ISIS and Our Times - Noam Chomsky

It is not pleasant to contemplate the thoughts that must be passing through the mind of the Owl of Minerva as the dusk falls and she undertakes the task of interpreting the era of human civilization, which may now be approaching its inglorious end.

Bajid Kandala refugee cam, Iraq

The era opened almost 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, stretching from the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates, through Phoenicia on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Nile Valley, and from there to Greece and beyond. What is happening in this region provides painful lessons on the depths to which the species can descend.

The land of the Tigris and Euphrates has been the scene of unspeakable horrors in recent years. The George W. Bush-Tony Blair aggression in 2003, which many Iraqis compared to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, was yet another lethal blow. It destroyed much of what survived the Bill Clinton-driven UN sanctions on Iraq, condemned as "genocidal" by the distinguished diplomats Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who administered them before resigning in protest. Halliday and von Sponeck's devastating reports received the usual treatment accorded to unwanted facts.

One dreadful consequence of the US-UK invasion is depicted in a New York Times "visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria": the radical change of Baghdad from mixed neighborhoods in 2003 to today's sectarian enclaves trapped in bitter hatred. The conflicts ignited by the invasion have spread beyond and are now tearing the entire region to shreds.

Much of the Tigris-Euphrates area is in the hands of ISIS and its self-proclaimed Islamic State, a grim caricature of the extremist form of radical Islam that has its home in Saudi Arabia. Patrick Cockburn, a Middle East correspondent for The Independent and one of the best-informed analysts of ISIS, describes it as "a very horrible, in many ways fascist organization, very sectarian, kills anybody who doesn't believe in their particular rigorous brand of Islam."

Cockburn also points out the contradiction in the Western reaction to the emergence of ISIS: efforts to stem its advance in Iraq along with others to undermine the group's major opponent in Syria, the brutal Bashar Assad regime. Meanwhile a major barrier to the spread of the ISIS plague to Lebanon is Hezbollah, a hated enemy of the US and its Israeli ally. And to complicate the situation further, the US and Iran now share a justified concern about the rise of the Islamic State, as do others in this highly conflicted region.

Egypt has plunged into some of its darkest days under a military dictatorship that continues to receive US support. Egypt's fate was not written in the stars. For centuries, alternative paths have been quite feasible, and not infrequently, a heavy imperial hand has barred the way.

After the renewed horrors of the past few weeks it should be unnecessary to comment on what emanates from Jerusalem, in remote history considered a moral center.

Eighty years ago, Martin Heidegger extolled Nazi Germany as providing the best hope for rescuing the glorious civilization of the Greeks from the barbarians of the East and West. Today, German bankers are crushing Greece under an economic regime designed to maintain their wealth and power.

The likely end of the era of civilization is foreshadowed in a new draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the generally conservative monitor of what is happening to the physical world.

The report concludes that increasing greenhouse gas emissions risk "severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems" over the coming decades. The world is nearing the temperature when loss of the vast ice sheet over Greenland will be unstoppable. Along with melting Antarctic ice, that could raise sea levels to inundate major cities as well as coastal plains.

The era of civilization coincides closely with the geological epoch of the Holocene, beginning over 11,000 years ago. The previous Pleistocene epoch lasted 2.5 million years. Scientists now suggest that a new epoch began about 250 years ago, the Anthropocene, the period when human activity has had a dramatic impact on the physical world. The rate of change of geological epochs is hard to ignore.

One index of human impact is the extinction of species, now estimated to be at about the same rate as it was 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Earth. That is the presumed cause for the ending of the age of the dinosaurs, which opened the way for small mammals to proliferate, and ultimately modern humans. Today, it is humans who are the asteroid, condemning much of life to extinction.

The IPCC report reaffirms that the "vast majority" of known fuel reserves must be left in the ground to avert intolerable risks to future generations. Meanwhile the major energy corporations make no secret of their goal of exploiting these reserves and discovering new ones.

A day before its summary of the IPCC conclusions, The New York Times reported that huge Midwestern grain stocks are rotting so that the products of the North Dakota oil boom can be shipped by rail to Asia and Europe.

One of the most feared consequences of anthropogenic global warming is the thawing of permafrost regions. A study in Science magazine warns that "even slightly warmer temperatures [less than anticipated in coming years] could start melting permafrost, which in turn threatens to trigger the release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases trapped in ice," with possible "fatal consequences" for the global climate.

Arundhati Roy suggests that the "most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times" is the Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani soldiers have killed each other on the highest battlefield in the world. The glacier is now melting and revealing "thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate" in meaningless conflict. And as the glaciers melt, India and Pakistan face indescribable disaster.

Sad species. Poor Owl.

© 2014 Noam Chomsky
Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate

 

© 2014

5 Crucial Lessons for the Left From Naomi Klein’s New Book

In her previous books The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) and NO LOGO: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (2000), Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein took on topics like neoliberal “shock therapy,” consumerism, globalization and “disaster capitalism,” extensively documenting the forces behind the dramatic rise in economic inequality and environmental degradation over the past 50 years.

Naomi Klein

But in her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (due in stores September 16), Klein casts her gaze toward the future, arguing that the dangers of climate change demand radical action now to ward off catastrophe. She certainly isn’t alone in pointing out the urgency of the threat, but what sets Klein apart is her argument that it is capitalism—not carbon—that is at the root of climate change, inexorably driving us toward an environmental Armageddon in the pursuit of profit. This Changes Everything is well worth a read (or two) in full, but we’ve distilled some of its key points here.

1. Band-Aid solutions don’t work.

“Only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed.”

Much of the conversation surrounding climate change focuses on what Klein dismisses as “Band-Aid solutions”: profit-friendly fixes like whizz-bang technological innovations, cap-and-trade schemes and supposedly “clean” alternatives like natural gas. To Klein, such strategies are too little, too late. In her drawn-out critique of corporate involvement in climate change prevention, she demonstrates how profitable “solutions” put forward by many think-tanks (and their corporate backers) actually end up making the problem worse. For instance, Klein argues that carbon trading programs create perverse incentives, allowing manufacturers to produce more harmful greenhouse gases, just to be paid to reduce them. In the process, carbon trading schemes have helped corporations make billions—allowing them to directly profit off the degradation of the planet. Instead, Klein argues, we need to break free of market fundamentalism and implement long-term planning, strict regulation of business, more taxation, more government spending and reversals of privatization to return key infrastructure to public control.

2. We need to fix ourselves, not fix the world.

“The earth is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the world, it is to fix ourselves.”

Klein devotes a full chapter of the book to geoengineering: the field of research, championed by a niche group of scientists, funders and media figures, that aims to fight global warming by altering the earth itself—say, by covering deserts with reflective material to send sunlight back to space or even dimming the sun to decrease the amount of heat reaching the planet. However, politicians and much of the global public have raised environmental, health and ethical concerns regarding these proposed science experiments with the planet, and Klein warns of the unknown consequences of creating “a Frankenstein’s world,” with multiple countries launching projects simultaneously. Instead of restoring an environmental equilibrium, Klein argues these “techno-fixes” will only further upset the earth’s balance, each one creating a host of new problems, requiring an endless chain of further “fixes.” She writes, “The earth—our life support system—would itself be put on life support, hooked up to machines 24/7 to prevent it from going full-tilt monster on us.”

3. We can’t rely on “well-intentioned” corporate funding.

“A great many progressives have opted out of the climate change debate in part because they thought that the Big Green groups, flush with philanthropic dollars, had this issue covered. That, it turns out, was a grave mistake.”

Klein strongly critiques partnerships between corporations and major environmental groups, along with attempts by “green billionaires” such as Bill Gates and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson to use capitalism to fighting global warming. When capitalism itself is a principal cause of climate change, Klein argues, it doesn’t make sense to expect corporations and billionaires to put the planet before profit. For example, though the Gates Foundation funds many major environmental groups dedicated to combating climate change, as of December 2013, it had at least $1.2 billion invested in BP and ExxonMobil. In addition, when Big Greens become dependent on corporate funding, they start to push a corporate agenda. For instance, organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, which have taken millions of dollars from pro-fracking corporate funders, such as Shell, Chevron and JP Morgan, are pitching natural gas as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal.

4. We need divestment, and reinvestment.

“The main power of divestment is not that it financially harms Shell and Chevron in the short term but that it erodes the social license of fossil fuel companies and builds pressure on politicians to introduce across-the-board emission reductions.”

Critics of the carbon divestment movement often claim that divestment will have minimal impact on polluters’ bottom lines. But Klein argues that this line of reasoning misses the point, quoting Canadian divestment activist Cameron Fenton's argument that “No one is thinking we’re going to bankrupt fossil fuel companies. But what we can do is bankrupt their reputations and take away their political power.” More importantly, divestment opens the door for reinvestment. A few million dollars out of the hands of ExxonMobil or BP frees up money that can now be spent developing green infrastructure or empowering communities to localize their economies. And some colleges, charities, pension funds and municipalities have already got the message: Klein reports that 13 U.S. colleges and universities, 25 North American cities, around 40 religious institutions and several major foundations have all made commitments to divest their endowments from fossil fuel stocks and bonds.

5. Confronting climate change is an opportunity to address other social, economic and political issues.

“When climate change deniers claim that global warming is a plot to redistribute wealth, it's not (only) because they are paranoid. It's also because they are paying attention.”

In The Shock Doctrine, Klein explained how corporations have exploited crises around the world for profit. In This Changes Everything, she argues that the climate change crisis can serve as a wake-up call for widespread democratic action. For instance, when a 2007 tornado destroyed most of Greensburg, Kansas, the town rejected top-down approaches to recovery in favor of community-based rebuilding efforts that increased democratic participation and created new, environmentally-friendly public buildings. Today, Greensburg is one of the greenest towns in the United States. To Klein, this example illustrates how people can use climate change to come together to build a greener society. It also can, and indeed must, spur a radical transformation of our economy: less consumption, less international trade (part of relocalizing our economies) and less private investment, and a lot more government spending to create the infrastructure we need for a green economy. “Implicit in all of this,” Klein writes, “is a great deal more redistribution, so that more of us can live comfortably within the planet’s capacity.” More

 

© 2014

The Sunswift eVe solar-powered car broke a 26-year-old land speed record for electric vehicles

The Sunswift eVe solar-powered car broke a 26-year-old land speed record for electric vehicles on Wednesday at the Australian Automotive Research Center in Victoria. While the record still has to be ratified by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, it would make eVe the fastest electric car to ever compete a 500 km set distance course by a significant margin, Gizmodo reported. The previous record, set in 1988, was an average speed of 73 kilometers per hour; the Sunswift eVe reached 100 km per hour average over the 500 km course.

Sunswift eVe, designed and built by students at the University of New South Wales, seeks to overcome the traditional obstacles that have impeded solar-powered cars, namely, offering both speed and range in the same vehicle.

“There are many solar cars out there with a long range, and many other solar cars capable of even higher speeds,” Rob Ireland, business team leader at Sunswift, told International Business Times. “However, we’re trying to do something ground-breaking and overcome both.”

The zero-emission solar and battery storage electric vehicle is capable of covering 800 km on a single charge and has a top speed of 140 km per hour (87 miles per hour). The car’s solar panels have an 800-watt output and when the sun isn’t shining, eVe relies on its battery pack, reducing drivers’ range anxiety. The car’s motor, “supplied by Australian national science agency CSIRO, operates at 97 percent efficiency, meaning eVe consumes as much power as a kitchen toaster,” according to IB Times.

For Wednesday’s record attempt, the solar panels on the roof and hood were used to charge the battery, but were covered for the actual run, as the attempt had to be completed on a single charge.

While the Sunswift eVe is not fully road legal, the team believes that isn’t far out of reach, telling Renew Economy they hope to have the vehicle on Australian roads within the year as “a symbol for a new era of sustainable driving.” And Ireland said the practicality of the two-seat, four-wheel car is unmatched among solar-powered vehicles.

In the run-up to their attempt at the land speed record, project director and third-year engineering student Hayden Smith explained to Renew Economy why it was so significant. “Five hundred kilometers is pretty much as far as a normal person would want to drive in a single day,” Smith said. “It’s another demonstration that one day you could be driving our car.” More

 

© 2014

Permaculture PDC in Palestine in September

Marda Permaculture Certification Course, Register Now!

Join us in SEPTEMBER for an exquisite opportunity to learn about permaculture principles and techniques whilst experiencing the culture, food and traditions of beautiful Palestine! And much more! Check out: Permaculture Design Course, 25 September – 10 October 2014

For more information click here

 

© 2014

Architecture for the 21st Century with Michael Reynolds

What do beer cans, car tires and water bottles have in common?

Not much unless you're renegade architect Michael Reynolds, in which case they are tools of choice for producing thermal mass and energy-independent housing. For 30 years New Mexico-based Reynolds and his green disciples have devoted their time to advancing the art of "Earthship Biotecture" by building self-sufficient, off-the-grid communities where design and function converge in eco-harmony.

However, these experimental structures that defy state standards create conflict between Reynolds and the authorities, who are backed by big business. Frustrated by antiquated legislation, Reynolds lobbies for the right to create a sustainable living test site. While politicians hum and ha, Mother Nature strikes, leaving communities devastated by tsunamis and hurricanes. Reynolds and his crew seize the opportunity to lend their pioneering skills to those who need it most.

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Shot over three years and in four countries, Garbage Warrior is a timely portrait of a determined visionary, a hero of the 21st century...

 

© 2014

Mushroom Hunter and Mycotechnologist Extraordinaire

Ken Miller received a national award for his article on Paul Stamets which was featured in Discover Magazine.

Paul Stamets

 

For Paul Stamets, the phrase mushroom hunt does not denote a leisurely stroll with a napkin-lined basket. This morning, a half-dozen of us are struggling to keep up with the mycologist as he charges through a fir-and-alder forest on Cartes Island, British Columbia. It s raining steadily, and the moss beneath our feet is slick, but Stamets, 57, barrels across it like a grizzly bear heading for a stump full of honey. He vaults over fallen trees, scrambles up muddy ravines, plows through shin-deep puddles in his rubber boots. He never slows down, but he halts abruptly whenever a specimen demands his attention.

This outing is part of a workshop on the fungi commonly known as mushrooms — a class of organisms whose cell walls are stiffened by a molecule called chitin instead of the cellulose found in plants, and whose most ardent scientific evangelist is the man ahead of us. Stamets is trying to find a patch of chanterelles, a variety known for its exquisite flavor. But the species that stop him in his tracks, and bring a look of bliss to his bushy-bearded face, possess qualities far beyond the culinary.

He points to a clutch of plump oyster mushrooms halfway up an alder trunk. These could clean up oil spills all over the planet, he says. He ducks beneath a rotting log, where a rare, beehive-like Agarikon

dangles. This could provide a defense against weaponized smallpox. Read PDF

 

© 2014

Volcanism, Climate and Food Security

Most have heard of the Battle of Waterloo, but who has heard of the volcano called Tambora? No school textbook I’ve seen mentions that only two months before Napoleon’s final defeat in Belgium on June 18, 1815, the faraway Indonesian island of Sumbawa was the site of the most devastating volcanic eruption on Earth in thousands of years.

Mt. Tambora

The death toll claimed around 100,000 people, from the thick pyroclastic flows of lava, from the tsunami that struck nearby coasts, and from the thick ash that blanketed South-East Asia’s farmlands, destroyed crops and plunged it into darkness for a week. Both events – Napoleon’s defeat and the eruption – had monumental impacts on human history. But while a library of scholarship has been devoted to Napoleon’s undoing at Waterloo, the scattered writings on Tambora would scarcely fill your in-tray.

This extraordinary geological event took place 199 years ago this week, and on the cusp of its bicentenary Tambora is finally getting its due. With the help of modern scientific instruments and old-fashioned archival detective work, the Tambora 1815 eruption can be conclusively placed among the greatest environmental disasters ever to befall mankind. The floods, droughts, starvation, and disease in the three years following the eruption stem from the volcano’s effects on weather systems, so Tambora stands today as a harrowing case study of what the human costs and global reach might be from runaway climate change.

Tambora’s greatest claim to infamy lies not in the impact it had on what was then the Dutch East Indies (which were terrible enough), but its indirect effects on the disease ecology of the Bay of Bengal. The enormous cloud of sulfate gases Tambora ejected into the atmosphere slowed the development of the Indian monsoon, the world’s largest weather system, for the following two years.

Tambora's eruption was heard 2,oookm
away in Sumatra, and ash fell metres deep

Drought brought on by the eruption devastated crop yields across the Indian sub-continent, but more disastrously gave rise to a new and deadly strain of cholera. Cholera had always been endemic to Bengal, but the bizarre weather of 1816-17 triggered by Tambora’s eruption – first drought, then late, unseasonal flooding – altered the microbial ecology of the Bay of Bengal. The cholera bacterium, which has an unusually adaptive genetic structure highly sensitive to changes in its aquatic environment, mutated into a new strain. This met with no resistance among the local population, and it spread across Asia and eventually the globe. By century’s end, the death toll from Bengal cholera stood in the tens of millions.

Just as the biological disaster known as the Black Death defined the 14th century in Europe and the Near East, so cholera shaped the nineteenth century like no other calamity. Much of our medical science, and our modern public health institutions, originate in the Victorian-era battle against cholera. But only now, thanks to renewed scientific interest in the relation between cholera and climate change, can we make the connection between the worldwide cholera epidemic originating in 1817 and Tambora’s eruption thousands of miles away.

Tambora’s ripple effects were felt across the globe. In southwest China, the outlying mountainous province of Yunnan suffered terribly from the cold volcanic weather, losing crop after crop of rice to bitter winds and flooding rains. The situation was so extreme that desperate Yunnanese resorted to eating white clay, while parents sold their children in the town markets, or killed them out of mercy.

In the aftermath of this three-year famine, Yunnan farmers turned to a more reliable cash crop – opium – to ensure their families’ survival against future disasters. Within a few decades, opium was being grown all across Yunnan, while opium processing technology and expertise drifted south into the remote mountains of modern-day Burma and Laos. The “golden triangle” of international opium production was born.

If the Tambora disaster persists in cultural memory at all, it is as the “Year Without a Summer,” 1816, the most notorious and best chronicled extreme weather event of that century. Snowstorms swept the east coast in June, ensuring the shortest growing season on record. Crowds of desperate and hungry rural folk from Maine and Vermont fled snowfalls of up to 18 inches to the western frontier, which had been spared the worst of Tambora’s weather.

Here grain harvests were fetching sky-high prices on the famine-struck Atlantic market, but after the boom came a shattering bust – the so-called Panic of 1819 – which triggered the first sustained economic depression in US history. East coast speculators had invested hugely in western agriculture post-1816, only to lose their shirts when the similarly-affected European grain markets returned to normal in 1819, and commodity prices plummeted. “Never were such hard times,” wrote Thomas Jefferson of ordinary Americans who, across the country, found themselves “in a condition of unparalleled distress,” persisting well into the 1820s.

As it turns out, however, the indirect ripple effects of Tambora – what climate scientists call “teleconnections” – were even more historically significant. Cholera, opium, and the Panic of 1819 are three examples; another is Arctic exploration.

One of the paradoxical effects of a major tropical eruption is that while the planet in general is cooled by the blanket of volcanic dust that drifts from the equator to the poles, the Arctic itself is drastically warmed owing to changes in wind circulation and north Atlantic ocean currents. This anomaly was only discovered after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the tropical Philippines, the first observed with the benefit of modern climatological instruments.

In 1817 and 1818, the British Admiralty began to receive exciting reports from whaling captains of a remarkable loss of sea ice in around Greenland. Huge icebergs from a broken icepack were spotted floating as far south as Ireland and New York. The prospect of a northwest passage for shipping to the East – a holy grail England had sought since Elizabethan times – beckoned once more. With a generation’s naval captains still hungry for glory but now languishing onshore after the defeat of Napoleon, the Admiralty launched an expensive and ultimately disastrous 50-year-long campaign to chart the elusive northwest passage.

The British could not have known then, of course, that Tambora had caused the Arctic to melt, and that the climatic impacts of a tropical eruption persist for no longer than three years. The Arctic refroze just in time for the arrival of Britain’s first polar expedition under Captain John Ross in 1818. Years of fruitless, icebound sallies into the polar seas culminated in the tragic Franklin expedition of the 1840s, when all hands were lost, and the heroic age of British Arctic exploration came to an end.

It is time to recognise Tambora as the Napoleon of eruptions. The implications – for historians – of a revised, volcanic nineteenth century are immense. As with the global cholera epidemic, and the growth of a Chinese opium empire, Victorian-era polar exploration might not have happened at all, or would have evolved in an entirely different direction, had it not been for Tambora’s climate-wrecking detonation in 1815.

For two long centuries, the connections between this major volcanic disaster and human history have been obscured by two factors: the limitations of scientific knowledge, and by our narrow, anthropocentric vision that seeks out only human causes for human events, neglecting the influence of environmental change. Now, in the 21st century, as we begin to appreciate more profoundly the interdependence of human and natural systems, the lesson of a 200-year-old climate emergency may finally be learned: a changing climate changes everything. More

How would the modern world survive an eruption of this magnitude? Given the relativly low global grain reserves how would we feed affected populations? Editor

 

© 2014

The Ohio State University presents Jeffrey Sachs

On April 4, 2014, Jeffrey Sachs spoke at Ohio State University on "The Age of Sustainable Development." Professor Sachs's lecture was both the Keynote Address for the COMPAS Program's Spring Conference and the inaugural Provost's Discovery Themes Lecture. Introductory comments are presented by Michael Neblo ofOSU's Political Science Department, Executive Dean and Vice Provost, David Manderscheid, and Executive Vice President and Provost, Joseph Steinmetz. After his lecture, Professor Sachs was joined on stage by Professors Elena Irwin and lan Sheldon, both of Ohio State's Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics Department for a discussion that was moderated by Michael Neblo.

Links:

OSU COMPAS Program: http://compas.osu.edu

OSU Discovery Themes Initiative: http://discovery.osu.edu

© 2014

Water Crisis: 2020 Statement by Mikhail Gorbachev on 20th Anniversary of Green Cross

Water crisis – clear and present danger

We live in urgent times. The sum of the concurrent crises that have been engulfing everything from climate to energy, to the economy, is creating a spiral of need for change. But the water crisis sticks out of this list in terms of being an explicitly clear and present danger with deadly implications.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The mounting water crisis and its geography make it clear that without resolute counteraction, it will overstretch many societies’ adaptive capacities within the coming decades. This could result in massive migration, severe socio-economic stress, destabilization and violence, jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree.

By 2025, a predicted 1.8 billion people will live in regions suffering from absolute water scarcity. Two-thirds of the world population could be under hydric stress conditions. Demand for water will rise: water withdrawals in developing countries will increase by 50%, and 18% in developed countries by 2025.

Despite these demands, what state is the world’s water in? Despite the fact that we use slightly more than half the world’s (54%) accessible water, more than 50% of the 3.5 billion people living in urban circumstances around the world already do not have access to adequate water and sanitation.

But the really bad news is that the water use is growing even faster than the population: the 20th century water consumption grew twice as fast as the world population. As a result, a third of the world's population lives in water-stressed countries now. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds.

In addition to unsustainable water use we are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Most wastewater (about 80%) from residential and industrial sources enters the environment untreated.

The growing human need for water, to sustain life and wellbeing, plus the pressures on the resource itself, from mismanagement, pollution and a general lack of foresight, make for the most telling case for improved global water conservation and consumption.

But too little is being done on these fronts. We have been waiting since 1997 for just 35 countries to sign the UN Watercourses Convention, to promote the management and sharing of the world’s 276 cross-border rivers and connected underground water sources, and we are still a handful short.

The lack of a global framework to manage water sources that cross national borders endangers the world in many ways, not least of all in terms of the risk of conflict between countries over who controls the same river that runs through their respective frontiers.

Then there is the Right to Water and Sanitation, which Green Cross was a loud advocate of before it finally came into being in 2010. While this recognition itself, that access to safe drinking water and sanitation are basic human rights, is a success, what must be happening at breakneck speed now is the realization of this right. This means creation of national legislation enshrining the right (alongside education, health and others) and investing in the infrastructure needed to make safe water and sanitation services available to all.

Despite UN adoption of this vital principle, the deficit of fresh water is becoming increasingly severe and large-scale – whereas, unlike other resources, there is no substitute for water.

While the Millennium Development Goal for access to drinking water and sanitation was announced met in 2012, almost 800 million people still have no access to safe water today, and three times that number lack adequate sanitation. Thousands of children die daily in the developing world due to related waterborne diseases.

The scale and global nature of the water crisis demand stronger statesmanship, vision and international action. To master the water crisis, we must address its effects and causes. The economic, social, water and environmental aspects must be properly coordinated in any response.

A comprehensive “water goal” must be injected into the post-2015 development agenda, linking development and environment in analyses and in governance policies. Such a goal would address the three interdependent dimensions of water: water, sanitation and hygiene; water management; and wastewater management and water quality.

This goal must be based on principles of equity, solidarity, recognition of limits of planet and rights approach, coupled with effective means to check and demand the accountability of all stakeholders.

We live in volatile and transformative times, faced with the awe-inspiring global challenge of climate change, the devastation of civil wars, and the hope-crushing scourge of extreme poverty. But one thing is constant: our need for water. Whole regions are languishing in poverty and conflict, effectively held hostage by their hydrology: we must break this cycle and give people a chance for their future. Benjamin Franklin said that "when the well's dry, we know the worth of water." The alarm clock has been ringing on deaf ears for far too long, it is time to wake-up before it is too late, before the wells of the world have run dry. More

 

© 2014

'This Is Not Over': Gulf Life Still Reeling From Toxic BP Spill

Report on four year anniversary of worst oil disaster in US history details fourteen ailing species, and raises the question of

"What should be the legal liability for polluting the Global Commons'?

Nearly four years after BP's Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe, plants, animals, and fish in the Gulf of Mexico are still reeling from the toxic spill, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Wildlife Federation.

The report, which arrives just ahead of the disaster's anniversary, examined 14 species of wildlife in the Gulf and found ongoing impacts of the disaster that could last for decades.

"Four years later, wildlife in the Gulf are still feeling the impacts of the spill," said Doug Inkley, senior scientist for the National Wildlife Federation. "Bottlenose dolphins in oiled areas are still sick and dying and the evidence is stronger than ever that these deaths are connected to the Deepwater Horizon. The science is telling us that this is not over."

According to the findings, in 2013 dolphins were dying at three times normal rates, with many suffering from "unusual lung damage" and immune system problems.

In addition to the ongoing plight of dolphins in Gulf waters, the researchers found that every year for the past three years roughly five hundred dead sea turtles are found near the spill, "a dramatic increase over normal rates." These sea turtles only recently recovered from near extinction—a recovery that has now been drastically threatened by the spill.

"The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle has long been the poster child for the possibilities of restoration in the Gulf," said Pamela Plotkin, associate research professor of oceanography at Texas A&M University and director of Texas Sea Grant. "Once close to extinction, it has rebounded dramatically over the past thirty years. But four years ago, the numbers of Kemp’s ridley appear to have flat-lined. We need to monitor this species carefully, as the next few years will be critical."

According to the report, sperm whales in the area are showing higher levels of "DNA-damaging metals" than others in other parts of the world—"metals that were present in oil from BP’s well."

In addition, deep sea coral colonies, which "provide a foundation for a diverse assortment of marine life," within seven miles from the site of the spill, were still "heavily impacted."

Other findings, as stated by the group, include:

• Oyster reproduction remained low over large areas of the northern Gulf at least through the fall of 2012.
• A chemical in oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill has been shown to cause irregular heartbeats in bluefin and yellowfin tuna that can lead to heart attacks, or even death.
• Loons that winter on the Louisiana coast have increasing concentrations of toxic oil compounds in their blood.

"Despite what BP would have you believe, the impacts of the disaster are ongoing," said Sara Gonzalez-Rothi, the National Wildlife Federation’s senior policy specialist for Gulf and coastal restoration. "Last year, nearly five million pounds of oiled material from the disaster were removed from Louisiana’s coast. And that’s just what we’ve seen. An unknown amount of oil remains deep in the Gulf."

The Gulf oil disaster—which is the worst in U.S. history—"will likely unfold for years or even decades," NWF writes. "It is essential that careful monitoring of the Gulf ecosystem continue and that mitigation of damages and restoration of degraded and weakened ecosystems begin as soon as possible."

Despite the ongoing travesty the Environmental Protection Agency announced last month that it removed its ban on BP contracts in the U.S. and new drilling leases, including in the Gulf of Mexico.

Shortly after, the oil giant won bids to start new drilling operations in two dozen separate locations, a total pricetag of $54 million.

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Given that the oceans are one continous body of water that encircle the globe, and furthermore that ocean currents will eventually spread the pollutants mentioned above around the world, affecting all inhabitants of the planet, I would argue that all States / countries would be justified in suing BP. Until we can implement Ecocide as the Fifth Crime Against Peace under the Treaty of Rome this may be the only way to stop the destruction of the ecosystem that all living things on Earth are dependant of for their survival. Editor

 

© 2014

Where is the human race heading? What does our future hold?

The Georgia Guidestones is a granite monument in Elbert County, Georgia, USA. A message clearly conveying a set of ten guidelines is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages, and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient languages' scripts: Babylonian, Classical Greek, Sanskrit and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The structure is sometimes referred to as an "American Stonehenge."[1] The monument is 19 feet 3 inches (5.87 m) tall, made from six granite slabs weighing 237,746 pounds (107,840 kg) in all.[2] One slab stands in the center, with four arranged around it. A capstone lies on top of the five slabs, which are astronomically aligned. An additional stone tablet, which is set in the ground a short distance to the west of the structure, provides some notes on the history and purpose of the Guidestones.

The Inscriptions - Photo opposite

A message consisting of a set of ten guidelines or principles is engraved on the Georgia Guidestones in eight different languages, one language on each face of the four large upright stones (see photograph of the face with the English version right). Moving clockwise around the structure from due north, these languages are: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese and Russian.

Astronomical features

The four outer stones are oriented to mark the limits of the 18.6 year lunar declination cycle.^[4] The center column features a hole through which the North Star can be seen regardless of time, as well as a slot that is aligned with the Sun's solstices and equinoxes. A 7/8" aperture in the capstone allows a ray of sun to pass through at noon each day, shining a beam on the center stone indicating the day of the year.^[2]

The Inscriptions

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
• Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
• Unite humanity with a living new language.
• Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
• Balance personal rights with social duties.
• Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
• Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

According to the 2009 Wired magazine article 'What's most widely agreed upon—based on the evidence available—is that the Guidestones are meant to instruct the dazed survivors of some impending apocalypse as they attempt to reconstitute civilization'.

The questions that must be asked however, is whether, driven by the repacious corporate multinationals, we will consume the planet's finite resources to supply the constantly growing population? Should we be planning a sustainable future? Should we be trying to control population? Scarce resources? Should we be enhancing food security and doing away with GMO's? What about water security? We should also continue to do away with Weapons of Mass Destruction, both nuclear, chemical and biological. We need to do these things now while we have a breathing space.

Can we do these things or are we on a course of self destruction?

Nicholas Robson, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands 23rd. March 2014

 

© 2014

A Scientist Predicts the Future

Michio Kaku interviewed more than 300 of the world’s top scientists, and many allowed him into laboratories where they are inventing the future. Their accomplishments and dreams are eye-opening. From his conversations with them, here’s a glimpse of what to expect in the coming decades:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/opinion/kaku-a-scientist-predicts-the-future.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

© 2014

Collapse' Of Modern Civilization A Real Possibility: Study

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:

"... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels."

The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."

Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.

Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:

".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."

Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites."

In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual' despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)."

Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:

"While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."

However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.

The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth:

"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."

The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately.

Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance - have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen years. But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very conservative. More

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

 

© 2014

Casino Capitalism - Or Why America Has Forgotten Its Three Biggest Economic Lessons

Why has America forgotten the three most important economic lessons we learned in the thirty years following World War II?

Before I answer that question, let me remind you what those lessons were:

First, America’s real job creators are consumers, whose rising wages generate jobs and growth. If average people don’t have decent wages there can be no real recovery and no sustained growth.

In those years, business boomed because American workers were getting raises, and had enough purchasing power to buy what expanding businesses had to offer. Strong labor unions ensured American workers got a fair share of the economy’s gains. It was a virtuous cycle.

Second, the rich do better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than they do with a large share of an economy that’s barely growing at all.

Between 1946 and 1974, the economy grew faster than it’s grown since, on average, because the nation was creating the largest middle class in history. The overall size of the economy doubled, as did the earnings of almost everyone. CEOs rarely took home more than forty times the average worker’s wage, yet were riding high.

Third, higher taxes on the wealthy to finance public investments — better roads, bridges, public transportation, basic research, world-class K-12 education, and affordable higher education – improve the future productivity of America. All of us gain from these investments, including the wealthy.

In those years, the top marginal tax rate on America’s highest earners never fell below 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower the tax rate was 91 percent. Combined with tax revenues from a growing middle class, these were enough to build the Interstate Highway system, dramatically expand public higher education, and make American public education the envy of the world.

We learned, in other words, that broadly-shared prosperity isn’t just compatible with a healthy economy that benefits everyone — it’s essential to it.

But then we forgot these lessons. For the last three decades the American economy has continued to grow but most peoples’ earnings have gone nowhere. Since the start of the recovery in 2009, 95 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent.

What happened?

For starters, too many of us bought the snake oil of “supply-side” economics, which said big corporations and the wealthy are the job creators – and if we cut their taxes the benefits will trickle down to everyone else. Of course, nothing trickled down.

Meanwhile, big corporations were allowed to bust labor unions, whose membership dropped from over a third of all private-sector workers in the 1950s to under 7 percent today.

Our roads, bridges, and public-transit systems were allowed to crumble under the weight of deferred maintenance. Our public schools deteriorated. And public higher education became so starved for funds that tuition rose to make up for shortfalls, making college unaffordable to many working families.

And Wall Street was deregulated — creating a casino capitalism that caused a near meltdown of the economy six years ago and continues to burden millions of homeowners. CEOs began taking home 300 times the earnings of the average worker.

Part of the reason for this extraordinary U-turn had to do with politics. As income and wealth concentrated at the top, so did political power. The captains of industry and of Wall Street knew what was happening, and some played leading roles in this transformation.

But why didn’t they remember the lessons learned in the thirty years after World War II – that widely-shared prosperity is good for everyone, including them?

Perhaps because they didn’t care to remember. They discovered that wealth is also relative: How rich they feel depends not just on how much money they have, but also how they live in comparison to most other people.

As the gap between America’s wealthy and the middle has widened, those at the top have felt even richer by comparison. Although a rising tide would lift all boats, many of America’s richest prefer a lower tide

Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He also served on President Obama's transition advisory board. His latest book is "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." More

His homepage is www.robertreich.org.

 

The REAL truth about Palestine in response to Danny Ayalon

The REAL truth about Palestine in response to Danny Ayalon

 

Intersstingly enough 22,000 pictures on Palestine have just surfaced in the US Library of Congress. This collection depict the country that the Zionists say did not exist! See http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Nazareth&sp=1&co=matpc&st=gallery