track. Suffice to say, the China-Iran pact deeply is embedded within a new matrix Beijing hopes to create with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Iran. The pact forms part of a new narrative on regional security and stability.  Nothing is known about the nature of the payment mechanism for such massive economic transactions running into hundreds of billions of dollars that the China-Iran pact envisages. China cannot be comfortable with the risk in the use of American dollar as the currency for such transactions. Indeed, Chinese experts have noted in recent times that Beijing realises the huge risk of over-reliance on the US dollar and Western-controlled payment system since the financial crisis in 2008, and that the latest massive quantitative easing done by the US for boosting its own economy also increases such concern. Besides, a top Chinese expert, Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times newspaper recently, “Washington has been abusing SWIFT to arbitrarily sanction any country at will, which has sparked global dissatisfaction. If China and Russia could work together to challenge the dollar hegemony, a laundry list of countries would echo the call and join the new system.” As the payment system is linked to the trading system, Dong suggested that the new payment system use the yuan as the clearing currency. “At first, the system could push forward a trial run in Central Asian countries and countries and regions along the routes of the Belt and Road Initiative. As its influence grows, the system is poised to draw in other countries in Europe and the ASEAN,” Dong said. Other reports in the recent months have also spoken of a non-dollar payment mechanism between China and Iran under discussion. It remains to be seen how far the US can stomach such an affront. China does not seek confrontation with the US — at least, not yet. For Iran too, export of oil and gas, a strategic asset, with payment in local currencies requires a leap of faith. In the most recent years, China has been urging Saudi Arabia too to move out of the dollar’s orbit for the oil trade. Having said that, China is testing the waters in West Asia. Last January, according to reports, the Digital Currency Institute of the People’s Bank of China and the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates joined the so-called Multiple CBDC (m-CBDC) Bridge, a cross-border payments project to facilitate fund transfers, international trade settlement and capital market transactions in their own jurisdictions. No doubt, the digital yuan, domestically branded in China as the Digital Currency/Electronic Payment (DCEP) project could also challenge the supremacy of the US dollar. As of now, China’s cross-border payment system CIPS both partners and competes with SWIFT amid growing Sino-U.S. tensions. Greater use of the CIPS instead of the Belgium-based SWIFT system would reduce exposure of China’s global payments data to the United States. Some US analysts have criticised this as a step “advancing China’s digital authoritarianism domestically and globally.” With China’s meteoric rise on the global stage, Beijing has long been hoping that its physical currency, the renminbi (yuan), would ride on the back of its economic success and force a shift away from the dollar-dominated financial system. China is steadily moving into a challenging yet opportunistic position. China’s Belt and Road Initiative becomes a ripe entry point for the digital yuan’s internationalisation. China could ask BRI participating countries to start accepting the digital yuan, make loan payments and pay to install infrastructures such as point-of-sale terminals and lower transaction fees. According to China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, a decision has been taken to “actively cooperate with the national belt and road development strategy.” Apart from being a cheaper and faster payment system, it also creates a firewall against US sanctions. In a hypothetical scenario, Iran can build a compatible digital currency system so that trade and investment and cross-border transfers, international trade settlement and foreign exchange transactions between the two countries are no longer trackable by the US anymore. Effectively, this can neutralise the US sanctions bypassing the all-mighty greenback. A report in the New York Times says that “If put into effect as detailed, the (China-Iran) partnership would create new and potentially dangerous flash points in the deteriorating relationship between China and the United States… Renewed American sanctions, including the threat to cut off access to the international banking system for any company that does business in Iran, have succeeded in suffocating the Iranian economy by scaring away badly needed foreign trade and investment.” How could Washington possibly accept such strategic defiance at a time when “America is back”, according to the Joe Biden administration? The US state department has vowed “to impose costs on Chinese companies that aid Iran.” Under the circumstances, it is entirely conceivable that there is no timetable for an official launch of the China-Iran pact. Being “civilisation states”, China and Iran would have their own concepts of time and space. Posted in his blog by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR https://www.indianpunchline.com/the-china-iran-pact-is-a-game-changer-iii/ *** See also by the same author in the current series on the flux in the global scene India’s agony and ecstasy over Quad, published on March 31, 2021 https://countercurrents.org/2021/03/indias-agony-and-ecstasy-over-quad/ China resents US presence in Afghanistan, published on April 1, 2021 https://countercurrents.org/2021/04/china-resents-us-presence-in-afghanistan/ This is how shingles of Indian interests in Myanmar overlap Russia and China’s, published on April 2, 2021 https://countercurrents.org/2021/04/this-is-how-shingles-of-indian-interests-in-myanmar-overlap-russia-and-chinas/ Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. He introduces about himself thus:  “Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Other overseas postings included South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey. I write mainly on Indian foreign policy and the affairs of the Middle East, Eurasia, Central Asia, South Asia and the Asia-Pacific…” His mail ID : indianpunchline@gmail.com	Read
April 7, 2021	Ecology And Economics by John Scales Avery, in Environmental Protection, Countercurrents.org. Humanity has reached a critical decade A new report, published on 14 March, 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly. Here is a link to the article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-021-01544-8 The Ambio article was written as part of the preparation of a meeting of Nobel Prize winners to discuss the state of the planet. The virtual meeting will be held on April 26-28, 2021. We must achieve a steady-state economic system A steady-state economic system is necessary because neither population growth nor economic growth can continue indefinitely on a finite earth. No one can maintain that exponential industrial growth is sustainable in the long run except by refusing to look more than a short  distance into the future. Of course, it is necessary to distinguish between industrial growth, and growth of culture and knowledge, which can and should continue to grow. Qualitative improvements in human society are possible and desirable, but resource-using and pollution-producing industrial growth is reaching its limits, both because of ecological constraints and because of the exhaustion of petroleum, natural gas and other non-renewable resources, such as metals. The threat of catastrophic climate change makes it imperative for us to stop using fossil fuels within very few years. Entropy is a measure of disorder. Our present  economic system is unidirectional and entropic: Low-entropy resources are converted into high-entropy waste, a unidirectional process. By contrast, to be sustainable in the long run, a process must be cyclic, like the growth and regeneration of a forest. We must decrease economic inequality In his Apostolic Exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium” Pope Francis said: “In our time humanity is experiencing a turning-point in its history, as we can see from the advances being made in so many fields. We can only praise the steps being taken to improve people’s welfare in areas such as health care, education and communications. At the same time we have to remember that the majority of our contemporaries are barely living from day to day, with dire consequences. A number of diseases are spreading. The hearts of many people are gripped by fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries. The joy of living frequently fades, lack of respect for others and violence are on the rise, and inequality is increasingly evident. It is a struggle to live and, often, to live with precious little dignity. “Just as the commandment `Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say `thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.” The social epidemiologist Prof. Richard Wilkinson, has documented the ways in which societies with less  economic inequality do better than more unequal societies in a number of areas, including increased rates of life expectancy, mathematical performance, literacy, trust, social mobility, together with decreased rates of infant mortality, homicides, imprisonment, teenage births, obesity and mental illness, as well as drug and alcohol addiction. We must also remember that according to the economist John A. Hobson, the basic problem that led to imperialism was an excessively unequal distribution of incomes in the industrialized countries. The result of this unequal distribution was that neither the rich nor the poor could buy back the total output of their society. The incomes of the poor were insufficient, and rich were too few in number. Thus governments were forced to look for markets in the less developed parts of the world. We must break the power of corporate greed When the United Nations was established in 1945, the purpose of the organization was to abolish the institution of war. This goal was built into many of the articles of the UN Charter. Accordingly, throughout the world, many War Departments were renamed and became Departments of Defense. But the very name is a lie. In an age of nuclear threats and counter-threats, populations are by no means protected. Ordinary citizens are just hostages in a game for power and money. It is all about greed. Why is war continually threatened? Why is Russia threatened? Why is war with Iran threatened? Why fan the flames of conflict with China? Is it to “protect” civilians? Absolutely not! In a thermonuclear war, hundreds of millions of civilians would die horribly everywhere in the world, also in neutral countries. What is really being protected are the profits of arms manufacturers. As long as there are tensions; as long as there is a threat of war, military budgets are safe; and the profits of arms makers are safe. The people in several “democracies”, for example the United States, do not rule at the moment. Greed rules. As Professor Noam Chomsky has pointed out, greed and lack of ethics are built into the structure of corporations. By law, the Chief Executive Officer of a corporation must be entirely motivated by the collective greed of the stockholders. He must maximize profits. If the CEO abandons this single-minded chase after corporate profits for ethical reasons, or for the sake of humanity or the biosphere or the future, he (or she) must, by law, be fired and replaced. We must leave fossil fuels in the ground The threat of catastrophic climate change requires prompt and dedicated action by the global community. Unless we very quickly make the transition from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy, we will reach a tipping point after which uncontrollable feedback loops could take over, leading to a human-caused 6th geological extinction event. This might even be comparable to the Permian-Triassic event, during which 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates became extinct. Arctic sea-ice is melting at an increasingly rapid rate, because of several feedback loops. One of these feedback loops, called the albedo effect, is due to the fact that white snow-covered sea-ice in the Arctic reflects sunlight, while dark water absorbs it, raising the temperature and leading to more melting. Another feedback loop is due to the fact that rising temperatures mean that more water is evaporated. The water vapor in the atmosphere acts like a greenhouse gas, and raises the temperature still further. If we consider long-term effects, by far the most dangerous of the feedback loops is the melting of methane hydrate crystals and the release of methane into the atmosphere, where its effects as a greenhouse gas are roughly twenty times great as those of CO2. When organic matter is carried into the oceans by rivers, it decays to form methane. The methane then combines with water to form hydrate crystals, which are stable at the temperatures which currently exist on ocean floors. However, if the temperature rises, the crystals become unstable, and methane gas bubbles up to the surface. The worrying thing about methane hydrate deposits on ocean floors is the enormous amount of carbon involved: roughly 10,000 gigatons. To put this huge amount into perspective, we can remember that the total amount in world CO2 emissions since 1751 has been only 337 gigatons. Hope for the future comes from the exponential growth of renewable energy. Governments and banks must aid this growth, and they must end the support that they give to fossil fuel corporations. Ecological Economics In the future, ecology must be incorporated into economic theory. The human economy is a part of the global environment, rather than the reverse. Human society cannot prosper while the environment suffers. Economists must acknowledge this fact. We need a new economic system, one that has both a social conscience and an ecological conscience. Note This article was originally published by TMS Weekly Digest on April 5, 2021. https://www.transcend.org/tms/2021/04/ecology-and-economics/ Other books and articles on global problems by the author can be found on the following links: https://www.johnavery.info/ https://wsimag.com/authors/716-john-scales-avery http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/ Please circulate these links to your friends and contacts who might be interested. John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Since 1990 he has been the Chairman of the Danish National Group of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Between 2004 and 2015 he also served as Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy. He founded the Journal of Bioenergetics and Biomembranes, and was for many years its Managing Editor. He also served as Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (19881997). http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com. To know more about his works visit this link.  https://www.johnavery.info/	Read
April 11, 2021	Land May Be A Deeply Philosophical Issue But Must Face Practical Realities of This World by Bharat Dogra, in India, Countercurrents.org. The more one thinks about it, the stronger appears the case for distribution of land based on equality, justice and actual need. Tolstoy, one of the greatest philosophers but by inheritance also a very big landlord, thought a lot about this issue and the more he thought, the more convinced he became that the most logical, in fact , the most obvious thing for him to do is to start handing  his large estate to his serfs and tenants. Vinoba Bhave also found this option very appealing. Sabai bhumi Gopal kee—All land of course belongs to Gopal or to God—was a saying much heard among his followers in the bhoodan ( gift of land) movement. If this is so, the most obvious thing would be  for all of God’s children to share land equally and happily. Unfortunately the Kauravas in Mahabharat failed to see it this way. In fact they  could not be persuaded to leave even just five villages for the  Pandavas, even when this message was taken to them by none other than Lord Krishna. The rest, as they say, is Mahabharat (with all its endless battles ). Various mythologies as well as historical events of various countries are full of violence over land. Why not leave this violence and just accept the most obvious solutions based on equality, justice and need, as Tolstoy did, as Vinoba pleaded. But practical realities of life can be very different from philosophical thought, and very grim and bitter too. Tolstoy also realized this unpalatable truth as his own family members opposed his yearning to give up his estate and land, as revealed also in some of the writings of his last days. Vinoba Bhave also faced a lot of difficulties in his mission despite its  success and promise in the early days, and the end results are not what he had hoped for. The most obvious justice based resolution of the land question is that people or families living in a village can cultivate the land and share the water on the basis of their needs, while also nurturing the fertility of land and conservation of water and cooperating with each other for this. But at a practical level such a situation is very rare and there are just too many issues relating to power , greed, property. law of property, corruption, records and documents, inheritance, hierarchy, social divisions, conflicts, governments, intermediaries, politics, influence etc. which stand in the way of land-distribution based on justice, equality and need. It is in this practical world of all these factors, all these realities, that ultimately the struggle for justice based land distribution must take place. When the communists pushed land reform laws in  Afghanistan they must have had good intentions of equality and justice in mind, but the actual result was a lot of violence and opposition which got out of control. So the question is how do we create adequate acceptance among most people for justice based land distribution. This is something which all serious land reforms efforts  towards justice and equality must consider very carefully and should give attention to. The way in which land reform is conceptualized, how far we can go, depends on this aspect. So there is a need to create a broad agreement in rural areas  that landless people should also  have  some land. This is why  I  emphasized from the very beginning  of  the ongoing farmers’ movement in India that this can be a good time, when so many farmers organizations are gathering at one place, for farmers organizations to take a clear stand that they support the  yearnings of the rural landless households also to have some land. This would also contribute to increasing the unity of all rural people to assert justice based demands. All nations have to  find their  own pathway of peace towards land justice and equality and many committed activists at the field level will be needed for this. But coming back to philosophers, their efforts at a broader level to create a world-level opinion in favor of this will also be valuable for this cause. Bharat Dogra is a  journalist and author. His recent books include Man over Machine and Protecting Earth for Children.	Read
May 22, 2021	Global Humanity Paralyzed by COVID-19 Pandemic and Politics of Conflicts Looks for Change and Unity by Dr Mahboob A Khawaja, in World, Countercurrents.org. COVID-19 Pandemic Deserves Critical Thinking and Human Unity We are living in a connect world of virtual reality – people in one part of the globe cannot be separated by resurgent COVID pandemic and continued insanity of violent political conflicts – man fighting man due to perpetuated ignorance, greed, economic and intellectual exploitation and political domination – an unending irresistible impulse of ill-informed mindset led by the few against many. The political leaders professing to be wise act like anarchist of political indoctrination without knowledge and human integrity.  Across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed the human societies into a world of greater unknown and socio-economic and political instability. Vaccinations are hurriedly developed and are being used on experimental basis as if an effective remedial approach is beyond human scientific and reasoned understanding. Evil is real not imaginary – be it the COVID Pandemic or man-made political conflicts going-on throughout the world but we the 21st century human societies and civilizations are unable to cope with. The global community appears tormented with socio-economic disparities and moral and political cruelty and injustice echoes its own voices of reason and wants under extremely unfavorable circumstances. One cannot separate evil and truth as we face a turbulent emerging future of the uncertainty. We appear to be haunted by preposterous forces of distortion and destruction. The COVID-19 pandemic crisis is a strand that can be found in the interwoven people’s thought and politics of the 21st century knowledge-based informed governance that echoes concerns and priorities that humanitarian imperatives are scarified for political expediency. The common sentiment of human solidarity is increasing over the inept nationalistic politics of the few like former US President Trump- “America First.” Politicians cannot resolve an exceptionally complex medical problem. When a global paradigm of this nature and unpredictable scope hits the mankind, one cannot think to focus on national interest and political campaigns to get re-elected. We are witnessing the severity of this COVID-19 impact across the globe and how millions and millions reject the politically maneuvered ideological divisions, hatred and fear and opt for understanding, collaboration and human solidarity to fight the virus with ingenuity, compassion and global unity.  It is impeccable for the thinking people of the globe to rise up to the challenge and demonstrate how best We, the People are connected together as One Humanity to encounter this invisible enemy of all without borders and nationalities.  For several decades, the political elite of the global systematic governance remained pre-occupied with warfare and insanity of victimizing good parts of the humanity in the Middle East, Asia South America and many parts of Africa. WE, the People deserve change for global unity to tackle the unknown impacts of the infectious disease. This is a call of global unity of all people – be it America, Europe, Russia, China, Asian and Africa or other parts of the earth with living human beings- we must rise to the challenge and given the scientific knowledge and medical cures, we are capable to overcome the multiple layers of socio-economic and political problems affecting the human societies. Political Conflicts Continued to Dehumanize the Rational Thinking We are witnessing continuous killings and bombardments of civilian habitats in Palestine, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Kashmir, forcibly displaced Rohinga people from Myanmar and Yemen and elsewhere. Tyranny has no other name except being a planned calamity imposed on powerless and innocent human beings – nowhere to hide for survival.  Palestinians are bombed and displaced from their natural homeland by forces of political ideology of Israel; Kashmiris are locked up for years by the Indian security forces for demanding their basic human rights of freedom and justice; Yemeni people are bombed by Saudis and UAE for political control and Syrians continued to be killed and displaced for authoritarianism. This was the moment that the UN-Security Council should have developed a workable mechanism of safety and protection of civilian in all major centers of political and ethnic conflicts. We need a constant force of reason, ingenuity and commitment to stop the killings and unwarranted bombardments of civilians – be it in Gaza, East Jerusalem, Yemen and Syria or other parts of human cultures. If Israeli and Palestinian leaders could sit and have a dialogue, would it not be preferred rather inhuman shelling of civilian population and cruelty of killings innocent children and displacement of civilian people with no ties to any political groups. President Biden’s administration must rethink to evolve a reasoned approach for peacemaking and stop support one against another in the Middle East conflict. Killing is madness , losing sense of normalcy and reasoned discourse – is this not happening for over 70 years in the Middle East?  America and West European hold the key to stopping this insanity and to take initiatives for restoration of human consciousness for change towards peacemaking and conflict resolution.  The voices of reason are echoed across the globe but constant warfare undermines human concerns and optimism against many odds. We, the People  and Concerned Humanity must think out of the box as proactive scholars and thinkers to offer new visions and prospects of peaceful interaction and persuasion to resolve our differences and conflicts, otherwise, we tend to be on the wrong side of thoughts, time and history to destroy our own existence and future. Can We, the People of Globe See the Mirror for our Future-Making? If time and history are a reference point, we the humankind stand at a critical juncture of our own complacency to have allowed ignorance, hatred, fear and animosity to destroy our life, culture and existence. The few obsessed with invincible armies and political powers – the warriors as dreamers to control and dominate us have driven the humanity to a terrible sense of helplessness and void about its future. We are witnessing a growing culture of domination by the same as was in history- universally the self-centered maniacs claiming to be leaders of peace and mankind, the most hated and feared are turning the world into more man-made tragedies, animosities, continued drone attacks and bogus wars – all causing massive deaths and destruction to endanger life, human habitats and the sanctity of Planet Earth. The NEED is urgent to understand – how to change the egoistic and embittered insanity of the few hate-mongers and warlords into equilibrium of balanced relationship between Man, Life and God- given living Universe in which we reside all. In a time of humanitarian crisis of the pandemic, we must allow truth of One Humanity to support our existence and future – we must rethink that we are not alone – how we care about others – the neglected and tormented mankind striving for its existence and sustainable lifelines. Often, politically aligned thoughts in Europe and America have ignored the humanitarian vitality of China and Russia for convenient political expediency. There appears to be lot of conjures to be cleaned and clarified for change and a new world order of collaboration and help when it is most needed beyond national flags and borders. We desperately need to re-organize our thoughts and genius for unity and coordination to pool the humanitarian resources to fill the political gaps of egoism and anarchy between inept patriotism and its global outreach to restructure our policies and practices to extend humanitarian help to all those who needed most, not the weapons of mass destruction, not the claims of individual greatness but a revitalized sense of One Humanity ready to protect the present and future of human civilizations. Can we see the Mirror with a collective conscience – why have we been pushed to resort to animalistic characteristics and behaviors that those who appear to be well educated and morally and intellectually intact but act like agents of the Draconian age as if there were no people of REASON and accountability populating the Planet Earth?  Bombardment of civilian habitats and displacement of civilian population will not create a better world of hope and optimism for the future. We must use force of reason, truth and adaptability to change and to understand the contemporary crises and protect our rights to freedom and human dignity and to be One Humanity. I wait to learn more from your inner conscience, your sense of humanity, your deep insight to human emancipation  for change and adaptability to the challenges of our common future as ONE Humanity as once one of the classical scholars Alexis Carrel entitled his book:  Man, The Unknown. Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Lambert Academic Publications, Germany, 12/2019.	Read
April 14, 2021	Language and people by Farooque Chowdhury, in Life/Philosophy, Countercurrents.org. Scientific pursuit, struggles in the arena of production, and class-war making language dynamic and rich is related to the issues of the world around – nature and processes in nature, dialectics, basis and super structures and relation between these, power and powerlessness, class and class struggle. Whatever individual contribution in the universe of language is made, it’s ultimately the product of society, of social labor, a product of a social milieu. It’s an important area of study by, among others, political activists connected to people’s politics as questions related to production relations and sociopolitical order are connected to this, as they strain to ground people’s political power. Classes in unremitting contention with each other mould language as they enter into production relations, where the powerful dominates access to language while people’s life with connections to production tools and their struggle counter the dominant tact; and thus, language flows like a perennial river. However, it can’t surpass material basis, the immediate material conditions, of the historical epoch it lives through and evolves. “Production relations and the sociopolitical order shaped by those relations determine the full range of verbal contacts between people, all the forms and means of their verbal communication – at work, in political life, in ideological creativity.” (Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Seminar Press, in liaison with the Harvard University Press and the Academic Press Inc., 1973, first published in Russian in 1929) The relations, and the order determined by the relations control access/non-access to language by people while language is a tool for struggle by people as it’s a tool by the dominant part of society to perpetuate its control. Access/non-access to language plays a role in decreasing/increasing inequality in society, where exploiters control economic and political life although the contrary is essential for a better life of the exploited classes. Dominant class sets up hurdles, at times, with another language as an informal but functional condition for making advancement in economic area at individual level, and, at times, with incomprehensible terms related to intricacies of power, to access language by people. The hurdles’ society-wide impact cements inequality. Jumping over the hurdles turns difficult for the poor, even for a major part of middle class, for historic and economic circumstances, which as a whole hurts the major portion of society. In such case, the language-access-game is actually a power play with different forms of power including money-power. Only a people’s political struggle can encounter such language-access-game played by dominant class. A research looked at “the law’s language in order to understand the law’s power. Its premise [was] that power is not a distant abstraction but rather an everyday reality.” (John M. Conley, William M. O’Barr, and Robin Conley Riner, Just Words, Law, Language and Power, “The politics of law and the science of talk”, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2019) It said: “Language is a critical element […] To the extent that power is realized, exercised, abused, or challenged […], the means are in large part linguistic.” The research questioned: “Why do many people continue to think that the law does not treat them fairly?” “The answer”, it said, “cannot be found just in the study of legal norms. [….] If the law is failing to live up to its ideals, the failure must lie in the details of everyday legal practice – details that often consist of language.” Language is such a connected and important issue; connected to power, fair treatment, ideals, people, and some more. The “some more” include inequality and its perpetuation, moneybagses and empty-pockets. “Power is the answer to the question of why some people get things, while others do not – why, in other words, the haves have what they do. Stated in this way, the study of power must deal with the fundamental issue of inequality, asking why it exists and how it is maintained. This sense of power is encompassed in the notion of hegemony, which means preponderant power in a political context, or the ability of some groups to sub-ordinate others.” (ibid.) The study said: “After twenty years of further research by ourselves and others, we reach the same conclusion that we had in 1998: language is not merely the vehicle through which legal power operates – in many vital respects, language is legal power.” (ibid.) The question – language – raises another serious issue: legal power. With the issue of legal power, illegal power, power-holders/hucksters of power, powerless, etc. issues, and, consequently, the issue of people arise as these are connected to people, who in most cases are unaware, unorganized, least capable to use language to further their interests. There are cases of language industry with grand profit having close connection to education industry – a major part of these is connected to imperialist interest. People, especially the poor and the lower-middle income group have no scope to access these industries. The divide is sharp – I have money, I access, you’re poor, don’t dream to access. The reality stands as here’s language, here’re people, but people can’t benefit from it as long as they don’t have money. To put the issue in simple questions: How many Baanglaa speaking factory workers dream to go through Tagore’s Taasher Desh, Country of Cards, or Nazrul’s declaration – gaahee saammer gaan, I sing the song of similitude, or the illuminating Kreetadaasher Haashee, Slave’s Smile? These works are in Baanglaa. Even, how many of them are aware that there’s a treasure of Baanglaa works that tell their tales, which they can learn and use for making their life better? Let’s forget the studies on poverty, inequality, nutrition, slums, the treatise on rights, the books on labor law, science, history, philosophy and appropriation of surplus labor, Gorky’s Mother, although many of these are compiled/translated/written in Baanglaa; how many of the Baanglaa speaking house cleaners, plantation workers, smiths and loaders know Rizia Rahman’s works mostly depicting the working people’s life? The works are in Baanglaa. Let’s ignore their language proficiency; do they have information about these books, and that time to go through these? The same with rickshaw-pullers, construction workers, self-employed, transport workers, journeymen, farm workers, and others of the same category. They form the people, the majority. They talk Baanglaa; the works are in Baanglaa. But the connecting rod, the bar joining piston and crank, is absent. So, the majority can’t access information, can’t access opportunity to learn and plan, can’t articulate their aspiration. A difficult question on the path of people’s struggle it’s! A study in the UK finds: “[L]anguage is important in stirring change; both through societal attitudes and political action. It also has the ability to reproduce or challenge inequalities. So it is important to consider how to talk about the structural inequalities in society in meaningful terms that fully articulate individual lived experience and the intersectional, cumulative nature of disadvantages faced.” (University College London (UCL) and Resolution Foundation (RF), Structurally Unsound Exploring Inequalities: Igniting research to better inform UK policy, report, October 2019) Referring to Social Mobility Barometer (2018), a study by UK’s Social Mobility Commission, the UCL and RF’s report said: “[J]ust 55 per cent of people in the UK understand what the term ‘social mobility’ means, with 18–24-year-olds least likely to understand it, compared to older age groups. If the language used to evidence and discuss social inequalities is not widely understood, it risks obscuring the true picture of social inequalities. Affecting societal change will, through public attitudes, in turn, then prove extremely challenging.” (ibid.) “Opportunity (and lack of) is a defining fault-line in UK society. It is a central factor when considering structural inequalities. For example, in a recent survey, 40 per cent of respondents believed it is getting harder for people from less advantaged backgrounds to move up in society.” (ibid.) If this – 55 per cent and 40 per cent – is the reality created by an advanced bourgeois state in a society with a long history of working people’s struggle, then, what’s the reality in the Third and Fourth Worlds without merest bourgeois democratic space, where imperialist capital and its local ramifications, along with imposing its ideology on people, controls most of people’s/working people’s political and cultural discussions, organizations and activities? It’s easy to comprehend. The gamut sings capital’s song. The study said: “The language we use also influences the way we understand and seek to address policy issues.” “Language shapes and goes hand in hand with access to society. Language can in itself be a barrier and a form of structural disadvantage. [….] If those who can’t communicate out are consequently excluded from debate, then language in itself risks acting as a structural disadvantage and perpetuating societal inequalities.” “Language holds an important political dimension.” Should people’s non-access to language and language’s political dimension be overlooked? There’s no way to overlook these if people are to march forward. Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka, Bangladesh. The article first appeared in Ekushey Special 2021, special issue on February 21, the Mother Language Day, of New Age, Dhaka on February 21, 2021.	Read
April 14, 2021	Narrow Response to Crisis Situations Which Ignores Basic Causes Will Not Resolve The Crisis by Bharat Dogra, in Climate Change, Countercurrents.org. At a time when the world is already in the middle of a serious survival crisis, it is a matter of deep concern that most responses to crisis situations are narrow responses which cannot go very far as, while trying to respond to a part of the crisis, they fail to look at the whole and at best  can make only a very limited contribution. To give the most obvious example, climate change is without doubt one of the most serious problems of our times. However few will deny that this is one among several very serious environmental problems, even though this may be stated to be the most important one . Other serious and related problems include those of loss of biodiversity, very serious pollution and disruption of life of oceans over vast areas, emergence and fast spread of very serious hazards , disruption of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, fast depletion of freshwater sources including rivers as well as their pollution, serious disruptions in food and farming systems, very high levels of air pollution, space junk and pollution, problems arising from cruel and destructive attitudes towards  certain species, to mention some of the more obvious aspects. In such a situation the most obvious question that we need to ask is—what are the most basic causes which are common to all these  problems? Firstly, there is the excessive consumption of a minority, which creates a lot of environmental problems on its own, and in addition pushes a model of what is desirable for other sections of population as well. Such patterns are supported by existing extremely high inequalities. The obvious solution is to make very strong efforts for a development model based on equality and simplicity. Secondly, there are very powerful corporations and billionaires as well technocrats, officials, politicians colluding with them who for their selfish interests are promoting technologies, products, advertisements, trends which are very destructive for environment. The obvious solution is to curb and check the powers of these forces and to hold them accountable for the harm they cause to environment in legal and illegal ways. Thirdly, militarization and arms race are important causes of environmental destruction in direct as well as indirect ways. The obvious solution is to press for a drastic reduction of militarization and arms race. We may add to this list, but even if only these three basic causes of ecological ruin are considered, then effective remedial steps taken regarding these will help to create  the base on which it becomes much easier to resolve all the other serious environmental problems including climate change. But in the existing agenda of climate change conferences we seldom hear about these three critical issues ( similarly in the case of conferences on other environmental issues). An infra-structure exists for taking  forward the agenda of tackling the various problems in limited and routine ways, without often even bothering to ask whether something much bigger to check the most basic distortions and problems is needed. At the end of all such conferences, self-congratulatory declarations are made, without bothering to ask why despite the earlier self-congratulations the problem has deteriorated. Implemented on the basis of  narrow understanding, some of the more obvious solutions also start creating new unforeseen problems. While everyone agrees that the promotion of renewable energy sources is most important, but in the existing distorted system it starts taking very harmful and questionable  forms  like ecologically destructive large dam projects being promoted as renewal energy, huge solar projects of big corporations being promoted in ways which displace small farmer communities, ecologically destructive  monocultures being promoted in the name of bio-fuels while displacing badly needed mixed food crops from  fertile land. Similar narrow responses to other crisis situations, ranging from economic crisis to pandemics, are coming in ways which sometimes aggravate problems instead of resolving or reducing them significantly. Let us face the most obvious truth that the world needs very basic changes towards equality, justice, peace, environment protection and protection of other forms of life and unless changes on the big scale needed are brought, narrow responses of the kind being seen at present will not take us far. Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth with its SED Demand . His recent books include Plant in Peril, Man Over Machine and Protecting Earth for Children.	Read
April 14, 2021	Slaughter Central by Tom Engelhardt, in World, Countercurrents.org. By the time you read this piece, it will already be out of date. The reason’s simple enough. No matter what mayhem I describe, with so much all-American weaponry in this world of ours, there’s no way to keep up. Often, despite the headlines that go with mass killings here, there’s almost no way even to know. On this planet of ours, America is the emperor of weaponry, even if in ways we normally tend not to put together. There’s really no question about it. The all-American powers-that-be and the arms makers that go with them dream up, produce, and sell weaponry, domestically and internationally, in an unmatched fashion. You’ll undoubtedly be shocked, shocked to learn that the top five arms makers on the planet — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics — are all located in the United States. Put another way, we’re a killer nation, a mass-murder machine, slaughter central. And as we’ve known since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, there could be far worse to come. After all, in the overheated dreams of both those weapons makers and Pentagon planners, slaughter-to-be has long been imagined on a planetary scale, right down to the latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) being created by Northrop Grumman at the cost of at least $100 billion. Each of those future arms of ultimate destruction is slated to be “the length of a bowling lane” and the nuclear charge that it carries will be at least 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That missile will someday be capable of traveling 6,000 miles and killing hundreds of thousands of people each. (And the Air Force is planning to order 600 of them.) By the end of this decade, that new ICBM is slated to join an unequaled American nuclear arsenal of — at this moment — 3,800 warheads. And with that in mind, let’s back up a moment. Have Gun — Will Travel Before we head abroad or think more about weaponry fit to destroy the planet (or at least human life on it), let’s just start right here at home. After all, we live in a country whose citizens are armed to their all-too-labile fingertips with more guns of every advanced sort than might once have been imaginable. The figures are stunning. Even before the pandemic hit and gun purchases soared to record levels — about 23 million of them (a 64% increase over 2019 sales) — American civilians were reported to possess almost 400 million firearms. That adds up to about 40% of all such weaponry in the hands of civilians globally, or more than the next 25 countries combined. And if that doesn’t stagger you, note that the versions of those weapons in public hands are becoming ever more militarized and powerful, ever more AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, not .22s. And keep in mind as well that, over the years, the death toll from those weapons in this country has grown staggeringly large. As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote recently, “More Americans have died from guns just since 1975, including suicides, murders and accidents (more than 1.5 million), than in all the wars in United States history, dating back to the Revolutionary War (about 1.4 million).” In my childhood, one of my favorite TV programs was called Have Gun — Will Travel. Its central character was a highly romanticized armed mercenary in the Old West and its theme song — still lodged in my head (where so much else is unlodging these days) — began: “Have gun will travel is the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land. His fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind. A soldier of fortune is the man called Paladin.” Staggering numbers of Americans are now ever grimmer versions of Paladin. Thanks to a largely unregulated gun industry, they’re armed like no other citizenry on the planet, not even — in a distant second place — the civilians of Yemen, a country torn by endless war. That TV show’s title could now be slapped on our whole culture, whether we’re talking about our modern-day Paladins traveling to a set of Atlanta spas; a chain grocery store in Boulder, Colorado; a real-estate office in Orange, California; a convenience store near Baltimore; or a home in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Remember how the National Rifle Association has always defended the right of Americans to own weapons at least in part by citing this country’s hunting tradition? Well, these days, startling numbers of Americans, armed to the teeth, have joined that hunting crew. Their game of choice isn’t deer or even wolves and grizzly bears, but that ultimate prey, other human beings — and all too often themselves. (In 2020, not only did a record nearly 20,000 Americans die from gun violence, but another 24,000 used guns to commit suicide.) As the rate of Covid-19 vaccination began to rise to remarkable levels in this country and ever more public places reopened, the first mass public killings (defined as four or more deaths in a public place) of the pandemic period — in Atlanta and Boulder — hit the news big-time. The thought, however, that the American urge to use weapons in a murderous fashion had in any way lessened or been laid to rest, even briefly, thanks to Covid-19, proved a fantasy of the first order. At a time when so many public places like schools were closed or their use limited indeed, if you took as your measuring point not mass public killings but mass shootings (defined as four or more people wounded or killed), the pandemic year of 2020 proved to be a record 12 months of armed chaos. In fact, such mass shootings actually surged by 47%. As USA Today recounted, “In 2020, the United States reported 611 mass shooting events that resulted in 513 deaths and 2,543 injuries. In 2019, there were 417 mass shootings with 465 deaths and 1,707 injured.” In addition, in that same year, according to projections based on FBI data, there were 4,000 to 5,000 more gun murders than usual, mainly in inner-city communities of color. In the first 73 days of Joe Biden’s presidency, there were five mass shootings and more than 10,000 gun-violence deaths. In the Covid-19 era, this has been the model the world’s “most exceptional” nation (as American politicians of both parties used to love to call this country) has set for the rest of the planet. Put another way, so far in 2020 and 2021, there have been two pandemics in America, Covid-19 and guns. And though the weaponization of our citizenry and the carnage that’s gone with it certainly gets attention — President Biden only recently called it “an international embarrassment” — here’s the strange thing: when reporting on such a binge of killings and the weapons industry that stokes it, few here think to include the deaths and other injuries for which the American military has been responsible via its “forever wars” of this century outside our own borders. Nor do they consider the massive U.S. weapons deliveries and sales to other countries that often enough lead to the same. In other words, a full picture of all-American carnage has — to use an apt phrase — remained missing in action. Cornering the Arms Market In fact, internationally, things are hardly less mind-boggling when it comes to this country and weaponry. As with its armed citizenry, when it comes to arming other countries, Washington is without peer. It’s the weapons dealer of choice across much of the world. Yes, the U.S. gun industry that makes all those rifles for this country also sells plenty of them abroad and, in the Trump years, such sales were only made easier to complete (as was the selling of U.S. unmanned aerial drones to “less stable governments”). When it comes to semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 or even grenades and flamethrowers, this country’s arms makers no longer even need State Department licenses, just far easier-to-get Commerce Department ones, to complete such sales, even to particularly abusive nations. As a result, to take one example, semi-automatic pistol exports abroad rose 148% in 2020. But what I’m particularly thinking about here are the big-ticket items that those five leading weapons makers of the military-industrial complex eternally produce. On the subject of the sale of jet fighters like the F-16 and F-35, tanks and other armored vehicles, submarines (as well as anti-submarine weaponry), and devastating bombs and missiles, among other things, we leave our “near-peer” competitors as well as our weapons-making allies in the dust. Washington is the largest supplier to 20 of the 40 major arms importers on the planet. When it comes to delivering the weapons of war, the U.S. leads all its competitors in a historic fashion, especially in the war-torn and devastated Middle East. There, between 2015 and 2019, it gobbled up nearly half of the arms market. Unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia was its largest customer, which, of course, only further stoked the brutal civil war in Yemen, where U.S. weapons are responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. As Pentagon expert William Hartung wrote of those years, U.S. arms deliveries to the region added up to “nearly three times the arms Russia supplied to MENA [the Middle East and North Africa], five times what France contributed, 10 times what the United Kingdom exported, and 16 times China’s contribution.” (And often enough, as in Iraq and Yemen, some of those weapons end up falling into the hands of those the U.S. opposes.) In fact, in 2020, this country’s arms sales abroad rose a further 2.8% to $178 billion. The U.S. now supplies no fewer than 96 countries with weaponry and controls 37% of the global arms market (with, for example, Lockheed Martin alone taking in $47.2 billion in such sales in 2018, followed by the four other giant U.S. weapons makers and, in sixth place, the British defense firm BAE). This remains the definition of mayhem-to-come, the international version of that spike in domestic arms sales and the killings that went with it. After all, in these years, deaths due to American arms in countries like Afghanistan and Yemen have grown strikingly. And to take just one more example, arms, ammunition, and equipment sold to or given to the brutal regime of Rodrigo Duterte for the Philippine military and constabulary have typically led to deaths (especially in its “war on drugs”) that no one’s counting up. And yet, even combined with the dead here at home, all of this weapons-based slaughter hardly adds up to a full record when it comes to the U.S. as a global mass-killing machine. Far, Far from Home After all, this country has a historic 800 or so military bases around the world and nearly 200,000 military personnel stationed abroad (about 60,000 in the Middle East alone). It has a drone-assassination program that extends from Afghanistan across the Greater Middle East to Africa, a series of “forever wars” and associated conflicts fought over that same expanse, and a Navy with major aircraft carrier task forces patrolling the high seas. In other words, in this century, it’s been responsible for largely uncounted but remarkable numbers of dead and wounded human beings. Or put another way, it’s been a mass-shooting machine abroad. Unlike in the United States, however, there’s little way to offer figures on those dead. To take one example, Brown University’s invaluable Costs of War Project has estimated that, from the beginning of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to late 2019, 801,000 people, perhaps 40% of them civilians, were killed in Washington’s war on terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. Of course, not all of those by any means were killed by the U.S. military. In fact, some were even American soldiers and contractors. Still, the figures are obviously sizeable. (To take but one very focused example, from December 2001 to December 2013 at TomDispatch, I was counting up civilian wedding parties taken down by U.S. air power in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen. I came up with eight well-documented ones with a death toll of nearly 300, including brides, grooms, musicians, and revelers.) Similarly, last December, Neta Crawford of the Costs of War Project released a report on the rising number of Afghan civilians who had died from U.S. air strikes in the Trump years. She found that in 2019, for instance, “airstrikes killed 700 civilians — more civilians than in any other year since the beginning of the war.” Overall, the documented civilian dead from American air strikes in the war years is in the many thousands, the wounded higher yet. (And, of course, those figures don’t include the dead from Afghan air strikes with U.S.-supplied aircraft.) And mind you, that’s just civilians mistaken for Taliban or other enemy forces. Similarly, thousands more civilians were killed by American air strikes across the rest of the Greater Middle East and northern Africa. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which followed U.S. drone strikes for years, estimated that, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, by 2019 such attacks had killed “between 8,500 and 12,000 people, including as many as 1,700 civilians — 400 of whom were children.” And that, of course, is just to begin to count the dead in America’s conflicts of this era. Or thought of another way, in this century, the U.S. military has been a kind of global Paladin. Its motto could obviously be “have gun, will travel” and its forces and those allied to it (and often supplied with American arms) have certainly killed staggering numbers of people in conflicts that have devastated communities across a significant part of the planet, while displacing an estimated 37 million people. Now, return to those Americans gunned down in this country and think of all of this as a single weaponized, well-woven fabric, a single American gun culture that spans the globe, as well as a three-part killing machine of the first order. Much as mass shootings and public killings can sometimes dominate the news here, a full sense of the damage done by the weaponization of our culture seldom comes into focus. When it does, the United States looks like slaughter central. Or as that song from Have Gun — Will Travel ended: Paladin, Paladin, Where do you roam? Paladin, Paladin, Far, far from home. Far, far from home — and close, close to home — indeed. Copyright 2021 Tom Engelhardt Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel Frostlands (the second in the Splinterlands series), 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. Tom Engelhardt created and runs the website TomDispatch.com. He is also a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture.  A fellow of the Type Media Center, his sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War. Originally published in TomDispatch	Read
April 15, 2021	Denis Halliday: A Voice of Reason in an Insane World by Nicolas J S Davies, in Life/Philosophy, Countercurrents.org. Denis Halliday is an exceptional figure in the world of diplomacy. In 1998, after a 34-year career with the United Nations—including as an Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq—he resigned when the UN Security Council refused to lift sanctions against Iraq. Halliday saw at first hand the devastating impact of this policy that had led to the deaths of over 500,000 children under the age of five and hundreds of thousands more older children and adults, and he called the sanctions a genocide against the people of Iraq. Since 1998, Denis has been a powerful voice for peace and for human rights around the world. He sailed in the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in 2010, when 10 of his companions on a Turkish ship were shot and killed in an attack by the Israeli armed forces. I interviewed Denis Halliday from his home in Ireland. Nicolas Davies:   So, Denis, twenty years after you resigned from the UN over the sanctions on Iraq, the United States is now imposing similar “maximum pressure” sanctions against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, denying their people access to food and medicines in the midst of a pandemic. What would you like to say to Americans about the real-world impact of these policies? Denis Halliday:   I’d like to begin with explaining that the sanctions imposed by the Security Council against Iraq, led very much by the United States and Britain, were unique in the sense that they were comprehensive. They were open-ended, meaning that they required a Security Council decision to end them, which of course never actually happened – and they followed immediately upon the Gulf War. The Gulf War, led primarily by the United States but supported by Britain and some others, undertook the bombing of Iraq and targeted civilian infrastructure, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and they took out all electric power networks in the country. This completely undermined the water treatment and distribution system of Iraq, which depended upon electricity to drive it, and drove people to use contaminated water from the Tigris and the Euphrates. That was the beginning of the death-knell for young children, because mothers were not breast-feeding, they were feeding their children with child formula, but mixing it with foul water from the Tigris and the Euphrates. That bombing of infrastructure, including communications systems and electric power, wiped out the production of food, horticulture, and all of the other basic necessities of life. They also closed down exports and imports, and they made sure that Iraq was unable to export its oil, which was the main source of its revenue at the time. In addition to that, they introduced a new weapon called depleted uranium, which was used by the U.S. forces driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. That was used again in southern Iraq in the Basra area, and led to a massive accumulation of nuclear debris which led to leukemia in children, and that took three, four or five years to become evident. So when I got to Iraq in 1998, the hospitals in Baghdad, and also of course in Basra and other cities, were full of children suffering from leukemia. Meantime adults had gotten their own cancer, mainly not a blood cancer diagnosis. Those children, we reckon perhaps 200,000 children, died of leukemia. At the same time, Washington and London withheld some of the treatment components that leukemia requires, again, it seemed, in a genocidal manner, denying Iraqi children the right to remain alive. And as you quoted 500,000, that was a statement made by Madeleine Albright, the then American Ambassador to the United Nations who, live on CBS, was asked the question about the loss of 500,000 children, and she said that the loss of 500,000 children was “worth it,” in terms of bringing down Saddam Hussein, which did not happen until the military invasion of 2003. So the point is that the Iraqi sanctions were uniquely punitive and cruel and prolonged and comprehensive. They remained in place no matter how people like myself or others, and not just me alone, but UNICEF and the agencies of the UN system – many states including France, China and Russia – complained bitterly about the consequences on human life and the lives of Iraqi children and adults. My desire in resigning was to go public, which I did. Within one month, I was in Washington doing my first Congressional briefing on the consequences of these sanctions, driven by Washington and London. So I think the United States and its populus, who vote these governments in, need to understand that the children and the people of Iraq are just like the children of the United States and England and their people. They have the same dreams, same ambitions of education and employment and housing and vacations and all the things that good people care about. We’re all the same people and we cannot sit back and think somehow, “We don’t know who they are, they’re Afghans, they’re Iranians, they’re Iraqis. So what? They’re dying. Well, we don’t know, it’s not our problem, this happens in war.” I mean, all that sort of rationale as to why this is unimportant. And I think that aspect of life in the sanctions world continues, whether it’s Venezuela, whether it’s Cuba, which has been ongoing now for 60 years. People are not aware or don’t think in terms of the lives of other human beings identical to ourselves here in Europe or in the United States. It’s a frightening problem, and I don’t know how it can be resolved. We now have sanctions on Iran and North Korea. So the difficulty is to bring alive that we kill people with sanctions. They’re not a substitute for war – they are a form of warfare. Nicolas Davies:   Thank you, Denis. I think that brings us to another question, because whereas the sanctions on Iraq were approved by the UN Security Council, what we’re looking at today in the world is, for the most part, the U.S. using the power of its financial system to impose unilateral sieges on these countries, even as the U.S. is also still waging war in at least half a dozen countries, mostly in the Greater Middle East. Medea Benjamin and I recently documented that the U.S. and its allies have dropped 326,000 bombs and missiles on other countries in all these wars, just since 2001 – that’s not counting the First Gulf War. You worked for the UN and UNDP for 34 years, and the UN was conceived of as a forum and an institution for peace and to confront violations of peace by any countries around the world. But how can the UN address the problem of a powerful, aggressive country like the United States that systematically violates international law and then abuses its veto and diplomatic power to avoid accountability? Denis Halliday:   Yes, when I talk to students, I try to explain that there are two United Nations: there’s a United Nations of the Secretariat, led by the Secretary-General and staffed by people like myself and 20,000 or 30,000 more worldwide, through UNDP and the agencies. We operate in every country, and most of it is developmental or humanitarian. It’s good work, it has real impact, whether it’s feeding Palestinians or it’s UNICEF work in Ethiopia. This continues. Where the UN collapses is in the Security Council, in my view, and that is because, in Yalta in 1945, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, having noted the failure of the League of Nations, decided to set up a United Nations that would have a controlling entity, which they then called the Security Council. And to make sure that worked, in their interests I would say, they established this five-power veto group, and they added France and they added China. And that five is still in place. That’s 1945 and this is 2021, and they’re still in power and they’re still manipulating the United Nations. And as long as they stay there and they manipulate, I think the UN is doomed. The tragedy is that the five veto powers are the very member states that violate the Charter, violate human rights conventions, and will not allow the application of the ICC to their war crimes and other abuses. On top of that, they are the countries that manufacture and sell weapons, and we know that weapons of war are possibly the most profitable product you can produce. So their vested interest is control, is the military capacity, is interference. It’s a neocolonial endeavor, an empire in reality, to control the world as the way they want to see it. Until that is changed and those five member states agree to dilute their power and play an honest role, I think we’re doomed. The UN has no capacity to stop the difficulties we’re faced with around the world. Nicolas Davies:   That’s a pretty damning prognosis. In this century, we’re facing such incredible problems, between climate change and the threat of nuclear war still hanging over all of us, possibly more dangerous than ever before, because of the lack of treaties and the lack of cooperation between the nuclear powers, notably the U.S. and Russia. This is really an existential crisis for humanity. Now there is also, of course, the UN General Assembly, and they did step up on nuclear weapons with the new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which has now officially entered into force. And every year when it meets, the General Assembly regularly and almost unanimously condemns the U.S. sanctions regime against Cuba. When I wrote my book about the war in Iraq, my final recommendations were that the senior American and British war criminals responsible for the war should be held criminally accountable, and that the U.S. and the U.K. should pay reparations to Iraq for the war. Could the General Assembly possibly be a venue to build support for Iraq to claim reparations from the U.S. and the U.K., or is there another venue where that would be more appropriate? Denis Halliday:   I think you’re right on target. The tragedy is that the decisions of the Security Council are binding decisions. Every member state has got to apply and respect those decisions. So, if you violate a sanctions regime imposed by the Council as a member state, you’re in trouble. The General Assembly resolutions are not binding. You’ve just referred to a very important decision, which is the decision about nuclear weapons. We’ve had a lot of decisions on banning various types of weapons over the years. Here in Ireland we were involved in anti-personnel mines and other things of that sort, and it was by a large number of member states, but not the guilty parties, not the Americans, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the British. The ones who control the veto power game are the ones who do not comply. Just like Clinton was one of the proposers, I think, of the ICC [International Criminal Court], but when it came to the end of the day, the United States doesn’t accept it has a role vis-a-vis themselves and their war crimes The same is true of other large states that are the guilty parties in those cases. So I would go back to your suggestion about the General Assembly. It could be enhanced, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be changed, but it requires tremendous courage on the part of member states. It also requires acceptance by the five veto powers that their day has come to an end, because, in reality, the UN carries very little cachet nowadays to send a UN mission into a country like Myanmar or Afghanistan. I think we have no power left, we have no influence left, because they know who runs the organization, they know who makes the decisions. It’s not the Secretary-General. It’s not people like me. We are dictated to by the Security Council. I resigned, effectively, from the Security Council. They were my bosses during that particular period of my career. I have a lecture I do on reforming the Security Council, making it a North-South representative body, which would find Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa in situ, and you’d get very different decisions, you’d get the sort of decisions we get in the General Assembly: much more balanced, much more aware of the world and its North and South and all those other variations. But of course, again, we can’t reform the Council until the five veto powers agree to that. That is the huge problem. Nicolas Davies:   Yes, in fact, when that structure was announced in 1945 with the Security Council, the five Permanent Members and the veto, Albert Camus, who was the editor of the French Resistance newspaper Combat, wrote a front-page editorial saying this was the end of any idea of international democracy. So, as with so many other issues, we live in these nominally democratic countries, but the people of a country like the United States are only really told what our leaders want us to know about how the world works. So reform of the Security Council is clearly needed, but it’s a massive process of education and democratic reform in countries around the world to actually build enough of a popular movement to demand that kind of change. In the meantime, the problems we’re facing are enormous. Another thing that is very under-reported in the U.S. is that, out of desperation after twenty years of war in Afghanistan, Secretary Blinken has finally asked the UN to lead a peace process for a ceasefire between the U.S.-backed government and the Taliban and a political transition. That could move the conflict into the political realm and end the civil war that resulted from the U.S. invasion and occupation and endless bombing campaign. So what do you think of that initiative? There is supposed to be a meeting in a couple of weeks in Istanbul, led by an experienced UN negotiator, Jean Arnault, who helped to bring peace to Guatemala at the end of its civil war, and then between Colombia and the FARC. The U.S. specifically asked China, Russia and Iran to be part of this process as well. Both sides in Afghanistan have agreed to come to Istanbul and at least see what they can agree on. So is that a constructive role that the UN can play? Does that offer a chance of peace for the people of Afghanistan? Denis Halliday:   If I were a member of the Taliban and I was asked to negotiate with a government that is only in power because it’s supported by the United States, I would question whether it’s an even keel. Are we equally powerful, can we talk to each other one-to-one? The answer, I think, is no. The UN chap, whoever he is, poor man, is going to have the same difficulty. He is representing the United Nations, a Security Council dominated by the United States and others, as the Afghans are perfectly well aware. The Taliban have been fighting for a helluva long time, and making no progress because of the interference of the U.S. troops, which are still on the ground. I just don’t think it’s an even playing-field. So I’d be very surprised if that works. I absolutely hope it might. I would think, in my view, if you want a lasting relationship within a country, it’s got to be negotiated within the country, without military or other interference or fear of further bombing or attacks or all the rest of it. I don’t think we have any credibility, as a UN, under those circumstances. It’ll be a very tough slog. Nicolas Davies:   Right. The irony is that the United States set aside the UN Charter when it attacked Yugoslavia in 1999 to carve out what is now the semi-recognized country of Kosovo, and then to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. The UN Charter, right at the beginning, at its heart, prohibits the threat or use of force by one country against another. But that is what the U.S. set aside. Denis Halliday:   And then, you have to remember, the U.S. is attacking a fellow member state of the United Nations, without hesitation, with no respect for the Charter. Perhaps people forget that Eleanor Roosevelt drove, and succeeded in establishing, the Declaration of Human Rights, an extraordinary achievement, which is still valid. It’s a biblical instrument for many of us who work in the UN. So the neglect of the Charter and the spirit of the Charter and the wording of the Charter, by the five veto members, perhaps in Afghanistan it was Russia, now it’s the United States, the Afghanis have had foreign intervention up to their necks and beyond, and the British have been involved there since the 18th century almost. So they have my deepest sympathy, but I hope this thing can work, let’s hope it can. Nicolas Davies:   I brought that up because the U.S., with its dominant military power after the end of the Cold War, made a very conscious choice that instead of living according to the UN Charter, it would live by the sword, by the law of the jungle: “might makes right.” It took those actions because it could, because no other military force was there to stand up against it. At the time of the First Gulf War, a Pentagon consultant told the New York Times that, with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. could finally conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about starting World War III. So they took the demise of the Soviet Union as a green light for these systematic, widespread actions that violate the UN Charter. But now, what is happening in Afghanistan is that the Taliban once again control half the country. We’re approaching the spring and the summer when the fighting traditionally gets worse, and so the U.S. is calling in the UN out of desperation because, frankly, without a ceasefire, their government in Kabul is just going to lose more territory. So the U.S. has chosen to live by the sword, and in this situation it’s now confronting dying by the sword. Denis Halliday:   What’s tragic, Nicolas, is that, in our lifetime, the Afghanis ran their own country. They had a monarchy, they had a parliament – I met and interviewed women ministers from Afghanistan in New York – and they managed it. It was when the Russians interfered, and then the Americans interfered, and then Bin Laden set up his camp there, and that was justification for destroying what was left of Afghanistan. And then Bush, Cheney and a few of the boys decided, although there was no justification whatsoever, to bomb and destroy Iraq, because they wanted to think that Saddam Hussein was involved with Al Qaeda, which of course was nonsense. They wanted to think he had weapons of mass destruction, which also was nonsense. The UN inspectors said that again and again, but nobody would believe them. It’s deliberate neglect of the one last hope. The League of Nations failed, and the UN was the next best hope and we have deliberately turned our backs upon it, neglected it and distrusted it. When we get a good Secretary General like Hammarskjold, we murder him. He was definitely killed, because he was interfering in the dreams of the British in particular, and perhaps the Belgians, in Katanga. It’s a very sad story, and I don’t know where we go from here. Nicolas Davies:   Right, well, where we seem to be going from here is to a loss of American power around the world, because the U.S. has so badly abused its power. In the U.S., we keep hearing that this is a Cold War between the U.S. and China, or maybe the U.S., China and Russia, but I think we all hopefully can work for a more multipolar world. As you say, the UN Security Council needs reform, and hopefully the American people are understanding that we cannot unilaterally rule the world, that the ambition for a U.S. global empire is an incredibly dangerous pipe-dream that has really led us to an impasse. Denis Halliday:   Perhaps the only good thing coming out of Covid-19 is the slow realization that, if everybody doesn’t get a vaccine, we fail, because we, the rich and the powerful with the money and the vaccines, will not be safe until we make sure the rest of the world is safe, from Covid and the next one that’s coming along the track undoubtedly. And this implies that if we don’t do trade with China or other countries we have reservations about, because we don’t like their government, we don’t like communism, we don’t like socialism, whatever it is, we just have to live with that, because without each other we can’t survive. With the climate crisis and all the other issues related to that, we need each other more than ever perhaps, and we need collaboration. It’s just basic common sense that we work and live together. The U.S. has something like 800 military bases around the world, of various sizes. China is certainly surrounded and this is a very dangerous situation, totally unnecessary. And now the rearming with fancy new nuclear weapons when we already have nuclear weapons that are twenty times bigger than the one that destroyed Hiroshima. Why on Earth? It’s just irrational nonsense to continue these programs, and it just doesn’t work for humanity. I would hope the U.S. would start perhaps retreating and sorting out its own domestic problems, which are quite substantial. I’m reminded every day when I look at CNN here in my home about the difficulties of race and all the other things that you’re well aware of that need to be addressed. Being policeman to the world was a bad decision. Nicolas Davies:   Absolutely. So the political, economic and military system we live under is not only genocidal at this point, but also suicidal. Thank you, Denis, for being a voice of reason in this insane world. Nicolas J. S. Davies is a researcher for CODEPINK, a freelance writer and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.	Read
April 16, 2021	POEM to the EARTH by David Sparenberg, in Arts/Literature, Countercurrents.org. i have sought to love you unworthy that i am   i have sat in the tall grass looking out over water watching a setting sun   and i have sought to love you unworthy that i am   i have walked poetic the meadow a red tailed hawk circled above   i have traveled the narrow quiet path through evergreen woods and followed the watercourse of waterfalls   and i have sought to love you unworthy that i am   when my time comes to say good-by let it be a lover’s farewell   my heart rains tears over those who harm you many walk here who are careless many are arrogant too   when my time comes to say good-by let it be a lover’s farewell   i shall give all that i am to the wonderment of life   and i have sought to love to love you, Sacred Earth unworthy that i am David Sparenberg is a world citizen, environmental & peace advocate & activist, actor, poet-playwright, storyteller, teacher and author.	Read
April 16, 2021	Indian monsoons becoming more chaotic. by Climate And Capitlism, in Climate Change, Countercurrents.org. Study warns of grave consequences for agriculture and economy, affecting over one billion people. If global warming continues unchecked, summer monsoon rainfall in India will become stronger and more erratic. This is the central finding of an analysis by a team of German researchers that compared more than 30 state-of-the-art climate models from all around the world. The study predicts more extremely wet years in the future – with potentially grave consequences for more than one billion people’s well-being, economy, food systems and agriculture. “We have found robust evidence for an exponential dependence: For every degree Celsius of warming, monsoon rainfalls will likely increase by about 5%,” says lead author Anja Katzenberger from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany (LMU). “Hereby we were also able to confirm previous studies but find that global warming is increasing monsoon rainfall in India even more than previously thought. It is dominating monsoon dynamics in the 21st century.” Too much rainfall can harm plants More rainfall is not necessarily a good thing for the farming sector in India and its neighboring countries. As co-author Julia Pongratz from LMU explains: “Crops need water especially in the initial growing period, but too much rainfall during other growing states can harm plants – including rice on which the majority of India’s population is depending for sustenance. This makes the Indian economy and food system highly sensitive to volatile monsoon patterns.” A look into the past underlines that human behavior is behind the intensification of rainfall. Starting in the 1950s, human-made forcings have begun to overtake slow natural changes occurring over many millennia. At first, high sun-light blocking aerosol loadings led to subdued warming and thus a decline in rainfall, but since then, from 1980 onwards, greenhouse gas-induced warming has become the deciding driver for stronger and more erratic Monsoon seasons. A threat to the Indian subcontinent “We see more and more that climate change is about unpredictable weather extremes and their serious consequences,” comments group leader and co-author Anders Levermann from PIK and Columbia University, New York/USA on the findings of the study published in the journal Earth System Dynamics. “Because what is really on the line is the socio-economic well-being of the Indian subcontinent. A more chaotic monsoon season poses a threat to the agriculture and economy in the region and should be a wakeup call for policy makers to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.” *** Abstract of Anja Katzenberger, Jacob Schewe, Julia Pongratz, and Anders Levermann, Robust increase of Indian monsoon rainfall and its variability under future warming in CMIP6 models Earth System Dynamics, Volume 12, issue 2, April 2021 The Indian summer monsoon is an integral part of the global climate system. As its seasonal rainfall plays a crucial role in India’s agriculture and shapes many other aspects of life, it affects the livelihood of a fifth of the world’s population. It is therefore highly relevant to assess its change under potential future climate change. Global climate models within the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) indicated a consistent increase in monsoon rainfall and its variability under global warming. Since the range of the results of CMIP5 was still large and the confidence in the models was limited due to partly poor representation of observed rainfall, the updates within the latest generation of climate models in CMIP6 are of interest. Here, we analyze 32 models of the latest CMIP6 exercise with regard to their annual mean monsoon rainfall and its variability. All of these models show a substantial increase in June-to-September (JJAS) mean rainfall under unabated climate change (SSP5-8.5) and most do also for the other three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways analyzed (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0). Moreover, the simulation ensemble indicates a linear dependence of rainfall on global mean temperature with a high agreement between the models independent of the SSP if global warming is the dominant forcing of the monsoon dynamics as it is in the 21st century; the multi-model mean for JJAS projects an increase of 0.33 mm d−1 and 5.3 % per kelvin of global warming. This is significantly higher than in the CMIP5 projections. Most models project that the increase will contribute to the precipitation especially in the Himalaya region and to the northeast of the Bay of Bengal, as well as the west coast of India. Interannual variability is found to be increasing in the higher-warming scenarios by almost all models. The CMIP6 simulations largely confirm the findings from CMIP5 models, but show an increased robustness across models with reduced uncertainties and updated magnitudes towards a stronger increase in monsoon rainfall. Courtesy : climateandcapitalism.com	Read
April 17, 2021	Ultimate Success by Tom Murphy , in Counter Solutions, mCountercurrents.org. In early fall 2020, I took a break from intense work on textbook preparation to immerse myself in nature, in the form of a month on the Olympic Peninsula. I spent periods of good weather in the backcountry, and therefore didn’t bother carrying a tent along in my already-too-heavy backpack. Somehow sleep is more precious when there’s some chance of being woken by a (black) bear’s slobbery breath in your face. But for the many dozens of times I’ve slept this way in the wilderness, I have not had a single nighttime bear encounter—being exceedingly careful to keep food smells well away from my sleeping site. Luckily, it would seem that my physical person does not smell like food. I’m not an adrenaline junkie with a death wish, but exposing myself to some risk at the hands of nature brings a greater appreciation of the relationship between humans and the world of the wild. Being a temporary tourist in nature is not quite the same as fully being a part of nature, but it’s closer than many experience in our human-dominated artificial world. One of my aims for the trip was to step back from the nitty-gritty focus on margin-notes and glossary items for the textbook and synthesize a broader picture. Being immersed in the wilderness really helped that process. Nature is so grand; so ancient; so indifferent. Nature is wild. Nature is mature. Humans have embarked on a 10,000 year experiment to separate from nature: to build stores and access “old money” that Earth has banked for eons, providing a recent freedom to largely ignore annual, renewable flows in nature. The last several centuries have accelerated the divorce to an alarming degree. But the question I stumbled upon as my boots navigated rocks and roots on the trail was: Is the 10,000-year-old human civilization in its infancy, or nearer its end than its beginning? Of course, this is not a question that I or anyone can answer with any confidence, but that’s not the point. The question provides a compelling framework against which to assess what long term success for humans on this planet would mean, by forcing us to think on appropriate timescales. Appendix section D.5 in the new textbook explores this topic in a complementary way to this post. Local Limitations General Relativity casts gravity as a curvature of spacetime, so that a particle (or planet) simply responds to the local curvature imposed by nearby masses, executing the straightest path that it can in that twisted space, which distorts into orbits traced out on a global scale. In this sense, we say that gravity is local. It’s not Newton’s “action at a distance” but a locally-felt influence, via the mechanism of curved space. Humans are similarly “local” by nature, most concerned with events in the very short term: eating today; rent this month; quarterly profits; annual yield; few-year political terms. Some thought goes into decade-level planning, but seldom extends beyond one’s own lifetime. All this is very understandable and is the way it is for good reason. It’s a sensible reaction to dealing with uncertainty and limited control over a complex life, and is highly adaptive in an evolutionary sense. Economists formalize this natural tendency as a discount rate: devaluing the future relative to the present. Where money counts—that is, in nearly all current human decisions—the distant future may as well not exist, having essentially zero value. Maybe this dismal framing simply captures human nature accurately. But maybe it also amplifies a destructive tendency—conditioning us to think in these myopic terms. That’s what is so powerful about the question: is human civilization nearer its end or its beginning? It forces a completely different perspective and timescale for consideration. It suddenly places value on the distant future, and has the potential to reshape actions today to help steer outcomes on such long timescales. It says: “Hey: do you even care what happens to humanity in the long term?” Futile Future Fantasies? At this stage, many say: “Sure, but we can’t possibly predict well enough the developments over such timescales to have a meaningful impact by our actions today.” A large part of this thinking is guided by the only context many of us have: the past. Someone 10,000 years ago surely could not have foreseen the technological world of today. Any mental energy in this direction would have been an utter waste of time. Any actions in preparation for that unforeseeable future would be exceedingly lucky to have any relevance whatsoever. Here’s why this mindset is not as valid as it seems: Most of the change in the last 10,000 years has happened in the last 200 years: much more local and fast-moving, and therefore more tractable to understand and predict. The tools of math and physics permit us to define some things that are not possible to maintain for 10,000 years, allowing us to usefully constrain the “head-space.”  In this sense, we can turn the usual argument on its head and say that people 10,000 years ago could not possibly fathom that we would have tools today to help meaningfully constrain possibilities 10,000 years hence. The first lesson from physics is that growth cannot be a long-term prospect. The last few-hundred years are the anomaly. We can be sure of that. A 1% growth rate—thought of as modest in the present era—has a doubling time of 70 years. 10,000 years means 140 doublings, which is 42 orders of magnitude. Physics says: not gonna happen. If each year, 1% of any resource is “destroyed” (mined, chopped, burned), it will be utterly gone in 10,000 years. According to the Attenborough show, A Life on Our Planet, wild spaces declined from 62% of the planet to 35% from 1960 to 2020 (very close to 1% reduction per year). Clearly, we’ve been doing it all wrong for the last 60 years, so that the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed is a terrible template for the future, and should probably be utterly ignored: discarded like smelly trash.  We have been deceived by rapid exhaustion of the extravagant inheritance into thinking life will always be at least this rich. Human civilization in 10,000 years therefore cannot afford to continue any exploitation or destruction of one-time resources. Fossil fuels will be long gone or abandoned. Deforestation must stop. Aquifer depletion must stop. Jeopardizing the survival of any species must stop. Soil erosion or degradation must stop. Anything that is not replenished by nature as fast as we’re using it cannot be part of a successful future. Success, Sustainability: Synonymous To me, that rock-solid and rather obvious insight is a big deal. Suddenly, we have a rule book for success. In the end, success can only mean sustainability. The rule book could get by with that one line. The converse is also true: unsustainable is unsuccessful. Which should we aim to be? To satisfy our desire to be in our infancy as a civilization, and not near the end, we have no choice but to cease actions that result in gradual decline of resources or gradual accumulation of pollutants. Doing it in a controlled manner might allow preservation our hard-won knowledge through the transition. If we ignore the unmistakable call to change, then nature will exercise indifferent control in a way that may not be to our liking, as ecosystems collapse and turn off our life support machine. We’re basically gnawing on the cord that powers the very thing keeping us alive: smart enough to destroy, but not wise enough to preserve. In this stark—and ultimately correct—view, almost everything we do today is not compliant with the success rule book. Can you guess what is left in the absence of success? That’s right: failure. Fueling Failure A restatement is therefore: most things we do today are contributing to our ultimate failure. The dinner table question: “What did you do today?” might as well be asked as “What did you do today that contributes to humanity’s ultimate failure?” The answer is generally the same. Whatever we did likely contributed more to ultimate failure than to ultimate success. Shouldn’t we be shouted at for our juvenile negligence and be sent to our rooms without any dinner? If, in the course of your day: you used fossil fuels; utilized mined materials; ate food grown using industrially-produced fertilizer or other soil amendments; used furniture whose wood was harvested from a place that is no longer forest; worked for a company whose focus is monetary rather than ecosystem health, enjoyed electricity produced by devices whose materials or fuel were extracted from the ground; lived in a house or building made from extracted materials or chopped forests; ate food irrigated from an aquifer (or animals fed on such food); or looked at a computer screen; then you contributed to ultimate failure. In other words, if you are a member of modern society and not living in harmony with the land like a primitive outcast, then you are perhaps unwillingly and/or unwittingly an accessory to crimes against the ultimate success of humanity. Scrapping the Script That’s okay, maybe. It’s not over yet. Nature is resilient and can rebound to support us for the long haul if we take our hands off its throat. It won’t bear a grudge (the upside of its indifference to our fate). We “just” need to sort activities into those that contribute to success and those that contribute to failure, and stop doing the latter in favor of the former. As long as we turn the tanker ship before too much irreversible damage is done to ecosystems, they can recover. But it has to be a system-wide shift, and we don’t have much time. Many ecosystems have already been hacked into small enough disconnected parcels that we cannot be assured of their springing back. The hard part is how pervasive the failure-promoting practices are. As aware as I am of our destructive trajectory, I can’t avoid contributing to failure as a member of our society. It pains me to know that like almost everyone else, I contribute more to failure than I contribute to success every day. My main strategy has been to drastically reduce how much damage I do by using far less energy, traveling less, buying less stuff, prioritizing nature (even bears, if they decide to eat me), and of course communicating concerns and perspectives that might help leverage broader action. Change won’t happen overnight, but it must start with awareness. Put on your 10,000 year glasses and ask what things in life are likely to be present in a successful 10,000 year lifestyle. Try to stop doing or at least de-emphasizing those things that contribute to ultimate failure. Be a part of the values shift, and help educate others—trying not to be righteous, condescending, or a know-it-all: just ask others if they think those activities will be possible in 10,000 years to start reflection and discussion. Explore together. Liberally sprinkle “I don’t know” into the conversation to encourage acknowledgement of the same truth from the other side. To help discern successful modes, think about natural flows: things nature replaces as we use them. Oxygen, water, wood, vine, pelts, bone, thatch, and fibers are resupplied by nature, for instance. Rock and clay are not regenerated, but perhaps abundant/present enough at the surface to be permissible. Primitive modes stood the test of time and offer valuable insight. Note: I’m not recommending everyone rush out to get bone tools, because 8 billion people wanting animal products may unleash a devastating blow against nature. Conversely, mined materials are not replaced. We may be able to recycle materials, but for how long? How many cycles before corrosion and dispersal preclude indefinite use? 10,000 years is many hundreds of human generations. It is true that the atoms don’t disappear, but our ability to gather them profitably may suffer.  Recycling mined materials may not be a viable possibility in 10,000 years. Remaining Reflection I would hope that the far future, while necessarily blending more intimately into nature, can also preserve some critical technology so that we can maintain and improve upon our knowledge of the world. But I honestly don’t know if nature is compatible with a technological species for the long term. We simply have no evidence on Earth or beyond, inspiring this thing I made up (not sure what the rules are, so is this a passage, a quote, or a poem?): Present practices are fundamentally incompatible with nature. Is it even possible to maintain technology over the long term? We, ourselves, will never know the answer. Meanwhile, the universe says… nothing. The next post will address the terms of our contract with nature. Tom Murphy is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. An amateur astronomer in high school, physics major at Georgia Tech, and PhD student in physics at Caltech, Murphy has spent decades reveling in the study of astrophysics. Originally published by Do the Math	Read
April 19, 2021	Earth Abuse and the Next Pandemic by Stan Cox, in World, Countercurrents.org. Humanity’s transgression of ecological limits has caused widespread damage, including a climate emergency, catastrophic loss of biodiversity, and extensive degradation of soils around the world. Earth abuse is also at the root of the Covid-19 pandemic and the grim likelihood that new pathogens will continue to emerge from other animal species to infect humans. Cultivation, deforestation, mining, livestock raising, and other activities degrade and destroy wildlife habitat, leaving animals no choice but to move closer to humans, potentially bringing pathogens along with them. Suburban sprawl and tourism (especially “eco-tourism”) also bring humans and wildlife closer together. Hunting involves the most intimate contact with wild animals; indeed, the prevailing hypothesis is that the hunting of horseshoe bats probably kicked off the chain of events that led to the current coronavirus pandemic. Humans have lived with domestic animals for millennia, and our bodies may have learned how to deal with the pathogens passed back and forth. But when ecosystems are disturbed or encroached upon, novel zoonotic viruses can move from wildlife into domestic animals and from there into humans. There is strong circumstantial evidence that the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, which killed more than 675,000 Americans and as many as 50 million worldwide, began with the flu virus jumping from swine into humans in Haskell County, Kansas, moving on to what is now Fort Riley with new army recruits, and from there reaching the battlefields of World War 1. The horrific wildfires that were ignited across Southeast Asia for land-clearing in 1997-98, combined with a regional drought, killed off many fruit-bearing trees in the forests of Malaysia. Fleeing the dead forests, fruit bats found sustenance in domestic orchards, bringing with them the Nipah virus. Swine being raised within the orchards became infected through the bats’ virus-laden droppings and passed the virus on to the people who handled them. Nipah brings high mortality among both hogs and human population, killing approximately 50 percent of the people it infects. We saw during the past year that once the new coronavirus gained a foothold in our species, the modern human propensity for long-distance travel quickly turned local outbreaks into a pandemic. Air conditioning, another technology with severe climate effects, was also implicated in Covid-19 outbreaks. Summertime, a season in which respiratory viruses typically wane, instead saw dramatic infection peaks throughout the Sun Belt as people escaped the heat and gathered in tightly enclosed, air-conditioned spaces. Vacation cruises, which should have been banned decades ago given their exploitation of workers and heavy effect on the oceans and atmosphere, hosted some of the worst early outbreaks. The industrial meat industry, despoiler of soils and water, prolific emitter of greenhouse gases, also turned out to be an efficient viral incubator. In some cases, greenhouse warming itself creates conditions for spread of zoonotic infection. In East and North Africa, for example, droughts have become more frequent and intense thanks to climate change. Many pastoralists have responded by replacing their cattle herds with camels, which, famously, can survive for long stretches of time without access to water. As a result, much larger numbers of camels are now in close contact with humans in the region. Worryingly, the coronavirus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome is circulating in dromedary camel populations in several countries in the region. MERS originated in bats, has become endemic in camels, and then over the past decade has repeatedly made the jump from camels into humans. It does not spread as readily from person to person as the Covid-19 virus, but it is orders of magnitude more deadly. Of approximately 2,500 people who have been infected by the MERS virus since 2012, one-third have died. As droughts worsen, farmers and herders take their camels on increasingly long journeys in search of forage. Trips often extend for days, and, without fuel for fire building, the herders often must sleep close to the camels for warmth. For want of fire and water, they also may sustain themselves by drinking the camels’ milk raw. All of this increases the risk of virus transmission. We may wriggle out from under the Covid-19 pandemic by year’s end, but we won’t be in the clear. It is likely that we will continue to encounter novel coronaviruses. Never before the year 2000 were coronaviruses known to emerge from bats into human populations and cause highly lethal disease in humans. In the two decades since, however, there have been three such events, involving SARS-CoV-1, which caused the 2002-2004 “severe acute respiratory syndrome” (SARS) pandemic; MERS-CoV, which causes MERS; and SARS-CoV-2, the cause of Covid-19. In a 2020 article in the journal Cell, David Morens and Anthony Fauci – yes, that Dr. Fauci – wrote that as we continue disrupting the ecosphere, pathogens are finding their way into human populations with increasing frequency: “The COVID-19 pandemic is yet another reminder, added to the rapidly growing archive of historical reminders, that in a human-dominated world, in which our human activities represent aggressive, damaging, and unbalanced interactions with nature, we will increasingly provoke new disease emergences. We remain at risk for the foreseeable future. COVID-19 is among the most vivid wake-up calls in over a century. It should force us to begin to think in earnest and collectively about living in more thoughtful and creative harmony with nature, even as we plan for nature’s inevitable, and always unexpected, surprises.” Our encroachment on the ecosphere has opened a Pandora’s box. In addition to the viruses causing SARS, MERS, and Covid-19, some of the other bat coronaviruses studied so far have all the necessary pathogenic tools for attacking humans, and they have been shown to infect and sicken laboratory mice. According to a paper authored by a national group of ten researchers in the field, there are “enormous groups of bat coronaviruses distributed globally,” and many, like SARS-CoV-2, are “functionally preadapted” to infecting humans. That preadaptation may be related to similarities among bats, minks, cats, humans, and some other mammalian species in our lung-cell membranes’ susceptibility to entry by this group of viruses. There’s more. Since 2017, another coronavirus – emerging, like the Covid-19 and SARS viruses, from horseshoe bats – has been triggering deadly outbreaks among piglets in China. In the laboratory, the new bug appears to have the genetic potential to infect human airway and intestinal cells. Three different coronaviruses that cause severe disease in cattle, horses, and swine are closely related to another virus that has long been causing the common cold in humans. These livestock viruses may acquire, through genetic exchange, the ability to infect us. Scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about the propensity of different coronavirus strains to engage in recombination, that is, to swap blocks of genetic code with one another. Reportedly, the code for shaping the “spike” protein that allows the virus to enter host cells is especially prone to recombination, raising concerns that code for versions of the spike that can serve as “keys” for opening human cells to infection could pass from human pathogens like the Covid-19 or common-cold viruses into livestock viruses. The latter might thereby acquire the ability to infect the people who work around them. In researchers’ words, “[C]oronaviruses can change rapidly, drastically, and unpredictably via recombination with both known and unknown lineages.” The ten scientists who warned that coronaviruses are functionally preadapted to the human body further stressed that their data “reaffirm what has long been obvious: that future coronavirus transmissions into humans are not only possible, but likely. Scientists knew this years ago and raised appropriate alarm. Our prolonged deafness now exacts a tragic price.” What’s good for the ecosphere is good for human health, and we are not helpless victims. Escaping ecological catastrophe and reducing the frequency of pandemics that might be lurking in the decades ahead is well within our capability, but it will require assiduous respect for ecological limits and great restraint in our interactions with nature. Stan Cox is the author of The Green New Deal and Beyond (2020) and the upcoming The Path to a Livable Future: Forging a New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic, both from City Lights Books. This article was originally published by GreenSocialThought.org.	Read
April 20, 2021	In our hurry to conquer nature and death, we have made a new religion of science. by Jonathan Cook, in World, Countercurrents.org. Back in the 1880s, the mathematician and theologian Edwin Abbott tried to help us better understand our world by describing a very different one he called Flatland. Imagine a world that is not a sphere moving through space like our own planet, but more like a vast sheet of paper inhabited by conscious, flat geometric shapes. These shape-people can move forwards and backwards, and they can turn left and right. But they have no sense of up or down. The very idea of a tree, or a well, or a mountain makes no sense to them because they lack the concepts and experiences of height and depth. They cannot imagine, let alone describe, objects familiar to us. In this two-dimensional world, the closest scientists can come to comprehending a third dimension are the baffling gaps in measurements that register on their most sophisticated equipment. They sense the shadows cast by a larger universe outside Flatland. The best brains infer that there must be more to the universe than can be observed but they have no way of knowing what it is they don’t know. This sense of the the unknowable, the ineffable has been with humans since our earliest ancestors became self-conscious. They inhabited a world of immediate, cataclysmic events – storms, droughts, volcanoes and earthquakes – caused by forces they could not explain. But they also lived with a larger, permanent wonder at the mysteries of nature itself: the change from day to night, and the cycle of the seasons; the pin-pricks of light in the night sky, and their continual movement; the rising and falling of the seas; and the inevitability of life and death. Perhaps not surprisingly, our ancestors tended to attribute common cause to these mysterious events, whether of the catastrophic or the cyclical variety, whether of chaos or order. They ascribed them to another world or dimension – to the spiritual realm, to the divine. Paradox and mystery Science has sought to shrink the realm of the inexplicable. We now understand – at least approximately – the laws of nature that govern the weather and catastrophic events like an earthquake. Telescopes and rocket-ships have also allowed us to probe deeper into the heavens to make a little more sense of the universe outside our tiny corner of it. But the more we investigate the universe the more rigid appear the limits to our knowledge. Like the shape-people of Flatland, our ability to understand is constrained by the dimensions we can observe and experience: in our case, the three dimensions of space and the additional one of time. Influential “string theory” posits another six dimensions, though we would be unlikely to ever sense them in any more detail than the shadows almost-detected by the scientists of Flatland. The deeper we peer into the big universe of the night sky and our cosmic past, and the deeper we peer into the small universe inside the atom and our personal past, the greater the sense of mystery and wonder. At the sub-atomic level, the normal laws of physics break down. Quantum mechanics is a best-guess attempt to explain the mysteries of movement of the tiniest particles we can observe, which appear to be operating, at least in part, in a dimension we cannot observe directly. And most cosmologists, looking outwards rather inwards, have long known that there are questions we are unlikely ever to answer: not least what exists outside our universe – or expressed another way, what existed before the Big Bang. For some time, dark matter and black holes have baffled the best minds. This month scientists conceded to the New York Times that there are forms of matter and energy unknown to science but which can be inferred because they disrupt the known laws of physics. Inside and outside the atom, our world is full of paradox and mystery. Conceit and humility Despite our science-venerating culture, we have arrived at a similar moment to our forebears, who gazed at the night sky in awe. We have been forced to acknowledge the boundaries of knowledge. There is a difference, however. Our ancestors feared the unknowable, and therefore preferred to show caution and humility in the face of what could not be understood. They treated the ineffable with respect and reverence. Our culture encourages precisely the opposite approach. We show only conceit and arrogance. We seek to defeat, ignore or trivialise that which we cannot explain or understand. The greatest scientists do not make this mistake. As an avid viewer of science programmes like the BBC’s Horizon, I am always struck by the number of cosmologists who openly speak of their religious belief. Carl Sagan, the most famous cosmologist, never lost his sense of awestruck wonder as he examined the universe. Outside the lab, his was not the language of hard, cold, calculating science. He described the universe in the language of poetry. He understood the necessary limits of science. Rather than being threatened by the universe’s mysteries and paradoxes, he celebrated them. When in 1990, for example, space probe Voyager 1 showed us for the first time our planet from 6 billion km away, Sagan did not mistake himself or his fellow NASA scientists for gods. He saw “a pale blue dot” and marvelled at a planet reduced to a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”. Humility was his response to the vast scale of the universe, our fleeting place within it, and our struggle to grapple with “the great enveloping cosmic dark”. Mind and matter Sadly, Sagan’s approach is not the one that dominates the western tradition. All too often, we behave as if we are gods. Foolishly, we have made a religion of science. We have forgotten that in a world of unknowables, the application of science is necessarily tentative and ideological. It is a tool, one of many that we can use to understand our place in the universe, and one that is easily appropriated by the corrupt, by the vain, by those who seek power over others, by those who worship money. Until relatively recently, science, philosophy and theology sought to investigate the same mysteries and answer the same existential questions. Through much of history, they were seen as complementary, not in competition. Abbott, remember, was a mathematician and theologian, and Flatland was his attempt to explain the nature of faith. Similarly, the man who has perhaps most shaped the paradigm within which much western science still operates was a French philosopher using the scientific methods of the time to prove the existence of God. Today, Rene Descartes is best remembered for his famous – if rarely understood – dictum: “I think, therefore I am.” Four hundred years ago, he believed he could prove God’s existence through his argument that mind and matter are separate. Just as human bodies were distinct from souls, so God was separate and distinct from humans. Descartes believed knowledge was innate, and therefore our idea of a perfect being, of God, could only derive from something that was perfect and objectively real outside us. Weak and self-serving as many of his arguments sound today, Descartes’ lasting ideological influence on western science was profound. Not least so-called Cartesian dualism – the treatment of mind and matter as separate realms – has encouraged and perpetuated a mechanistic view of the world around us. We can briefly grasp how strong the continuing grip of his thinking is on us when we are confronted with more ancient cultures that have resisted the west’s extreme rationalist discourse – in part, we should note, because they were exposed to it in hostile, oppressive ways that served only to alienate them from the western canon. Hearing a Native American or an Australian Aboriginal speak of the sacred significance of a river or a rock – or about their ancestors – is to become suddenly aware of how alien their thinking sounds to our “modern” ears. It is the moment when we are likely to respond in one of two ways: either to smirk internally at their childish ignorance, or to gulp at a wisdom that seems to fill a yawning emptiness in our own lives. Science and power Descartes’ legacy – a dualism that assumes separation between soul and body, mind and matter – has in many ways proved a poisonous one for western societies. An impoverished, mechanistic worldview treats both the planet and our bodies primarily as material objects: one a plaything for our greed, the other a canvas for our insecurities. The British scientist James Lovelock who helped model conditions on Mars for NASA so it would have a better idea how to build the first probes to land there, is still ridiculed for the Gaia hypothesis he developed in the 1970s. He understood that our planet was best not viewed as a very large lump of rock with life-forms living on it, though distinct from it. Rather Earth was as a complete, endlessly complex, delicately balanced living entity. Over billions of years, life had grown more sophisticated, but each species, from the most primitive to the most advanced, was vital to the whole, maintaining a harmony that sustained the diversity Few listened to Lovelock. Our god-complex got the better of us. And now, as the bees and other insects disappear, everything he warned of decades ago seems far more urgent. Through our arrogance, we are destroying the conditions for advanced life. If we don’t stop soon, the planet will dispose of us and return to an earlier stage of its evolution. It will begin again, without us, as simple flora and microbes once again begin recreating gradually – measured in aeons – the conditions favourable to higher life forms. But the abusive, mechanistic relationship we have with our planet is mirrored by the one we have with our bodies and our health. Dualism has encouraged us to think of our bodies as fleshy vehicles, which like the metal ones need regular outside intervention, from a service to a respray or an upgrade. The pandemic has only served to underscore these unwholesome tendencies. In part, the medical establishment, like all establishments, has been corrupted by the desire for power and enrichment. Science is not some pristine discipline, free from real-world pressures. Scientists need funding for research, they have mortgages to pay, and they crave status and career advancement like everyone else. Kamran Abbasi, executive editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote an editorial last November warning of British state corruption that had been unleashed on a grand scale by covid-19. But it was not just politicians responsible. Scientists and health experts had been implicated too: “The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency.” He added: “The UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines.” Doctors and clerics But in some ways Abbasi is too generous. Scientists haven’t only corrupted science by prioritising their personal, political and commercial interests. Science itself is shaped and swayed by the ideological assumptions of scientists and the wider societies to which they belong. For centuries, Descartes’ dualism has provided the lens through which scientists have often developed and justified medical treatments and procedures. Medicine has its fashions too, even if they tend to be longer-lived – and more dangerous – than the ones of the clothing industry. In fact, there were self-interested reasons why Descartes’s dualism was so appealing to the scientific and medical community four centuries ago. His mind-matter division carved out a space for science free from clerical interference. Doctors could now claim an authority over our bodies separate from that claimed by the Church over our souls. But the mechanistic view of health has been hard to shake off, even as scientific understanding – and exposure to non-western medical traditions – should have made it seem ever less credible. Cartesian dualism reigns to this day, seen in the supposedly strict separation of physical and mental health. To treat the mind and body as indivisible, as two sides of the same coin, is to risk being accused of quackery. “Holistic” medicine still struggles to be taken seriously. Faced with a fear-inducing pandemic, the medical establishment has inevitably reverted even more strongly to type. The virus has been viewed through a single lens: as an invader seeking to overwhelm our defences, while we are seen as vulnerable patients in desperate need of an extra battalion of soldiers who can help us to fight it off. With this as the dominant framework, it has fallen to Big Pharma – the medical corporations with the greatest firepower – to ride to our rescue. Vaccines are part of an emergency solution, of course. They will help save lives among the most vulnerable. But the reliance on vaccines, to the exclusion of everything else, is a sign that once again we are being lured back to viewing our bodies as machines. We are being told by the medical establishment we can ride out this war with some armour-plating from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. We can all be Robocop in the battle against Covid-19. But there are others ways to view health than as an expensive, resource-depleting technological battle against virus-warriors. Where is the focus on improving the ever-more nutrient-deficient, processed, pesticide-laden, and sugar and chemical-rich diets most of us consume? How do we address the plague of stress and anxiety we all endure in a competitive, digitally connected, no-rest world stripped of all spiritual meaning? What do we do about the cosseted lifestyles we prefer, where exertion is a lifestyle choice renamed as exercise rather than integral to our working day, and where regular exposure to sunshine, outside of a beach vacation, is all but impossible in our office-bound schedules? Fear and quick-fixes For much of human history, our chief concern was the fight for survival – against animals and other humans, against the elements, against natural disasters. Technological developments proved invaluable in making our lives safer and easier, whether it was flint axes and domesticated animals, wheels and combustion engines, medicines and mass communications. Our brains now seem hardwired to look to technological innovation to address even the smallest inconvenience, to allay even our wildest fears. So, of course, we have invested our hopes, and sacrificed our economies, in finding a technological fix to the pandemic. But does this exclusive fixation on technology to solve the current health crisis not have a parallel with the similar, quick-fix technological remedies we keep seeking for the many ecological crises we have created? Global warming? We can create an even whiter paint to reflect back the sun’s heat. Plastics in every corner of our oceans? We can build giant vacuum-cleaners that will suck it all out. Vanishing bee populations? We can invent pollinator drones to take their place. A dying planet? Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk will fly millions of us to space colonies. Were we not so technology obsessed, were we not so greedy, were we not so terrified of insecurity and death, if we did not see our bodies and minds as separate, and humans as separate from everything else, we might pause to ponder whether our approach is not a little misguided. Science and technology can be wonderful things. They can advance our knowledge of ourselves and the world we inhabit. But they need to be conducted with a sense of humility we increasingly seem incapable of. We are not conquerors of our bodies, or the planet, or the universe – and if we imagine we are, we will soon find out that the battle we are waging is one we can never hope to win. This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/ Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.	Read
April 23, 2021	Every Day Is An Earth Day: Suggestions for Living in an Ecozoic Future by David Sparenberg, in Counter Solutions, Countercurrents.org. Here are two lists of changes that can and should be made, restoring this Earth home more fully to a habitable, life-diversified, and evolving planet. Outward behaviors everyone can practice and contribute to: Reduce and eliminate uses of fossil fuels.  Support and participate in clean energy alternatives. Reduce and eliminate non-biodegradable plastics.  Support and participate in oceanic and fresh water clean ups. Plant trees and support largescale tree planting projects.  Reverse deforestation, promote reforestation. The two main sources of oxygen on this planet come from forests and algae blooms along coral reefs.  Both forests and reefs are in danger of becoming dead zones. Plant gardens, no matter how small, and grow edible produce.  Eat the food you grow.  Be attentive to the growing process and life cycles of plants. Support only political, spiritual, and economic leaders who are green to the core and crisis sensitive and committed, who do not serve their own egos and do not do biding-for-profit of special (Earth traumatizing) interests of wealth and power. Minimize overall energy consumption and unplug yourself from extension technologies used to contain and define your identity, most to the point, the energy reduction and unplugging needed from computer, cell phone and television. Help to create and maintain neighborhood Ecozoic Culture and Ecozophic Education Centers.  Such centers can become primary places for reeducation in appropriateness and response-ability and for developing a participatory culture of ritual belonging and community recognition. Set times for solitude in nature as vital practice.  Whether this is along a seashore, at a hiking spot, in wilderness areas, or even a neighborhood park or back yard, allow your senses to fully participate in becoming acquainted with the immediate eco-system and local biotic diversity. Actualize creative, non-invasive ways to connect and express reality-grounded appreciate.  This could take the form of writing a poem and reciting aloud, telling a story to the environment (and yourself) about what your senses are discovering, playing music, drumming, dancing a dance to nature and the elements, singing a song to context and its other than human inhabitants, whether the song is learned from tradition, or original and spontaneous. Reduce consuming on all levels, from eating to gadgets, clothes and accessories. Make it part of everyday to slow down, detox, find the way to your “grounding dimension” of breathing, heartbeat, bare feet on the ground and embracing the human gift of vision-dreaming.  Let these be times for tears (sorrow and suffering are realities not to be blocked by drugs), time for laughter, not mockery or humorous cruelty, but wonderment and spontaneous delight; times for appropriate movement (the conscientiousness of carbon footprint), and times for stillness, when human porousness is most open to the euphoria and ecstasy of embracing existence-within-creation. Invite others to practice these and related behaviors, especially those others who are not likely to do any of this without being invited.  There are vast numbers who are dominated by false (unauthentic) values, who are going through life with false (unauthentic) self-images.  There are many who are traumatized and go through their years in recurrent patterns, if not in permanent states of shock and numbness. Contribute to making sustainability and stability, without exploitation, oppression, genocide or forced extinction, foundational to a global new normal. Inward transformations toward eco-self and species maturation: Cultivate and practice the Ecosophy (Earth Wisdom) and disciplines of letting be, letting go, appropriate and noble intention, silence and reverence for life in all of life’s Earthly aspects.  Become intimate with delight, nest it in your heart and soul, practice acts of beauty, be playfully subversive before shallowness and passionately spontaneous within a culture of relationships and with education in instinct, moral character, and response-ability. There are traits and characteristics common to human life which must be overcome or transformed (and likely more than once) for our Earth-evolved instincts and soul to be free to unite and guide life in appropriateness and visions to abiding within the realties and necessities of homecoming to this Living Earth.  These negative traits include aggression, greed, disappointment, bitterness, resentment, fear, rage, boredom, violence, and the denials of betrayal. We are all thrown into the dark abyss of history—drawn into complicity with crimes against humanity, crimes against creation.  Repentance is in order.  Center in your spirituality and with your identity-signature, have your repentance made tangible, visible, palpable through acts of beauty (doing what a right because it is right to do so; resisting what is wrong because it degrades and destroys).  Be expressive in the delight of life, in being a conscious presence, awakened in the wonderment of creation, appropriate in affirmation and participation. Mark out in your interior a sacred learning space attendant with quality time for education in moral character.  Moral character is not reducible to adapting and adhering to any external set of principles or specific moral system.  The essence of moral character is twofold.  It consists of developing an integral capacity for reflection, even critical reflection, to consider the honesty of what is experienced and to examine beforehand the consequences of actions, of opinions, convictions, ideational positions, and adherences.  Reflection cultivates responsibility as an ability to respond to what is true in what is given, what is necessary, and what is appropriate as a human response.  Along with reflection, moral character develops a discipline of restraint to resist and counter negative impulses and reactions in one’s person and with others, which unchecked can, and too frequently do, lead to violence and injustice. Moral character is strength of person and inner resource, not excusing and not denying.  It will not diminish the spontaneities of delight but provide a defense to that which is most human and universal. Consider: If one of us with a gun can kill a huge bear or even a bigger elephant (if a few of us with guns on trains could have decimated enormous herds of buffalo for no purpose other than a cruel sport of species removal), if a small crew on a ship can kill a whale, why not accept that billions of us constantly and selfishly exploiting and devouring via our technologies can kill a planet?  Systems disruptions are prelude to chaos and collapse.  Mass extinctions are prelude to our self-made species suicide. Moral character, rising against human hubris, instills in life dignity, respect, reverence, and freedom of conscience.  Moral character is a keystone process in human spiritual evolution, to mature and be worthy, to be appropriately participatory members within the Living Earth. Make appreciation the center of your prosperity.  Learning to sing the world, as light aware of darkness, as a manifestation of sentient presence, wealthy from inclusiveness and with passionate/compassionate embrace. Above all, in the inward journey, work at this:  the justice of inclusiveness, peace of commensality and emergence along the way of everyday lives, through openness and acts of beauty, into avatars of relationships. Friend, you have read the list, add to it and share with others.  The life of the planet is being decided.  Procrastination is a choice for destruction. *Ecozoic Era, a developing age when the destructive history of humanity is reversed and replaced by human responsibility.  This begins by changing the content of the day, and by each and everyday being an Earth day. David Sparenberg is a world citizen, environmental & peace advocate & activist, actor, poet-playwright, storyteller, teacher and author.	Read
April 29, 2021	Water by John Scales Avery , in Book Review, Countercurrents.org. A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the relationships between water and life. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link: http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Water-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf The United Nations’ World Water Day On its home-page for World Water Day the United Nations points out the following facts: “Today, 1 in 3 people live without safe drinking water. “By 2050, up to 5.7 billion people could be living in areas where water is scarce for at least one month a year. “Climate-resilient water supply and sanitation could save the lives of more than 360,000 infants every year. “If we limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, we could cut climate-induced water stress by up to 50%. “Extreme weather has caused more than 90% of major disasters over the last decade. “By 2040, global energy demand is projected to increase by over 25% and water demand is expected to increase by more than 50%.” A critical resource Clearly, water is a crucial resource, and the future well-being of human society depends on how well we manage our global supply of fresh water. This book discusses various aspects of the relationship of water with human society, and with all life on planet earth. Because of climate change, some regions are increasingly threatened by drought, while others experience catastrophic floods. Water tables throughout the world are falling, as aquifers are overdrawn. Falling water tables in China were the reason why that country adopted its one-child policy. Because of water shortages, China may soon be unable to feed its own population, but, as Lester R. Brown has pointed out, this will not cause a famine in China, but as China increasingly buys grain on the world market, the price will increase beyond the purchasing power of some of the poorer countries, and it is here that the Chinese water shortages will cause famine. Countries in the Middle East and Africa have been pæagued by drought in recent years.  Millions of people are now threatened with starvation because of failing agriculture and deaths from lack of water among cattle herds. In Zimbabwe, grain production is down by 53%. Water levels on the Zambezi River are lower than they have been for decades, and Victoria Falls has become a trickle. Fish stocks on the river are in danger of collapsing. Drought is also hitting the western hemisphere. Today, California and the southwestern states are plagued by drought. The Colorado River is reduced to a trickle when it reaches the Pacific, Water tables are falling. The Ogallala aquifer is overdrawn and disappears as it flows southward. Wildfires caused by extremely dry conditions have hit California and the Pacific Northwest. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua are part of an area that has come to be known as the Dry Corridor. It is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and drought because a large percentage of the people  in this region live in poverty and are dependent on agriculture, which, in turn, depends on adequate rainfall. 2019 was the fifth consecutive year of drought in the Dry Corridor. Because of failed crops and food insecurity, many people in the region plan to migrate, despite the hardships and risks that this entails. During the years 2014-2017, Brazil experienced a severe drought, which affected the southeast part of the country, including the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Over half the area of Brazil was affected by the drought, which was considered to be the worst in 100 years. I fear that by the middle of the present century, growing populations, water shortages, the effect of climate change on agriculture and the end of the fossil fuel era will combine to produce a famine involving billions of people, rather than millions. Today the high-yield Green Revolution crop varieties have warded off famine, but these varieties are dependent on intensive irrigation and heavy use of fertilizers (often produced today with the aid of fossil fuels). Thus, high-yield agriculture may be difficult to maintain in the future. In many countries, large corporations have taken control of water supplies, and are now selling water at prices that poor citizens cannot afford. Maude Barlow, born in 1947 in Canada, is leading the struggle against the commodification of water. As the result of her campaign, the United Nations has declared water to be a human right. This is particularly important at a time when fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce. Water plays a role in present conflicts, for example in the conflict between the government of Israel and the country’s Palestinian population. In the future, there may be many other conflicts over water, for example between China and India. China is building a canal to take water from the Tibetan Plateau to Beijing, thus reducing the amount of water in rivers flowing down from the plateau into India. Other dangerous water conflicts loom in regions such as Sudan. The book also discusses the health of our oceans. Between 1751 and 1995 the amount of H+ ion in ocean surface water is estimated to have increased by 35%. Living organisms are very sensitive to acidity, and today we can observe the alarming death of many forms of marine life, for example the death of coral in the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reef systems. Over a billion people depend on fish from coral reef habitats for protein in their diets. Our oceans are now massively polluted with carelessly discarded plastic waste. Plastic waste is found in huge quantities on the beaches of the remotest islands and in the blocked digestive systems of dead whales. A recent study found that in 2010, 8 million tonnes of plastic went into our oceans, The last two chapters of this book are devoted to the role of water in biological specificity, upon which life depends, and the role of water in the origin of life, both on earth, and elsewhere in the universe. Other books and articles about  global problems are on these links https://www.johnavery.info/ https://wsimag.com/authors/716-john-scales-avery John Scales Avery I hope that you will circulate the links in this article to friends and contacts who might be interested. John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Since 1990 he has been the Chairman of the Danish National Group of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Between 2004 and 2015 he also served as Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy. He founded the Journal of Bioenergetics and Biomembranes, and was for many years its Managing Editor. He also served as Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (19881997). http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm. He can be reached at avery.john.s@gmail.com. To know more about his works visit this link.  https://www.johnavery.info/	Read
May 6, 2021	Climate change will be disastrous even after latest world pledges, says report by Countercurrents Collective, in Climate Change, Countercurrents.org. The recent pledges made by governments to limit carbon emissions will not be sufficient to meet the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius, claims a new report. Instead, those nonbinding commitments will result in a rise in the average global temperature to a potentially catastrophic 2.4 degrees Celsius. The Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent network of scientists that tracks the commitments made on cutting emissions, released its findings Monday, just weeks after U.S. President Biden convened a climate summit with world leaders. The report notes that more robust targets made at the summit “have improved the Climate Action Tracker’s warming estimate by 0.2°C,” but that the net result would still mean the world is poised to blow past the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold set in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “While all of these developments are welcome, warming based on the targets and pledges, even under the most optimistic assumptions, is still well above the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C temperature limit,” the report states. Despite the initial commitments made by world leaders in the Paris climate accord, temperatures have already risen by more than 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to a report released last month by the UN World Meteorological Organization, a finding that led UN Secretary-General António Guterres to declare, “We are on the verge of the abyss.” While keeping the average rise of surface temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible, the CAT said doing so will require a massive, unified effort from world governments that would transform life as we know it. “Of great concern are the persisting plans of some governments to build new infrastructure not compatible with Paris goals, such as new coal-fired power plants, increasing uptake of natural gas as a source of electricity and that there are large inefficient personal vehicles in some countries,” said the report. Rising temperatures have already had a profound impact on life on Earth, scientists say. A 2020 study conducted by the University of Arizona, for instance, found that at the current rate of temperature rise, one-third of all plants and animals on the planet will be at risk of mass extinction in the next 50 years. In its 2018 report, the IPCC warned that global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius would result in drastic sea-level rise, threatening coastlines and island nations, and an increase in the number of deadly heat waves. At 2 degrees of Celsius warming, 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs would die off, an estimated 13 percent of ecosystems on land would be imperiled and an ice-free Arctic would become a reality within two decades. Global Update: Climate Summit Momentum CAT said: Climate action announcements at U.S. President Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate, together with those announced since September last year, have improved the CAT’s warming estimate by 0.2°C. End of century warming from these Paris Agreement pledges and targets is now estimated to be 2.4°C. Assuming full implementation of the net zero targets by the U.S., China and other countries that have announced or are considering such targets, but have not yet submitted them to the UNFCCC, global warming by 2100 could be as low as 2.0°C (‘Optimistic Targets’ scenario). 131 countries, covering 73% of global GHG emissions, have adopted or are considering net zero targets (up by four since CAT’s last assessment). However, it is the updated 2030 NDC targets, rather than these four additional countries, that contribute the most to the drop in projected warming compared to our last estimate, highlighting the importance of stronger near-term targets. While all of these developments are welcome, warming based on the targets and pledges, even under the most optimistic assumptions, is still well above the Paris Agreement’s 1.5˚C temperature limit. The emissions gap in 2030 between Paris pledges and targets and pathways compatible with 1.5°C has narrowed by around 11-14% (2.6-3.9 GtCO2e). The largest contributions came from the U.S., the EU27, China and Japan. This emissions gap needs to be closed with further NDC target updates this year. NDC updates need to continue in advance of the COP in Glasgow. Those countries that have not improved their targets need to rethink: Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. All targets have yet to be supported by ambitious policies. Our temperature estimate of all adopted national policies (‘current policies’ scenario) is 2.9°C. Projected warming from Paris pledges drops to 2.4 degrees after U.S. Summit In an analysis, CAT said: While the number of countries adopting or considering net zero targets has risen to 131 countries, covering 73% of global GHG emissions, it is the updated 2030 Paris Agreement 2030 targets, rather than the additional countries, that contribute the most to the drop in projected warming compared with the CAT’s 2.1˚C “optimistic scenario” in the CAT December update. The biggest contributors to the drop in projected warming are the U.S., the EU27, China and Japan although China and Japan did not yet formally submit a new 2030 target to the UN. Canada announced a new target, South Africa has an increased target under public consultation, Argentina has announced a further strengthening of the target it submitted last December, and the UK has announced a stronger 2035 target. While the leaders of India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey all spoke at the US summit, none announced stronger NDCs. South Korea, New Zealand, Bhutan and Bangladesh all committed to submitting stronger NDC’s this year. Australia made a vague commitment to reaching net zero at an unspecified date, but did not update its 2030 target. Brazil brought forward its climate neutrality goal, but has changed its baseline, making its 2030 target weaker. Just over 40% of the countries that have ratified the Paris Agreement, representing about half-global emissions and about a third of the global population, have submitted updated NDCs. The CAT’s final calculations on the 2030 emissions gap between Paris pledges and a 1.5˚C pathway show it has been narrowed by 11-14%. “The wave towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions is unstoppable. The long-term intentions are good. But only if all governments flip into emergency mode and propose and implement more short-term action, global emissions can still be halved in the next 10 years as required by the Paris Agreement,” said Niklas Höhne of NewClimate Institute, the second CAT partner. The CAT set out the key measures that governments need to take to get emissions onto a 1.5˚C pathway. While the renewable electricity and electric vehicle sectors show much promise, and the technology is there, the development of new technologies for the industry and buildings sectors is too slow. Contrary to the Paris Agreement are the persisting plans of some governments to build new infrastructure such as new coal-fired power plants, increasing uptake of natural gas as a source of electricity and a trend towards larger, less efficient personal vehicles in some countries. Cleaner ‘Bridge’ Fuels are Killing Up to 46,000 Americans Per Year, Study Shows A HuffPost report said on May 5, 2021: Burning natural gas and wood instead of coal was supposed to be a bridge to a safer future, where heat and electricity came from sources that did not generate as much pollution. But new research suggests the alternative fuels are less of a bridge and more of a staircase. A new Harvard University study found that, in at least 19 states plus Washington, D.C., burning gas now kills more people than coal because of exposure to a deadly type of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5 that lingers in the air and lodges in lung tissue. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found 47,000 to 69,000 premature deaths each year that could be attributed to emissions from things like buildings, power generators and industrial boilers. Of that, fumes from gas, wood and biomass were responsible for between 29,000 and 46,000 deaths. “If you swap out one combustion fuel for another, that’s not a pathway toward a healthy energy system,” said Harvard research scientist Jonathan Buonocore, paper’s lead author. “This is showing that even with the transition from coal to gas, there are remaining impacts.” The findings do highlight the benefits of eliminating coal. In 2008, when coal produced nearly half the nation’s electricity, emissions from the power sector caused between 59,000 and 66,000 premature deaths. By 2017, that fell to 10,000 to 12,000 deaths. Along with fewer deaths came drops in U.S. output of climate-changing carbon, since gas produces roughly half the CO2 of coal. But other recent studies have cast doubt over those climate benefits. U.S. output of carbon dioxide, the primary gas causing climate change, fell 10% between 2000 to 2018 as the electricity sector’s emissions dropped 23%, mostly thanks to coal plants retiring. But if the new fleet of gas plants built over the past decade last as long and are fired up as often as the coal units they replaced, the projected emissions for the U.S. power sector over those generators’ lifespan will decrease climate-changing pollutants by just 12%, a study published last year in the journal AGU Advances found. Add to that the higher-end estimates of how much methane, a potent heat-trapping gas and the main ingredient in natural gas, leaks during production and burning, and even those reductions are effectively eliminated, the study indicated. In response to growing climate concerns and cheaper renewables, utilities are now publicly considering phasing out gas plants before their expiration dates. The new Harvard research shows the extent of the health risks associated not just with replacing coal-fired power plants with gas units, but continuing to use gas or other burning fuels for heating, cooking and industrial purposes. “We have historically tended to focus on very large point sources [of pollution] like power plants and factories,” Buonocore said. “What this shows is that to continue to improve air pollution, we should be shifting focus over to buildings and smaller industry.” If you swap out one combustion fuel for another, that’s not a pathway toward a healthy energy system. Harvard research scientist Jonathan Buonocore The study comes as emissions from buildings take center stage in the climate policy fight. As more cities opt to ban gas hookups in new or renovated buildings, at least a dozen states are considering legislation to preempt such restrictions and protect gas utilities against what they see as an existential threat to the industry. The nonprofit that sets building codes around the country, meanwhile, eliminated city governments’ right to vote on model energy codes in what was widely seen as a bid to slow the transition to nonfossil heating and cooking systems. The fine particulate matter spewed into the air by everything from gas stoves to power plants to automobiles takes a disproportionate toll on nonwhite Americans, who are exposed to 2.4 times more pollution on average than their white counterparts, according to a study published last week in the journal Science Advances. “While natural gas burns more cleanly than coal does, its usage still results in significant co-product emissions and corresponding public health impacts,” said Eric Daniel Fournier, the research director at the University of California, Los Angeles’s California Center for Sustainable Communities, who was not involved in the study. “As gas comes to represent a larger fraction of the county’s primary fuel portfolio, it will naturally come to be responsible for a larger proportion of the health impacts from stationary sources, of which electricity production is a major contributor.” C. Arden Pope III, an economist at Brigham Young University who studies the effects of fine particulate matter pollution, said the new analysis shows the “uncertainties regarding the exact impacts of transitioning away from coal.” “These results help quantify the substantial health and economic benefits that come from reducing air pollution from coal combustion,” he said. “They also remind us that there are additional benefits that can come from efforts to reduce air pollution from traffic and other sources.” Buonocore and his co-authors pulled the most recent nine years of emissions data available from the Environmental Protection Agency and compared them to state-level data from the Energy Information Administration. The researchers then ran the numbers through three reduced complexity models, which simplify projections by making assumptions about weather conditions and what chemical reactions will occur when pollutants enter the atmosphere. Those models do not capture the full picture of people getting sick and dying from coal-related pollution, which includes mining residue, toxic ash waste and nitrogen dioxide emissions. But the results “confirmed recent patterns: We observed that decreasing impacts from coal and increasing impacts from gas and biomass are likely to continue,” said Parichehr Salimifard, a postdoctoral fellow at Havard and co-author of the study. “This study highlights the gap there’s been in our climate planning,” Salimifard said. “Because we’ve been focusing on gas emissions, there’s been a blindness to other air pollutants that are hazardous to health.”	Read
May 20, 2021	Birds and Biodiversity : The Pillar of life on Earth by Dr Renu Kohli, in Environmental Protection, Countercurrents.org. Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears ,as close to us and everyone in the world as universal as birds David Attenborough A healthy planet and rich biodiversity  are essential for our health and wellbeing.   The emergence of COVID -19 has underscored the fact that when we destroy biodiversity, we destroy the system that supports human life.  Plants, animals and climate work together to maintain the balance of nature and the need for humans to coexist with nature are now clearer. Coronavirus pandemic is a reminder that we live in a connected world. What Is Biodiversity The most unique feature on earth is existence of life and most extraordinary feature of life is its diversity.  Biodiversity is earth’s primary life support system and is vital for human survival. Biodiversity is originated from Greek word bios means life and diversity means variety. Biodiversity   refers to variability of living organism on earth, from human to microbes, fungi, and invertebrates. We are part of this web of life. The term includes all the terrestrial, marine, and aquatic organisms.  Biodiversity is earth’s support system and is vital for human survival. Convention of Biological Diversity Convention on Biological Diversity is a legally binding treaty, which came as an outcome of Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on 5 June 1992 and entered into force on 29 December 1993. It is commonly known as “Biodiversity Convention” The CBD has three main objectives Conservation of biodiversity; sustainable use biodiversity without destroying it; and, to share fair and equitable benefits arising out of utilization of genetic resources. India enacted Biological Diversity Act in 2002 for giving effect to the provisions of the CBD. Birds and Biodiversity Indian Roller Birds are one of the best-known elements of the natural world as birds vary in their diversity, habitats, abundance and distribution throughout the World.  Birds constitute one of the most important species in the biodiversity of earth. There are more than10, 000 species of birds alive today, and class Aves exemplifies diversity in form and function and bird are best-documented animal on the planet. Birds occupy every continent, utilize all habitat types, and display incredible variety in behavior and appearance.  They have adapted to some of Earth’s most extreme environments they play various roles as scavenger, pollinators, seeds dispersal agent and predators of insect pest and an important indicator to evaluate different habitats both qualitatively and quantitatively. India’s biodiversity strength is well reflected with high number of bird species. 13% of the world’s bird fauna.  An estimate of about 1300 bird species are found in India. Birds vary in their diversity, habitats, abundance and distribution throughout the World. They are therefore an effective entry point for people to engage with the natural world and develop awareness of biodiversity . They are sensitive to changes in the environment, and are one of the key indicators of the health of the ecosystem. They are an important part of the food chain and food web. Birds play an important role in maintaining ecological balance; they also indicate the level of pollution. Their help in pollination of flowers and dispersal of seeds is well known.They are an important part of the food chain and food web. Here we will look at some of these roles played by our feathered co -inhibiters on earth. Value of Avian Biodiversity Biodiversity plays a major role in maintaining the ecological balance of the ecosystem. Birds act as indicator species— they are sensitive to environmental disruptions and they serve as an early warning of trouble. . Birds are popular and better studied than any other comparable group of organism, and are excellent barometer for change in the Biodiversity. Ecosystem services refer to the benefits that humans derive from the natural world, and birds are key players in providing many of these benefits.  Some might not realize the tangible value of birds, but it would be foolish to underestimate how tough life would be without them. They play a significant role in agriculture. Bio-pesticides, fodder and fuel are some of the benefits that the farming communities can enjoy when there’s an ecological balance of biodiversity. Many people derive great pleasure, fulfillment and inspiration from watching birds and listening to them. But birds are also an intricate component of ecosystems, which we need for our own survival. As birds are high up in the food chain, they are also good indicators of the general state of our biodiversity. When they start disappearing, it means that something is wrong with our environment and that we need to take action. Ecological Role Birds perform valuable ecosystem services like seed dispersal, insect and rodent control and scavenging. Many birds are sentinel species they warn us of current and impending problems, they could indicate high acidity levels in water, chemical contamination, arrival of new diseases etc. Pollination & Seed Dispersal Although the role of birds as pollinators is minimal – only 3-5% of some 1500 economically important crop and medicinal plants are bird-pollinated. Birds are extremely important as seed dispersers.  Species such as bulbuls, orioles, barbets, parakeets and hornbills are voracious fruit eaters that unwittingly drop seeds as they cover distances. Once they set foot onto a new habitat, the seeds germinate and sprout into life. This ensures the renewal of plants and ecosystems that oxygenate our planet and provide us with even more fruit/food than we started out with. Cycling nutrients and fertilizing marine ecosystem Birds, especially seabirds, play a key role in cycling nutrients and helping to fertilize marine ecosystems such as coral reefs. Seabirds travel hundreds of kilometers to feed out in the ocean – and when they return, they deposit layers of their droppings called guano, as manure guano is highly effective fertilizer due to extremely high content of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium… and act as natural fertilizer. Economic value Birds eat insects and rodents, which saves farmers money they would otherwise spend on pesticides and crop protection measures. By acting as natural controls they help regulate pests by reducing populations of potentially harmful insects such as caterpillars, weevils, beetles and flies. Insectivorous birds have been observed to reduce insect pest damage in various agricultural systems, such as apples, broccoli, coffee, corn, grapes, and oil palm. Birds of prey are good pest control agents.  In its lifetime a Barn Owl may eat more than 11,000 mice that would have consumed 13 tons of crops. Owls have been shown to control rat populations in various field crops, such as wheat, rice, and corn. Hundreds of thousands of birdwatchers travel to various places in the world hoping to glimpse rare species. Considerable economic benefit is achieved in various forms for travelling, accommodation and entrance fees. This type of ecotourism improves knowledge about importance of migratory birds and ecosystems. Seasonal Indicators Many birds migrate due to changes in season. They are perhaps great indicator of changes in weather. Observing their behavior and migration patterns can inform us about the inbound seasonal transition. Seeing Jacobin’s Cuckoos during the advent of pre monsoons is an accurate sign that a spell of monsoon showers across India is around the corner Scavenging Certain species are specialist scavengers. Vultures, kites, magpies and crows are known as nature’s cleanup crew as they consume carcasses within hours. Vultures are particularly valuable as carrion birds because they feed on carcasses that are in a more advanced state of decay than other scavengers will handle.  A vulture’s extremely acidic gut secretions destroy many of the bacteria, as well as bacterial spores and toxins, associated with rotting meat. Hence, consumption of carrion by vultures helps limit the spread of disease. They also play a critical role in nutrient cycling. Being highly specialized to rapidly dispose of large carcasses, vultures act as health wardens in the avian animal kingdom. Griffon vulture Jorbeed Conservation Reserve (Bikaner ) Recreational Value of biodiversity Avian biodiversity adds to the quality of life and provides some of the most beautiful aspects of our existence It adds beauty of a landscape. Birds provide humans with pleasure, joy, and spiritual inspiration merely by their presence. In addition, bird watching and related eco-tourism is a major economic force in many parts of the world. Bird watching is a great way to create environmental awareness Birding is a wildlife-related recreational activity that enjoys worldwide appeal. Scientific Role of Biodiversity Each species of the ecosystem contributes to providing enough evidence as to how life evolved on this planet. Humans have got inspiration from birds for centuries. Some of these advances have been huge: Darwin’s studies of finches in the Galápagos proved instrumental in shaping his thoughts on evolution through natural selection. They have been instrumental in how planes are designed. Japanese engineers used a kingfisher to redesign their bullet train. But birds play a more important role than just giving us ideas. Birds are the messengers that tell us about the health of the planet. The cliché “the canary in the coal mine” is used to imply an early indicator of potential danger or failure. Because of this, they are our early-warning system for pressing concerns such as climate change. Major threats to birds Major threats to the loss of biodiversity are the increased rate of population growth. Habitat change through land clearing and urbanization, Expansion of industrial-scale agriculture, human encroachment on habitats, the drying out of wetlands, deforestation, illegal or unattainable hunting and electrocution by power lines all due to increased rate of population growth.  In case of migratory birds Climate change adversely affects by reducing the availability of food at stopovers. Hunting and mobile signal towers are also adversely impacting migratory birds 1.Habitat loss and fragmentation Habitats are fundamentally important to species’ survival. In the case of birds, habitats provide cover from predators; breeding, wintering, and migration stopover sites; and places to forage and roost. All of the habitats used by a bird play a role in its survival, and the loss or degradation of any one of them can potentially have a population-level impact. It is little surprise, and then, that habitat loss is the greatest threat to birds. The world’s forests, swamps, plains, lakes, and other habitats continue to disappear as they are harvested for human consumption and cleared to make way for agriculture, housing, roads, pipelines and the other hallmarks of development.  Population of yellow crowned woodpecker, birds of Prey and water birds are in decline owing to habitat destruction. The amazon rain forest called as  “lungs of the planet” for its role in sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and adding fresh oxygen to it, harbors millions of bird’s species is being cut and cleared for agriculture purpose. Overexploitation of resources Over exploitation is one of the major threats to global avian biodiversity. Human have drastically disturbed the natural rate of extinction of species. The illegal killing or smuggling of wildlife is rampant in almost all parts of world. Changing consumption patterns of humans is often cited as key reason for this unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. Pollution All forms of pollution pose a serious threat to avian biodiversity. Industrialization has become one of the major threats to our environment. Pollution and contamination cause irreversible change to species. We know that pollution can threaten human health, birds which share the air we breath get affected by same respiratory problems as human when exposed to air pollution and can lead to inflammation, ruptured blood vessels and irreversible damage to birds lung. Climate change The impacts of climate change, such as increased air and ocean temperatures, and increased frequency of extreme climatic events will directly and indirectly affect biodiversity. The climate change can intensify many catastrophic events, such as droughts, decrease water supply, threaten food security, erode and inundate coastlines, and weaken natural resilience. When it comes to land biodiversity, global warming is the biggest enemy of the Polar Regions. Avifauna like penguins, puffins, and other Arctic creatures will face a constant threat of losing their habitat through the diminishment of ice caps. We should consider the consequences of our actions on birds. Thinking about the importance of birds for us culturally, aesthetically, economically and environmentally can help us feel that we have many genuine reasons to protect them. By protecting birds we are looking after the environment as a whole. If we want to prevent further health crises, it is imperative that we listen to the birds clarian call. Dr Renu Kohli , Associate Professor in zoology, Government Bangur college, Pali(Rajasthan). Joint secretary Ethological Society Of India	Read
May 20, 2021	Will There Be Resource Wars in a Renewable Future? by Michael T Klare, in Resource Crisis, Countercurrents.org. Thanks to its very name — renewable energy — we can picture a time in the not-too-distant future when our need for non-renewable fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal will vanish. Indeed, the Biden administration has announced a breakthrough target of 2035 for fully eliminating U.S. reliance on those non-renewable fuels for the generation of electricity. That would be accomplished by “deploying carbon-pollution-free electricity-generating resources,” primarily the everlasting power of the wind and sun. With other nations moving in a similar direction, it’s tempting to conclude that the days when competition over finite supplies of energy was a recurring source of conflict will soon draw to a close. Unfortunately, think again: while the sun and wind are indeed infinitely renewable, the materials needed to convert those resources into electricity — minerals like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and the rare-earth elements, or REEs — are anything but. Some of them, in fact, are far scarcer than petroleum, suggesting that global strife over vital resources may not, in fact, disappear in the Age of Renewables. To appreciate this unexpected paradox, it’s necessary to explore how wind and solar power are converted into usable forms of electricity and propulsion. Solar power is largely collected by photovoltaic cells, often deployed in vast arrays, while the wind is harvested by giant turbines, typically deployed in extensive wind farms. To use electricity in transportation, cars and trucks must be equipped with advanced batteries capable of holding a charge over long distances. Each one of these devices uses substantial amounts of copper for electrical transmission, as well as a variety of other non-renewable minerals. Those wind turbines, for instance, require manganese, molybdenum, nickel, zinc, and rare-earth elements for their electrical generators, while electric vehicles (EVs) need cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and rare earths for their engines and batteries. At present, with wind and solar power accounting for only about 7% of global electricity generation and electric vehicles making up less than 1% of the cars on the road, the production of those minerals is roughly adequate to meet global demand. If, however, the U.S. and other countries really do move toward a green-energy future of the kind envisioned by President Biden, the demand for them will skyrocket and global output will fall far short of anticipated needs. According to a recent study by the International Energy Agency (IEA), “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” the demand for lithium in 2040 could be 50 times greater than today and for cobalt and graphite 30 times greater if the world moves swiftly to replace oil-driven vehicles with EVs. Such rising demand will, of course, incentivize industry to develop new supplies of such minerals, but potential sources of them are limited and the process of bringing them online will be costly and complicated. In other words, the world could face significant shortages of critical materials. (“As clean energy transitions accelerate globally,” the IEA report noted ominously, “and solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars are deployed on a growing scale, these rapidly growing markets for key minerals could be subject to price volatility, geopolitical influence, and even disruptions to supply.”) And here’s a further complication: for a number of the most critical materials, including lithium, cobalt, and those rare-earth elements, production is highly concentrated in just a few countries, a reality that could lead to the sort of geopolitical struggles that accompanied the world’s dependence on a few major sources of oil. According to the IEA, just one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), currently supplies more than 80% of the world’s cobalt, and another — China — 70% of its rare-earth elements. Similarly, lithium production is largely in two countries, Argentina and Chile, which jointly account for nearly 80% of world supply, while four countries — Argentina, Chile, the DRC, and Peru — provide most of our copper. In other words, such future supplies are far more concentrated in far fewer lands than petroleum and natural gas, leading IEA analysts to worry about future struggles over the world’s access to them. From Oil to Lithium: the Geopolitical Implications of the Electric-Car Revolution The role of petroleum in shaping global geopolitics is well understood. Ever since oil became essential to world transportation — and so to the effective functioning of the world’s economy — it has been viewed for obvious reasons as a “strategic” resource. Because the largest concentrations of petroleum were located in the Middle East, an area historically far removed from the principal centers of industrial activity in Europe and North America and regularly subject to political convulsions, the major importing nations long sought to exercise some control over that region’s oil production and export. This, of course, led to resource imperialism of a high order, beginning after World War I when Britain and the other European powers contended for colonial control of the oil-producing parts of the Persian Gulf region. It continued after World War II, when the United States entered that competition in a big way. For the United States, ensuring access to Middle Eastern oil became a strategic priority after the “oil shocks” of 1973 and 1979 — the first caused by an Arab oil embargo that was a reprisal for Washington’s support of Israel in that year’s October War; the second by a disruption of supplies caused by the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In response to endless lines at American gas stations and the subsequent recessions, successive presidents pledged to protect oil imports by “any means necessary,” including the use of armed force. And that very stance led President George H.W. Bush to wage the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and his son to invade that same country in 2003. In 2021, the United States is no longer as dependent on Middle Eastern oil, given how extensively domestic deposits of petroleum-laden shale and other sedimentary rocks are being exploited by fracking technology. Still, the connection between oil use and geopolitical conflict has hardly disappeared. Most analysts believe that petroleum will continue to supply a major share of global energy for decades to come, and that’s certain to generate political and military struggles over the remaining supplies. Already, for instance, conflict has broken out over disputed offshore supplies in the South and East China Seas, and some analysts predict a struggle for the control of untapped oil and mineral deposits in the Arctic region as well. Here, then, is the question of the hour: Will an explosion in electric-car ownership change all this? EV market share is already growing rapidly and projected to reach 15% of worldwide sales by 2030. The major automakers are investing heavily in such vehicles, anticipating a surge in demand. There were around 370 EV models available for sale worldwide in 2020 — a 40% increase from 2019 — and major automakers have revealed plans to make an additional 450 models available by 2022. In addition, General Motors has announced its intention to completely phase out conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2035, while Volvo’s CEO has indicated that the company would only sell EVs by 2030. It’s reasonable to assume that this shift will only gain momentum, with profound consequences for the global trade in resources. According to the IEA, a typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional oil-powered vehicle. These include the copper for electrical wiring plus the cobalt, graphite, lithium, and nickel needed to ensure battery performance, longevity, and energy density (the energy output per unit of weight). In addition, rare-earth elements will be essential for the permanent magnets installed in EV motors. Lithium, a primary component of lithium-ion batteries used in most EVs, is the lightest known metal. Although present both in clay deposits and ore composites, it’s rarely found in easily mineable concentrations, though it can also be extracted from brine in areas like Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. At present, approximately 58% of the world’s lithium comes from Australia, another 20% from Chile, 11% from China, 6% from Argentina, and smaller percentages from elsewhere. A U.S. firm, Lithium Americas, is about to undertake the extraction of significant amounts of lithium from a clay deposit in northern Nevada, but is meeting resistance from local ranchers and Native Americans, who fear the contamination of their water supplies. Cobalt is another key component of lithium-ion batteries. It’s rarely found in unique deposits and most often acquired as a byproduct of copper and nickel mining. Today, it’s almost entirely produced thanks to copper mining in the violent, chaotic Democratic Republic of the Congo, mostly in what’s known as the copper belt of Katanga Province, a region which once sought to break away from the rest of the country and still harbors secessionist impulses. Rare-earth elements encompass a group of 17 metallic substances scattered across the Earth’s surface but rarely found in mineable concentrations. Among them, several are essential for future green-energy solutions, including dysprosium, lanthanum, neodymium, and terbium. When used as alloys with other minerals, they help perpetuate the magnetization of electrical motors under high-temperature conditions, a key requirement for electric vehicles and wind turbines. At present, approximately 70% of REEs come from China, perhaps 12% from Australia, and 8% from the U.S. A mere glance at the location of such concentrations suggests that the green-energy transition envisioned by President Biden and other world leaders may encounter severe geopolitical problems, not unlike those generated in the past by reliance on oil. As a start, the most militarily powerful nation on the planet, the United States, can supply itself with only tiny percentages of REEs, as well as other critical minerals like nickel and zinc needed for advanced green technologies. While Australia, a close ally, will undoubtedly be an important supplier of some of them, China, already increasingly viewed as an adversary, is crucial when it comes to REEs, and the Congo, one of the most conflict-plagued nations on the planet, is the leading producer of cobalt. So don’t for a second imagine that the transition to a renewable-energy future will either be easy or conflict-free. The Crunch to Come Faced with the prospect of inadequate or hard-to-access supplies of such critical materials, energy strategists are already calling for major efforts to develop new sources in as many locations as possible. “Today’s supply and investment plans for many critical minerals fall well short of what is needed to support an accelerated deployment of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. “These hazards are real, but they are surmountable. The response from policymakers and companies will determine whether critical minerals remain a vital enabler for clean energy transitions or become a bottleneck in the process.” As Birol and his associates at the IEA have made all too clear, however, surmounting the obstacles to increased mineral production will be anything but easy. To begin with, launching new mining ventures can be extraordinarily expensive and entail numerous risks. Mining firms may be willing to invest billions of dollars in a country like Australia, where the legal framework is welcoming and where they can expect protection against future expropriation or war, but many promising ore sources lie in countries like the DRC, Myanmar, Peru, and Russia where such conditions hardly apply. For example, the current turmoil in Myanmar, a major producer of certain rare-earth elements, has already led to worries about their future availability and sparked a rise in prices. Declining ore quality is also a concern. When it comes to mineral sites, this planet has been thoroughly scavenged for them, sometimes since the early Bronze Age, and many of the best deposits have long since been discovered and exploited. “In recent years, ore quality has continued to fall across a range of commodities,” the IEA noted in its report on critical minerals and green technology. “For example, the average copper ore grade in Chile declined by 30% over the past 15 years. Extracting metal content from lower-grade ores requires more energy, exerting upward pressure on production costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste volumes.” In addition, extracting minerals from underground rock formations often entails the use of acids and other toxic substances and typically requires vast amounts of water, which are contaminated after use. This has become ever more of a problem since the enactment of environmental-protection legislation and the mobilization of local communities. In many parts of the world, as in Nevada when it comes to lithium, new mining and ore-processing efforts are going to encounter increasingly fierce local opposition. When, for example, the Lynas Corporation, an Australian firm, sought to evade Australia’s environmental laws by shipping ores from its Mount Weld rare-earths mine to Malaysia for processing, local activists there mounted a protracted campaign to prevent it from doing so. For Washington, perhaps no problem is more challenging, when it comes to the availability of critical materials for a green revolution, than this country’s deteriorating relationship with Beijing. After all, China currently provides 70% of the world’s rare-earth supplies and harbors significant deposits of other key minerals as well. No less significant, that country is responsible for the refining and processing of many key materials mined elsewhere. In fact, when it comes to mineral processing, the figures are astonishing. China may not produce significant amounts of cobalt or nickel, but it does account for approximately 65% of the world’s processed cobalt and 35% of its processed nickel. And while China produces 11% of the world’s lithium, it’s responsible for nearly 60% of processed lithium. When it comes to rare-earth elements, however, China is dominant in a staggering way. Not only does it provide 60% of the world’s raw materials, but nearly 90% of processed REEs. To put the matter simply, there is no way the United States or other countries can undertake a massive transition from fossil fuels to a renewables-based economy without engaging economically with China. Undoubtedly, efforts will be made to reduce the degree of that reliance, but there’s no realistic prospect of eliminating dependence on China for rare earths, lithium, and other key materials in the foreseeable future. If, in other words, the U.S. were to move from a modestly Cold-War-like stance toward Beijing to an even more hostile one, and if it were to engage in further Trumpian-style attempts to “decouple” its economy from that of the People’s Republic, as advocated by many “China hawks” in Congress, there’s no question about it: the Biden administration would have to abandon its plans for a green-energy future. It’s possible, of course, to imagine a future in which nations begin fighting over the world’s supplies of critical minerals, just as they once fought over oil. At the same time, it’s perfectly possible to conceive of a world in which countries like ours simply abandoned their plans for a green-energy future for lack of adequate raw materials and reverted to the oil wars of the past. On an already overheating planet, however, that would lead to a civilizational fate worse than death. In truth, there’s little choice but for Washington and Beijing to collaborate with each other and so many other countries in accelerating the green energy transition by establishing new mines and processing facilities for critical minerals, developing substitutes for materials in short supply, improving mining techniques to reduce environmental hazards, and dramatically increasing the recycling of vital minerals from discarded batteries and other products. Any alternative is guaranteed to prove a disaster of the first order — or beyond. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel Frostlands (the second in the Splinterlands series), 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 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, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change. He is a founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy. Originally published in TomDispatch	Read
May 20, 2021	The sad saga continues: occupation and oppression of Palestinians by Ron Forthofer, in Palestine, Countercurrents.org. Here we go again with yet another deadly and devastating Israeli military attack on Gaza that has captured the world’s attention. However, this current crisis is notably different in scope from the numerous previous major Israeli war crimes against Gaza. This time there was already ongoing Palestinian resistance to Israeli provocations and violence in occupied East Jerusalem including the egregious Israeli attack in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in all of Islam. There was also more Palestinian resistance to the Israeli provocations and violence in other parts of the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself with its apartheid regime. Thus this time, when Hamas fired rockets into Israel, it was responding to attacks on Palestinians and demonstrating the unity of the Palestinian cause of resisting Israeli occupation and oppression. In addition, people worldwide now recognize that the Israeli conquest and theft of Palestinian lands is just another brutal and illegal colonial racist venture. The ongoing Israeli treatment of Palestinians is similar to the barbaric treatment of indigenous and minorities by other colonial powers. There is now much more connection between Palestinians and other oppressed people around the world, including in the US. The US and Western European nations wring their hands and plead for an end to the violence while the US simultaneously prevents any sanctions against Israel. Of course, these nations lamely insist that Israel, an occupying military power attacking an occupied people, has a ‘right to defend itself’. Wait, what did they say?! Don’t they mean to say that the Palestinians, those without an army and living under apartheid and those living under a brutal military occupation, have a right to defend themselves? Rather than go into the details of this current crisis, in the following I am going to look at a larger picture. I don’t mean to downplay the horrific suffering, loss of life and devastation of this ongoing crisis that impacts Palestinians to a far greater extent than Israelis. However, it’s important to understand that this shameful situation was predicted and could have been prevented. At the end of WWI, the US established the King-Crane Commission to examine the question of Palestine. The Commission, initially predisposed in favor of Zionism, changed its mind when it learned that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the non-Jewish inhabitants. The British officers consulted by the Commission did not think that this program could be carried out except by force of arms. In a 1929 letter to Chaim Weizmann, the future first Israeli president, Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote: “A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression [is] not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, [is] worth a great deal even though the attempt should fail.” In a September 13, 1929, letter to the American Jewish leader Felix Warburg, Magnes wrote, “I have, I regret to say, no confidence whatever that Dr. Weizmann and his associates understand the situation today any better than they have before. They may pass resolutions and agree to White Papers and lots of other things out of political necessity, but not out of inner conviction. Unless the whole aim of Zionism is changed, there will never be peace.” In 1938 Mahatma Gandhi was asked about the Palestine Conflict. He responded: “It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. … They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart.” Albert Einstein said: “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State … I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain…” In 1942 the American Council for Judaism was formed. As a solution for the conflict between Jews and Arabs, the ACJ recommended a democratic state in Palestine wherein Arabs and Jews would share in the government and have equal rights and responsibilities. It rejected the creation of an exclusively Jewish state as undemocratic and as a retreat from the universal vision of Judaism. In 1947, Loy Henderson, director of the US State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, warned Secretary of State George C. Marshall of the dangers of UN partition plan for Palestine. Here is an excerpt. “The UNSCOP [U.N. Special Committee on Palestine] Majority Plan is not only unworkable; if adopted, it would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future. “The proposals contained in the UNSCOP plan are not only not based on any principles of an international character, the maintenance of which would be in the interests of the United States, but they are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [U.N.] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. “These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race against persons outside of Palestine.” Clearly, the potential for future tension and conflict was well recognized. Shortly before his death in 1970, Bertrand Russell, one of the leading philosophers of Western thought during the 20 th century, summarized the issue very well, saying: “The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was ‘given’ by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?” If it is not too late, given that Israel has killed a two-state solution, could the 1942 ACJ recommendation work? If we continue on the current path, the future looks increasingly bleak. Ron Forthofer is retired Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, Texas; former Green Party candidate for Congress and for Governor of Colorado	Read
May 20, 2021	Palestine, to whom does it Belong? by Anthony Mathew Jacob, in Palestine, Countercurrents.org. Palestine is considered sacred to all three religions that trace their roots to (Prophet) Abraham; Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For the Jews, this is the place where the temple of (Prophet) Solomon stood, for the Christians this is the place where the Messiah, Jesus Christ was born, preached and was crucified. For the Muslims this is the place from where Prophet Mohammad ascended to heaven on the night of Mea’raj. For centuries; the Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in peace in Palestine. Although there were instances of clashes in different times, it never led to confiscating each other’s properties or large-scale evictions. However, the rise of modern Zionism in Europe in the 19th century and the ‘Balfour Declaration of 1917’ announced by the British, changed the course of history forever. The Zionist justification of the biblical ‘promised land’ and the persecution of the Jews in Europe, especially Germany in the 1940s, turned the tide in their favor. The Zionists used two major justifications for occupying Palestine: The Biblical claim of Palestine belonging exclusively to the Jews The Persecution of the Jews in Europe For the practicing Jews in Palestine as well as other parts of the world, Zionism was a political movement led by non-religious Jews who intended to occupy the land of Palestine in the name of religion. As for the Biblical claim, Jewish Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss explains: “Zionism is only around 100 years old. It is the transformation from religion to nationalism, to materialism created by non-religious Jews who hated their religion. The reason why they use the name Israel, the Star of David, hijacking, stealing the identity of Judaism and the Jewish people is in order to gain a legitimacy for their existence that should lead people to say, ‘oh, it is God given to them’ and that they should use fear and intimidate people from speaking out against their actions because they will call those that do anti-Semitic; it couldn’t be anything further from the Truth.” During one of his Tv appearances, British MP George Galloway was told that Israel (occupied Palestine) belongs to the Jews because ‘they were persecuted in Germany,’ to which he replied “The British gave the land of one people (Palestinians) to another people (Zionist Jews) to compensate for the fault of a third people (Nazi Germany).” The Nakba The Zionists; under the auspices of the British empire, orchestrated one the largest migrations in history, a large number of Jews escaping Nazi Germany were settled in Palestine leading to a sharp rise in Jewish population in the region. When the WWII ended, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. This gave birth to ‘State of Israel’ on November 29, 1947. Subsequently, Israel emerged victorious in a war with neighboring Arab states and confiscated more land than the initial UN plan. The Palestinians called it ‘Al Naqba’ meaning ‘the Catastrophe’ as more than 750,000 Palestinians were displaced and rendered refugees. On the one hand, Palestinians were displaced and forced into refugee camps, and on the other hand Jewish migration to Israel was systematically encouraged and implemented. Till today, Israel follows the policy of racial segregation, religious persecution, subjugation and harassment while continuing to deny Palestinian refugees their right to return home. Israeli settlement on Palestinian lands continues unabated, and so does the deliberate displacement of native Palestinians. Israel is an entity built on the Zionist ideology of ethno-religious supremacy, apartheid, occupation, settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing. Israeli government approves and encourages Jewish settlement in occupied Palestine on a daily basis. This is the blood-stained history that Israel and its lackeys do not want you to know. All that they want you to know is: “the Israelis are “KILLED” by Palestinians and the Palestinians merely “DIE” to Israeli attempts at “SELF-DEFENCE.” The “OCCUPIER” is called the “VICTIM” and the real “VICTIM” is called a “TERRORIST”. Despite all the propaganda, disinformation and manipulation, the truth is easy to discern, Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. Israel cannot expect the Christians and the Muslims to give up their land because the Jewish scriptures (according to Zionists) asks them to do so, or because the Jews were persecuted in Europe. Anthony Mathew Jacob is a political analyst specializing in the Middle East and Indian Subcontinent. His articles have appeared in Tehran Times, Press Tv, countercurrents.org and many other media outlets.	Read
May 7, 2021	The Arctic’s greening won’t save us by Countercurrents Collective, in Climate Change, Countercurrents.org. A new research led by scientists at UC Irvine and Boston University, published in Nature Climate Change (Jonathan A. Wang, Alessandro Baccini, Mary Farina, James T. Randerson, Mark A. Friedl, Disturbance suppresses the aboveground carbon sink in North American boreal forests, Nature Climate Change, 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-01027-4 ) suggests that all the new green biomass is not as large a carbon sink as scientists had hoped. There was a hope that as more plants start to grow in the Arctic and boreal latitudes as our warming climate makes those regions more hospitable for plants, those photosynthesizing plants would work to help sequester the atmospheric carbon dioxide that helped them flourish in the first place. “What does greening really mean? Can we really trust it to save us from climate change?” said Jon Wang, an Earth system scientist at UCI who the led the work alongside BU Earth & Environment professor Mark Friedl. “A big question is: What will happen to the carbon that is currently stored in these forests as above-ground biomass in the face of a changing climate?” The answer is that a lot of the carbon is not staying stored in the plants. Because as fires and timber harvests at those latitudes become more and more common as climate change makes those parts of the world hotter and drier and more arable at rates sometimes twice that seen at lower latitudes, much of the new green biomass is not storing carbon – it is combusting during wildfires. “What we found overall is across this whole domain over the past 31 years the carbon stocks have increased modestly,” Wang said. “What we estimate is that 430 million metric tons of biomass has accumulated over the last 31 years – but across this domain it would’ve been nearly double if it were not for these fires and harvests that are keeping it down.” The assumption before, Wang explained, was that greening was happening and it was going to help draw climate-warming carbon dioxide concentrations down – but no-one knew the exact extent of that help. To test the assumption, Wang and his team combined observational data from two different satellite missions from the US Geological Survey and NASA, Landsat and ICESat, so they could model the amount of carbon stored in biomass across a 2.8-million-square-kilometer region spanning Canada and Alaska. ICESat data provides measurements of the height of forest canopies, while Landsat data extends back 31 years to 1984 and provides data on the reflection of different wavelengths of light from the surface of the planet, which also provides information about plant biomass abundance. Juxtaposing that with a two-to-three times increase in the severity of wildfires in the region, and the pictures started to take shape. Wang found that plant biomass still increased, but not as much as previous computer models that aim to simulate climate change suggested they would, as those models have struggled to account for fires as a variable. The results, Wang hopes, will help scientists who construct those models – models that tell the world what we can expect climate change to look like – build ever-more-accurate pictures of what is in store as the century unfolds. Co-author James Randerson from UC Irvine believes these new data are important because they provide an independent means to test climate models, and because of the way they represent feedbacks between the carbon cycle and the climate system. “The rates of carbon accumulation in this region are lower that what previous studies have indicated, and will push the science community to look elsewhere for the main drivers of the terrestrial carbon sink,” Randerson said. Wang added: “The change is good news for climate — but it’s also much lower than we might’ve expected, because these fires have raged, and gotten more severe.” Catastrophic sea-level rise from Antarctic melting possible with severe global warming The Antarctic ice sheet is much less likely to become unstable and cause dramatic sea-level rise in upcoming centuries if the world follows policies that keep global warming below a key 2015 Paris climate agreement target, says a Rutgers coauthored study (DeConto, R.M., Pollard, D., Alley, R.B. et al, The Paris Climate Agreement and future sea-level rise from Antarctica, Nature, 2021 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03427-0). But if global warming exceeds the target – 2 degrees Celsius – the risk of ice shelves around the ice sheet’s perimeter melting would increase significantly, and their collapse would trigger rapid Antarctic melting. That would result in at least 0.07 inches of global average sea-level rise a year in 2060 and beyond, according to the study in the journal Nature. That is faster than the average rate of sea-level rise over the past 120 years and, in vulnerable coastal places like downtown Annapolis, Maryland, has led to a dramatic increase in days of extreme flooding. Global warming of 3 degrees Celsius could lead to catastrophic sea-level rise from Antarctic melting – an increase of at least 0.2 inches per year globally after 2060, on average. “Ice-sheet collapse is irreversible over thousands of years, and if the Antarctic ice sheet becomes unstable it could continue to retreat for centuries,” said coauthor Daniel M. Gilford, a post-doctoral associate in the Rutgers Earth System Science & Policy Lab led by coauthor Robert E. Kopp, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences within the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “That’s regardless of whether emissions mitigation strategies such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are employed.” The Paris Agreement, achieved at UN climate change conference, seeks to limit the negative impacts of global warming. Its goal is to keep the increase in global average temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, along with pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The signatories committed to eliminating global net carbon dioxide emissions in the second half of the 21st century. Climate change from human activities is causing sea levels to rise, and projecting how Antarctica will contribute to this rise in a warmer climate is a difficult but critical challenge. How ice sheets might respond to warming is not well understood, and we don’t know what the ultimate global policy response to climate change will be. Greenland is losing ice at a faster rate than Antarctica, but Antarctica contains nearly eight times more ice above the ocean level, equivalent to 190 feet of global average sea-level rise, the study notes. The study explored how Antarctica might change over the next century and beyond, depending on whether the temperature targets in the Paris Agreement are met or exceeded. To better understand how the ice sheet might respond, scientists trained a state-of-the-art ice-sheet model with modern satellite observations, paleoclimate data and a machine learning technique. They used the model to explore the likelihood of rapid ice-sheet retreat and the western Antarctic ice-sheet’s collapse under different global greenhouse gas emissions policies. Current international policies are likely to lead to about 3 degrees Celsius of warming, which could thin Antarctica’s protective ice shelves and trigger rapid ice-sheet retreat between 2050 and 2100. Under this scenario, geoengineering strategies such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequestering (or storing) it would fail to prevent the worst of Antarctica’s contributions to global sea-level rise. “These results demonstrate the possibility that unstoppable, catastrophic sea level rise from Antarctica will be triggered if Paris Agreement temperature targets are exceeded,” the study says. Gilford said, “It is critical to be proactive in mitigating climate change now through active international participation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and by continuing to ratchet down proposed policies to meet the ambitious Paris Agreement targets.”	Read
May 11, 2021	Change In Worldview Need Of Hour by Sandeep Pandey, in Life/Philosophy, Countercurrents.org. As the second more virulent wave of coronavirus rages on, the urban areas seem to be more adversely affected compared to the rural areas. Although, there are cases and deaths being now reported from rural areas too but the numbers in cities is disproportionately higher. And within the cities the better off localities seem to be more adversely affected than the slums, although ironically slums are more densely populated and because of this it is not possible for people in slums to maintain physical distancing and most people here are carefree about putting on masks. Given that about half the people in India are malnourished and anaemic and most of this population would presumably be in rural areas or urban slums, deprived sections of population seem to be coping with coronavirus in a far better manner than the well-to-do section of society, comes as a surprise. What are the inferences we can draw from the abovementioned observations. The rural and urban poor population apparently has inherently more immunity to the virus compared to more affluent people living protected lives. Middle and upper middle class have a distinctly different life style than the poor and rural people. They confine themselves to more indoor activities and are removed from physical labour. Rich among them probably spend a substantial amount of time in air-conditioned spaces. On the other hand urban poor and rural people are engaged in physical labour and are out in open most of the time. This probably explains why even with poor health indicators, the urban poor and rural population inherently has a robust immunity and can resist the virus attack better. Hence living close to the nature and breathing fresh oxygen is the key. There are hardly any reports from tribal areas, where people are closest to nature, of coronavirus cases or deaths due to it. Tribals are in any case known to deal better with natural calamities because of their innate instincts. A human being cannot meet his/her physical needs without engaging in labour. The rich are able to meet all their needs without doing any labour because it is the poor who labour on their behalf. For example, from growing and cooking and bringing the food to table is done by other people for a rich person. He enjoys the labour of others. Coronavirus has shown the limitation of us as humans and our so called knowledge. The rich with all their luxury and social comforts feel insecure as for the first time money is not able to buy them a guarantee to remain alive. Scientists and doctors feel their knowledge and skills are not enough to save human lives. Ultimately it is the shortage of Oxygen, which is otherwise present to the extent of 21 % in natural air, which is choking lives. All the might of powerful militaries and modern sophisticated armaments are not able to defend lives of our fellow countrymen and women. Ironically, traditional enemies are offering help. Coronavirus has erased the divisions among human beings and has made us think about the purpose of our existence. The direction of the argument is leading us to Mahatma Gandhi’s thesis in Hind Swaraj. He is opposed to machinery when it cripples the limbs of men. He argues that in pursuance of mechanization or industrialization in order to save time and labour we have arrived at a situation where people are without work and hence face starvation. He accepts contraptions like sewing machine because he thinks that it fulfills a primary need of human beings, i.e., to stitch clothes, but according to him traversing distance with rapidity of motor car is not a primary need. According to him all machines, including human body, are useful so long as they subserve the growth of soul. He did not want humans to become slaves of machines. He considered railways and hospitals as necessary evils. It is true if human beings lived close to nature they would probably not have to visit doctors very often or would rely on traditional ways of healing. Hence if we have to prevent more Covid like diseases we should learn to live more in harmony with nature. Additional problem which has arisen in the second wave of coronavirus is that due to large number of deaths taking place we are witnessing continuous burning of bodies in some cremation grounds. Needless to say it requires tremendous amount of wood and creates huge pollution. Communities which practice burning of bodies must think of switching over to burying human corpses. Question of physical space may arise then. If dead bodies are buried with a sapling planted on top instead of creating a permanent or semi-permanent structure, practice followed in Anandwan established by Baba Amte in Warora, Chandrapur District of Maharashtra, then one doesn’t have to limit oneself to a well defined graveyards. Poor lower caste communities, even among the Hindus, often bury the dead in their agricultural fields. Then there are communities like Lingayats which traditionally practice burial rather than burning. First writer’s mother has asked her to bury her in a burial ground with no construction over it so that eventually the space could be used to bury someone else. Significance of burying is to become one with nature and our body being utilized by other organisms. In burning the latter doesn’t happen. Burying is a environmentally more friendly way of disposing dead bodies and it should be adopted by all rational human beings. The best would be, of course, if we chose to donate our bodies to medical colleges for students, or our organs for people who need them. Our survival as a species depends on adapting ourselves so that we are one with the nature and believe in a worldview which is holistic. The industrial civilization has taken us farther away from it. Poornima Bisineer, MBBS, is from Lingayat community and Sandeep Pandey is Vice President, Socialist Party (India).	Read
May 11, 2021	Poisoning the Planet’s Web of Life by Robert Hunziker, in Environmental Protection, Countercurrents.org. The Web of Life is under attack but almost nobody is aware because it’s happening mostly below surface. Scientists have identified a rampant worldwide Bugpocalypse that’s methodically killing the planet’s most significant and most crucial life support system, and it’s intentional! The victim is soil, which is the life source for 95% of the foods we cram down our throats three times per day, 365 days per year. A new landmark study has identified the killer of nature’s greatest achievement of all time, soil. Based upon this major new research only recently released, the culprit or soil killer is agricultural pesticides, as follows: “Study after study indicates the unchecked use of pesticides across hundreds of millions of acres each year is poisoning the organisms critical to maintaining healthy soils,” Donley added. “Yet our regulators have been ignoring the harm to these important ecosystems for decades.” (Source: Tari Gunstone, et al, “Pesticides and Soil Invertebrates: A Hazard Assessment,” Frontiers in Environmental Science, May 4, 2021) “Below the surface of fields covered with monoculture crops of corn and soybeans, pesticides are destroying the very foundations of the web of life,’ said study co-author Nathan Donley, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity… A handful of soil contains an estimated 10 –100 million organisms belonging to over 5,000 taxa… Soils contain an abundance of biologically diverse organisms that perform many important functions such as nutrient cycling, soil structure maintenance, carbon transformation, and the regulation of pests and diseases,” Ibid. All of which prompts a troubling thought: What impact does pesticide have, not only on the organisms within the soil, but on the entire network from industrial farming to food processors to supermarkets with packaged goods that people buy to satisfy hunger and/or just plain ole gluttony, binging, gorging, or on occasion pigging out? Answer: It’s not a pretty picture. It should be noted that the study is classified as “the largest, most comprehensive review of the impacts of agricultural pesticides on soil organisms ever conducted.” (Source: Pesticides Threaten the ‘Foundations of the Web of Life,’ New Soil Study Warns, EcoWatch, May 4, 2021) By all appearances, this is a monstrous scandal that’s hidden from sight within the world’s soil as well as hidden behind lackadaisical, slipshod regulations. Worse yet, after years of unbridled poisoning, nobody seems to care enough to do anything about it because it’s not on the “Save the Planet” top ten list. Moreover, similar to other toxins spread throughout the world, like nuclear radiation exposure, it takes many years for the harmful impact to be fully recognized, e.g., according to the Ukraine Health Ministry, three decades after the fact, there are 2,347,863 Chernobyl-related cases, including 453,391 malformed and/or diseased children, not yet born in 1986. Their parents were children when Chernobyl’s nuclear core melted down. (Sources: BBC special report: The True Toll of the Chernobyl Disaster d/d July 26, 2019 and USA Today, Chernobyl’s Legacy: Kids With Bodies Ravaged by Disaster, April 17, 2016) Hopefully, this landmark study, which clearly proves massive poisoning of the web of life, arrives in the public’s hands early enough, and is taken seriously enough, to do something about an impending crisis like no other crisis throughout all of human history, i.e., universal toxicosis. The study concludes that sweeping changes are needed to protect the web of life: “It’s not just one or two pesticides that are causing harm, the results are really very consistent across the whole class of chemical poisons… Co-author Tara Cornelisse, an entomologist at the Center for Biological Diversity, concurred that ‘it’s extremely concerning that over 70% of cases show that pesticides significantly harm soil invertebrates,” Ibid. According to statements by the researchers: “The paper constitutes a comprehensive review of the impacts of agricultural pesticides on soil invertebrates. We found that pesticide exposure negatively impacted soil invertebrates in 70.5% of 2,842 tested parameters from 394 reviewed studies.” Those percentage results for invertebrate loss interestingly jive with a recent report of vertebrate loss issued September 10th 2020 by the World Wildlife Foundation, in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London entitled: “The Living Planet Report 2020,” which shows a loss of 68% of vertebrate life in less than 50 years. Figures like that are within earshot of extinction-type numbers from millions of years ago. These extraordinarily high percentage losses of life make it nearly impossible to grasp the true gravity of the situation. These are ‘off the charts’ numbers of destruction of the most basic forms of life, gone forever. How long can this persist? The Gunstone study “Pesticides and Soil Invertebrates: A Hazard Assessment,” which is the subject of this article, conducted 51 studies within Europe, 30 in the United States, eight in Australia, seven in Canada, and five or less in Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Columbia, Egypt, India, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Yemen confirming the conclusion that “from these data it is apparent that, as a set of chemical poisons, pesticides pose a clear hazard to soil invertebrates,” Ibid. “The United States Environmental Protection Agency does not have sufficient testing requirements or tools in place to quantify risk to soil dwelling organisms. The European honeybee is the only terrestrial invertebrate included in mandatory ecotoxicological testing of pesticides. The practice of using the honey bee as a surrogate underestimates harm to many taxa and often results in narrow efforts to mitigate pesticide impacts solely to honey bees and other pollinators, not soil organisms,” Ibid. The entire planet has become a chemical enterprise. Sixty-five hundred (6,500) different man-made chemicals are used in the production, formulation, preservation, and packaging of our modern food supply. (Source: Julian Cribb, Food or War, Cambridge University Press, 2019) “Rachel Carson blew the whistle on global poisoning in her 1962 book Silent Spring, which focused on one particular chemical, DDT, leading to a worldwide ban in 1972. (Ed. If it had not been banned, today only airplanes would be flying in the sky, maybe) Since she wrote her book, worldwide production and use of pesticides in agriculture has more than quadrupled, exceeding 5 million tonnes in 2017.” (Cribb) “In recent years, a growing flood of scientific papers has reported more and graver health impacts as a result of the chemicalisation of our food supply, for example, in 2018 Irva Herzz-Picciotto and colleagues reported brain damage to unborn children and adult deaths resulting from exposure to organo-phosphate pesticides, which are widely used in agriculture all over the world… what consumers often fail to understand is that many of these toxic chemicals used in food production do not just vanish after they have been used and continue to cycle through the natural world, lingering in the soil and concentrating up the food chain to result in doses often times many times stronger by the time they reach humans.” (Cribb) The Gunstone paper is a landmark study that exposes a frightening side to the world that has been hidden from public view for decades. But, what can be done? Are there “save the soil” advocacy groups? Soil is alive, a complete self-sustaining ecosystem with 10-to-100, 000,000 organisms per handful! Whereas, dirt does not support life, with few, if any, minerals, no nutrients, or living organisms, no worms, no fungi, and lacking texture and structure. Poisoning the planet’s soil, or its web of life, turns it into dirt. Who would’ve ever guessed that agricultural practices would turn soil into dirt? The paradox is beyond breathtaking, but it does fill some open slots within ”The World is Insanely Stupid” jigsaw puzzle. “Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?” (Jane Goodall, Harvest of Hope, 2005) Robert Hunziker is a writer from Los Angeles	Read
May 16, 2021	Premier Xi Jinping’s Geopolitical Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop Challenge in Climate Change by David Anderson, Countercurrents.org. Without quick action to curb CO2 emissions, global warming is likely to increase by 4 degrees Centigrade (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above today’s normal during the 21st century and that is dangerously close to the temperature of 6 degrees Centigrade above normal that initiated the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago when 96% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates were wiped out.” 2012 World Bank Report XXXXX It will be the result of A Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop in the Arctic land and Arctic Ocean floor like the one that caused the Permian-Triassic Extinction. That one was the last near total mass planetary extinction. So the question now facing us is this: Will we humans be able to bring about a worldwide economic and political order that will prevent such an extinction from occurring again? See Reference for more info Four Questions X Can China’s political and economic system based on Confucian and Socialist/Marxist thought assure the survival of Homo sapiens on this planet? X Can American Democracy in its present form assure the survival of Homo sapiens on this planet? X Will all nations come together to assure the survival of Homo sapiens on this planet? X If the answer to all is no, what then? With the bronze/iron/agricultural age we became fully aware of the fact that we can be delusional and when we are, finding rational solutions to challenges can be a problem. The following biblical verse from Jeremiah 6/5th century BCE speaks to this. ’The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Jeremiah17:9: Now a few words on America and then on China And then back to Jeremiah: Many throughout the world see America in a state of self-delusion. They see Americans in a state of political and societal upheaval. They see a nation overwhelmed by an unrelenting flow of fake vile lugubrious information. They see large segments of the American population encumbered by dark inner social/psychological forces. They see powerful psychotic extremists in control of large segments of its society. They see an American nation recently under the control of a psycho President who dispatched a mob to ransack the Capitol in hopes of overturning his loss in an election. They see a nation with gaping material inequality, an absence of “containment” of autocratic power, a nation of autocrats who are blinded to societally needed constraints on their behavior, also blinded to the suffering of the downtrodden. (Income inequality in America is greater than that in any of the other Western democracies and is growing) Now they see a new American President who is trying to put some of the pieces back together, yet facing sizeable opposition. All are asking the question: Why are Americans so out of touch with world reality? Why has irrational thought become so powerful? Why are so many unable to draw the line between constructive “Free Speech” and extreme opinions and beliefs that encourage aberrant behavior? This raises a serious question not only about the future of America but also the future of other nations that have adopted the American Democratic Capitalist form of government as their own. It is the question all “Democracies” should now be asking: Has the time come to go back to Socrates and rethink this “Democracy” thing all over again? American dysfunction was an issue in the minds of early American leaders Washington and Madison and others like them when the Nation was formed. They saw themselves as having ability knowledge and virtue. Their concern however was how much power to give the masses. It led to questions such as: How much power should those in control have to contain the masses? How can a constitutional government of the people and for the people check-mate all sides to the equation? Years before, Socrates had given them a warning. He believed that the best form of government was neither a tyranny nor a democracy. Instead, government worked best when ruled by individuals who had the greatest ability knowledge and virtue and possessed a complete understanding of themselves. His was a vision of an ideal society. It was an ideal inoperable for America during and after its formation. The nation was soon to find a lack of ability knowledge and virtue among its leaders. And as for the masses?? In this New Age the “Western” world should be examining the strengths of China. It is demanding ability knowledge and virtue among its leaders and at the same time constraining the aberrant behavior of its masses. It is instituting a form of Marxist/Socialism in a blend some ways like that of Scandinavian Social Democracy. All this is combined with a government structured under the guiding precepts of Confucianism. The implications are profound. In ideological competition with the Westernized world are over 1.400 billion Chinese citizens accepting an entirely different pattern of thought and behavior. The Westernized world is losing the battle. One reason is that the system gives full rein to the neurotic psychotic me/me/mine side of the human impulse. Western laws and customs do not provide sufficient restraint. There is no understanding of the need for governance to control aberrant human behavior up and down the line. We see this pattern in America and in many other Western countries as well as in those colonialized by the West such as in India. So here is the question: Could China be providing an answer? A key to an understanding of the system in China is that China is intent on constraining that part of human behavior which throughout its own history was evidenced by societally destructive forces. Controlling them today is a priority. It includes societally destructive religious forces. An example: China has been able to control Uyghur Islamic terrorism and Uyghur Islamic exponential population growth. Exponential population grown is an enormous problem in the Middle East. Uyghurs within the Xinjiang region now number just over 12 million. Terrorism there was being brought in by Islamic terrorists leaving Syria, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. “Reeducation Centers” are being used to reeducate those would be terrorists. Also, sterilization measures are being taken to stabilize population size. Some facts about American behavior are now in order. Between 1994 and 2020 there were 893 terrorist attacks and plots in the United States. Overall, right-wing terrorists perpetrated the majority; 50 % of all attacks and plots during this period compared to 25 % committed by left-wing terrorists, 15 % by religious terrorists, 3% by ethno nationalists. Since Tiananmen Square, there seems to have been no notable extremist behavior in China. All has been quiet. One reason why: There are no news outlets or organizations as in America that feast on American style ultra-conservative alt-right degenerate false fake-news. There is no Rupert Murdoch Fox News or his Wall Street Journal, no CPAC, no neo-radical Face Book. Unlike in America China has been able to provide an increasing standard of living for all of its population, including medical care. It should be noted that Pandemics such as the Corona Virus were contained better than in any other nation of its size. And to build international goodwill, China pledged roughly 10 times more vaccines abroad than it distributed at home. The Chinese pharmaceutical companies Sinovac and Sinopharm early on began supplying “vaccine aid” to 53 low and middle-income countries, those largely left behind as rich nations were scooping up most of the pricey vaccines produced by the likes of Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson. China has been able to move forward in other ways. Unlike in America, by way of governmental control of industrial activity it has been able to control internal economic growth within the framework of specific objectives. This has resulted in infrastructural initiatives such as electrical grid, electric transportation. (no Texas tragedies as noted below) Also it has begun to expand its influence beyond its borders culturally and economically by way of its Belt and Road initiative; now stretching to the other Asian countries, to the Middle East, to Eastern Europe and to South America. The list goes on. So here is the “if it succeeds” China question: Is Premier Xi Jinping, a follower of Confucius, the man Jeremiah (quoted above and below) and Jesus and Socrates and Confucius himself would choose as the world leader to recognize and overcome the dark eukaryotic neurotic psychotic force now in this Anthropogenic Age driving all of us on this planet toward extinction? Or would it be Americans Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Fox News or the Wall Street Journal; all so opposed to President Biden’s initiatives, from COVID-19 Relief to Climate Change? Or those Republican Senators and Representatives; as they too vote against his initiatives and announce to the World that America is no longer “The United States of America” but now “The Divided States of America”. It would appear Xi Jinping has a much better chance of passing the Jeremiah/Jesus/Socrates/Confucius test. Because it would seem he has identified the fact that we are coming out of a many thousand year period of contradictory/separate/regional identity formation, Because it would seem he has identified the fact that a new period is being forced on us by our need to reassess our relationship to each other by way a shared global identity and a shared symbiotic relationship with all life on Planet Earth. Because it would seem he has identified the need for a metamorphosis of the human mind far surpassing all others throughout human history. But then questions remain: Within a 10/15 year period can Premier Xi Jinping and his team eliminate China’s carbon dependency? China through coal use is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses on the planet. Under an international agreement, will Premier Xi Jinping agree to escalating taxation of all domestic goods and services based on carbon content? For the purpose of orchestrating a graduated worldwide increase in the price of all other nation’s carbon input goods and services will this also become integral to all China export pricing? Will he recognize that our problem goes well beyond carbon, that this must be just the first step toward human planetary resource control and human survival? Will he then recognize that pricing in of all other negative externalities harmful to humanity and other life on the planet need to come next? Will he recognize all nations need to acknowledge that our planetary problems can only be solved multi-nationally and that the future of human civilization hangs in the balance? See My Paper This Subject There is evidence that with the bronze/iron/agricultural age we became fully aware of the fact that we all have a problem. Over the centuries the underlying cause has not gone away. It is a thinking imperfection we brought with us into this Age. Jeremiah wrote about it. It remains our nemesis. If Premier Xi Jinping’s China will not – and all other nations will not – fully recognize it and move quickly to overcome it, then what is left of us – if any are left – will have to go back to Jeremiah and figure out how to start this human civilization thing all over again. I will end as I began; with the Jeremiah message: I quote him in my New Book “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9 REFERENCES Methane Hydrate Feedback Loop Challenge “A 500 ppm concentration would most likely warm the planet by 3 to 4 degrees C (5.4 to 7.2 degrees F). The permafrost under the Arctic tundra, already softening would generally melt …. greatly enhancing the greenhouse effect…. At present rates carbon dioxide is expected to reach 500 ppm by 2050, and combined with the effects of methane and nitrous oxide, will cause a relentless push toward higher temperatures, which will release more methane from tundra regions, increasing warming in a relentless feedback cycle. Less obvious but potentially a greater cause for concern than gasses within the Arctic tundra is the enormous accumulation of methane deep within the sea.…. With continued warming, the sea may give up in a geological blink the accumulation of millions of years of carbon sequestration. Destabilizing the massive accumulation of methane hydrates could trigger undersea landslides that in turn could set off tsunamis on a grand scale.” Earle, Sylvia A. The World Is Blue How Our Fate and The Ocean’s Are One National Geographic Society,  2010.  pp 169,170 https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/earth-permian-mass-extinction-apocalypse-warning-climate-change-frozen-methane-a7648006.html	Read
May 16, 2021	China on the horizon as ‘world’s pharmacy’in World by M K Bhadrakumar, Countercurrents.org. Jospeh Stiglitz,  the Nobel laureate,  in an essay last week , with a startling title Will Corporate Greed Prolong the Pandemic? , wrote: “…Their goal is simple: to maintain as much market power as they can for as long as possible in order to maximise profits..” Now China has gatecrashed the aggressively-guarded orchard of powerful western pharmaceutical companies… The WHO approved on May 7 their vaccine Sinopharm… Sinovac and 15 others from China are in the queue. In immediate terms, this has potential to boost global vaccine supply, as China’s overall yearly production capacity is approaching five billion doses.  *** The western pharmaceutical industry’s monopoly has been breached, as Sinopharm’s is the first COVID-19 vaccine developed by a developing country to be validated by the WHO and only the sixth approved for emergency use globally — in fact, the only non-western vaccine so far. Literally, China has gatecrashed the aggressively-guarded orchard of powerful western pharmaceutical companies. The World Health Organisation’s approval May 7 Friday for China’s Covid-19 vaccine known as Sinopharm dramatically transforms the ecosystem of the pandemic. In immediate terms, this has potential to boost global vaccine supply, as China’s overall yearly production capacity is approaching five billion doses.  In practical terms, the WHO approval allows China to enter the portals of the COVAX as a qualified supplier. The COVAX platform aims to provide two billion doses to developing countries and regions by the end of 2021. But as of Friday, only 54 million doses had been delivered to 121 participants of the program. That is because, as New York Times wrote in the weekend, “Despite early vows, the developed world has done little to promote global vaccination, in what analysts call both a moral and epidemiological failure.” The anomaly creates a bizarre situation whereby in the western world, “vaccine orders are soaring into the billions of doses, Covid-19 cases are easing, economies are poised to roar to life, and people are busy lining up summer vacations,” while in the poor countries, the virus is raging on and vaccinations are happening far too slowly. This wasn’t how COVAX was supposed to pan put when 192 countries joined hands and all agreed that vaccination is a universal human right. Plainly put, vaccine nationalism is as much a moral issue as of predatory capitalism.  The western pharmaceutical industry is prospering off sales to the world’s rich. Pfizer made $3.5 billion out of the vaccine in the first quarter of 2021. Moderna expects to make over $19 billion this year. The French President Emmanuel Macron lost patience, saying, “Today the Anglo-Saxons (read the US and the UK) are blocking many of these ingredients and these vaccines. Today 100% of the vaccines produced in the U.S. go to the American market.”  Jospeh Stiglitz — the Nobel laureate in economics at Columbia University, former chief economist of World Bank and chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers — co-authored an essay last week with a startling title Will Corporate Greed Prolong the Pandemic? He wrote: “The scarcity of COVID-19 vaccines across the developing world is largely the result of efforts by vaccine manufacturers to maintain their monopoly control and profits. Pfizer and Moderna, the makers of the extremely effective mRNA vaccines, have refused or failed to respond to numerous requests by qualified pharmaceutical manufacturers seeking to produce their vaccines. “Their goal is simple: to maintain as much market power as they can for as long as possible in order to maximise profits… The argument that developing countries lack the skills to manufacture COVID vaccines based on new technologies is bogus. When US and European vaccine makers have agreed to partnerships with foreign producers, like the Serum Institute of India (the world’s largest vaccine producer) and Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa, these organisations have had no notable manufacturing problems. There are many more firms and organisations around the world with the same potential to help boost the vaccine supply; they just need access to the technology and know-how.”  The western nations are inoculating their own citizens as priority and also keeping stockpiles and vaccine-making capacity as reserves to provide for booster doses that may be required against some new variants of the virus in future. In effect, China’s Sinopharm is entering the COVAX platform just as it seemed to be floundering. The WHO said in a statement that the approval given to Sinopharm (which took over 5 months, actually) is a “milestone achievement” that will create an opening to significantly increase the global supply of vaccines. The WHO is reportedly granting approval to a second Chinese vaccine, Sinovac, in the coming days. Last October, when China joined the COVAX global vaccine distribution campaign, it had made a modest commitment to provide 10 million vaccines. Now, the WHO approval to Sinopharm will speed up China’s supplies to COVAX, which aims to send vaccines for free to 92 lower-income countries and to help another 99 countries and territories procure them.  Indeed, the WHO approval is a defining moment for the Chinese vaccine. Many countries were hitherto hesitating to use the Chinese the vaccine as it did not have recognition from the WHO. Sri Lanka began using Sinopharm last weekend itself! China has curbed the epidemic without the help of vaccines, while it has secured a place right at the forefront of vaccine research and development and has the capabilities today to expand vaccine production capacity explosively. To be sure, China is at the horizon as the ‘world’s pharmacy’.  The copyright for that compelling coinage belongs of course to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had patented it as far back October last year. Modi was flaunting his government’s achievements in the rather surrealistic setting of an investment conference in New Delhi in the middle of a pandemic that was yet to rear its head in India. But, seriously, India’s ambitions to cater to the vaccine needs of world community lie in ruins today. And, with the virus mutating, new unforeseeable crisis situations of graver proportions still lie ahead for India.  Where China is scoring is on account of its high degree of national mobilisation. In comparison, the US trails far behind. Its public health system is badly in need of revamp and is fragile. The Biden Administration is conscious of the vulnerabilities and deficiencies, which explains its refusal to export vaccines and raw materials.  The WHO statement added, “One vaccine (Sinopharm) has received EUL (Emergency Use Listing), but we know that there are over fifteen additional COVID-19 vaccines in advanced development in China. Today’s milestone achievement should spur other manufacturers to pursue this route and add to the global vaccine arsenal. It should also encourage an even greater contribution from China to global supply and vaccine equity.” Additionally, three Chinese biopharmaceutical companies have reportedly signed deals with Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) in recent weeks for the production of over 260 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine that could fully vaccinate over 130 million people worldwide. The RDIF said, “China is one of the major production hubs for Sputnik V and we are ready for increasing the scope of partnership with local producers to meet the rising demand for the Russian vaccine.” China’s vaccine diplomacy has far-reaching consequences.  Not only will China earn goodwill, but Sinopharm, Sinovac and the fifteen other vaccines rolling out in a near future (plus China-Russia cooperation in vaccine) bear testimony to the superiority of the Chinese model of development.  For the western world, this will be an intolerably rude reminder of the Asian Century. There are incipient western attempts already to resuscitate the moribund conspiracy theory over the ‘Wuhan virus’ — that the pandemic is a grand export project of the Chinese Communist Party! Sour grapes? . *** Posted in his blog, indianpunchline, on May 10, 2021 by the author. Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years. He introduces about himself thus:  “Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Other overseas postings included South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey. I write mainly on Indian foreign policy and the affairs of the Middle East, Eurasia, Central Asia, South Asia and the Asia-Pacific…” His mail ID : indianpunchline@gmail.com	Read
May 18, 2021	Sheikh Jarrah: History shows that empires have colluded to legalise ‘settler colonialism’ in Palestinian territories in Palestine by Pooja Kalra, Countercurrents.org. On 8th May, Israeli occupation forces attacked the Palestinian protestors outside the old city, a day after they stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque and injured about 200 Palestinians. According to the reports, 90 people have been grievously injured so far. Israeli police used bullet and stun grenades to inflict violence on the protestors, made several arrests and destroyed solidarity tents. The police crackdown has come in the background of protests against the decision of the Jerusalem District Court, which ruled, on May 2, that six Palestinian families must vacate their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, despite having lived there for generations. Earlier this year, The Israeli Central court, too, approved a decision to evict four Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah in favour of Israeli settlers. Israel’s Supreme Court was scheduled to issue a ruling on the evictions on May 6, but the decision was delayed amidst demonstrations and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers. What we are witnessing in Sheikh Jarrah right now is just the tip of the iceberg. Israeli forces are culpable of using excessive force during the law enforcement activities, unlawfully killing indigenous Palestinians without provocation, using blockade to subject them to collective punishment and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and arbitrarily detaining and torturing them (including children), among committing other war crimes, with impunity, that has caused several thousand Palestinians to lose their lives and family members. Justice long due The roots of this conflict go way back to the birth of nationalism in nineteenth century Europe, which led to the rise of Zionism. It is an ideology which identifies Jewish religious identity with the territory of Israel. In 1917, in the hopes of winning the support of European Jews during the war years, the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration, in which it promised to establish a ‘national home’ for the Jews in Palestine. At the time, this territory was still under the control of the Ottoman Empire and the First World War was ongoing. After winning the First World War, the British colonised Palestine and facilitated Jewish Immigration in an attempt to honour the Balfour Declaration. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish population increased dramatically, and the Jewish immigrants focused on purchasing land from absentee Palestinian landowners and evicting Palestinian farmers who lived and worked there. Hence, began the period of Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine, as the Jewish population started controlling the land as well as labour. The first Palestinian Revolt in 1936 was brutally suppressed by the British with the help of Zionist militias. These were the precursors to the illegal settlers in the West Bank who are backed by the Israeli Defence Forces today. The British limited the Jewish Immigration and called for the establishment of a joint Arab and Palestinian state. This left no one happy. After the Second World War, the British handed the issue of Palestine to the newly created United Nations, which divided Palestine into two roughly equal parts in 1947. However, soon after, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war broke out. Palestine and neighbouring Arab countries were on one side and Israel, with European and American support, on the other. Israel won and occupied a third more land than agreed to under the initial UN proposal. Meanwhile, Jordan controlled and later annexed the West Bank and Jerusalem and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip. However, these regions were annexed by Israel during the next war in 1967. While the 1948 war was the beginning of a nation for the Zionists, it was a catastrophe, or Nakba, for the Palestinians, as 700,000 of them became stateless. Has Israel legalised apartheid? After the 1967 war, the United Nations drew a resolution for the withdrawal of Israelis from the Palestinian territory. Israel refused. Instead, it started establishing illegal settlements in what had historically been Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There are now over 3,50,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, where the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood is located, which are illegal according to international law. While Palestinians make up 88 per cent of the population there, they only have access to 0.24 per cent of the public land, while the 12 per cent Jewish population has access to the remaining 99.76 per cent. When the West Bank was under Jordanian Rule (from 1951 to 1967), 28 Palestinian Family were promised housing in Sheikh Jarrah but the process halted in 1967 due to Israeli occupation. In 1970, the Law on Legal and Administrative Affairs in Israel was enacted, which stipulates that Jews who lost their property in 1948 in East Jerusalem could reclaim it. However, the Palestinians who lost their territory in Israel could not. This marked a milestone in Israel’s descent not just into ‘settler colonialism’—where the coloniser resides in the same territory as the colonised—but also an apartheid state, with separate rules for Arab and Jewish citizens. In 1972, two Israeli associations, namely the Sephardic committee and the Knesset committee, alleged that they owned the land on which the houses were built as early as 1885 and asked the court to Evict four Palestinian families. This led to a legal battle, as they appointed a lawyer to defend their rights, which they won. In 1976 a verdict was issued in their favour by the Israeli courts. However, the same year, using a new registration made in the Land Registry Department, the Israeli Court ruled that the land in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood belongs to the Israeli AssociationsThey started harassing the Palestinian families by serving them eviction notices and threatening them to make refugees again. The legal battle continued, however, according to the residents of Sheikh Jarrah, they were deceived by a lawyer appointed by, by the Israeli court, to defend them.  He signed an agreement in 1991, without their knowledge, that the land belonged to the Israeli Settlements Association while Palestinian residents of the neighbourhood were only ‘tenants’. Israeli courts have been hearing cases submitted by the settlements association against Palestinian residents, as well as Palestinian appeals against court rulings issued in favour of settlers, for years on end. Still, decisions have always been made favouring the former, resulting in the eviction of families from their homes. Thus, these unjustified court rulings result from Palestinians’ decades-long struggle to retain their homes and lands. According to Grassroots Jerusalem, an NGO that is dedicated to community based mobilisation of Palestinians, it is “absurd” to depend upon the Israeli Judicial System to prevent the violation of rights of Indigenous Palestinians, for it is a major constituent of the Zionist colonial-apartheid state, whose policy is to displace and dispossess Palestinians. The Zionist settlement organisations ensured the displacement of 43 Palestinian families in 2002, the Honoun and Ghawi families in 2008 and the Shamasneh family in 2017. They are heavily funded by donors from the United States. In fact, the US has historically been against allowing the oppressed, stateless indigenous Palestinians to use internationally recognised tools, like the International Criminal Court, to hold Israel accountable for the unimaginable amount of suffering it is causing. It has shielded Israel’s war crimes in the UN Security Council by vetoing and blocking international intervention. While it often maintains an equidistance to both Israel and Palestine on paper, it dishes out unconditional financial, military and diplomatic support to Israel in reality. In fact, no other country provides as much military assistance to Israel as the US. In 2018, the Trump-led US administration recognised occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. While British imperialism started the process of the destruction of the Palestinian homelands and lives, US imperialism is sustaining it today. Pooja Kalra is a graduate of history from Lady Shriram College, Delhi University, and a member of the progressive student organization COLLECTIVE.	Read
May 15, 2021	How the United States Helps To Kill Palestinians in Palestine. by Medea Benjamin, Countercurrents.org. The U.S. corporate media usually report on Israeli military assaults in occupied Palestine as if the United States is an innocent neutral party to the conflict. In fact, large majorities of Americans have told pollsters for decades that they want the United States to be neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But U.S. media and politicians betray their own lack of neutrality by blaming Palestinians for nearly all the violence and framing flagrantly disproportionate, indiscriminate and therefore illegal Israeli attacks as a justifiable response to Palestinian actions. The classic formulation from U.S. officials and commentators is that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” never “Palestinians have the right to defend themselves,” even as the Israelis massacre hundreds of Palestinian civilians, destroy thousands of Palestinian homes and seize ever more Palestinian land. The disparity in casualties in Israeli assaults on Gaza speaks for itself. – At the time of writing, the current Israeli assault on Gaza has killed at least 200 people, including 59 children and 35 women, while rockets fired from Gaza have killed 10 people in Israel, including 2 children. – In the 2008-9 assault on Gaza, Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, while their meagre efforts to defend themselves killed 9 Israelis. – In 2014, 2,251 Palestinians and 72 Israelis (mostly soldiers invading Gaza) were killed, as U.S.-built F-16s dropped at least 5,000 bombs and missiles on Gaza and Israeli tanks and artillery fired 49,500 shells, mostly massive 6-inch shells from U.S.-built M-109 howitzers. – In response to largely peaceful “March of Return” protests at the Israel-Gaza border in 2018, Israeli snipers killed 183 Palestinians and wounded over 6,100, including 122 that required amputations, 21 paralyzed by spinal cord injuries and 9 permanently blinded. As with the Saudi-led war on Yemen and other serious foreign policy problems, biased and distorted news coverage by U.S. corporate media leaves many Americans not knowing what to think. Many simply give up trying to sort out the rights and wrongs of what is happening and instead blame both sides, and then focus their attention closer to home, where the problems of society impact them more directly and are easier to understand and do something about. So how should Americans respond to horrific images of bleeding, dying children and homes reduced to rubble in Gaza? The tragic relevance of this crisis for Americans is that, behind the fog of war, propaganda and commercialized, biased media coverage, the United States bears an overwhelming share of responsibility for the carnage taking place in Palestine. U.S. policy has perpetuated the crisis and atrocities of the Israeli occupation by unconditionally supporting Israel in three distinct ways: militarily, diplomatically and politically. On the military front, since the creation of the Israeli state, the United States has provided $146 billion in foreign aid, nearly all of it military-related. It currently provides $3.8 billion per year in military aid to Israel. In addition, the United States is the largest seller of weapons to Israel, whose military arsenal now includes 362 U.S.-built F-16 warplanes and 100 other U.S. military aircraft, including a growing fleet of the new F-35s; at least 45 Apache attack helicopters; 600 M-109 howitzers and 64 M270 rocket-launchers. At this very moment, Israel is using many of these U.S.-supplied weapons in its devastating bombardment of Gaza. The U.S. military alliance with Israel also involves joint military exercises and joint production of Arrow missiles and other weapons systems. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have collaborated on drone technologies tested by the Israelis in Gaza. In 2004, the United States called on Israeli forces with experience in the Occupied Territories to give tactical training to U.S. Special Operations Forces as they confronted popular resistance to the United States’ hostile military occupation of Iraq. The U.S. military also maintains a $1.8 billion stockpile of weapons at six locations in Israel, pre-positioned for use in future U.S. wars in the Middle East. During the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, even as the U.S. Congress suspended some weapons deliveries to Israel, it approved handing over stocks of 120mm mortar shells and 40mm grenade launcher ammunition from the U.S. stockpile for Israel to use against Palestinians in Gaza. Diplomatically, the United States has exercised its veto in the UN Security Council 82 times, and 44 of those vetoes have been to shield Israel from accountability for war crimes or human rights violations. In every single case, the United States has been the lone vote against the resolution, although a few other countries have occasionally abstained. It is only the United States’ privileged position as a veto-wielding Permanent Member of the Security Council, and its willingness to abuse that privilege to shield its ally Israel, that gives it this unique power to stymie international efforts to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions under international law. The result of this unconditional U.S. diplomatic shielding of Israel has been to encourage increasingly barbaric Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. With the United States blocking any accountability in the Security Council, Israel has seized ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, uprooted more and more Palestinians from their homes and responded to the resistance of largely unarmed people with ever-increasing violence, detentions and restrictions on day-to-day life. Thirdly, on the political front, despite most Americans supporting neutrality in the conflict, AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbying groups have exercised an extraordinary role in bribing and intimidating U.S. politicians to provide unconditional support for Israel. The roles of campaign contributors and lobbyists in the corrupt U.S. political system make the United States uniquely vulnerable to this kind of influence peddling and intimidation, whether it is by monopolistic corporations and industry groups like the Military-Industrial Complex and Big Pharma, or well-funded interest groups like the NRA, AIPAC and, in recent years, lobbyists for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. On April 22, just weeks before this latest assault on Gaza, the overwhelming majority of congresspeople, 330 out of 435, signed a letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee opposing any reduction or conditioning of US monies to Israel. The letter represented a show of force from AIPAC and a repudiation of calls from some progressives in the Democratic Party to condition or otherwise restrict aid to Israel. President Joe Biden, who has a long history of supporting Israeli crimes, responded to the latest massacre by insisting on Israel’s “right to defend itself” and inanely hoping that “this will be closing down sooner than later.” His UN ambassador also shamefully blocked a call for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council. The silence and worse from President Biden and most of our representatives in Congress at the massacre of civilians and mass destruction of Gaza is unconscionable. The independent voices speaking out forcefully for Palestinians, including Senator Sanders and Representatives Tlaib, Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, show us what real democracy looks like, as do the massive protests that have filled U.S. streets all over the country. US policy must be reversed to reflect international law and the shifting US opinion in favor of Palestinian rights. Every Member of Congress must be pushed to sign the bill introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum insisting that US funds to Israel are not used “to support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law.” Congress must also be pressured to quickly enforce the Arms Export Control Act and the Leahy Laws to stop supplying any more U.S. weapons to Israel until it stops using them to attack and kill civilians. The United States has played a vital and instrumental role in the decades-long catastrophe that has engulfed the people of Palestine. U.S. leaders and politicians must now confront their country’s and, in many cases, their own personal complicity in this catastrophe, and act urgently and decisively to reverse U.S. policy to support full human rights for all Palestinians. Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.   Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.	Read
May 19, 2021	Gaza – US and the West Supports Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity – Understanding the Never-Ending Conflict. in Palestine by Peter Koenig, Countercurrents.org. “I said we would exact a very heavy price from Hamas and other terror groups, and we are doing so and will continue to do so with great force,” Netanyahu said in a fiery video address. Israel’s PM Netanyahu is a war criminal and should be held accountable for war crimes throughout his PM-ship of Israel, according to the 1945 / 1946 Nuremberg trials criteria. His crimes against humanity, against a defenseless Palestine are comparable to the Holocaust. In 2016 Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu had been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The trial is ongoing but has temporarily been “suspended”. Netanyahu has dismissed the charges as hypocritical and acts as if they didn’t exist. Even though he lacks the majority to form a government, he acts with impunity, because he can – he can because he has the backing of the United States. More importantly, Israel has been accused before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestine. The prosecutor of the ICC, Ms. Fatou Bensouda, said on 3 March 2021 that she has launched an investigation into alleged crimes in the Palestinian territories. She added the probe will look into “crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed” since June 13, 2014, and that the investigation will be conducted “independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.” In a quick response, PM Netanyahu accused the Court of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism. Of course, the quickest and often most effective defense and counter-attack is calling any accusation, no matter how rightful it is, as anti-Semitism. Calling someone an anti-Semite shuts most people up, no matter whether the accusation is true or false. That explains in part why nobody dares to even come forward with the truth about crimes committed by Israel. — Imagine, Jews were the chief victims of the German Third Reich – a Nazi Regime, and today the descendants of these very Jews, persecuted and slaughtered in Nazi-concentration camps, allowed the transformation of Israel into a Zionist Fourth Reich, executing Palestinians Holocaust-style. They have done this with impunity for the last 73 years, with the current massacres reaching unheard-of proportions. Pro-Palestine protests take place around the world – and especially now, finally, throughout Europe. Workers and young people joined protests across Europe on Saturday, 15 May, including in London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid, to oppose Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinian population in Gaza. The demonstrations coincided with the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe Day, 14 May 1948)—marking the founding of the state of Israel, through the forced expulsion of 760,000 Palestinians from their villages. Here is what one protester, Khalid, in Manchester, UK, had to say. Khalid held a placard reading “Lift the siege of Palestine-Stop bombing Palestine”. He said, “Israel should know better. They know how it feels to be exterminated. They had no homeland and came to Palestine as guests and now they have taken the Palestinians’ homes and are trying to throw them out. The Palestinians have no water, they have no food. You have got people like [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and presidents colluding with Israel and giving them money to destroy human life” – http://www.defenddemocracy.press/protests-across-europe-against-israeli-war-on-gaza/ Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, always take place with the unwavering support of the United States. No US presidential candidate has a chance of being “elected” to the empire’s highest chair, the Presidency, without having proven his or her unquestioned support for Zionist-Israel. Without that western support, Israel’s war against and oppression of Palestine would soon be over. Palestine could start breathing again and become a free country, an autonomous, sovereign, self-sustained country, what they were before the forced UN Partition Plan for Palestine, and as was foreseen by UN Resolution 181 II of 1947. This genocidal conflict situation has lasted almost three quarters of a century – and has little chance to abate under the current geopolitical constellation of the Middle East and the world, where obedient submission to US-Israeli command and atrocities is the name of the game. Background The conflict started basically with the creation of Israel. The UK, since the end of WWI and the Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, occupier of the Palestine Peninsula (Palestine and Transjordan, see map), proposed to the UN as a condition for UK withdrawal, the creation of Israel in the western part of what was then known as Palestine and Transjordan. The so-called UN Partitian Plan for Palestine, was voted on 29 November 1947 by the UN General Assembly, as Resolution 181 (II). The then 57 UN members voted 33 (72%) for, 13 against the resolution, with 10 abstentions, and one absent. The Palestinian Authority was never consulted on this proposal. Therefore, for many scholars the UN Partition Plan’s legality remains questionable. The Plan sought to resolve the conflicting objectives and claims of two competing movements, Palestinian nationalism and Jewish nationalism, or Zionism. The Plan also called for an Economic Union between the proposed two states, and for the protection of religious and minority rights. However, immediately after adoption of the Resolution by the General Assembly, a civil war broke out and the plan was not implemented. The remnants of this civil war, the non-acceptance by Palestine of this UN Resolution 181, for which the historic owners of the land were not consulted, are lingering on as of this day. —- After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British administration was formalized by the League of Nations under the Palestine Mandate in 1923, as part of the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. The Mandate reaffirmed the 1917 British commitment to the Balfour Declaration, for the establishment in Palestine of a “National Home” for the Jewish people, with the prerogative to carry it out. The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War, announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The question is still asked today: How legitimate was that declaration in terms of international law? Many academics see this declaration still today as a unilateral move and a breach of international law, as no consultation of the Palestine Authority ever took place. —— In the November 1947 UN General Assembly vote, the US was among the 33 countries voting FOR the Partition Plan. Interestingly, though, President Truman later noted, “The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders—actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats—disturbed and annoyed me.” – This Zionist pressure was to set the bar for what was to follow – up to this day. David Ben-Gurion, Zionist statesman and political leader, was the first Prime Minister (1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63) of Israel. In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to “possession of the land as a whole” (emphasis added by author). As of today, seventy-three years later and counting, the conflict is not resolved. To the contrary. It has become the longest lasting war, or aggression rather, in recent human history. A war it isn’t really, because a sheer oppression and literal slaughter against a perceived enemy, like Palestine that has no weapons to speak of, being bombarded and shot with the most sophisticated US-sponsored weapons systems, cannot be called a war. It is sheer genocide. The Palestinian weapons of choice are mostly rocks; rocks thrown by Palestinians at the Israeli IDF invaders, who then mow them down with machine guns, mostly civilians, women and children. The Israel armed-to-the-teeth Defense Forces (IDF), invade Gaza and Palestinian West Bank areas with the most sophisticated machine guns, bombs, white phosphorus, practicing indiscriminate killing. The IDF destroys Palestinian living quarters, administration buildings, schools, shops, the little manufacturing industries that makes up their economy – destroying a people already teetering at the edge of extreme poverty and despair. No mercy. What does one call people who are committing such unspeakable crimes? What does one call this style of aggression? – Literally killing hundreds, thousands of people without defense, in the world’s largest open prison – Gaza – home to more than 2 million people, living in misery, housing and infrastructure constantly destroyed, painfully partially rebuilt – just to be destroyed and bombed to pieces again. Those who don’t die from Israeli direct aggressions, may die from the indirect effects – famine, misery, disease and suicide – of this constant, abject hostility perpetuated upon what was supposed to be, according to the UN Partition Plan, an autonomous Palestine home of the Palestine people. It is an ongoing – seemingly never-ending conflict, ever since the first Intifada beginning in December 1987 (Intifada in the context of the Israeli-Palestine conflict is a concerted Palestinian attempt to shake off Israeli power and gain independence). The Oslo Accords I and II are a pair of agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), of 1993 and 1995, respectively, sponsored by Norway in an attempt to achieve peace between the two parties. The Oslo Accords failed bitterly, over the issue of Jerusalem that was to become the religious capital for both countries, but Israel refused, claiming Jerusalem as her own, making the holy city to Israel’s capital. The first foreign leader recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, was US President Donald Trump on 6 December 2017. —- There was, however, another, less talked-about but equally important issue – an issue of survival – within the Oslo Accords: The fair sharing of the water resources. Israel never agreed, as about 85% of all water resources of what used to be the Palestinian Land, falls currently within the borders of what was defined by the Partitian Plan as Palestine. This is based on a World Bank study, in which I participated. On the insistence of Israel, the US vetoed publication of the study. Hence, the report was never officially published and publicly available. Subsequent, so-called Peace processes, mostly US-sponsored, failed as of this day, because both Israel and the US have no interest in finding a peaceful solution. Neither one of the two nations have an interest in a Peace Accord, as the US needs the conflict to keep control over the Middle East, while Israel has no intentions to give up (slave)-control over Palestine, as her wellbeing depends on the overall control of what used to be Arab-Palestinian territory, and especially Palestine’s water resources. Without them, Israel would be a dry and unproductive desert. There is a purpose behind these illegal, but ever-growing number of Israeli settlements on Palestine territories: Control over water. The settlements are usually over or near underground water resources. This is one way of controlling Palestine’s water. This happens not only in the so-called West Bank, but also in Gaza, where water resources are really scarce. Gaza is the world’s per capita water-scarcest area. The few Gaza water tables are super-posed by Israeli settlements. This totally illegal and often UN-condemned Israeli Settlements strategy – also totally ignored by Israel – gradually reduces Palestine land and increases Israel’s control over crucial Palestinian water resources. The impediment of being able to manage their own water resources, therefore increasing their food self-sufficiency through their own agriculture, makes out of Palestine an Israeli slave-state. In addition, Israel has a handle on opening or closing the Gaza border, letting at will minimal food, medication and other life-essentials into Gaza, as well as allowing exactly the number needed of low-paid Palestinians (literally slave-labor) cross the border in the morning to work in Israel, and having to return at night to their Palestine homes. It is sheer Apartheid exploitation. Furthermore, Israel does not recognize Gaza’s territorial Mediterranean waters which would be a means towards Palestinians self-sustention and economic industrial activity. According to an OECD report of 2016, Israel ranks as the nation with the highest poverty rate among OECD countries, i.e. 21% of Israelis are living under the poverty line. This is more than Mexico, Turkey and Chile. The OECD average is about 11%. This figure (21%) may be slightly exaggerated, given the relatively large informal sector and transfer payments to Israel from Jews abroad, as well as from international Jewish organizations. Nevertheless, it is clear that Israel is economically not autonomous and needs Palestine to survive, both in terms of confiscated Palestinian water resources, as well as Palestinian slave labor. Therefore, there is hardly any hope for the UN-planned two-state solution to eventually materialize. There is little hope that this situation will change under the current geopolitical conditions. The US wants to dominate the Middle East and needs Israel as a garrison state that will be armed to the teeth for the US – to eventually grow and become Washington’s proxy ruler of the Middle East. A question that is rarely asked, if ever: What is Hamas’ role in this never-ending Israeli-Palestine conflict? Since 2007 Hamas is officially governing the 2-million-plus population of the 363 square kilometer Gaza Strip. Hamas is also the Palestine paramilitary or defense organization. Hamas is said to be funded largely by Iran. Is it true? And if so, is Iran the only funder of Hamas? It is odd, however, that ever so often, Hamas attacks Israel by launching unsophisticated rockets at Israeli cities, rockets that most often are intercepted by the IDF defense system, or cause minimal damage. But they cause, predictably minimal damage against an IDF which is US-equipped with the latest technology weapons- and defense systems. Yet, a Hamas attack on Israel prompts regularly a ferocious retaliation; bombardments, not so much aiming at Hamas, as Netanyahu intimidates, “We would exact a very heavy price from Hamas and other terror groups…” , but at the civilian populations. The heaviest casualties are civilian Gaza citizens, many women and children among them, after an Israeli “self-defense” retaliation. This is of course no self-defense. The Hamas attacks usually follows an Israeli provocation. Why would Hamas hit back, knowing that they won’t wreak any damage on Israel, yet they will trigger each time a deadly massacre on the Gaza population? – At the outset, Israeli provocations look like “false flags”. Could they be false flags with the willing participation of Hamas? If so, with whom does Hamas collaborate? These are questions which certainly do not have an immediate answer. But the 14-year pattern of repeatedly similar events begs the question – is there another (Hamas) agenda behind what meets the eye? What is nearly as criminal as the IDF’s aggressions, is the almost complete silence of the west, and the world at large, vis-à-vis Israel’s atrocities committed on the Palestinian population. It is an unspoken tolerance for the carnages Israel inflicts on Palestine, especially in the Gaza Strip, the world’s largest open-air prison. For example, the political UN body, despite hundreds of Resolutions, condemning and flagging Israel’s illegal actions against Palestine, including the ever-increasing number of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestine territories, seems to be hapless against Israel. Weak condemnations of Israel, calling both parties to reason – leaves Israel totally cold and undisturbed. There is no punishment whatsoever, not from the UN system, not from the western allies, most of whom are Washington and NATO vassals. The Biden Administration has taken the usual imperialist position of cynical neutrality, like it was an uninvolved disinterested player, while painting up Israel as being some kind of victim instead of the brutal Zionist apartheid state that it is. It is important to remember that the creation of Israel was so that the US had a garrison state to protect her interests in the Middle East. Take the UN Secretary General. Instead of condemning Israeli ruthlessness and demanding accountability, the spokesman for UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, merely called on the Netanyahu regime to “exercise maximum restraint and respect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.” The Secretary General himself reiterates his commitment, including through the Middle East Quartet, “to supporting Palestinians and Israelis to resolve the conflict on the basis of relevant United Nations resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements.” The Quartet, set up in 2002, consists of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia. Its mandate is to help mediate Middle East peace. As of this day they have not achieved any tangible results. Because they do NOT WANT to achieve any peace. For the reasons mentioned before, Peace is not in the interest of Israel, nor in the interest of the West, led by the United States. To keep the conflict burning, sacrificing hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of Palestinian lives is not important. It’s just a collateral damage of a larger agenda – control over the Middle East and her riches, a step towards controlling the entire world. Time and again, Guterres disgraced himself and the office he holds by failing to denounce US/NATO/Israeli aggression and demand accountability for high crimes too serious to ignore. If the UN is incapable or unwilling of assuming the responsibility of reigning in Israel, perhaps the Group of 77 (by now more than 120 UN member countries) should take a joint stand, exerting pressure on Israel, asking as an intermediary for outright negotiating with Israel and Palestine to reach a sustainable peace settlement, including the original two-state solution, back to the pre-1967 Israeli-Palestine borders. Let us, the UN, become pro-active in seeking and finding a permanent solution for the stressed-to-death, starving and tortured Palestinians, especially those from the Gaza Strip. Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020) Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.	Read

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