#the pacific can be united by its closeness to nuclear power being used as a tool of mass genocide and colonisation yes

[irawhiti]

gonna clarify a few things that i've noticed in the notes instead of replying to everyone individually. i ended up cutting out a fair bit of information to make this post initially since i was focusing on the US history of nuclear imperialism, this was (vaguely) about oppenheimer, but this seems to have confused some people and i'm a bit um, annoyed, at some of the other responses, so:

1. while i was specifically talking about the US here, i should clarify that the entire imperial core has, and still actively continues, to exploit the pacific for nuclear testing and waste sites. this is NOT something that is unique to the united states, it never has been, and i would like it if people didn't act like this is a "dumb american thing" on my post as if american citizens weren't being fucking bombed by their own government. japan has been trying to dump nuclear waste in the pacific for years and is still attempting to gain permission, despite fierce backlash and outrage from pacific islanders. france and england were allied with the US and were testing their own nuclear bombs in the pacific during the US tests.

pikinni specifically has been under colonial rule by germany, japan, spain, and the USA. this is not unique; the entirety of the fucking pacific has been colonised, sold, overthrown, and handed back and forth between global powers for centuries.

it is convenient for the imperial core to designate the pacific as a nuclear waste site, just as it is convenient for the imperial core to shift blame. i would recommend people look more into these topics on their own time since if i were to list every war crime the imperial core has committed against pasifika? i would be writing this post for months.

do NOT make this into a weird little thing about "uniquely horrible/genocidal/ignorant americans" as if americans (almost exclusively native americans and people of colour), weren't subject to the same horrors. as if part of the issue this post is TALKING about is the erasure of the voices affected by nuclear testing. as if the US government was alone in the act of decades-long nuclear genocide.

2. again, this post is focusing on the war crimes the US committed against the pacific as i am a pacific islander and feel comfortable speaking on and am affected by this topic, but while the pacific was ravaged by testing, other regions were absolutely being used for horrific nuclear tests. tests on US soil continued well after the war. england detonated at least 12 nukes on australia, which was quite convenient for them as colonisers as this made a large swatch of Aboriginal land uninhabitable and allowed the racist myth of terra nullius to further take hold. the soviet union conducted at least 715 nuclear tests in various countries and territories during the cold war. i could go on but i know less about these events frankly and i feel like it'd be inappropriate for me to try and act like any kind of authority. so, again, i'm going to recommend people do their own reading here.

a couple much less/tangentially related additions will be under the readmore, mostly just answering a few things that have come up repeatedly in the tags that aren't really the point of this post.

3. this is... obviously tangential, but i saw it mentioned a few times and people seem confused about the history there so: yes, the word "bikini" for swimsuits comes from pikinni, but the clothing has absolutely nothing to do with the atoll, its people, or its culture. pikinni roughly translates to "coconut place/surface" in kajin m̧ajel‌̧ (marshallese) and "bikini" is the german transliteration, given when pikinni was under colonial rule as part of german new guinea. the modern bikini was designed by louis réard, a frenchman (as a reminder: the french were among the countries actively and openly bombing the pacific with the US with nuclear tests). there was no actual connection to the atoll and he named it that because of the nuclear test which had been making headlines.

4. just as unrelated and frankly not something that i'd really want to put on such a serious post lmao, but it was brought up a few times in the tags so... yeah. yes, "bikini bottom" comes from bikini atoll. it obviously goes without saying that a lot of imagery taken from pacific islanders is used in spongebob. there's no actual connection to the atoll in the show, just like the "tiki totems" in the background and stuff like squidward's mo'ai house are just generalised "tropical island" imagery ripped from any cultural context. it's a little sucky sometimes, sure, but it's REALLY not related to the topic at hand and this is on such a different scale that it feels a bit... ehh. to bring these up together.

since it's been brought up i might as well mention that they actually use real footage of the nuclear bombs being dropped on pikinni as Funny Gag explosions in the show. which is uh, extremely fucking tasteless to put it lightly, but i truly Do not think it's worth including shit like "very tasteless imagery is used in a children's show sometimes" in a serious post about fucking... mass nuclear genocide being used as a tool for imperialism lmfao. for the love of god PLEASE don't let your takeaway of this post be that these are somehow on the same or some even remotely similar level here or that i'm comparing them i swear to fucking god. it just got mentioned in the tags a few times so i'm clarifying please god. look me directly in the eyes here.

while everyone's rightfully talking about oppenheimer and its flaws regarding the erasure of japanese and native american voices regarding nuclear testing and detonations, i'd like to bring up the fact that pacific islanders have also been severely impacted by nuclear testing under the pacific proving grounds, a name given by the US to a number of sites in the pacific that were designated for testing nuclear weapons after the second world war, at least 318 of which were dropped on our ancestral homes and people. i would like if more people talked about this.

important sections are bolded for ease of reading. i would appreciate this being reblogged since it's a bit alarming how few people know about this.

--

in 1946, the indigenous peoples of pikinni (the bikini atoll) were forcibly relocated off of their islands so that nuclear tests could be run on the atoll. at least 23 nuclear bombs were detonated on this inhabited island chain, including 20 hydrogen bombs. many pasifika were irreversibly irradiated, all of them were starved during multiple forced relocations, and the island chain is still unsafe to live on despite multiple cleanup attempts. there are several craters visible from space that were left on the atoll from nuclear testing.

the forced relocation was to several different small and previously uninhabited islands over several decades, none of which were able to sustain traditional lifestyles which directly lead to further starvation and loss of culture and identity. there is a reason that pacific islanders choose specific islands to inhabit including access to fresh water, food, shelter, cloth and fibre, climate, etc. and obviously none of these reasons were taken into account during the displacements.

200 pikinni were eventually moved back to the atoll in the 1970s but dangerous levels of strontium-90 were found in drinking water in 1978 and the inhabitants were found to have abnormally high levels of caesium-137 in their bodies.

--

i'm going to put the rest of this post under a readmore to improve the chances of this being reblogged by the general public. i would recommend you read the entirety of the post since it really isn't long and goes into detail about, say, entire islands being fully, utterly destroyed. like, wiped off of the map. without exaggeration, entire islands were disintegrated.

--

as i just mentioned, ānewetak (the eniwetok atoll) was bombed so violently that an entire island, āllokļap, was permanently and completely destroyed. an entire island. it's just GONE. the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested on this island. the crater is visibly larger than any of the islands next to it, more than a mile in diameter and roughly fifteen storeys deep. the hydrogen bomb released roughly 700 times the energy released during the bombing of hiroshima. this would, of course, be later outdone by other hydrogen bombs dropped on the pacific, reaching over 1000 times the energy released.

one attempt to clean up the waste on ānewetak was the construction of a large ~380ft dome, colloquially known as the tomb, on runit island. the island has been essentially turned into a nuclear waste dump where several other islands of ānewetak have moved irradiated soil to and, due to climate change, rising seawater is beginning to seep into the dome, causing nuclear waste to leak out. along with this, if a large typhoon were to hit the dome, there would be a catastrophic failure followed by a leak of nuclear waste into the surrounding land, drinking water, and ocean. the tomb was built haphazardly and quickly to cut costs.

hey, though, there's a plus side! the water in the lagoon and the soil surrounding the tomb is far more radioactive than the currently contained radioactive waste. a typhoon wouldn't cause (much) worse irradiation than the locals and ocean already currently experience, anyway! it's already gone to shit! and who cares, right, the only ""concern"" is that it will just further poison the drinking water of the locals with radioactive materials. this can just be handwaved off as a nonissue, i guess. /s

--

at least 36 bombs were detonated in the general vicinity of kiritimati (christmas island) and johnson atoll. while johnson atoll has seemingly never been inhabited by polynesians, kiritimati was used intermittently by polynesians (and later on, micronesians) for several hundred years. many islands in the pacific were inhabited seasonally and likewise many pacific islanders should be classified as nomadic but it has always been convenient for the goal of white supremacy and imperalism to claim that semi-inhabited areas are completely uninhabited, claimable pieces of terra nullius.

regardless of the current lack of inhabitants on these islands, the nuclear detonations have caused widespread ecological damage to otherwise delicate island ecosystems and have further spread nuclear fallout across the entirety of the pacific ocean.

--

while the marshall islands, micronesia, and the surrounding areas of melanesia and polynesia were (and still are) by far the worst affected by these atrocities, the entirety of the pacific has been irradiated to some extent due to ocean/wind currents freely spreading nuclear fallout through the water and air. all in all, at least 318 nuclear bombs were detonated across the pacific. i say "at least" because these are just the events that have been declassified and frankly? i wouldn't be shocked to find out they didn't stop there.

please don't leave the atomic destruction of the pacific out of this conversation. we've been displaced, irradiated, murdered, poisoned, and otherwise mass exterminated by nuclear testing on purpose and we are still suffering because of it. many of us have radiation poisoning, many of us have no safe ancestral home anymore. i cannot fucking state this enough, ISLANDS WERE DISINTEGRATED INTO NONEXISTENCE.

look, this isn't blaming people for not talking about us or knowing the extent of these issues, but it's... insidiously ironic that i haven't seen a single post that even mentions pacific islanders in a conversation about indigenous voices/voices of colour being ignored when it comes to nuclear tests and the devastation they've caused.

[mariacallous]

After decades of strategic drift and costly acquisition failures, the U.S. Navy is sailing straight into a storm it can’t avoid. Despite the Defense Department’s lip service about China being the “pacing challenge,” decades of deindustrialization and policymakers’ failure to prioritize among services and threats have left the Navy ill-equipped to endure a sustained high-intensity conflict in the Pacific. The United States is unable to keep pace with Chinese shipbuilding and will fall even further behind in the coming years. Where does that leave the U.S. Navy and the most critical U.S. foreign-policy imperative: deterring a war in the Pacific?

As evidenced by the Biden administration’s latest budget request, fiscal constraints are forcing the Navy to cut procurement requests, delay modernization programs, and retire ships early. The Navy’s budget for the 2025 fiscal year calls for decommissioning 19 ships—including three nuclear-powered attack submarines and four guided-missile cruisers—while procuring only six new vessels. The full scope of what military analysts have long warned would be the “Terrible ’20s” is now evident: The expensive upgrading of the U.S. nuclear triad, simultaneous modernization efforts across the services, and the constraint of rising government debt are compelling the Pentagon to make tough choices about what it can and cannot pay for.

Workforce shortages and supply chain issues are also limiting shipbuilding capacity. The defense industrial base is still struggling to recover from post-Cold War budget cuts that dramatically shrank U.S. defense manufacturing. The Navy needs more shipyard capacity, but finding enough qualified workers for the yards remains the biggest barrier to expanding production. The shipbuilding industry is struggling to attract talent, losing out to fast food restaurants that offer better pay and benefits for entry-level employees. At bottom, it is a lack of welders, not widgets, that must be overcome if the U.S. Navy is to grow its fleet.

Instead, the shipbuilding outlook is progressively worsening. An internal review ordered by Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro in January found that major programs, including submarines and aircraft carriers, face lengthy delays. Even the Constellation-class frigates, touted as a quick adaptation of a proven European design, are delayed by three years.

As defense analyst David Alman outlined in a prize-winning essay for the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings, the United States simply can’t win a warship race with China. The United States effectively gave up on commercial shipbuilding during the Reagan administration in the name of free trade. In the decades that followed, generous state subsidies helped China dominate commercial shipbuilding, and Beijing’s requirement that the sector be dual-use resulted in an industry that can shift to production and ship repair for the military during a conflict, much as U.S. shipyards did during World War II. The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence estimates that China now has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States. China built almost half the world’s new ships in 2022, whereas U.S. shipyards produced just 0.13 percent.

Rebuilding the arsenal of democracy that anchored the U.S. victory at sea 80 years ago won’t happen overnight or cheaply—it is a generational project. The 20-year Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program aimed at upgrading dry docks, facilities, and equipment will end up costing well over the projected $21 billion. But the plan is only intended to maximize existing U.S. industrial capacity and won’t do much to close the enormous shipbuilding gap with China. That would require a reconstitution program on par with the series of maritime laws passed after World War I, which supported the expansion of an industrial base eventually capable of turning out thousands of carriers, destroyers, submarines, frigates, and cargo ships for the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.

Realizing that U.S. shipyards are stretched thin, policymakers have begun looking abroad. Del Toro encouraged South Korean companies to invest in U.S. naval shipping during a visit this year. Japan will likely begin performing repair and maintenance work on U.S. warships soon; India agreed to do so last year. These initiatives will alleviate the increasing maintenance backlog at U.S. facilities, but it would take a large share of the combined Japanese and South Korean shipyard capacity to fundamentally alter the growing disparity between the U.S. and Chinese fleet size in the Western Pacific.

Ships are not all comparable, of course. U.S. warships are heavier and more capable than China’s, although a dearth of logistics vessels and sealift capability are major concerns. Still, the current era of missile warfare has magnified the importance of fleet size.

Without enough ships to match the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, what can the United States do to maintain conventional deterrence in the Pacific and prevent war? At least two big things: buy missiles and cut back on missions.

First, to manage risk in the short term, the Navy and the other services need to rapidly procure more munitions—focusing on weapons and capabilities, not the platforms that carry them.

The Russia-Ukraine war has military planners thinking less about short, quick conflicts and more about long wars and their vast need for materiel. What holds for depleted stocks of land-based artillery also holds for many of the weapons needed for a war at sea. A much-publicized 2023 wargame conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that the United States would run out of its entire inventory of the key Long Range Anti-Ship Missile within the first few days of a war over Taiwan. Ramping up the procurement and production of these munitions, as well as Joint Strike Missiles, Standoff Land Attack Missiles, and Harpoon missiles will enable U.S. airpower to help even the odds in the Pacific.

Anti-ship systems operated by the Army and Marines could also complement the other services’ firepower. However, the deployment of ground-based missiles will require allies’ consent. To date, no Asian allies of the United States have volunteered to permanently host U.S. missile batteries, due to political sensitivities and the fact that these countries already have such weapons of their own.

Innovation and creativity could further augment U.S. naval power. Retired U.S. Marine Col. T.X. Hammes, a fellow at the National Defense University, has urged the Navy to convert commercial container ships into warships capable of launching missiles, which would add a tremendous volume of firepower at a bargain price. These “missile merchants” would also require significantly less manpower than traditional warships do, a major consideration given the Navy’s struggle to fill existing billets.

Policymakers also need to make hard choices and limit naval deployments. Though the Navy is shrinking, its missions aren’t. A high operational tempo, manpower shortfalls, and an aging fleet are fueling a readiness crisis that is burning out sailors and ships.

Addressing the readiness crisis requires taking a hard look at which missions are essential for U.S. security and which aren’t. As former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work has written, since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Navy has spent 30 years prioritizing global presence over warfighting readiness. The deadly Pacific ship accidents in 2017 involving the USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain were directly attributable to this unsustainable mania for global presence, according to a Navy review.

The preeminence of presence missions also has more subtle consequences. After 20 years of largely uncontested deployments to the Middle East, the U.S. Navy now has an opponent who shoots back: Yemen’s Houthis. But increased experience in missile and drone defense is outweighed by a deleterious drain on precision munitions. In the conflict with the Houthis, the Navy burned through more Tomahawk land attack missiles in one day than it purchased in all of 2023. Meanwhile, the Houthis can replace all equipment destroyed by U.S. attacks with just two shiploads from Iran, according to Gen. Michael Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command.

The costs of maintaining global presence are magnified by the state of Navy recruiting and retention. The service’s recruiting woes are undeniable. The Navy missed all of its recruiting goals in 2023, some by as much as 35 percent. The service projects a shortfall of 6,700 recruits this year, according to its chief personnel officer.

Like the rest of the all-volunteer force, unprecedented recruiting headwinds mean manpower shortages will remain a persistent challenge for the Navy. Absent any change in operational tempo, sailors will work harder, deploy more frequently, and leave the service in greater numbers—ensuring a downward spiral for both manning and readiness.

The United States can’t match the size of China’s fleet in the near or medium term. Deindustrialization, poor procurement choices, and a myopic fixation on the U.S. presence in the Middle East have seen to that. All that said, the U.S. Navy still retains several significant advantages in a potential conflict with China: submarine dominance, overall tonnage, blue-water experience, and support from capable allies. A major increase in joint munitions purchases and an end to the readiness drain of presence deployments to secondary theaters will enhance the Navy’s edge during the potential peak window for a Chinese move on Taiwan over the next decade. The alternative is grim. If conventional deterrence fails, it risks military defeat for the United States or something even more dangerous: nuclear confrontation between the world’s two superpowers.

[dertaglichedan]

The growth of space and cyber technologies worldwide is raising the likelihood that war — or at least its ripple effects — will crash onto America's doorstep.

Why it matters: Centuries of national security strategy, relying on protection provided by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, are being rattled by these weapons that conquer vast distances.

America has long had the edge in space and cyberspace, but China and other powers are closing the gap. A global surveillance showdown is underway.

Hackers tied to the People's Liberation Army abscond with countless files detailing stateside arsenals. That theft propels its modernization.

Other saboteurs stalk critical infrastructure, including in Guam, a key U.S. foothold. A digital onslaught there would sap military responses in the Indo-Pacific.

Russian hacks plague Ukraine, earning it a "testing ground" moniker. U.S. lawmakers expressed concern about spillover in the months following the 2022 invasion.

North Korean cyberattacks rake in money and other assets, funding the regime's weapons programs.

A record-setting 2,877 spacecraft were launched in 2023. While most were attributed to the U.S. and its booming commercial sector, Chinese and European numbers were on the rise.

Both China and Russia have made strides in developing space weapons that could knock out satellites essential to navigation, overhead imaging and long-distance communications. Destructive testing of anti-satellite weapons has produced dangerous debris, as well.

A senior Pentagon official earlier this year warned of Moscow's efforts to put a nuclear device into space.

"I would say China is well ahead of us there. They've got the full suite of counter-space capabilities, as does Russia," said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "The United States has a lot at stake in space."

By the numbers: The Department of Defense's spending illuminates its thinking

[paladin-of-nerd-fandom65]

(Clears throat)

In a Pacific Rim AU of The DCU,

Chris Kent and Jake Grayson are drift compatible via their tight friendship

Their jaeger would be called ‘Caeruleum Sokil”

(caeruleum is Latin for ‘blue’ while sokil is Ukrainian for ‘falcon’)

Said jaeger is a Mark 3, it’s headpiece while the pilots are held inside is shaped similarly to BK-3 military helmets, with a chassis based on in turn to the torso armor of Medieval knights, its centerpiece with it displays its nuclear reactor being shaped like the Diamond shaped shield on Chris’ canon Nightwing outfit. It’s color scheme is a combination of light and standard blues with some black and yellow highlights on the torso, the ‘ankles’ and the forearms

It’s main payload are twin plasma cluster missile canons on its shoulders, two detachable GD6 chain swords on each of its forearms, EMP generators within its palms if it’s hands it can use to shock a Kaiju and finally its ultimate weapon, ‘The Starbolt’ a gigantic green nuclear plasma discharge it fires from the palms of its hands via supercharging the EMP generators and overriding the safety locks on pilots’ request. Reason for said override request is that the Starbolt carries a high risk of some of its payload backfiring onto Sokil, potentially destroying the arms in the process. Otherwise the majority of Sokil’s combat prowess is via up close melee combat. A specialized unit within its legs allowing its to jump and even flip off the ground akin to a human sized acrobat.

Also as per Jaeger designs, Caeruleum Sokil has two escape pods, a system that allows excess coolant to be expelled from its systems, and is powered as one can tell by a nuclear reactor. Unlike G. Danger however, Sokil can’t self destruct; if it were destroyed or damaged, the nuclear reactor is safely ejected out of the body to a far off distance away from the battle zone, allowing it to be salvaged by the Pan Pacific Defense Corps.

As of the present day of the Human-Kaiju War, Chris and Jake have defeated at least 3 kaiju on their own, and at least 8 total.

The majority of their victories are Category 2 and 3.

[xtruss]

Who Runs The World?

— June 14, 2023 | Ian Bremmer | GZEROMedia

Credit: Gilberto Tadday/TED

That’s the subject of my just-released TED Talk. And, believe it or not, it used to be an easy question to answer.

If you’re over 45, like me, you grew up in a world dominated by two superpowers. The United States and its allies set the rules on one side of the Berlin Wall, while the Soviet Union called the shots on the other. Nearly every other country had to align its political, economic, and security systems with one side or the other. That was a Bipolar World.

If you’re under 45, you came of age after the Soviet Union collapsed. The US became the world’s sole superpower, dictating outcomes both through its dominant role in international organizations and also by exerting raw power. That was a Unipolar World.

About 15 years ago, the world changed again – and it got a lot more complicated. The United States became less interested in being the world’s policeman, the architect of global trade, and even the cheerleader of global values. And lots of other countries grew powerful enough to ignore rules they didn’t like and, occasionally, to set some themselves. That’s the G-Zero world order I named my media company after and constantly write about – a Leaderless World.

Three things happened to cause this “geopolitical recession” – when the global architecture no longer lines up with the underlying balance of power.

First, the US didn’t bring Russia into the US-led international order. Now a former great power in serious decline, Russia has become extremely angry and sees the US as its primary adversary on the global stage. We can argue about who is most to blame for this, but the fact is we are where we are.

Second, the US did bring China into US-led institutions – but on the presumption that as the Chinese grew more integrated, wealthy, and powerful, they would also become American (i.e., a free-market democracy willing to play by the rules without wanting to change them). As it turns out, they’re still Chinese – and the US is not ready to accept that.

And third, the US and its allies ignored the tens of millions of their own citizens who felt left behind by globalization. After decades of benign neglect, most of these citizens have grown fundamentally mistrustful of their governments and of democracy itself, in turn making their leaders less able or willing to lead.

All the geopolitical crises you see in the headlines every day? Over 90% of them trace back directly or indirectly to these three issues.

Yet for better or worse, geopolitical recessions don’t last forever. After all, nature abhors a (power) vacuum. And the coming global order is something very, very different from what we’ve become used to.

Where We Are Now

We no longer live in a unipolar or bipolar or multipolar world. Why? Because we no longer have superpowers – as in, countries that exert global power in every domain. That’s right, the US and China are not superpowers today. And no superpowers means no single global order. Instead, what we have today is multiple world orders, separate but interconnected.

First, we have a Unipolar Security Order. The US is the only country that can send soldiers, sailors, and military hardware to every corner of the world. Nobody else comes close. America’s role in the security order today is more essential – and indeed more dominant – than it was a decade ago.

China is rapidly growing its military capabilities in Asia, but nowhere else in a significant way. That’s increasingly concerning to America’s Indo-Pacific allies, who now rely on the US security umbrella more than before. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has similarly made Europe the most dependent on US-led NATO it has been in decades. Meanwhile, Russia’s military has been weakened by the loss of over 200,000 troops and much of its critical materiel in Ukraine, all of which it’ll find hard to rebuild in the face of Western sanctions.

Yes, China, Russia, and others have nuclear weapons, but actually using them is still suicide. The US is the world’s sole security superpower – and will remain so for at least the next decade.

We also have a Multipolar Economic Order. There, global power is more widely shared. The US has a robust and dynamic economy, still the world’s largest. But military might doesn’t allow Washington to set the rules for the global economy.

Despite all the talk about a new cold war, the US and China are far too economically interdependent to decouple from each other. Bilateral trade between the two keeps making new highs, and other countries want access to both American muscle and the Chinese market (soon to become the world’s largest). You can’t have an economic cold war if there’s no one willing to fight it.

Meanwhile, the European Union is the world’s largest common market, and it’s able to set rules and standards that the Americans, Chinese, and others have to accept as the price of doing business with it. Japan is still a global economic power, if barely. India’s economy is growing rapidly, and with it, so is its influence on the global stage.

The relative importance of these and other economies will continue to shift over the coming decade, but what’s certain is that the global economic order is and will remain a multipolar order.

Where We’re Going

So far, I’ve written about the two world orders we already see. But there’s a third, rapidly emerging order where we find the most uncertainty … and the greatest changes to the world we know: the Digital Order. There, unlike every other geopolitical order past and present, the dominant actors setting rules and exerting power aren’t governments but technology companies.

You’ve heard how NATO weapons, intelligence, and training have helped Ukrainians defend their land. But if Western tech companies hadn’t quickly come to the rescue in the early days of the invasion – fending off Russian cyberattacks and allowing Ukrainian leaders to communicate with their soldiers on the front lines – Russia would have knocked Ukraine completely offline within weeks, effectively ending (and winning) the war. I don’t think I exaggerate when I say President Zelensky probably wouldn’t be in power today if not for tech companies and their power in the new digital order.

Tech companies decide whether Donald Trump can speak without filters and in real time to hundreds of millions of people as he runs for president again. Without social media and its ability to mass market conspiracy theories, there is no January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, no trucker riots in Ottawa, no January 8 revolt in Brazil.

Tech companies even define our identities. We used to wonder whether human behavior was primarily the result of nature or nurture. No longer – today, it’s nature, nurture, and algorithm. The digital order is becoming a critical determinant of how we live, what we believe in, what we want … and what we’re willing to do to get it.

That’s a staggering amount of power that tech companies have amassed. And it leads to the biggest question for all of us: How will technology companies use their power? The answer depends largely on what they want to be when they grow up. I see three possible scenarios.

If American and Chinese political leaders continue to assert themselves ever more forcefully in the digital space, and if the tech companies then line up with their home governments, then we’ll end up in a Technology Cold War between the US and China. The digital world will be split in two, other countries will be forced to choose sides, and globalization will fragment to a degree unprecedented in the last several decades.

If the tech companies stick with global growth strategies, refusing to align with governments and preserving the existing divide between the physical and digital fields of competition, then we’ll see a new globalization – a Globalized Digital Order. Tech companies will remain sovereign in the digital space, competing largely with each other for profits – and with governments for geopolitical power much in the same way that major state actors presently jockey for influence in the space where the economic and security orders overlap.

But if the digital space itself becomes the most important arena of great power competition, with the power of governments continuing to erode relative to the power of tech companies, then the digital order itself will become the dominant global order. If that happens, we’ll have a post-Westphalian world – a Technopolar Order dominated by tech companies as the central players in 21st-century geopolitics.

All three of these scenarios strike me as wholly plausible. Much depends on how the explosive nature of artificial intelligence drives changes in existing power structures, whether or not governments are able and willing to regulate tech companies, and – most critically – how tech leaders decide they want to use their newfound power.

These questions will determine whether we have a brighter future or a world without freedom.

[blackwoolncrown]

For the past few days, a heatwave has glowered over the Pacific Northwest, forcing temperatures in the region to a record-breaking 118ºF. Few people in the region—neither Americans nor Canadians—have air-conditioning. Stores sold out of new AC units in hours as a panicked public sought a reasonable solution to the emergency. Unfortunately, air-conditioning is part of what’s causing the unusual heatwave in the first place.

We came close to destroying all life on Earth during the Cold War, with the threat of nuclear annihilation. But we may have come even closer during the cooling war, when the rising number of Americans with air conditioners—and a refrigerant industry that fought regulation—nearly obliterated the ozone layer. We avoided that environmental catastrophe, but the fundamental problem of air conditioning has never really been resolved.

Mechanical cooling appeared in the early 1900s not for comfort but for business. In manufacturing, the regulation of temperature—“process cooling”—controlled the quality of commodities like cotton, tobacco, and chewing gum. In 1903, Alfred Wolff installed the first cooling system for people at the New York Stock Exchange because comfortable traders yielded considerably higher stock returns. Only in the ’20s did “commercial cooling” appear. On Memorial Day weekend 1925, Willis Carrier debuted the first centrifugal air-conditioning system at the Rivoli Theater in Midtown Manhattan. Previously, theaters had shut down in the summer. With air-conditioning, the Rivoli became “the talk of Broadway” and inaugurated the summer blockbuster.

-another direct tie to capitalism. Everything born out of colonio-capitalism carries its toxic mark. Article totally not under the cut for those who can’t pay for Time. It honestly paints a really clear picture of the situation. Bolding mine.-

“It’s time we become more comfortable with discomfort. Our survival may depend on it.“

Before World War II, almost no one had air-conditioning at home. Besides being financially impractical and culturally odd, it was also dangerous. Chemical refrigerants like sulfur dioxide and methyl chloride filled most fridges and coolers, and leaks could kill a child, poison a hospital floor, even blow up a basement. Everything changed with the invention of Freon in 1928. Non-toxic and non-explosive, Freon was hailed as a “miracle.” It made the modernist skyscraper—with its sealed windows and heat-absorbing materials—possible. It made living in the desert possible. The small, winter resort of Phoenix, Arizona, became a year-round attraction. Architecture could now ignore the local climate. Anywhere could be 65ºF with 55% humidity. Cheap materials made boxy, suburban tract housing affordable to most Americans, but the sealed-up, stifling design of these homes required air-conditioning to keep the heat at bay. Quickly, air-conditioning transitioned from a luxury to a necessity. By 1980, more than half of all U.S. homes were air-conditioned. And despite millions of Black Americans fleeing the violence of Jim Crow, the South saw greater in-migration than out-migration for the first time—a direct result of AC. The American car was similarly transformed. In 1955, only 10 percent of American cars had air-conditioning. Thirty years later, it came standard.

The cooling boom also altered the way we work. Now, Americans could work anywhere at any hour of the day. Early ads for air-conditioning promised not health or comfort but productivity. The workday could proceed no matter the season or the climate. Even in the home, A/C brought comfort as a means to rest up before the next work day.

The use of air-conditioning was as symbolic as it was material. It conveyed class status. Who did and didn’t have air-conditioning often fell starkly along the color line, too, especially in the South. It conquered the weather and, with it, the need to sweat or squirm or lie down in the summer swelter. In that sense, air-conditioning allowed Americans to transcend their physical bodies, that long-sought fantasy of the Puritan settlers: to be in the world but not of it. Miracle, indeed.

But it came with a price. As it turned out, Freon isn’t exactly non-toxic. Freon is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), which depletes the ozone layer and also acts as a global warming gas. By 1974, the industrialized world was churning out CFCs, chemicals that had never appeared on the planet in any significant quantities, at a rate of one million metric tons a year—the equivalent mass of more than 500,000 cars. That was the year atmospheric chemists Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina first hypothesized that the chlorine molecules in CFCs might be destroying ozone in the stratosphere by bonding to free oxygen atoms and disrupting the atmosphere’s delicate chemistry. By then, CFCs were used not only as refrigerants but also as spray can propellants, manufacturing degreasers, and foam-blowing agents.

The ozone layer absorbs the worst of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Without stratospheric ozone, life as we know it is impossible. A 1 percent decline in the ozone layer’s thickness results in thousands of new cases of skin cancer. Greater depletion would lead to crop failures, the collapse of oceanic food systems, and, eventually, the destruction of all life on Earth.

In the 1980s, geophysicist Joseph Farman confirmed the Rowland-Molina hypothesis when he detected a near-absence of ozone over Antarctica—the “Ozone Hole.” A fierce battle ensued among industry, scientists, environmentalists, and politicians, but in 1987 the U.S signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which ended Freon production.

The Montreal Protocol remains the world’s only successful international environmental treaty with legally binding emissions targets. Annual conferences to re-assess the goals of the treaty make it a living document, which is revised in light of up-to-date scientific data. For instance, the Montreal Protocol set out only to slow production of CFCs, but, by 1997, industrialized countries had stopped production entirely, far sooner than was thought possible. The world was saved through global cooperation.

The trouble is that the refrigerants replacing CFCs, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), turned out to be terrible for the planet, too. While they have an ozone-depleting potential of zero, they are potent greenhouse gases. They absorb infrared radiation from the sun and Earth and block heat that normally escapes into outer space. Carbon dioxide and methane do this too, but HFCs trap heat at rates thousands of times higher. Although the number of refrigerant molecules in the atmosphere is far fewer than those of other greenhouse gases, their destructive force, molecule for molecule, is far greater.

In three decades, the production of HFCs grew exponentially. Today, HFCs provide the cooling power to almost any air conditioner in the home, in the office, in the supermarket, or in the car. They cool vaccines, blood for transfusions, and temperature-sensitive medications, as well as the data processors and computer servers that make up the internet—everything from the cloud to blockchains. In 2019, annual global warming emissions from HFCs were the equivalent of 175 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

In May, the EPA signaled it will begin phasing down HFCs and replacing them with more climate-friendly alternatives. Experts agree that a swift end to HFCs could prevent as much as 0.5ºC of warming over the next century—a third of the way to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Yet regardless of the refrigerant used, cooling still requires energy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, air-conditioning accounts for nearly a fifth of annual U.S. residential electricity use. This is more energy for cooling overall and per capita than in any other nation. Most Americans consider the cost of energy only in terms of their electricity bills. But it’s also costing us the planet. Joe Biden’s announcement to shift toward a renewable energy infrastructure obscures the uncertainty of whether that infrastructure could meet Americans’ outrageously high energy demand—much of it for cooling that doesn’t save lives. Renewable energy infrastructure can take us only so far. The rest of the work is cultural. From Freon to HFCs, we keep replacing chemical refrigerants without taking a hard look at why we’re cooling in the first place.

Comfort cooling began not as a survival strategy but as a business venture. It still carries all those symbolic meanings, though its currency now works globally, cleaving the world into civilized cooling and barbaric heat. Despite what we assume, as a means of weathering a heat wave, individual air-conditioning is terribly ineffective. It works only for those who can afford it. But even then, their use in urban areas only makes the surrounding micro-climate hotter, sometimes by a factor of 10ºF, actively threatening the lives of those who don’t have access to cooling. (The sociologist Eric Klinenberg has brilliantly studied how, in a 1995 Chicago heat wave, about twice as many people died than in a comparable heat wave forty years earlier due to the city’s neglect of certain neighborhoods and social infrastructure.) Ironically, research suggests that exposure to constant air-conditioning can prevent our bodies from acclimatizing to hot weather, so those who subject themselves to “thermal monotony” are, in the end, making themselves more vulnerable to heat-related illness.

And, of course, air-conditioning only works when you have the electricity to power it. During heatwaves, when air-conditioning is needed most, blackouts are frequent. On Sunday, with afternoon temperatures reaching 112ºF around Portland, the power grid failed for more than 6,300 residences under control by Portland General Electrics.

The troubled history of air-conditioning suggests not that we chuck it entirely but that we focus on public cooling, on public comfort, rather than individual cooling, on individual comfort. Ensuring that the most vulnerable among the planet’s human inhabitants can keep cool through better access to public cooling centers, shade-giving trees, safe green spaces, water infrastructure to cool, and smart design will not only enrich our cities overall, it will lower the temperature for everyone. It’s far more efficient this way.

To do so, we’ll have to re-orient ourselves to the meaning of air-conditioning. And to comfort. Privatized air-conditioning survived the ozone crisis, but its power to separate—by class, by race, by nation, by ability—has survived, too. Comfort for some comes at the expense of the life on this planet.

It’s time we become more comfortable with discomfort. Our survival may depend on it.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, August 29, 2021

Louisiana braces for ‘life-altering’ Hurricane Ida (AP) Residents across Louisiana’s coast Saturday were taking one last day to prepare for what is being described as a “life-altering” Hurricane Ida which is expected to bring winds as high as 140 mph (225 kph) when it slams ashore. A combination of voluntary and mandatory evacuations have been called for cities and communities across the region including New Orleans, where the mayor ordered a mandatory evacuation for areas outside the city’s levee system and a voluntary evacuation for residents inside the levee system. The storm is expected to make landfall on the exact date Hurricane Katrina devastated a large swath of the Gulf Coast 16 years earlier. But whereas Katrina was a Category 3 when it made landfall southwest of New Orleans, Ida is expected to reach an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 140 mph (225 kph) before making landfall likely west of New Orleans late Sunday. “This will be a life-altering storm for those who aren’t prepared,” National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott said during a Friday news conference with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.

White House More Than Doubles Its Inflation Forecast in New Update (WSJ) The White House more than doubled its forecast for annual inflation in new projections released Friday, as supply-chain disruptions stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic continue to put upward pressure on prices. The Office of Management and Budget said it expected consumer prices would rise 4.8% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, up sharply from the 2% rise that the Biden administration forecast in May. Officials see those price pressures quickly abating next year, with the consumer-price index rising 2.5% in the fourth quarter of 2022, more than the 2.1% they expected in May, and reaching 2.3% in 2023.

Hurricane Nora on track to skirt along Mexico’s coast (AP) Hurricane Nora formed Saturday in the eastern Pacific on a forecast track that would bring it near the Puerto Vallarta area and then head toward a close encounter with resorts at the tip of Baja California Peninsula. Nora had maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph) Saturday morning, with tropical storm force winds extending out 175 miles (280 kilometers) from the center in some places. The storm’s large wind field and heavy rains mean much of Mexico’s central and northern Pacific Coast could see floods, mudslides and perilous surf even if it misses the very heart of the hurricane.

Brazil water survey heightens alarm over extreme drought (AP) The Brazilian scientists were skeptical. They ran different models to check calculations, but all returned the same startling result. The country with the most freshwater resources on the planet steadily lost 15% of its surface water since 1991. Gradual retreat in the Brazilian share of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, left water covering just one-quarter the area it did 30 years ago. And the data only went through 2020—before this year’s drought that is Brazil’s worst in nine decades. The ongoing drought has already boosted energy costs and food prices, withered crops, rendered vast swaths of forest more susceptible to wildfire and prompted specialists to warn of possible electricity shortages. President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday said hydroelectric dam reservoirs are “at the limit of the limit.” Brazil’s energy minister Bento Albuquerque on Aug. 25 called a press conference to deny the possibility of rationing, while at the same time calling on companies and people to reduce power consumption.

UN team: Unclear if Fukushima cleanup can finish by 2051 (AP) Too little is known about melted fuel inside damaged reactors at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant, even a decade after the disaster, to be able to tell if its decommissioning can be finished by 2051 as planned, a U.N. nuclear agency official said Friday. “Honestly speaking, I don’t know, and I don’t know if anybody knows,” said Christophe Xerri, head of an International Atomic Energy Agency team reviewing progress in the plant’s cleanup. A massive earthquake and a tsunami in March 2011 destroyed cooling systems at the Fukushima plant in northeastern Japan, triggering meltdowns in three reactors in the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Japanese government and utility officials say they hope to finish its decommissioning within 30 years, though some experts say that’s overly optimistic, even if a full decommissioning is possible at all.

As China-Taiwan Tensions Rise, Japan Begins Preparing for Possible Conflict (WSJ) China’s growing assertiveness toward Taiwan has triggered a public push by Japanese leaders to plan for a possible conflict. Tokyo officials, normally wary of upsetting Beijing, are speaking openly about preparing for a crisis and supporting Taiwan, a self-ruled island claimed by China, despite Japan’s pacifist constitution. Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said recently in a speech to supporters that Japan and the U.S. should plan together to defend the island in the event of hostilities. In its annual regional security review, Japan said there a “greater sense of crisis than ever before” regarding Taiwan, after China stepped up maneuvers by its ships and aircraft nearby. Major Japanese military drills starting in September are expected to further help Tokyo prepare for any trouble in areas including Taiwan, current and former Japanese officials say.

American forces keep up airlift under high threat warnings (AP) American forces working under heightened security and threats of another attack pressed ahead in the closing days of the U.S.-led evacuation from Afghanistan after a devastating suicide bombing, and U.S. officials said they had killed two members of the extremist group that the United States believes responsible for it. Thursday’s bombing marked one of the most lethal attacks the country has seen. The U.S. said it was the deadliest day for American forces in Afghanistan since 2011. Around the world, newly arriving Afghan evacuees, many clutching babies and bare handfuls of belongings in plastic bags, stepped off evacuation flights in the United States, in Albania, in Belgium and beyond. More than 110,000 people have been safely evacuated through the Kabul airport, according to the U.S., but thousands more are struggling to leave.

U.S. military begins withdrawal from Kabul airport (Reuters) U.S. troops have begun their withdrawal from Kabul airport, the Pentagon said on Saturday, as the evacuation efforts from the Afghan capital entered their final stages. President Joe Biden sent thousands of troops to the airport as the Taliban swept through Afghanistan earlier this month to help evacuate American citizens, at-risk Afghans and other foreigners desperate to flee. At the peak of the deployment there were 5,800 U.S. troops securing Hamid Karzai International Airport, where an unprecedented airlift operation is set to end by Tuesday.

From garbage to garden, Nairobi resident helps slum bloom (Reuters) A decade ago, a patch of land in Nairobi’s Dandora district was a dumping ground for the trash of the city’s wealthier residents with scarcely a plant to be seen. Now, children play on the grass and locals relax among avocado trees as birds sing in the branches above. The lush community garden has even become the backdrop for rappers and other creatives to shoot their videos. This transformation is thanks to Charles Gachanga, 45, who grew up in the neighbourhood back when it reeked of garbage. “We came and cleaned ... We did not even have a penny,” said Gachanga, who started working in 2013 on the garden space, called Mustard Seed, with three friends. “We just had that focus, we had that passion to see how we could transform our neighbourhood.” Their project has inspired a network of similar community-built green spaces, 20 alone in Dandora, he said. Maintenance costs are covered by community contributions. Residents living near Gachanga’s green space pay 100 shillings a month, less than $1, for maintenance. People without the funds often volunteer, planting trees or cleaning, Gachanga said.

15 more students freed in Nigeria after release of 90 others (AP) Overjoyed parents awaited the return of 90 young schoolchildren who had spent three months held by gunmen as authorities elsewhere in northern Nigeria announced a second group of 15 students also had been released. The news was celebrated across Nigeria, where more than 1,000 students have been kidnapped from schools since December. The abductions have stepped up pressure on the Nigerian government to do more to secure educational facilities in remote areas.

How water shortages are brewing wars (BBC Future) As much as a quarter of the world's population now faces severe water scarcity at least one month out of the year and it is leading many to seek a more secure life in other countries. "If there is no water, people will start to move," says Kitty van der Heijden, chief of international cooperation at the Netherlands' foreign ministry and an expert in hydropolitics. Water scarcity affects roughly 40% of the world's population and, according to predictions by the United Nations and the World Bank, drought could put up to 700 million people at risk of displacement by 2030. People like van der Heijden are concerned about what that could lead to. "If there is no water, politicians are going to try and get their hands on it and they might start to fight over it," she says. Over the course of the 20th Century, global water use grew at more than twice the rate of population increase. Today, this dissonance is leading many cities—from Rome to Cape Town, Chennai to Lima—to ration water. Water crises have been ranked in the top five of the World Economic Forum's Global Risks by Impact list nearly every year since 2012. In 2017, severe droughts contributed to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two, when 20 million people across Africa and the Middle East were forced to leave their homes due to the accompanying food shortages and conflicts that erupted. Peter Gleick, head of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, has spent the last three decades studying the link between water scarcity, conflict and migration and believes that water conflict is on the rise. "With very rare exceptions, no one dies of literal thirst," he says. "But more and more people are dying from contaminated water or conflicts over access to water."

The year of COVID burnout (The Week) “September was supposed to mark the beginning of a new normal,” said Katherine Bindley at The Wall Street Journal. Instead, for many workers, the spread of the Delta variant is déjà vu all over again. Companies of all sizes are delaying plans to return to the office, and outbreaks have already forced some schools to shut down. It’s left many workers “in an anxiety-producing state of limbo.” As the pandemic drags on, more people are struggling with exhaustion, loss, and isolation, and “employees’ mental health is quickly becoming a top concern,” said Erica Pandey at Axios. In addition to seeing more employees quit, “a whopping 52 percent of U.S. employers say they are ‘experiencing significant workplace issues’ with substance misuse or addiction by employees,” according to a new survey. Forty-four percent of workers now say they feel fatigued on the job, up from 34 percent in 2020. Some companies are going to great lengths to boost worker morale, said Jenny Gross at The New York Times. LinkedIn, Bumble, and Intuit recently “introduced weeklong companywide shutdowns so employees can fully disconnect.” PricewaterhouseCoopers is even “offering workers $250 each time they take 40 consecutive hours off.” Recognizing that extended vacations might not benefit workers hesitant about travel, Adobe began giving the entire company a day off one Friday per month. Before the pandemic, “I had a solid division between my work and home life,” said Cody Barbo at Fast Company. “Now everything has sort of blended together.” My company has added a monthly flex day that employees can take off for their “mental health.” We’ve also added guest speakers, virtual happy hours, and stipends for work-from-home costs.

[mariacallous]

According to official U.N. estimates, April 2023 is the month during which, in all likelihood, India will overtake China in population. That is a fascinating story in and of itself, since China has been the world’s most populous country for centuries.

But the real significance of this story, especially for geopolitics, is not about who’s number one. Rather, combined with other demographic realities, the trends send a clear message that China is not 10 feet tall. Any sense of Western defeatism based on fears about the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic and strategic rise should be tempered with the many constraints affecting that country, beginning with its demographics. None of this is to trivialize the significance of China’s rise or the challenges it could pose to the United States and its allies along the way. But it is far from obvious that, hegemonically speaking, time is on China’s side. That observation should provide some tempering perspective on the question of how soon China might use force to attempt reunification with Taiwan or try to displace the United States strategically in the broader Indo-Pacific region. For some U.S. scholars, these kinds of demographic trend lines may persuade Beijing that its window of opportunity to carry out aggression is closing — meaning that it should use force soon. But there are huge risks and downsides to such an attempt given the current correlation of military forces, and the difficulty of achieving a decisive victory in a great-power war. Thus, a more compelling interpretation is that China’s presumed future dominance is not preordained on any timetable. The PRC is, and will be, formidable, to be sure. And it is dangerous. But it is not poised to establish hegemony in either the first or second half of the 21st century as some kind of historical inevitability.

Back to the data. What is fascinating is not just that India will, at the level of about 1.4 billion citizens, slightly overtake China sometime this month (or at least, let’s say, this year — acknowledging the uncertainties in these kinds of population counts). The curves displaying their population trajectories over time have very different shapes. China’s population is, in fact, already declining. Its population will likely decline faster and faster in the decades to come — even if the PRC government has other wishes — because Chinese citizens are already choosing to have far fewer babies than had been expected when the earlier one-child policy was gradually relaxed, then lifted, in the last couple decades. Those trends can be expected to continue in a society that is becoming richer, and more expensive, and also has a gradually improving social safety net and retirement system. Indeed, according to current projections, China’s population is likely to drop below 1 billion by 2080 and below 800 million by 2100. Those specific numbers will surely change; the downward shape of the curve almost certainly will not.

India by contrast will keep growing quickly for a while. Its population is projected to approach 1.7 billion by 2060 before descending back to about 1.5 billion by century’s end.

These numbers are of course rough, and tentative. Herculean policy interventions — or natural catastrophe, nuclear war, or other exogenous shocks — could change them. But they are extrapolations of trend lines that are already underway, already evident in the demographic data, and consistent with what we know about demographic trend lines in other modernizing societies. They are far from conjectural.

Being number one may not be all good news for India. A larger workforce is a positive. But the resources, jobs, infrastructure, education, and health care requirements of a growing population will pose huge challenges to New Delhi. Long term, these demographic dynamics may promise a better 22nd century for China than for India — and certainly for the quality of life of the typical Chinese citizen relative to her or his Indian counterpart.

However, for the coming years and decades of the 21st century, the demographic transition in China will constitute a major constraint on the growth of Chinese power. A working-age population that peaked in 2011 at more than 900 million will have declined by nearly a quarter, to some 700 million, by mid-century. These workers will have to provide by then for nearly 500 million Chinese aged 60 and over, compared with 200 million today. America’s social security challenges seem like a policy picnic by comparison.

By century’s end, according to the predictions, the United States will have well over 400 million inhabitants or more than half of China’s expected total. China will still be much bigger in population, of course, but the two countries will not be in totally different leagues.

Factoring in NATO and key East Asian allies, the Western alliance system already has a billion people today — 70% of China’s total. Yes, many U.S. allies face declining demographics as well. But overall numbers within this bloc are likely to hold relatively steady, as modest American (and Filipino) population growth counteracts European, Japanese, and Korean declines.

Thus, not long after 2050, this Western alliance network will collectively approach China in total numbers of citizens. The West will likely remain significantly wealthier on a per capita basis as well. In fact, Brookings economist David Dollar has even speculated that China might overtake the United States in gross domestic product in coming decades — only to have America regain the claim to the world’s biggest economy toward the end of the century.

None of this should make us complacent about the challenges we face from Beijing. But Chinese power and military opportunity are constrained in the short to medium term by American as well as allied military and high-tech preeminence; Chinese power is constrained over the longer term by demographics and resource scarcity. If we in the West can get our own acts together, time is not overwhelmingly on China’s side.

[sataniccapitalist]

“Our survival depends on seeing this violent, barbarian behemoth for what it is.”

Chaos, violence, legal challenges, voter suppression and party suppression all culminated in the pathetic display of democratic degeneration on Election Day. After two decades of losing wars, plus the economic collapse of 2008, the response to COVID-19, and now the election debacle, if there were any doubts the U.S. is a morally exhausted empire in irreversible decline, they would have been erased with yesterday’s anti-democratic spectacle.

Democratic Party propagandists and “frightened” leftists are desperate. They tell their supporters and the public that the republic will not survive another term of Donald Trump. They point to his despicable, racist descriptions of undocumented migrant workers from Mexico; his characterization of some global South nations; his misogyny; his crude and obvious white supremacy; his authoritarian proclivities; and his pathological dishonesty—among his many character flaws—as reasons why he must be stopped.

However, for those of us who have been historically subjected to the colonial fascism that is the U.S. settler project, the liberal-left argument that the Trump regime represents some fundamental departure from previous administrations that were equally committed to white power and that he is an existential threat (to whom, we are not clear) remains unpersuasive.

As the Biden and Trump drama plays out, we ask from our experiences some simple questions on what might happen when a victor emerges:

Will either candidate really have the ability to restore the millions of jobs lost during the current economic crisis?

Will the illegal subversion of Venezuela and Nicaragua stop, and the blockade of Cuba end?

Will the prison-industrial complex that is housing ten of thousands of the Black and Brown economically redundant be closed?

Will the charges be dropped against Edward Snowden and the extradition demand for Julian Assange end?

Will Gaza continue to be the largest open-air prison on the planet?

Will the U.S. reverse its decision to deploy new intermediate-range missiles that will be equipped with nuclear warheads targeting Russia in Europe and China in the Asia-Pacific?

Will the Saudi and Obama-originated war on Yemen end?

Will the U.S. settler-colonial state really defund the police and the military?

“The liberal-left argument that the Trump regime represents some fundamental departure from previous administrations remains unpersuasive.”

What is this “new fascism” the latte-left talks about? What is this “existential threat”? For most of us, the threat has always been existential. When colonial Nazism that was inspired by the U.S. Jim Crow South was applied in Europe—with its violence and racism—it was only then that it took on a different moral and political characterization.

The racist French government launches a domestic terror campaign against Muslims in the country, while bombing Africans in Africa and overthrowing their governments. The European Union gives a human rights award to a political opposition in Venezuela that burns Black people alive because those Black people are seen as Maduro supporters. Meanwhile, NATO, the military wing of U.S. and European white supremacy, expands into South America to support the Monroe Doctrine that morally justifies U.S. regional domination. But fascism is coming to the U.S., they cry!

For those of us who reside in the colonized spaces of empire, leading with uncritical emotionalism as we confront and attempt to deal with the Trump phenomenon, is a self-indulgent diversion we cannot afford. That is because, for us, the consequences truly are life threatening.

In occupied Palestine, Venezuela, Yemen, the South-side of Chicago, Haiti, the concentration camps for Indigenous peoples called “reservations,” as well as “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana, our survival depends on seeing this violent, barbarian behemoth for what it is. We must have no sentimental delusions about the difference between the governance of either of the two ruling class-dominated parties.

For us, both parties are ongoing criminal enterprises that are committed to one thing and one thing only: Ultimately serving the interests of the capitalist ruling class—by any means necessary!

It is in that commitment that we, the colonized, the excluded, the killable, who experience the murderous sanctions that deny us food and life preserving medicines, the killer cops who slowly snuff out our lives with their knee on our necks, the deadly military attacks that destroy our ancient nations and turn us into refugees, the subversion of our political systems, the theft of our precious resources, and the literal draining of the value of our lives through the super-exploitation of our labor.

“Both parties are ongoing criminal enterprises.”

For us, we ask, what will be the difference if Biden wins? Wasn’t Biden part of the administration that conspired with the Department of Homeland Security and Democratic mayors to repress the Occupy movement once it became clear the movement could not be co-opted?

Didn’t Obama place Assata Shakur as the first woman on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list and increase the bounty on her head? A recent release of FBI documents revealed it was during the Obama-Biden years that the “Black Identity Extremist ” label was created.

The illegal subversion of Venezuela began with Bush, but intensified under Obama. The sanctions slapped on that country—that were expanded under Trump—have resulted in tens of thousands of innocent people dying from lack of medicines. It was the Obama-Biden administration that decided to devote over $1 trillion to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next decade.

Democratic and Republican strategists support the white supremacist NATO structure, the “Pivot to Asia,” and the insane theory being advanced by military strategists, who are wargaming a nuclear “first-strike” strategy against Russia and China that they believe can be successful in destroying those countries’ intercontinental ballistic missiles while the missiles are still in their launchers. That is why the Trump administration pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and has so far failed to renew the START nuclear treaty with Russia, scheduled to end in February 2021.

“It was during the Obama-Biden years that the ‘Black Identity Extremist’ label was created.”

Not being confused by the liberal framework that advances a cartoonish understanding of fascism that Trump’s bombastic theatrics evokes in the public imagination, it is clear the threat of increased authoritarianism, the use of military force, repression, subversion, illegal sanctions, theft, and rogue state gangsterism is on the agenda of both capitalist parties in the U.S. and the Western European colonizer states.

No matter who sits in the white peoples’ house after the election, we will have to continue to fight for social justice, democracy, and People(s)-Centered Human Rights.

It is important to re-state that last sentence because the left in the U.S. is experiencing extreme anxiety with the events around the election. They want and need to have order, stability and good feelings about their nation again. But for those of us from the colonized zones of non-being, anything that creates psychological chaos, disorder, delegitimization, disruption of the settler-colonial state and demoralization of its supporters is of no concern for us.

Unlike the house slave who will fight harder than the Massa to put out the flames in the plantation house, we call to the ancestors to send a strong breeze.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shim award for uncompromised integrity in journalism

[politicaltheatre]

Consent

September 2nd.

In any other year we'd be remembering the official - well, "official" - end of World War II, 75 years ago today. Or we'd be learning about it, because 75 is a nice, round number and we like nice, round numbers because they give us the opportunity to remember and learn things.

Obviously, this year is different. Milestones of history have flown by this year, unremembered and unlearnt, and certainly undervalued.

Not that we're so good at learning history, let alone remembering it. No, we're far better at forgetting, at pushing lessons away. We prefer challenging and, especially, uncomfortable things at a distance. That's why we have to work so hard learn and remember, especially in times like these.

September 2nd was the date in 1945 when the Japanese signed the "Instrument of Surrender" on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri. They did so because we had dropped two nuclear bombs on them, the first infamously on Hiroshima and the second, too often overlooked, on Nagasaki.

Two more milestones of history barely given a glance this year. They were the first and so far only nuclear weapons yet used by humanity on humans, and in two horrifying flashes they killed up to 200,000 civilian men, women, and children.

Consent.

A strong case could be made for not having dropped either bomb, certainly not on an inhabited area. The United States already had film of a successful test to share. Think of it, sharing that film with an enemy and inviting its representatives to watch another, live test before demanding that they submit and accept defeat. How genteel. How civilized.

No, this was war. We abandon exactly that best part of ourselves in war. That's why the right wing always tries to push us into war. War pushes us towards short term thinking, short term gains, and short term defenses, all held together by a string of victories as long as you can just hold on.

It doesn't last. It can't. Short term solutions can't solve long term problems. They make them worse. That's why the right wing always loses, and always will. In the long term.

Still, it takes its toll even on the best of us. We become exhausted, physically and emotionally. We just want it to end. Fight long enough and suffer enough, we also want to punish. We want those who have caused us pain to feel it themselves.

So, we dropped "the bomb". We did, the Americans, the "good guys". Two of them. And with the consent of all Americans, 200,000 lives were taken. Like that.

It ended the war. There's no arguing that. And it's not like we were alone in what we did. It was one more atrocity in a war filled with them, each one committed by armies with the consent of civilians.

For the Japanese, there was "The Rape of Nanking", that left a scar so deep you can still see the bones of its victims in Nanjing today. For the citizens of the Soviet Union, there was the Katyn Massacre, which compounded their earlier collusion with the Nazis to divide and consume Poland. Have you heard of the fire-bombing of Dresden, an abomination shared between the British and the United States? All together, these killed 200,000 more. At least.

And then there were the Nazis and their "Final Solution". When Hannah Arendt wrote of the banality of evil, it was this, men and women not merely consenting to genocide and committing it but justifying it by organizing it with corporate precision.

The marriage of fascism and corporate organization was no mere accident of history. They were, in point of fact, born of the same lineage. They are children of colonialism.

The economics of colonialism gave us corporatism. Multinational entities with close ties to governments required organization and legal justification to build and maintain industries rooted in the imbalance of power.

Think of the labor policies of corporate America, of how and why they fight not only to undermine unions but to undermine labor laws. This isn't capitalism, it predates it. Humans have been profiting off of cheap or free labor as long as there have been humans.

All capitalism did was provide an economic means to move commodities from one place to another and to build industries based on far flung resources. Which brings us back to colonies, and slaves.

When we think about slavery - the word, the culture, the cost in human lives - we tend to think of American slavery. It's only natural. In very real ways, we're still fighting the Civil War to this day. To Africans, though, and Asians and South Americans and Australians and Pacific islanders, there is little to distinguish slavery from colonialism.

Labor was forced. The laws, such as they were, favored those in power at the expense of those under their rule. The colonial industries and there friends in government saw to that. In very real ways, those people are still fighting for their freedom to this day, too.

It didn't start with brutality. No. it never does. Colonialism started the way most relationships do. When the colonizers came, they had something to offer, something of value. They had technology. They had the ability to travel great distances. They were something new. They had whatever it was that seemed good in the short term.

It was only as short term grew to long term that the cost of the imbalance of power and what the colonizers would do to maintain it became clear.

Which brings us to what became known as fascism. The colonial era - the late 19th century into the early 20th, in particular - was a period of great technological advancement. That "technology" included methods of controlling "unruly" natives. The colonizers talked to each other, shared ideas, experimented, and found what they hoped would be better, more efficient ways of forcing those natives to accept things as they were.

Of course, they failed. The more effort it takes to force anyone to accept your control over them, the more they want you gone. Eventually, like a star exhausting its fuel, your expansion collapses and things explode.

This is what happened to the colonizers. At least, this is what happened to their colonial occupation. The first World War was fought over colonial possessions. Don't let the stories of trench warfare fool you, it was resources they were fighting over, and the right to control the natives in the countries where those resources could be found.

The countries that held colonies after that war made a killing. The ones that didn't, well, you see where this is going.

Italy had a chance to rule what is now Turkey; the Turks kicked them out. The Germans lost all of their colonial possessions to a group of countries that demanded they pay for the privilege. The Japanese had ambition, but the Europeans and Americans held all the colonies in their own backyard and liked to draw racist caricatures of them.

The appeal of fascism was that it was market tested. Decades of methodology and technology had been tested on local populations and reported on to governments and titans of industry alike.

Soldiers, humiliated by failure in war and having no colonies in which to serve, were easy recruits. Give them certainty and the weapons to force it on others and they'll happily serve.

Throw in a bad economy and national humiliation in the eyes of the world, and you have a sizable portion of your own population ready and willing to see those same methodologies and technologies imported back home for domestic use.

That's what the Italians did. It seemed to work. The trains ran on time. That the leader seemed like a big buffoon didn't matter.

So, the Germans gave it a try. The Nazis weren't going after Germans, anyway. It was all of those "others" they hated: the non-Germans, the intellectuals, the radicals, the deviants, the Jews. If you weren't any of those things, they left you alone. You might even profit from their loss.

And so, the Japanese took it on. It would restore national pride. It would give them purpose. Before long, fascist Japan had expanded their colonial reach from Korea to inland China, and were eager for more.

By the time Spain's generals, lamenting the loss of their own colonial empire and prestige, launched a Nazi-supported civil war, fascism had gone from being a bunch of fringe extremists with guns and pseudo-military costumes to mainstream political movements. The ideas hadn't changed, just the consent of the people they sought to rule.

We all know what happened next, or should. We fought a war, one colonizer against another, just like the last one. The big, big difference was that this time one side was fighting to justify using the brutal methods of colonization on everyone and the other side, our side, was fighting to stop them.

Fascism. That was our justification for "the bomb". We had to fight it. We had to build a bomb so they couldn't, because we knew that if they did they would use it. And because we knew that, we told ourselves that we had to use it. We knew that because we knew them, because we knew what they believed, because we had seen it and bore witness to it, atrocity after atrocity after atrocity committed in its name.

Fascists believed, and still do, that might makes right, that force trumps consent, that apologies are for the weak, and that all must be accountable to them while they must never be held accountable to others.

And here we are, September 2nd, 2020, two months from what may be the most important election in our nation's history, and we are fighting that same fight again.

This time, the methodology and technology have been imported from war zones back to our home for domestic use. In the space of a few decades our police have become militarized and our military are, for purely political purposes, being used as police.

The cheating culture that infested Wall Street and professional sorts has wormed its way so completely into American culture that the corruption we see on a daily basis in Washington is considered normal. Attempt to point it out all you want, if you still have the energy, but Trump's supporters already know.

It isn't that they don't care. Quite the opposite. They love seeing someone getting away with it. That's their fantasy. That's the power they crave: all must be accountable to them while they must never be held accountable to others.

Laws, to them, are for the governed. For the weak. They are not weak. They will not be governed. Does that sound childish to you? It should. It is. That doesn't change the fact that it is the reality we face.

That reality exists because of our consent. We have allowed the bullies in our midst to hold an imbalance of power over us and to abuse others around us in order to do so.

Their victims were always someone else, someone "other", living far away literally and figuratively, far enough away that we could accept whatever it was. It did not affect us.

Only, now it does. It always did, of course, we just had that fantasy to hold onto, the one that it was all so very far away. We had the luxury of putting that distance between it and us, of forgetting. We're good at that. Historically so.

The pushback of the past five years - Black Lives Matter, #metoo, Occupy Wall Street, etc. - only came about because the bullies in our culture had become so emboldened by our collective inaction that they pushed the imbalance of power too far and, like the colonizers before them, triggered their own decline.

What have we seen the past four years in reaction to that? A racist, misogynist, man-child elected president. A Republican Congress passing massive tax cuts for themselves and their friends before giving their president a pass on naked corruption. Deregulation so complete that it will take at least two Democratic administrations with Democratic congresses to undo most of the damage, and that's only if the Republican-appointed judges let them do it. 

And, oh, yes, the callous disregard for human life that has led us both to the politicization of using brutal, military occupation tactics on non-violent, domestic protesters and the avoidable deaths of almost 200,000 Americans from Covid-19. For all the world to see.

If I was a Trump supporter, I'd get a rush just thinking about it. I'd feel like I had permission to do as I please, to harm others if I pleased, to kill as I pleased, because they are "others", other thinking, other looking, other feeling.

That's the thing about fascism. It isn't concentration camps and genocide. It isn't the atrocities of war. It's the profit-driven enabling of man's inhumanity to man. It's the encouraging of it. It's the foundation of it.

That only happens with consent.

- Daniel Ward

[bountyofbeads]

With Trump as President, the World Is Spiraling Into Chaos https://nyti.ms/305ERbG

With Trump as President, the World Is Spiraling Into Chaos

Trump torched America’s foreign policy infrastructure. The results are becoming clear.

By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist | Published August 16, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 16, 2019 |

Earlier this week, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, visited The New York Times editorial board, and I asked him about the threat of armed conflict between his country and India over Kashmir. India and Pakistan have already fought two wars over the Himalayan territory, which both countries claim, and which is mostly divided between them. India recently revoked the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the part of Kashmir it controls and put nearly seven million people there under virtual house arrest. Pakistan’s prime minister  compared India’s leaders to Nazis and warned that they’ll target Pakistan next. It seems like there’s potential for humanitarian and geopolitical horror.

Khan’s answer was not comforting. “We are two big countries with very large militaries with nuclear capability and a history of conflict,” he said. “So I would not like to burden your imagination on that one, but obviously if things get worse, then things get worse.”

All over the world, things are getting worse. China appears to be weighing a Tiananmen Square-like crackdown in Hong Kong. After I spoke to Khan, hostilities between India and Pakistan ratcheted up further; on Thursday, fighting across the border in Kashmir left three Pakistani soldiers dead. (Pakistan also claimed that five Indian soldiers were killed, but India denied it.) Turkey is threatening to invade Northeast Syria to go after America’s Kurdish allies there, and it’s not clear if an American agreement meant to prevent such an incursion will hold.

North Korea’s nuclear program and ballistic missile testing continue apace. The prospect of a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine is more remote than it’s been in decades. Tensions between America and Iran keep escalating. Relations between Japan and South Korea have broken down. A Pentagon report warns that ISIS is “re-surging” in Syria. The U.K. could see food shortages if the country’s Trumpish prime minister, Boris Johnson, follows through on his promise to crash out of the European Union without an agreement in place for the aftermath. Oh, and the globe may be lurching towards recession.

In a world spiraling towards chaos, we can begin to see the fruits of Donald Trump’s erratic, amoral and incompetent foreign policy, his systematic undermining of alliances and hollowing out of America’s diplomatic and national security architecture. Over the last two and a half years, Trump has been playing Jenga with the world order, pulling out once piece after another. For a while, things more or less held up. But now the whole structure is teetering.

To be sure, most of these crises have causes other than Trump. Even competent American administrations can’t dictate policy to other countries, particularly powerful ones like India and China. But in one flashpoint after another, the Trump administration has either failed to act appropriately, or acted in ways that have made things worse. “Almost everything they do is the wrong move,” said Susan Thornton, who until last year was the acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, America’s top diplomat for Asia.

Consider Trump’s role in the Kashmir crisis. In July, during a White House visit by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump offered to mediate India and Pakistan’s long-running conflict over Kashmir, even suggesting that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to do so. Modi’s government quickly denied this, and Trump’s words reportedly alarmed India, which has long resisted outside involvement in Kashmir. Two weeks later, India sent troops to lock Kashmir down, then stripped it of its autonomy.

Americans have grown used to ignoring Trump’s casual lies and verbal incontinence, but people in other countries have not. Thornton thinks the president’s comments were a “precipitating factor” in Modi’s decision to annex Kashmir. By blundering into the conflict, she suggested, Trump put the Indian prime minister on the defensive before his Hindu nationalist constituency. “He might not have had to do that,” she said of Modi’s Kashmir takeover, “but he would have had to do something. And this was the thing he was looking to do anyway.”

At the same time, Modi can be confident that Trump, unlike previous American presidents, won’t even pretend to care about democratic backsliding or human rights abuses, particularly against Muslims. “There’s a cost-benefit analysis that any political leader makes,” said Ben Rhodes, a former top Obama national security aide. “If the leader of India felt like he was going to face public criticism, potential scrutiny at the United Nations,” or damage to the bilateral relationship with the United States, “that might affect his cost-benefit analysis.” Trump’s instinctive sympathy for authoritarian leaders empowers them diplomatically.

Obviously, India and Pakistan still have every interest in avoiding a nuclear holocaust. China may show restraint on Hong Kong. Wary of starting a war before the 2020 election, Trump might make a deal with Iran, though probably a worse one than the Obama agreement that he jettisoned. The global economy could slow down but not seize up. We could get through the next 17 months with a world that still looks basically recognizable.

Even then, America will emerge with a desiccated diplomatic corps, strained alliances, and a tattered reputation. It will never again play the same leadership role internationally that it did before Trump.

And that’s the best-case scenario. The most powerful country in the world is being run by a sundowning demagogue whose oceanic ignorance is matched only by his gargantuan ego. The United States has been lucky that things have hung together as much as they have, save the odd government shutdown or white nationalist terrorist attack. But now, in foreign affairs as in the economy, the consequences of not having a functioning American administration are coming into focus. “No U.S. leadership is leaving a vacuum,” said Thornton. We’ll see what gets sucked into it.

If You Think Trump Is Helping Israel, You’re a Fool

By barring Representatives Omar and Tlaib, Netanyahu made the president happy. But he has poisoned relations with America.

By Thomas L. Friedman, Opinion Columnist | Published Aug. 16, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 16, 2019 |

I am going to say this as simply and clearly as I can: If you’re an American Jew and you’re planning on voting for Donald Trump because you think he is pro-Israel, you’re a damn fool.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Trump has said and done many things that are in the interests of the current Israeli government — and have been widely appreciated by the Israeli public. To deny that would be to deny the obvious. But here’s what’s also obvious. Trump’s way of — and motivation for — expressing his affection for Israel is guided by his political desire to improve his re-election chances by depicting the entire Republican Party as pro-Israel and the entire Democratic Party as anti-Israel.

As a result, Trump — with the knowing help of Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — is doing something no American president and Israeli prime minister have done before: They’re making support for Israel a wedge issue in American politics.

Few things are more dangerous to Israel’s long-term interests than its becoming a partisan matter in America, which is Israel’s vital political, military and economic backer in the world.

As Dore Gold, the right-wing former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and once a very close adviser to Netanyahu, warned in a dialogue at the Hudson Institute on Nov. 27, 2018: “You reach out to Democrats, and you reach out to Republicans. And you don’t get caught playing partisan politics in the United States.’’

Trump’s campaign to tar the entire Democratic Party with some of the hostile views toward Israel of a few of its newly elected congresswomen — and Netanyahu’s careless willingness to concede to Trump’s demand and bar two of them, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, from visiting Israel and the West Bank — is part of a process that will do huge, long-term damage to Israel’s interests and support in America.

Netanyahu later relented and granted a visa to Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, for a private, “humanitarian’’ visit to see her 90-year-old grandmother — provided she agree in writing not to advocate the boycott of Israel while there. At first Tlaib agreed, but then decided that she would not come under such conditions.

Excuse me, but when did powerful Israel — a noisy, boisterous democracy where Israeli Arabs in its parliament say all kinds of wild and crazy things — get so frightened by what a couple of visiting freshman American congresswomen might see or say? When did Israel get so afraid of saying to them: “Come, visit, go anywhere you want! We’ve got our warts and we’ve got our good stuff. We’d just like you to visit both. But if you don’t, we’ll live with that too. We’re pretty tough.’’

It’s too late for that now. The damage of what Trump and Bibi have been up to — formally making Israel a wedge issue in American politics — is already done. Do not be fooled: Netanyahu, through his machinations with Senate Republicans, can get the United States Congress to give him an audience anytime he wants. But Bibi could not speak on any major American college campus today without massive police protection. The protests would be huge.

And listen now to some of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — you can hear how unhappy they are with the behavior of this Israeli government and its continued occupation of the West Bank. And they are not afraid to say so anymore. As The Jerusalem Post reported on July 11, “Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose presidential candidacy has rallied in recent weeks, told two Jewish anti-occupation activists ‘yes’ when they asked her for support.’’

But who can blame them? Trump is equating the entire Democratic Party with hatred for Israel, while equating support for Netanyahu — who leads the most extreme, far-right government that Israel has ever had, who is facing indictment on three counts of corruption and whose top priority is getting re-elected so that he can have the Israeli Knesset overrule its justice system and keep him out of court — with loving Israel.

How many young Americans want to buy into that narrative? If Bibi wins, he plans to pass a law banning his own indictment on corruption, and then, when Israel’s Supreme Court strikes down that law as illegal, he plans to get the Knesset to pass another law making the Supreme Court subservient to his parliament. I am not making this up. Israel will become a Jewish banana republic.

If and when that happens, every synagogue, every campus Hillel, every Jewish institution, every friend of Israel will have to ask: Can I support such an Israel? It will tear apart the entire pro-Israel community and every synagogue and Jewish Federation.

Then add another factor. By moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — and turning that embassy, led by a Trump crony, Ambassador David Friedman, into an outpost for advancing the interests of Israeli Jewish settlers, not American interests — Trump has essentially greenlighted the Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Again, should Netanyahu remain prime minister — which is possible only if he puts together a ruling coalition made up of far-right parties that want to absorb the West Bank and its 2.5 million Palestinians into Israel — Israel will be on its way to becoming either a binational state of Arabs and Jews or a state that systematically deprives a large and growing segment of its population of the democratic right to vote. Neither will be a Jewish democracy, the dream of Israel’s founders and still the defining, but endangered, political characteristic of the state.

Don’t get me wrong. I strongly oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement — which Representatives Omar and Tlaib have embraced — because it wants to erase the possibility of a two-state solution. And I am particularly unhappy with Representative Omar.

I know a lot about her home district in Minnesota, because I grew up in it, in St. Louis Park. Omar represents the biggest concentration of Jews and Muslims living together in one district in the Upper Midwest. She was perfectly placed to be a bridge builder between Muslims and Jews. Instead, sadly, she has been a bridge destroyer between the two since she came to Washington. But anytime she is legitimately criticized, Democrats automatically scream “Islamophobia’’ and defend her. That’s as disturbing as Trump.

I know that more than a few Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, who face so many challenges — from gang violence to unemployment — are asking why is Omar spending time on the West Bank of the Jordan and not on the West Bank of the Mississippi?

I love Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs — but God save me from some of their American friends. So many of them just want to exploit this problem to advance themselves politically, get attention, raise money or delegitimize their opponents.

In that, Trump is not alone — he’s just the worst of the worst.

[alexsmitposts]

China Breaks the Western Debt Stranglehold on the World The west has colonized, exploited, ravaged and assassinated the people of the Global South for hundreds of years. Up to the mid-20th Century Europe has occupied Africa, and large parts of Asia. In Latin America, though much of the sub-Continent was “freed” from Spain and Portugal in the 19th Century – a new kind of colonization followed by the new Empire of the United States – under the so-called Monroe Doctrine, named after President James Monroe (1817 -1825), forbidding Europeans to interfere in any “American territory”. Latin America was then and is again today considered Washington’s Backyard. In the last ten years or so, Washington has launched the Monreo Doctrine 2.0. This time expanding the interference policy beyond Europe – to the world. Democratic sovereign governments in Latin America that could choose freely their political and economic alliances in the world are not tolerated. China, entering into partnership agreements with Latin American countries, sought after vividly by the latter – is condemned by the US and the west, especially vassalic Europe. Therefore, democratically elected center-left governments had to be “regime-changed’ – Honduras, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay. So far, they stumbled over Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua – and maybe Mexico. Venezuela and Cuba are being economically strangled to exhaustion. But they are standing tall as pillars in defending the Latin American Continent – with economic assistance and military advice from China and Russia. *** Latin America is waking up – and so is Africa. In Latin America, street protests against the US / IMF imposed debt trap and de consequential austerity programs, making the rich richer and the poor poorer, are raging in Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and even in Brazil. In Argentina, in a democratic election this past weekend, 27 October, the people deposed neoliberal President Macri. He was put in the Presidency via “tricked” elections by Washington in 2015. Macri ruined the prosperous country in his 4 year-reign. He privatized public services and infrastructure, education, health, transportation – and more, leading to hefty tariff increases, worker layoffs, unemployment and poverty. Poverty, at about 15% in 2015, when Macri took office, soared to over 40% in October 2019. In 2018 Macri contracted the largest ever IMF loan of US$ 57.2 billion – a debt trap, if there was ever one. The new, just elected Fernandez-Fernandez center-left Government will have to devise programs to counter the impact of this massive debt. All over in Latin America, people have had enough of the US / western imposed austerity and simultaneous exploitation of their natural resources. They want change – big style. They seek to detach from the economic and financial stranglehold of the west. They are looking for China and Russia as new partners in trade and in financial contracts. The same in Africa – neocolonialism by the west, mostly France and the UK, through financial oppression, unfair trading deals and wester imposed – and militarily protected – despotic and corrupt leaders, has kept Africa poor and desolate after more than 50 years of so-called Independence. Africa is arguably still the Continent with the most natural resources the west covets and needs to preserve its luxury life style and continuous armament. People, who do not conform, especially younger politicians and economists, who protest and speak out, because they see clearly through the western imposed economic crimes committed on a daily basis, are simply assassinated or otherwise silenced. Here too, Africans are quietly seeking to move out of the claws of the west, seeking new relations with China and Russia. The recent Russian-African summit in Sochi was a vivid example. China is invited to build infrastructure, fast trains, roads, ports and industrial parks – and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is more than welcomed in Africa, as it projects common and equal development for all to benefit. BRI is the epitome for building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind. China also offers a gradual release from the US / western dominated dollar-debt claws. Freeing a country from the dollar-based economy, is freeing it from the vulnerability of US / western imposed sanctions. This is an enormous relief that literally every country of the Global South – and possibly even Europe – is hoping for. However, as could be expected, the west, led by the US of A, is pouncing China for engaging in “debt trap diplomacy”. Exactly the contrary of what is actually happening. The truth is, though, countries throughout the world, be it in Africa, Asia, South Pacific and Latin America, are choosing to partner with China by their free will. According to a statement by a high-level African politician “China does not force or coerce us into a deal, we are free to choose and negotiate a win-win situation.” – That says it all. The difference between the west and east is stark. While anybody and any country that does not agree with the US dictate and doctrine, risks being regime-changed or bombed, China does not impose her new Silk Road – the BRI – to any country. China invites, respecting national sovereignty. Who wants to join is welcome to do so. That applies as much to the Global South, as it does to Europe. China’s President Xi Jinping launched the BRI in 2013. In 2014 Mr. Xi visited Madame Merkel in Germany, offering her to be at that time the western-most link to the BRI. Ms. Merkel under the spell of Washington, declined. President Xi returned and China continued working quietly on this fabulous worldwide economic development project – BRI – THE economic venture of the 21st Century, so massive that it was incorporated in 2017 into the Chinese Constitution. It took the west however 6 years to acknowledge this new version of the more than 2000-year-old Silk Road. Only in 2019, the western mainstream media started reporting on the BRI – and always negatively, of course. The preaching was and still is – beware of the Chinese Dragon, they will dominate you and everything you own with their socialism. This train of thought is typically western. Aggression seems to be in the genes of western societies, of western culture, as the hundreds of years of violent and despotic colonization and exploitation – and ongoing – are proving. Does it have to do with western monotheistic doctrines? – This is pure speculation, of course. Again, the truth is multi-fold. – First, China does not have a history of invasion. China seeks a peaceful and egalitarian development of trade, science and foremost human wellbeing – a Tao tradition of non-aggression. Second, despite the “warnings” from the throne of the falling empire, about a hundred countries have already subscribed to participate in BRI – and that voluntarily. And third, China and Russia and along with them the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are in a solid economic and defense alliance which encompasses close to half of the world population and about one third of the globes total economic output. Hence, SCO members are – or may be, if they so choose – largely detached from the dollar hegemony. The western privately run and Wall Street controlled monetary transfer system, SWIFT, is no longer needed by SCO countries. They deal in local currencies and / or through the Chinese Interbank Payment System (CIPS). It is no secret, that the empire, headquartered in Washington, is gradually decaying, economically as well as militarily. It’s just a matter of time. How much time, is difficult to guess. But Washington’s everyday behavior of dishing out sanctions left and right, disrupting international monetary transactions, confiscating and stealing other countries assets around the world, puts ever more nails in the Empire’s coffin. By doing this, America is herself committing economic and monetary suicide. Who wants to belong to a monetary system that can act willy-nilly to a county’s detriment? There is no need for outside help for this US-sponsored pyramid fiat monetary system to fall. It’s a house of cards that is already crumbling by its own weight. The US dollar was some 20-25 years ago still to the tune of 90% the domineering reserve currency in the world. Today that proportion has declined to less than 60% – and falling. It is being replaced primarily by the Chinese yuan as the new reserve currency. This is what the US-initiated trade war is all about – discrediting the yuan, a solid currency, based on China’s economy – and on gold. “Sanctioning” the Chinese economy with US tariffs, is supposed to hurt the yuan, to reduce its competition with the dollar as a world reserve currency. To no avail. The yuan is a worldwide recognized solid currency, the currency of the second largest economy. By some standards, like accounted by PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), the most important socioeconomic indicator for mankind, China is since 2017 the world’s number one economy. This, and other constant attacks by Washington, is a typical desperate gesture of a dying beast – thrashing wildly left and right and above and below around itself to bring down into its grave as many perceived adversaries as possible. There is of course a clear danger that this fight for the empire’s survival might end nuclear – god forbid! China’s and Russia’s policy, philosophy and diplomacy of non-aggression may save the world from extinction – including the people of the United States of America.

[issantashikibaindr3orndrv3yet]

Danganronpa Kirigiri Sou translations-Part 6

<- Part 5 | Masterpost | Part 7 ->

A transcript of part 6 of juicedup14 playthrough/translation of Kirigiri Sou, which you can watch here.

This transcript was not worked by me, but worked by zanthosus and @drmedicsgamesurgery. Thanks to them for working on this part.

This room looks like a busy person’s meeting place. It looked like a warehouse in disorder. Tables were lined up along the wall where many monitors were mounted. Maps, files, and clippings were placed on the whiteboard. On the table were binoculars and whatnot scattered all around.

As Shikiba enters the room he sweeps away the stuff on top of the table with his free hand. He spreads out a map on the table.

“Please stop opening maps like you’re in a Hollywood movie, Shikiba. It always sucks cleaning it up.”

When the white coated girl enters the room, she locks the door. It’s the girl that was upstairs.

“Welcome to the Earth Defense Force headquarters.”

Shikiba puts out his hand for a handshake. I hesitate, but he respectfully passes by that and takes her hand.

“You’re the Super High School Level Detective, Kirigiri Kyouko, aren’t you?”

Without saying anything, she nods her head.

What is this? Could she be a student of that school as well, and a detective? Unbelievable information keeps getting blurted out. My head can’t organize all this.

“Even though it was an anonymous request, I’m glad that you’ve come all this way. Sorry for being so ill-mannered. There were circumstances, so please understand.”

“I don’t really mind that, though I have to decline one thing. On the way here, this man had an accident. I had no choice but to bring him.”

She explains while she looks at me with a sidelong glance.

“My name is Matsudaira Kouhei. There’s been a terrible accident, and she helped me.”

“What do you mean an accident?”

I explain about the meteorite that fell down.

“I don’t think those were meteorites. That must’ve been their attack.”

“Attack?”

“It’s nothing for them to burn down a tree with their light beams. The light that you saw many times was probably their UFO.”

What? UFO… What a ridiculous thing to say.

“Seeing as how you’ve survive one of their attacks, you’re already a comrade in battle. Your name is Kouhei, right? I welcome you.”

“What? Huh?”

“Aren’t you glad?”

Kirigiri asks with a cold expression. All I wanted to do was borrow a phone.

“Well then, allow me to introduce her. That girl’s name is Kyouka, this army’s most powerful recruit. If there’s something you don’t understand, then ask her. Let’s all get along.”

“Well…”

Kyouka smiles. She looks somewhat like Kirigiri. The long hair leaves an impression. Unlike Kirigiri, her hair is not in a triple braid, and her expressions are lively.

Even so, what kind of group is this? Could it be that I got myself into a crazy situation?

“Well then, before I explain the request to Kirigiri, you need to understand the situation.”

Shikiba holds a pointing rod and stands in front of the white board.

“One year ago, near these mountains, one UFO crash landed.”

He smoothly says something ridiculous. There’s no room for me to butt in.

“As you know, there are numerous stars that inhabit our universe. Within those, the possibility of intelligent life existing is numerous as well. When you think about it in the scale of the universe, the likelihood of two different civilizations meeting each other at the same time is almost zero. Almost! But it happened.”

Shikiba takes on the newspaper clippings off the board. It’s an article on UFO sighting testimonies. On the photo is a clear picture of a UFO flying.

A: “This UFO… it’s CG isn’t it?”

B: “This UFO... is of the Adamski kind, isn’t it”

C: “This UFO… is the same kind from Planet Ummo.”

juicedup14 chooses A

“This UFO… it’s CG isn’t it?”

Me, not being able to believe it, ask with 90% doubt.

“You have no idea how happy I would be if it was CG. Unfortunately, I have seen many UFOs in reality. When you guys were coming here, did you see any lights in the sky?”

“Uh…”

I, many times, flash back to the moment I saw that.

“Ever since lately, around the area, much more UFO activity has been flying around. Almost like they are showing us their power. It’s unfortunate, but it seems they attained high level aviation techniques. In terms of culture, they succeeded over us. What this truth means… I shouldn’t have to say what this points to, should I?”

How do you expect me to believe that…

“It’s an invasion, isn’t it?”

Kirigiri enters.

“You’re correct.”

Shikiba nods his head seriously.

“They seem to be a Level III civilization. They have the power to control the Milky Way Galaxy. They are a high level society, no doubt about it. They are Super Galaxy Level Invaders.”

And against Super Galaxy Level, we have Super High School Level. I already feel that there is a massive scale difference between those two.

“I learned of their existence when I was walking around this area for my botany research. I found an unrecognizable flower. When I took it on my hand, it was one of the Rhinogradentia. I think it was a different type than the one that attacked you. The one that I found was like a flower that tricked its prey.”

“Even if they’re the same species of Rhinogradentia, there are different types.”

He puts a picture of a Rhinogradentia on the table and explains.

“All the pictures are old.”

Kirigiri points out.

“Sharp eye. All of these pictures are decades old.”

“Didn’t you say the UFOs came a year ago?”

I tilt my head and say.

“Actually, since hundreds of years ago, the Rhinogradentia were planning on invading the Earth in the Southern islands of Hy-yi-yi. They controlled a solitary community in the distant seas.”

It suddenly became an unbelievable story.

However, I have actually seen those Rhinogradentia. There’s no doubt about that part.

“Their invasion is steadily increasing. The war in the South Pacific has changed the situation. When a certain Swedish man named Einar Pettersson-Skämtkvist, escaped from a Japanese detention camp, and he happened to wash up onto the islands that held the Rhinogradentia, their existence became known to the world. But this information has been sealed for a long time and has not been publicly announced. It’s only known about in top secret levels. And all the photos were taken at that time.”

“Um… Wait. At that time, what happened with the Rhinogradentia? Were they not able to chase them away?”

“That’s right. But humanity’s victory was just part of coincidence.”

“Coincidence?”

“It seemed that near the islands, extreme nuclear tests were being run, and the whole island got destroyed.”

What terrible irony. It seems such terrible atomic weapons saved humanity once.

“All of the Rhinogradentia at that time were destroyed. However, they’ve once again come to Earth. And now, their numbers have increased and they have the chance for one full invasion. It seems that those who enter these woods become spirited away. It could be that the Rhinogradentia mutilated them.”

Shikiba grips his hand tightly.

“Wouldn’t it be faster if you called the police, or the FBI, or the MIB, or the United Nations?”

“If that were to happen, it would be all-out war. There’s no need for us to speed things up. They’re still looking for an opening. We mustn’t act so rashly.”

“Well then, what do we do?”

“I’ve been fighting a quiet and private war for this whole year. I was lucky to find that their invasion spot would be this abandoned mansion. I’ve been holding the fort here, looking for a chance to attack.”

“However, they’ve been sending scouts here and there.”

Kyouka explained.

“If we don’t stop them here, then we would be allowing them to invade the rest of the Earth. In order to protect this Earth, someone… no, I have to stand up and stop them.”

“Shikiba, there’s no need for you to take on that responsibility.”

“Are you telling me to just step away? That’s absolutely out of the question. As long as I know of their existence, I have no choice but to fight. Ever since I decided that, I’ve been prepared for a solitary fight. Like I said before, I can’t let anyone outside of the group know. If it escalated to an all-out war, we are an inferior civilization, and we would surely lose.”

So he was all alone fighting with those gross Rhinogradentia. When I think about that, I can’t help but respect him.

“Since when have you been here, Kyouka?”

“When I was about to be mutilated by those Rhinogradentia, Captain Shikiba was the one who saved me. So, I became a team member.”

“Now that it’s come to this, she’s an irreplaceable comrade. I can’t deny that we’ve been low on manpower though.”

“So that’s where you need a hand, isn’t it?”

Kirigiri, cross armed, gets close to the desk and asks. As expected of the Super High School Level Detective.

“Your judgement will be helpful. That’s where your request is. Please, save us.”

“Wait, hold on. Time out!”

I interrupt the conversation and then whisper to Kirigiri.

“Are these people serious?

“I wonder. But it’s true that there are some bizarre creatures running around, and I see the correlation to the missing people incident.”

“But I never heard about fighting those things.”

“I haven’t heard of it either. If I knew about it, I wouldn’t have come. I wonder what they think a detective is.”

“Exactly. Hurry up and decline them, and let’s get out of here.”

“I’ll do it.”

“Yes, she’ll do it! ... Wait, what!?”

“You’ve made a great decision. I knew you would say that. You guys might be humanity’s hope. Welcome to the Earth Plants Against Invaders Defence Force!”

Shikiba welcomes us with a round of applause.

“Congratulations on your enlistments!”

Kyouka joins him and claps as well.

“What do you mean, ‘enlistments’? Do you mean me, too? I’m just ordinary, I’m not Super High School Level or anything.”

“You don’t have to worry about that part. Kyouka’s just like you. You’ll become a great troop.”

I only got lost in the mountains, and now I’ve joined an Earth Defense Force… what is this ridiculous turn of events?

“I’ll have you guys help me right away. Ask Kyouka for the details.”

Shikiba grabs his spear and heads to the door.

“Oh? Where are you going, Captain?”

“I’m going to see if there are any other Rhinogradentia that got in.”

“Roger, take care.”

She sees him off as she salutes. Shikiba turns the doorknob as it clacks and it won’t open. He kicks it down and heads out.

“It was only locked, geez. Why is Captain always so wild?”

Kyouka picks up the broken hinge and sighs. It’s not just wild with his craziness.

I was just going with the flow and I accidentally joined in. Should I be happy about that? I ask Kirigiri…

A: “The Earth Defense Force isn’t something for detectives to do, is it?”

B: “I wonder if they’ll pay us?”

juicedup14 chooses A

“You can’t do anything as a detective here, can you?”

“I’m just going to fulfill my request.”

“Don’t you have the right to decline?”

“I do. But seeing as how this case is related to the missing persons incident, I can’t let more victims arise as a detective. And more so…”

As she fixes her gloves she says.

“And a detective is an ally to the truth.”

She looks as if she’s looking at something far away. I look at her, but she says nothing more.

“We should get moving soon.”

Kyouka says as she, from out of nowhere, pulls out a machine gun and holds it up to her shoulder.

“Is that a real gun?”

“Obviously. You won’t protect the Earth with a toy gun.”

Kyouka answers and laughs. I struggle to understand how she could laugh like that.

Kyouka takes the lead and leaves the meeting room and heads into the rooms next to the entrance hall.

It’s a reception room. There’s a sofa lined in front of the couch. There are shelves decorating the wall. It looks like there’s ash building up in the fireplace, but I don’t think we can use it.

“Oh, Kyouka?”

I ask to her back.

“What is it, Newbie?”

She’s even calling me newbie…

“I’ve been wondering. This Earth Defense Force is great and all, but what do you mean by Plant Defense Force?”

“You have a good ear. Let’s talk while we walk.”

We head into the door past the reception hall.

“You saw the Captain fighting a Rhinogradentia. However, no matter how tough he is, he can’t do everything alone. He’s been using his talent, called a Super High School Level, as a botanist in order to create a modified plant-based weapon.

“Turn plants into weapons?”

“Yes. That’s the Plant Defense Force. Sort of like carnivorous plants. They trap creatures and turn them into nutrients. Are you aware of those plants? He modified those so they would trap Rhinogradentia, and placed them all around the mansion. I’m fairly certain that all the plants in the garden are dangerous. It’d be best not to get close to them.”

“By the way, there’s a trap placed here in this room. However, it looks like it hasn’t been sprung.”

Kyouka looks up at the ceiling and says. It looks like webbing-like vines have been spread around.

“What is this?”

“When it detects movement, the vines constrict. It’s their trait.”

When hearing that I unconsciously stop moving.

“You can go ahead and keep walking. At a certain speed, it reacts, but it seems like they didn’t get modified enough and there’s still room to grow.”

There are other plants that, when they are touched, shoot bullet like things. There are ones that can cause burning when you get close to them. Ones that release poisonous gas.

What a dreadful Super High School Level Botanist. The sole man who’s protecting the Earth. Kyouka opens the door and we enter the room.

It seems that we’re in the dining hall now. There’s a dirty cloth on the table. There’s also a trunk on top of the table.

“Well then, I guess I’d like to get started with the mission.”

Kyouka opens the trunk case and takes out some potted plants from there. In the middle of the pots, it looks like there’s an open-looking budding plant growing.

“These are modified fly traps that are sensing mines. When the leaves are touched, the bud explodes and released shrapnel.”

Kyouka hands Kirigiri the pot with a smile. Obviously, Kirigiri becomes a bit more tense.

“We’re going to place these in front of the windows. Try not to touch the leaves, or you’ll get blown to smithereens.”

While being as cautious as possible, I set up the traps.

The windows have bars on them. It doesn’t seem like you’d be able to infiltrate easily. From the gaps in the bars, I can see the dark garden. But just happening to look outside, all of a sudden, I see black eyes appear. It’s a Rhinogradentia!

“Ah!”

I suddenly jump up and let go of the potted plant I was holding, throwing it.

As it flies in the air, the plant explodes. I see the projection line in slow motion as I think back to a past memory…

A: My life flashed before my eyes.

B: I think of a death poem.

C: Before I die, please tell… oh nevermind.

[elcorreodetorreon]

Legendary journalist John Pilger on Assange's arrest

The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist, his eyes wincing against his first natural light in almost seven years.

That this outrage happened in the heart of London, in the land of Magna Carta, ought to shame and anger all who fear for “democratic” societies. Assange is a political refugee protected by international law, the recipient of asylum under a strict covenant to which Britain is a signatory. The United Nations made this clear in the legal ruling of its Working Party on Arbitrary Detention.

But to hell with that. Let the thugs go in. Directed by the quasi fascists in Trump’s Washington, in league with Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno, a Latin American Judas and liar seeking to disguise his rancid regime, the British elite abandoned its last imperial myth: that of fairness and justice.



Moreno: A Latin American Judas.

Imagine Tony Blair dragged from his multi-million pound Georgian home in Connaught Square, London, in handcuffs, for onward dispatch to the dock in The Hague. By the standard of Nuremberg, Blair’s “paramount crime” is the deaths of a million Iraqis. Assange’s crime is journalism: holding the rapacious to account, exposing their lies and empowering people all over the world with truth.

The shocking arrest of Assange carries a warning for all who, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “sew the seeds of discontent [without which] there would be no advance towards civilization.” The warning is explicit towards journalists. What happened to the founder and editor of WikiLeaks can happen to you on a newspaper, you in a TV studio, you on radio, you running a podcast.

Assange’s principal media tormentor, The Guardian, a collaborator with the secret state, displayed its nervousness this week with an editorial that scaled new weasel heights. The Guardian has exploited the work of Assange and WikiLeaks in what its previous editor called “the greatest scoop of the last 30 years.” The paper creamed off WikiLeaks’ revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them.

With not a penny going to Julian Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, turned on their source, abused him and disclosed the secret password Assange had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing leaked US embassy cables.

Revealing Homicidal Colonial Wars

When Assange was still trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy, Harding joined police outside and gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.” The Guardian then published a series of falsehoods about Assange, not least a discredited claim that a group of Russians and Trump’s man, Paul Manafort, had visited Assange in the embassy. The meetings never happened; it was fake.

But the tone has now changed. “The Assange case is a morally tangled web,” the paper opined. “He (Assange) believes in publishing things that should not be published …. But he has always shone a light on things that should never have been hidden.”

These “things” are the truth about the homicidal way America conducts its colonial wars, the lies of the British Foreign Office in its denial of rights to vulnerable people, such as the Chagos Islanders, the exposé of Hillary Clinton as a backer and beneficiary of jihadism in the Middle East, the detailed description of American ambassadors of how the governments in Syria and Venezuela might be overthrown, and much more. It is all available on the WikiLeaks site.

The Guardian is understandably nervous. Secret policemen have already visited the newspaper and demanded and got the ritual destruction of a hard drive. On this, the paper has form. In 1983, a Foreign Office clerk, Sarah Tisdall, leaked British Government documents showing when American cruise nuclear weapons would arrive in Europe. The Guardian was showered with praise.

When a court order demanded to know the source, instead of the editor going to prison on a fundamental principle of protecting a source, Tisdall was betrayed, prosecuted and served six months.

If Assange is extradited to America for publishing what The Guardian calls truthful “things,” what is to stop the current editor, Katherine Viner, following him, or the previous editor, Alan Rusbridger, or the prolific propagandist Luke Harding?



Even the propagandist Harding could be at risk.

What is to stop the editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post, who also published morsels of the truth that originated with WikiLeaks, and the editor of El Pais in Spain, andDer Spiegel in Germany and The Sydney MorningHerald in Australia. The list is long.

David McCraw, lead lawyer of The New York Times, wrote: “I think the prosecution [of Assange] would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers … from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and the law would have a very hard time distinguishing between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.”

Even if journalists who published WikiLeaks’ leaks are not summoned by an American grand jury, the intimidation of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning will be enough. Real journalism is being criminalized by thugs in plain sight. Dissent has become an indulgence.

In Australia, the current America-besotted government is prosecuting two whistle-blowers who revealed that Canberra’s spooks bugged the cabinet meetings of the new government of East Timor for the express purpose of cheating the tiny, impoverished nation out of its proper share of the oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea. Their trial will be held in secret. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, is infamous for his part in setting up concentration camps for refugees on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus, where children self harm and suicide. In 2014, Morrison proposed mass detention camps for 30,000 people.

Journalism: a Major Threat

Real journalism is the enemy of these disgraces. A decade ago, the Ministry of Defense in London produced a secret document which described the “principal threats” to public order as threefold: terrorists, Russian spies and investigative journalists. The latter was designated the major threat.

The document was duly leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it. “We had no choice,” Assange told me. “It’s very simple. People have a right to know and a right to question and challenge power. That’s true democracy.”

What if Assange and Manning and others in their wake — if there are others — are silenced and “the right to know and question and challenge” is taken away?

In the 1970s, I met Leni Reifenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler, whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany.

She told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the public.

“Did this submissive void include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she said, “especially the intelligentsia …. When people no longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable. Anything can happen.”

And did. The rest, she might have added, is history.

[heliosphoenix]

State of the planet: 2018 edition

Well here we are, it's time once again for my now annual review of the year we just finished up. When we take some time out of our New Year's celebrations to recognize that while it seems like we just went through 365 days of pain and frustration, there was a smattering of good things that happened as well.

Here's some of them:

Scientists in China cloned two monkeys via Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, a major development toward's the potential for this technique to be used for regenerative cloning in the future

A new drug designed to combat Ovarian Cancer has begun clinical trials. Early results show that half the patients taking the drug are now Cancer free with no sign of the Cancer returning

Chinese scientists have developed rice that will grow in drought conditions. They plan to cover about 10% of the desert in the UAE with this rice for farming use.

An effort is underway to save the Northern White Rhino from extinction, using frozen sperm implanted in eggs from Southern White Rhinos, the hope is that this process will be able to revive the species in the future

A Ukrainian company is placing Solar Panels around Chernobyl to generate Solar Power. They plan to use the existing infrastructure to eventually generate up to 100 Megawatts of energy

101 cities around the world are now getting 70% of their power from renewable energy sources. In a related story, 56 cities in the United States have committed to going 100% renewable by 2050

The World Health Organization reported that Paraguay has now completely eradicated Malaria, other Latin America nations are close to doing so as well

The Ocean Cleanup Project has begun an initiative to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They're aiming to remove at least 50 tons of garbage from the ocean every year

The Ozone is beginning to repair itself. At current rates, the Northern Hemisphere should be fully repaired by 2030, with the Ozone Hole in Antarctica sealed by 2060

The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge was opened, it's the world's longest sea crossing bridge

Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he's modified the DNA of twin infant girls in an attempt to make them resistant to HIV

According to a report by the International Telecommunications Union, 51.2% of the world's population is using the Internet

Qantas launched the first commercial non stop service between Australia and the United Kingdom, the route is flown by their 787 fleet

Cinemas opened in Saudi Arabia for the first time since 1983, the first movie shown is Black Panther

Diplomatic talks took place between North and South Korea, with both nations committing to the removal of land mines from the Demilitarized Zone between the nations

The Basque separatist group ETA announced its dissolution

The Supreme Court of India decriminalized homosexuality

Ireland citizens voted to repeal the nations ban on abortion in a national referendum

Voting turnout for the US Midterm elections was at a 50 year high

Michigan was the latest state to legalize recreational use of Marijuana, Canada also voted to allow sale of Marijuana.

The overall crime rate for the year is expected to have dropped by 2.9%

11% of the US Population is expected to get a boost to their credit scores

Homeownership rates for Americans under 35 are now at just over 36%, the highest since 2013

Americans gave over $400 Billion to charity this year, a record high

The 2018 Winter Olympics were held in South Korea

The 2018 World Cup was held in Russia with France claiming their second title. It was also announced that the United States, Mexico and Canada will host the 2026 World Cup

The Philadelphia Eagles won their first Super Bowl over the heavily favored New England Patriots

Tiger Woods won his first PGA tournament since 2013

The Michigan Basketball team did so much better than anyone could've expected, winning their second consecutive Big Ten tournament, and making their second Final Four appearance in 5 years

The Michigan Football team had a decent year as well, posting their third 10-3 record under Jim Harbaugh as well as winning a share of the Big Ten East division title (but because two of those losses were to Notre Dame and Ohio State, Michigan fans will be forced to spend the offseason being miserable twats again)

Justify won the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing, the second horse to win the title in 3 years (rather remarkable considering the previous title drought was nearly 4 decades)

SpaceX launched 21 Falcon rockets this year, including the first Falcon Heavy rocket which sent Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into interplanetary space

NASA had a busy year as well, launching the TESS spacecraft to search for ExoPlanets, the Parker Solar Probe to explore the Sun's atmosphere, and the InSight lander which successfully touched down on Mars in November

ESA launched the BepiColombo spacecraft to explore the planet Mercury, the first mission to the planet in over a decade

The OSIRIS-REx sample returned spacecraft arrived at the Asteroid Bennu.

Finally, the New Horizons spaceprobe will conduct a flyby of the Kuiper Belt Object Ultima Thule just after midnight tonight!

Remember all that? Good. Because that's where I'm at right now: December 31, 2018, with just over 11 hours left in this year.

You, dear reader, are in the future. And by the time you read this, it's very likely that for you 2018 will be over. Relegated to the books. And you've probably read a bunch of articles and blogs and tweets about how we just went through a year of infinite pain. Which is why I'm hoping that this missive finds you after you've already read all those other things.

Because our minds tend to place the most emphasis on the last thing we experienced, and I want your lasting memory of 2018 to be that all those things I listed above happened this year, and nothing can ever erase them.

Now this is the part where I say something nice and worldly to tie up the events of this last trip around the ol' Sun. I try my best to come up with some theme or other that brings it all together into a coherent picture.

I think the word I would use to describe this year is "Revelation." Because I think we can all say that this year, it's not so much that we learned things, but things were revealed to us.

We've all been in this situation before. We think that we've got everything figured out, we have all the answers. And then all of a sudden we uncover something that completely shatters our perceptions and kicks our foundation out from under us. And based on all that's happened this past year, I think it's safe to say this happened to all of us at least once in the preceding 12 months.

Perhaps someone did something you never thought they would do? Or something that seemed to be amazing turned out not to be as good as you thought? Or maybe your way of viewing the world now looks totally alien to you?

Revelation can be a very traumatic thing to deal with, and I can tell you from experience that when your entire perception of reality is challenged, you become unsure about everything else. Doubts creep into your mind, and you start wondering what else it might be that you're wrong about? It's the kind of feeling that can make you feel completely alone even in the middle of thousands of people.

But Revelation can also be a good thing.

Sometimes something turns out to be even better than you were expecting. Or you discover that you actually are much more respected and valued than you thought you were. Or maybe you look around and realize that things aren't actually as bad as they seem.

Even if you have to deal with the Revelation of a harsh truth, you can still find the positive out of that. Sure you can choose to become cynical and jaded and let it consume you, or you can choose to be proactive about it.

Sure, things weren't what you thought they were, but that's okay. The world didn't come to an end, you still have much to be thankful for, and you can now use the knowledge that you've learned to become wiser about how to live your life.

So this is the part where I usually say that there's one more awesome thing that happened this year, but you're going to tell me what it is. Tell me something good that happened to you during 2018.

This time however, I'd like to try something different.

In addition to telling me something good that happened to you this year, I'd like you to give me the biggest Revelation you've had this year. What was the most surprising thing that was revealed to you?

Now I understand that it probably won't be as pleasant of a memory as whatever awesome thing that happened to you this year was, it may even cause you distress just thinking about it.

If that's the case, embrace it, because you are distressed. But not over whatever it was that you were forced to confront, but rather the loss of what you thought the world was.

But don't let it consume you. Take the truth that was revealed to you and apply it. Learn from it and resolve to use that truth to strengthen your resolve for this next trip around the Sun.

Things aren't always what they seem, and they often don't work out how you planned, but that's not always a bad thing. Because the amazing thing about this world is that things have a way of working out anyway.

So remember the good times, but learn from the Revelations. When you do that, you'll be that much closer to being the person you want to be.

Have a good day, a great month, and an AMAZING 2019.

[newstfionline]

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Billionaire Blastoff (AP) Two billionaires are putting everything on the line this month to ride their own rockets into space. Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson is due to take off Sunday from New Mexico, launching with two pilots and three other employees aboard a rocket plane carried aloft by a double-fuselage aircraft. Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos departs nine days later from West Texas, blasting off in a fully automated capsule with three guests: his brother, an 82-year-old female aviation pioneer who’s waited six decades for a shot at space and the winner of a $28 million charity auction. They will go 55 miles to 66 miles (88 kilometers to 106 kilometers) up.

Severe heat wave builds across Western U.S. after nation’s hottest June on record (Washington Post) Last week, a “thousand-year” heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest and adjacent British Columbia with widespread highs topping 100 degrees, resulting in a death toll in the hundreds. Lytton, Canada, climbed to 121 degrees and established new national records three days in a row before the town burned in heat-intensified wildfires. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Friday that the heat wave helped the United States clinch its hottest June on record. Eight states had their hottest Junes, including Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. These four states are at the heart of yet another heat wave developing in the West that could challenge records and bring dangerously hot temperatures. It will mark the third punishing heat wave in the West this summer, including last week’s in the Pacific Northwest and a record-breaking event in mid-June. This heat wave will not likely be as extreme as the event in the Pacific Northwest, but temperatures could challenge all-time highs around Las Vegas, Redding, Calif., and Sacramento and a few other places between California’s Central Valley and southern Nevada.

Political Crisis in Haiti Deepens Over Rival Claims to Power (NYT) The political storm in Haiti intensified on Thursday as two competing prime ministers claimed the right to run the country, setting up an extraordinary power struggle over who had the legal authority to govern after the brazen assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in his home the day before. Haiti’s interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, says he has taken command of the police and the army, declaring a “state of siege” that essentially put the country under martial law. But constitutional experts questioned his right to impose it, and his claim to power was quickly challenged by a rival. Two days before his death, Mr. Moïse had appointed a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon who was supposed to take up the role this week and told a local newspaper that he was the rightful prime minister instead. The dueling claims created a volatile political crisis that left constitutional experts confused and diplomats worried about a broad societal collapse that could ignite violence or prompt Haitians to flee the country en masse, as they have after natural disasters, coups or other periods of deep instability.

Brexit bill (Reuters) Brexit’s unfortunate fallout continues. The European Union has said that the United Kingdom is liable to pay 47.5 billion euros ($56.2 billion) to the E.U. as part of its post-Brexit financial settlement. The E.U.’s consolidated budget report for 2020 said the money is owed under a series of articles which both sides agreed to as part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement. The amount is significantly higher than the U.K. expected. Its Office for Budget Responsibility predicted in its March 2018 economic and fiscal outlook report that the bill would amount to 41.4 billion euros ($49 billion). Britain and the E.U. were in a 47-year relationship, and the divorce has been dicey. It took more than four years of acrimonious negotiations and lingering mistrust before the two finally struck a trade and cooperation agreement at the end of December.

Thailand to impose tighter restrictions to slow virus spread (Reuters) Thailand will announce new travel restrictions, mall closures and curbs on gatherings in the capital Bangkok and surrounding provinces starting next week, in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, two government sources told Reuters. The government will issue a stay-home order from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. for 14 days and bar gatherings of more than five people in the capital and high-risk areas, the sources said.

China’s gaming curfew (Foreign Policy) Chinese gaming giant Tencent will begin using facial recognition technology to prevent minors playing mobile video games past a nationwide gaming curfew. China established the 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew in 2019 to combat gaming addiction—deemed a mental health disorder in 2018 by the World Health Organization. Chinese children and teenagers had been circumventing the nighttime ban by using adult’s credentials to log in to the gaming service, prompting the technological intervention.

Biden Accelerates Withdrawal Timetable (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, despite the Taliban’s rapid territorial gains in recent weeks. In a White House address, Biden said that all combat troops would leave Afghanistan by August 31, even earlier than a Sept. 11 deadline he set back in April. Heading off criticism from some conservatives, who have called for a small combat troop presence to remain in the country, Biden—a long-time skeptic of prolonged U.S. involvement in Afghanistan—questioned the cost of such a move. “Let me ask those who want us to stay: How many more—how many thousands more Americans, daughters and sons—are you willing to risk?” Biden said. “I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome.” Although nearly all U.S. troops are set to depart Afghanistan by August, a substantial number—roughly 650—will remain in the country to provide security for the U.S. embassy and Kabul’s international airport.

Drone attacks by Iraqi militias reflect Iran’s waning hold (AP) Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force commander brought one main directive for Iraqi militia faction leaders long beholden to Tehran, when he gathered with them in Baghdad last month: Maintain calm, until after nuclear talks between Iran and the United States. But he was met with defiance. One of the six faction leaders spoke up in their meeting: They could not stay quiet while the death of his predecessor Qassim Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a U.S. drone strike went unavenged. Militia attacks have only been increasing against the U.S. in military bases in both Iraq and Syria. Three missile attacks in the last week alone resulted in minor injuries, stoking fears of escalation. There have been at least eight drone attacks targeting the U.S. presence since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks, according to coalition officials. The attacks are blamed on the Iranian-backed militias that make up the bulk of Iraq’s state-supported Popular Mobilization Forces. The Biden administration has responded by twice targeting Iraqi militia groups operating inside Syria, including close to the Iraqi border.

Israel levels family home of alleged Palestinian attacker (AP) Israel on Thursday demolished the family home of a Palestinian-American man accused of carrying out a deadly attack on Israelis in the occupied West Bank, rejecting pleas from his estranged wife that he rarely lived in the house, which she shared with their three children. The demolition drew a rebuke from the United States, which is opposed to punitive home demolitions and has taken a more critical line toward Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank since President Joe Biden took office this year. “The home of an entire family should not be demolished for the actions of one individual,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price. “There is a critical need to lower the temperature in the West Bank. Punitive demolitions exacerbate tensions at a time when everyone should be focused on principally ensuring calm.”

Religion (Public Religion Research Institute) A new survey of 50,334 Americans over the course of 2020 tracked how religion in the United States has continued to change over recent years. According to the survey, 36 percent of those 18 to 29 years old considered themselves unaffiliated with a religion, substantially higher than the 23 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds who considered themselves as much in 2006, and the 10 percent who were unaffiliated in 1986. That’s also double the rate of religiously unaffiliated compared to those aged 50 to 64. Still, a majority—54 percent—of those 18 to 29 are Christians, though that’s down from the 70 percent of all Americans.

Laughter can make you more productive at work (CNBC) Being inundated with bad news and working from home, for some alone, during the coronavirus pandemic has made it harder than ever for workers to find the time for laughter, but experts argue that it can really make a difference when it comes to productivity. Daniel Sgroi, an economics professor at the U.K.’s University of Warwick, told CNBC via telephone that laughter can trigger the activation of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin, both of which are considered mood-boosting hormones. Sgroi explained that laughter “fast tracks networks in the brain to help you concentrate and focus,” working as the equivalent of a productivity boost. Research that Sgroi co-authored, published in 2015, found evidence of a link between happiness and productivity. One of the techniques used in his study was to use comedy to make participants laugh and be happier, which he said boosted productivity by up to 12%. “So it’s almost like being happy generates more time,” he said, explaining that someone who is happy might be able to do in one hour what it takes someone who is less happy to do in an hour and 20 minutes.