Truth about Military Recruiting

SUBHEAD: Military recruiters don't tell the whole truth. Help us complete the picture.

By Kip Goodwin on 3 October 2017 for Hawaii Peace and Justice -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/10/truth-about-military-recruiting.html)


Image above: Volunteers providing information about the truth regarding US military recruitment in support of 808truth2youth and Hawaii Peace and Justice. From https://youtu.be/_8rbHwMXMT8.

The Pentagon spends $1.4 billion annually on public relations and recruiting, teaming with professional sports, Hollywood, and the video gaming and media industries. Their primary audience is 15 to 25 year olds, the demographic from which they recruit about one quarter million annually.

There are missing pieces in the recruitment narrative, and there is no organized effort on the part of the schools or anyone else to fill in gaps. We need your support to meet the need. If we reach our goal, more than 20,000 Hawaii youth will have the opportunity to learn:

Enlistment contract promises made to the enlistee can ALL be broken.
Service term is for eight years, and may be extended.
Job training is for military, not civilian jobs.
College benefits are NOT guaranteed.

Our young Hawaii citizens who are committing to military service have a right to know:

Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs report in 2016 that 10 to 17% of combat veterans suffer PTSD and 10-23% have traumatic brain injury (TBI).  25% have some to extreme difficulty in social functioning, productivity and self care.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports in 2015 male veterans 50% as likely, women vets almost twice as likely to be homeless, than the general population.

In 2014, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 100 men reported military sexual trauma. "For women, an experience of sexual trauma while in the military greatly increases risk of homelessness."

The Veterans Administration reports in 2016 thirty veterans per 100,000 population commit suicide, more than twice the number for the general population. On average, twenty veterans are committing suicide every day.

America's Health Rankings, based on interviews with 400,000 Americans in 2016, reported 62% higher rate of heart disease and 13% higher rate of cancer in veterans than in the general population.

Modern neuroscience teaches us that the parts of our brains that allow reason to overcome emotion don't fully mature until our early to mid twenties. The military plays on this with promises of adventure. Our mission is to fully disclose the reality of the military commitment, during active duty and afterward.

808truth2youth is currently engaged in social media outreach to our children growing into adulthood in low income communities (the most recruiter-vulnerable) on the four main islands. Every six days, our posts have gone out to hundreds of young people on Facebook. We have surpassed 10,000 "reaches". You can see these posts on our Facebook page, 808truth2youth.

We encourage them to consider alternatives, especially education leading to secure, good paying careers that promote peace. Our donation website, 808truth2youth.org, has a how-to guide to the best schools, and scholarships exclusively for students who show an interest in social justice, nuclear disarmament and conflict resolution.

Please help us empower our youth with the truth about the military and by extension about America's addiction to a war economy and the endless cycle of war that will end only when a critical mass of awareness is arrived at.


Image above: Retired Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff explains what military life really entails. From (https://youtu.be/_8rbHwMXMT8).

Thank you! for what support you can give for our Hawaii youth's right to know.

You can donate to our mission through Hawaii Peace and Justice, our fiscal sponsor.

Click here to donate:
(https://www.gofundme.com/808truth2youth)
or
Send a check to:
Hawaii Peace and Justice
2426 O`ahu Avenue
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822-1967

-in memo line, write 8808truth2youth

.

Fascism and the Denial of Truth

SUBHEAD: Party polarization and gridlock in the US have created unsolved issues amenable to a Trump demagogue.

By Thomas Scott on 30 July 2017 for Truth Out  -
(http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41423-fascism-and-the-denial-of-truth-what-henry-wallace-can-teach-us-about-trump)


Image above: Cover art for song release of "Demagogue" by Franz Ferdinand. From (https://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/franz-ferdinand/demagogue/).

What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they? These are the questions that the New York Times posed to Henry A. Wallace, Franklin Roosevelt's vice president, in April 1944.

In response, Wallace wrote "The Danger of American Fascism," an essay in which he suggested that the number of American fascists and the threat they posed were directly connected to how fascism was defined.

Wallace pointed out that several personality traits characterized fascist belief, arguing that a fascist is;

"one whose lust for money and power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends."

Wallace also claimed that fascists "always and everywhere can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power."

Fascists are "easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact" (my italics), he contended.

Moreover, Wallace noted that fascists "pay lip service to democracy and the common welfare" and they "surreptitiously evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion."

Finally, Wallace identified that fascists' primary objective was to "capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they keep the common man in eternal subjection."

Wallace was writing in the context of an existential threat to democracy posed by Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan.

However, his essay is prescient in that he identified the existence of a domestic form of American fascism that emerged from the political context of enlightened thought, rule of law and limited government. Wallace drew a clear distinction between European fascism and the kind of fascism found in the United States.

Rather than resort to overt violence, American fascists would "poison the channels of public information," Wallace reasoned. Likewise, he argued that American fascism was generally inert, not having reached the level of overt threat that it had reached in Europe.

Despite this, Wallace argued that American fascism had the potential to become dangerous to democracy under that appropriate context; one in which a "purposeful coalition" emerges based on "demagoguery."

British historian Karl Polanyi has written in his seminal book, The Great Transformation, that fascism can emerge in a society in reaction to "unsolved national issues."

Party polarization and gridlock in the US have created unsolved issues concerning health care, immigration reform and the "war on terror." These volatile issues, in turn, have created the perfect political context for a demagogue to emerge in the United States.

With the election of Donald Trump, the purposeful coalition Wallace feared may have evolved. Trump is the first US president who has been seriously associated with fascist ideology.

His coalition of white supremacists, xenophobes, plutocratic oligarchs and disaffected members of the working class have aligned with the mainstream Republican Party.

The coalition's political philosophy, rooted in reactionary populism and "American First" sloganeering, has quickly led to the United States' systematic withdrawal from global leadership.

Coupled with a disdain for multilateral collaboration, a rejection of globalization, and a focus on militarism and economic nationalism, Trumpism has taken the country down the perilous path of national chauvinism reminiscent of previous fascist states like Spain under Franco, Portugal under Salazar, or Peronist Argentina.

Unlike past Republican and Democratic presidents, Trump has disregarded long-standing traditions related to political protocol and decorum in the realm of political communication. He routinely makes unsubstantiated claims about political rivals, questioning their veracity and ethics.

Trump's claim that the Obama administration wiretapped his phones during the 2016 campaign and that Obama refused to take action regarding Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as well as Trump's incendiary tweets about federal judges who ruled against his executive orders on immigration, suggest a sense of paranoia commonly associated with autocrats.

Trump has demonstrated a fundamental ignorance of democratic institutions associated with the rule of law, checks and balances, and the separation of powers.

Common to autocratic leaders, Trump sees executive power as absolute and seems confounded when the legislative or judicial branches of government question his decisions.

Trump has seemed willing to ignore norms that are fundamentally aligned with US democracy: equality before the law, freedom of the press, individual rights, due process and inclusiveness.

Typical of all autocratic leaders, Trump has a deep-seated distrust of the media. Calling journalists "enemies of the people," Trump's incessant claims that media outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post create "fake news" is a common attribute of authoritarian regimes.

In response to investigative reports that are critical of his administration, Trump engages in systematic tactics of disinformation. Trump has refined the art of evasion through communicating a multiplicity of falsehoods as a means of obfuscating charges of abuse of power and political misconduct.

The biggest dilemma for an autocrat is confronting the truth. Systematic strategies to implant misinformation have historically provided significant political dividends for demagogues.

From Trump's earliest forays in national politics, the truth was his biggest enemy.

Trump discovered in the 2016 campaign that the perpetuation of lies and deceit could be converted into political capital. Lying on issues actually generated support from Trump's political base, many of whom were low-information voters.

The hope by many that Trump would conform to traditional political norms once elected proved to be a chimera. Trump has obliterated the Orwellian dictum that lies are truth; in Trump's worldview, truth does not exist. It is seen as a political liability.

As president, the debasement of truth has become an important political strategy shaping much of his communication to the American public.

Purposeful deceit has become one of the primary means by which Trump energizes and excites his supporters. It is the catalyst that drives their emotional connection to Trump, who is insistent on "telling it like it is" and fighting for "the people" as a challenge to the political elite.

For Trump, facts mean nothing. They are contrary to the desires of his political base. Connecting to his base is visceral; intellectualism is the antithesis of Trump's immediate political objectives.

By denying the existence of truth-based politics, Trump solidifies his populist vision and perpetuates one of fascism's greatest mechanisms for acquiring absolute power: the force of emotion conquering the force of reason.

As Timothy Snyder states in his insightful book On Tyranny, "To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.

If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so."

Seen in this light, empirical evidence based on scientific investigation is superfluous; public policy is only useful when it is connected to human emotion and desire.

This is all that matters in Trump's vision for the US. As such, facts and scientific research are a ruse, a tool of the elite designed to consolidate power over "the people" and discredit Trump's "America First" policies.

Truth is a necessity for democracy because citizens depend on truth-based decision-making to achieve reasoned judgments about public policy. In the Trump administration, the eradication of fact-based communication has normalized the denial of truth.

As a result, democracy is clearly under siege. Henry Giroux makes an excellent argument when he writes, "normalization is code for retreat from any sense of moral or political responsibility, and it should be viewed as an act of political complicity with authoritarianism and condemned outright."

All Americans should take heed of this point. History has provided ample evidence of how institutional and civic complicity with autocratic rule erodes democracy.

However, history has also demonstrated how engaged citizens can mobilize to resist this erosion.

]As Snyder argues, in order to confront autocracy, citizens need to become aware that democracy can disappear and mobilize to stop such a disastrous turn of events. In the age of Trump, there is no time for complacency.

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Chelsea Manning freed from prison

SUBHEAD: Manning served more time in prison than any other American leaker of information.

By David Kravits on 17 April 2107 for Ars Technica -
(https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/chelsea-manning-freed-from-military-prison/)


Image above: Chelsea Manning poses for new portrait with cation, " So here I am everyone!!" From (https://twitter.com/xychelsea/status/865250670831702016).

Chelsea Manning was released from the Military Corrections Complex at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas on Wednesday—nearly three decades before the Army private's sentence was up for leaking classified military documents to WikiLeaks.

The intelligence analyst, who left the barracks at 2am (CDT), was court-martialed and convicted of leaking more than 700,000 documents and video about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. She came out as a transgender woman shortly after being handed an unprecedented 35-year prison sentence in 2013.

Then-President Barack Obama commuted Manning's term in January and set a May 17 release date. Manning, whom President Trump has called a "TRAITOR" on Twitter, had been in prison longer than any other US leaker convicted under the Espionage Act. She was eligible for parole in six years.

Because Manning's conviction is under appeal, she is to remain in the military on "excess leave in an active-duty status" entitling her to healthcare, the military said. If she loses her appeal, she might be dishonorably discharged and could lose her healthcare and other benefits.

Neither the military nor Manning's supporters said where she would be living. But Manning tweeted in January she would return to Maryland, where she previously resided.

"I am looking forward to so much! Whatever is ahead of me is far more important than the past. I’m figuring things out right now—which is exciting, awkward, fun, and all new for me," Manning said in a statement.

Manning said in a petition to Obama that she "did not intend to harm the interests of the United States or harm any service members." Among other reasons, she wanted to be released in order to continue her transition-related healthcare. A White House online petition saw more than 100,000 people demand that Obama commute Manning's sentence.

"It has been my view that, given she went to trial, that due process was carried out, that she took responsibility for her crime, that the sentence that she received was very disproportionate relative to what other leakers had received. It made sense to commute, and not pardon, her sentence," Obama said of Manning's commutation during the final days of his presidency.

Manning enlisted with the Army in 2007 and leaked the documents at a Barnes & Noble in suburban Maryland. The classified files, which were on a camera's memory stick, were uploaded during a 2010 mid-tour leave from Iraq.

At trial, Manning testified about a classified video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Iraq that was ultimately found to have killed civilians and a Reuters journalist. "For me, that was like a child torturing an ant with a magnifying glass," Manning said. Using Tor, Manning uploaded the video and documents to WikiLeaks. The video went viral and is known as the "collateral murder" video.

In the days before Obama commuted Manning's sentence, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he would surrender to US authorities if Obama showed Manning mercy. Assange is living in a self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London amid fears he could be charged in the US for exposing the secrets Manning leaked.

However, Assange weaseled out of his pledge, saying he meant he would surrender only if Obama allowed Manning to leave the brig immediately, not on May 17.



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The New American Despotism

SUBHEAD: The appropriate work to be done by civilization when faced with numbing retrenchment.

By Jeremy Leggett on 24 April 2017 for JeremyLeggett.net -
(http://www.jeremyleggett.net/2017/04/appropriate-civilization-versus-new-despotism-month-3-21st-march-20th-april-2017/)


Image above: Illustration of the Statue of Liberty being submerged. From (http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Fascism-is-looming-over-the-US-and-its-bad-news-for-the-Jews-454411).

1. Climate Action
Trump endeavours to dig a little coal
President Trump moved to dismantle President Obama’s climate legacy with an executive order that seeks to dismantle the Clean Power Plan. Within a week, 17 US states filed a legal challenge. China immediately pledged to uphold its Paris climate commitments, including considerable efforts not to use coal, accusing the US of “selfish” behavior.

The EU joined the pushback. Miguel Árias Cañete, the EU’s climate action commissioner, said: “The continued leadership of the EU, China and many other major economies is now more important than ever. When it comes to climate and the global clean energy transition, there cannot be vacuums, there can only be drivers, and we are committed to driving this agenda forward.”

Fine sentiments. But whereas China can point to policies consistent with its rhetoric, unfortunately the same cannot be said of much EU national policymaking, as things stand.

Among EU states, only Sweden, Germany and France are pursuing goals consistent with the Paris target of 40% cuts in carbon emissions by 2030, according to a study by Carbon Market Watch.

As ever, much will depend on industry, and one encouraging development this month was a pledge by Eurelectric, a trade body which represents 3,500 utilities with a combined value of over €200 billion, vowing no new investments in coal plants after 2020. Among the 28 EU countries, only Polish and Greek companies did not join the initiative.

2. Energy Transition
Fast, but not fast enough
Record new renewable power capacity was added in 2016, UNEP figures showed: 138 gigawatts of it, up 9% despite investment falling by a worrying 23%. Renewables now provide 11.3% of global electricity. New global solar capacity outpaced wind, IRENA reported, by 71 to 51 gigawatts.

Solar in California exceeded 50% of supply, for the first time ever, causing a net market oversupply resulting in a short interval of negative wholesale prices.

Costs of renewables keep falling. GTM Research predicts that solar will drop below two cents per kilowatt hour in 2017. Offshore wind is the latest renewable to defy predictions. EnBW and Dong won offshore wind tenders in the North Sea with the first subsidy-free bids.

Moody’s reported that wind is now cheaper to install new than coal is to operate in 58 power plants across 15 Midwestern states, at $20 a megawatt versus $30. Trump told a rally in Kentucky that “the miners are coming back”. But they aren’t. Not even top US coal boss Robert Murray expects that, in the face of real contemporary economics.

As for US renewables companies, they were professing this month that their industries will thrive even without the Clean Power Plan. Their confidence is rooted in record solar installation and above average wind installation in 2016, plus federally agreed tax credits that would be difficult for the Trump administration to dismantle.

The news was also broadly good for EVs this month, with Tesla meeting production targets and its shares soaring to an all time high, for a while making it the most valuable car company in America. Meanwhile Big Oil, facing predictions of significant demand destruction by EVs within just years, is struggling to break even.

Most of the oil majors didn’t even cover their costs in 2016, a Wall Street Journal analysis showed, despite a rising oil price. Some oil companies say American shale will help save them. But of the three main oil-producing shale belts, production has already peaked in two.

The oil industry loves to taunt its critics with the mantra that “peak oil is dead”. For some players, it is clearly not the case. Mexico’s proved oil reserves have declined by more than a third since 2013.

This month its National Hydrocarbons Commission country warned that the country will run out of oil in less than nine years if there are no new discoveries.

What an incentive fast oil depletion like that must be to build a clean-energy economy fast, never mind climate change. (More on this in my keynote to the MIREC renewables congress in Mexico City on 10th May).

And there are many other stand-out non-climate incentives around our troubled world, from air pollution to risk of stranded assets. But new figures showed that clean energy investment dropped 17% in the first quarter of 2017.

3. Tech for Good?
Evidence of effort
Advances in artificial intelligence and robotics outpace even those in clean energy, and continue to be used in many ways for the betterment of society. But evidence that they have profound downsides was everywhere this month.

YouTube and Google’s use of algorithms to automatically match ads with content is the basis for widespread criticism that they fed the spread of fake news in the crucial months running up to both the Brexit vote and Trump’s election, much of it orchestrated by a well organised nationalist-right dark-propaganda network.

The two companies ran into further, related, trouble, with big name advertisers boycotting them for posting ads next to racist and other offensive content. The boycotters included such diverse actors as AT&T, the BBC, the British government, PepsiCo, Starbucks, Verizon, and WalMart.

Google responded quickly, saying it was in a race to ramp up its AI capability to deal with the problem. But that is no easy task. Nobody has pulled off such a feat of megadata sifting before. As part of their effort, they have begun to use outside firms to verify ad standards.

They might want to hurry. The inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, argues that concentration of power over information, such as Goggle and Facebook now possess, is dangerous for society. He is plotting, with others in the Decentralized Information Group at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL), means to decentralise control of data in his creation.

The threat AI and robotics pose to jobs becomes ever clearer. More than 10 million UK workers are at risk of being replaced within 15 years, PwC calculated, some 30% of the workforce. The IPPR estimates a similar figure: robots replacing 1 in 3 UK jobs over the next 20 years.

A report by the US National Bureau of Economic Research goes further, suggesting that large numbers of jobs have already been lost to robotics in America, and are unlikely to come back. Wages have been depressed in the process, they contend.

The question arises, then, as to how much this has been fueling populist rage, on both sides of the Atlantic, making it easier for nationalist demagogues to push their argument that “the other” – immigrants and anyone else who is not in what psychologists call their in-group – is entirely to blame.

Whatever the answer to that question about the past, the additional stress just around the corner will clearly pose a dire threat to social cohesion if nothing is done. The imperative for government and business to act is obvious.

4. Truth
Liars under growing scrutiny
As investigations into the conduct of the Trump election and the Brexit vote continue, it becomes ever clearer that the nationalist right is capable of extraordinary feats of voter manipulation.

A group of UK academics warned this month that dark money is a threat to the integrity of British elections. The Electoral Commission is investigating whether work by Cambridge Analytica, one data firm at the heart of the controversy, constitutes an undeclared donation from an impermissible foreign donor.

Cambridge Analytica is majority owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, a major bankroller of Donald Trump. Steve Bannon, Trump’s head of strategy, has been a major player in the development of the company and its capabilities.

Filings of White House staffers’ interests this month show he has made millions shaping right-wing thought, via Cambridge Analytica and other organs.
The pushback unfolding against this fast-emerging Orwellian narrative is often extraordinary to behold.

The Los Angeles Times published a series of  essays by its editorial board this month. “Our Dishonest President”, the first was entitled. “Why Trump lies”, the second. They read like a science fiction novel of a dystopian future society. But they are about real-life America, today.

New arenas of corporate responsibility are being stimulated, unsurprisingly. Google announced it will begin to display fact-checking labels to show if news it purveys is true or false. Facebook gave a green light to its employees to protest against Trump on May 1^st. Dramas build slowly in the courts as truth and lies compete. A judge rejected Trump’s defense against a claim he incited violence at one of his rallies.

5. Equality
Talk of cutting aid as famine rages
Meanwhile, though you would hardly know it from mainstream media coverage, we are in the midst of the gravest humanitarian crisis since 1945 – since the creation of the United Nations. 20 million people face starvation and famine in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria, the UN warns.

Drought has descended on Kenya, triggering violence as displaced peoples migrate.

Amid all this, populist nationalists continue to contend that aid budgets should be cut. The UK government, to its credit, is resisting this so far.

As for the considerable potential role of clean energy in building equality and alleviating poverty, an international gathering of the Sustainable Energy for All organisation in New York this month called for more urgent action on progress towards global energy goals.

In SolarAid, my colleagues and I could not agree more. Our work is based on the fact that if you burn oil in a kerosene lamp in Africa and it will cost you almost $80 a year, yet a solar lamp retailing at around $5 will give clean light for free, for 4 years.

So if you were one of the poorest people in Africa, which would you rather do? Save $70 a year to spend on food and other essentials, in a time of famine, or burn a fistful of ten dollar bills each year, and risk your health breathing the fumes? This should be an obvious starting point for a massive programme to free up local money for the necessities of poverty alleviation, SolarAid contends.

But sales of the most affordable of these lights are actually falling in Africa, and in fact the rest of the world too. In Malawi, for example, we are one of only a few organisations working to help. More on that subject, a microcosm of global challenges and opportunities in energy, in an e-mail in a week or so.

6. Reform of Capitalism
Graphic evidence of the need
The Bank of England has admitted to fearing, in the current febrile financial climate, that it may not be able to spot the next global crisis coming. Few who studied the forensics of the last one, and the response – or mostly lack thereof – can be surprised. There are obvious candidates for a trigger in the inflated stock market, and mountainous debt in car loans, credit cards, and mortgages. The Brexit gamble is also potentially on the list. The IMF professes that its unpredictable outcome poses a risk to global stability.

Given the fact that regulators regard another crisis as inevitable, and see an unreadable multiplicity of potential paths to it, who can realistically contend that the unbridled 21st century version of capitalism is anything close to a satisfactory way to run a global economy today?

Root-to-branch reform might take some mapping, but starting points are not too difficult to find. One involves the jailing of executives guilty of gross corruption. Until this starts happening, how there can be hope for wider reform, or the necessary adjustments of cultures? Shell offered up a perfect example this month.

The company is under investigation for one of the most corrupt deals in the history of the oil industry.  E-mails show that top executives handed a billion dollars to the Nigerian government, knowing it would be passed to a convicted money-launderer,  in return for a giant oilfield.

The CEO of the day, Peter Voser, knew of the deal. The current CEO, Ben van Buerden, described the evidence in e-mails as “really unhelpful”, but “just pub talk.”

One might hope that if the forces of the law cannot sort out behaviour of this kind, then investors might be queuing to punish a company as wide of the ethical mark as this using their money and governance power.

Not on recent evidence from Wall Street. The social media company Snap, owner of a popular photo exchange website, went public in February with investors queuing to pour cash into it.

This despite the twenty-something co-founders specifying that investors would have zero voting rights. Far from failing, in the exodus of financial custodians that this dangerous first-of-a-kind should have been faced with, Snap raised $3.4 billion and achieved a valuation of $19.7 billion.

What a gloomy precedent this now sets for the future. It raises the prospect, in principle, of a small cadre of almost unregulated and unconstrained tech billionaires calling the shots on how the AI and robotics innovations of the next few years are deployed.

We had better all hope, if this is the way investors and regulators allow events to unfold, that said billionaires, and investors in them, are not friends of the the populist nationalist right.

Yet the way financiers were lining up to engage with Marine Le Pen as the French Presidential election neared suggests we can far from rely on this.

7. Common Security
If you elect nationalist demagogues, you will be more likely to experience World War III
Let me be brief on this final point.

In the Trump administration’s handling of Syria and North Korea, where is there any evidence at all of basic statesmanship?

Of rudimentary strategy even?

Of any thought that there might be lessons to be learned in decades of diplomacy?

Ahead of the election, Trump seemed to grasp the inadvisability of poking a hornets nest with a stick, let alone many millions of dollars worth of cruise missiles. “Again, to our very foolish leader”, he tweeted at Obama (all in capital letters), “do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen.”

Suffice it to say that one particularly bad knee-jerk reaction from Trump and/or those he turns into his adversaries, and all bets are off on the balance of play I endeavour to summarise above.

A message for my senior grandson, if he made it this far in this blog. Sorry fella, I have been trying for a quarter century. But I and all the people like me have pretty much failed, to date. Hopefully there is some comfort in the thought that we are still trying.

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Wikileaks to reveal illegal CIA acts

SUBHEAD: The CIA, a state non-intelligence agency"calls him a "non-state intelligence service".

By Joe Urchill  on 19 April 2017 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-20/us-preparing-charges-arrest-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange)


Image above: A photo of Julien Assange at the Equidorian Embassy in London in September 2016. From (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-16/julian-assange-press-conference-ecuador-embassy/7854166).

In a podcast interview, WikiLeaks head Julian Assange characterized his site's most recent series of leaks as showing "all sorts of illegal actions by the CIA."

In the same interview for the "Intercepted" podcast, Assange accused the CIA director of slamming him "to get ahead of the publicity curve."

The comments came at the beginning of the interview conducted by Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept, as the two discussed CIA Director Mike Pompeo's recent speech calling out WikiLeaks as a "nonstate hostile intelligence service."

"In fact, the reason Pompeo is launching this attack is because he understands we are exposing in this series all sorts of illegal actions by the CIA, so he’s trying to get ahead of the publicity curve and create a pre-emptive defense," Assange said.

The conversation addressed recent allegations that WikiLeaks has stretched the facts in its descriptions of what the CIA files showed. Those allegations were made in The Hill and other news outlets, including The Intercept.

Pompeo told The Intercept that WikiLeaks was "stretching the facts" in saying the CIA was likely intercepting new Apple cellphones to implant malware before the iPhones were sent to purchasers.
"I never liked that article," Assange said on the podcast.

Though he did not defend the Apple claim, he did say that a separate controversy referenced in The Intercept — that another WikiLeaks summary may have implied that the CIA specifically developed techniques to hack encrypted chat apps, which the documents did not show — was unwarranted.

"One of the important revelations from our initial Vault 7 publication was that the CIA had spent enormous resources on developing endpoint attacks, that is, to attack your smartphone directly. ... We thought it was very important to show that, no, that’s not true. The encryption itself is quite good, but if you can hack the endpoints, the encryption doesn’t matter," he said.

Assange also used the interview to reaffirm stances he's taken since publishing internal Democratic Party emails last year during the presidential campaign.

He said he still does not believe his site received files stolen by the Russian government and defended the site as nonpartisan. He said it would have published Republican National Committee emails if it had received them.

He also said he had no "back channel" communications with Roger Stone, a former adviser to President Trump, as Stone has claimed. Stone has told The Hill he communicated with Assange through a mutual friend but said perhaps Assange did not consider the communications as formal as he did.

Assange told "Intercepted" that he does not have a vendetta against 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, as is often alleged.

“I think I’d probably like her in person. Most good politicians are quite charismatic in person. In some ways, she’s a bit like me, She’s a bit wonkish and a bit awkward, so maybe we’d get along,” he said.

---

US prepares to arrest Assange

SUBHEAD: Called a "non-state intelligence service" today by the "state non-intelligence agency".

By Tyler Durden on 20 April 2107 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-20/us-preparing-charges-arrest-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange)

In a stunning new report, CNN has just revealed, according to anonymous sources at least, that US authorities have prepared charges and will seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for intelligence leaks dating all the way back to 2010.

US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning.

This latest revelation comes after CIA Director Mike Pompeo ramped up the Trump administration's rhetoric against WikiLeaks describing it as a "non-state hostile intelligence service" earlier this week.

Ironically, as we noted this morning, Pompeo's comments can just days before the FBI and CIA admitted that they are searching for an "insider" at the CIA (not a Russian) who exposed thousands of top-secret documents that described CIA tools used to penetrate smartphones, smart televisions and computer systems.

Last week in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, CIA Director Mike Pompeo went further than any US government official in describing a role by WikiLeaks that went beyond First Amendment activity

He said WikiLeaks "directed Chelsea Manning to intercept specific secret information, and it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States."

"It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: A non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia," Pompeo said.Pompeo's comments were, of course, met with an immediate snarky reply from Assange over twitter.

Julian Assange @JulianAssange

Called a "non-state intelligence service" today by the "state non-intelligence agency" which produced al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iraq, Iran & Pinochet.

3:26 PM - 13 Apr 2017

For the past several years, U.S. prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange.  In fact, in what now appears to be a very prescient opinion piece, Julian Assange recently penned an article in the Washington Post defending his publications by saying that his motives are "identical to those claimed by the New York Times and The Post."

Quite simply, our motive is identical to that claimed by the New York Times and The Post — to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the U.S. Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media. And we strive to mitigate legitimate concerns, for example by using redaction to protect the identities of at-risk intelligence agents.

During President Barack Obama's administration, Attorney General Eric Holder and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasn't alone in publishing documents stolen by Manning.

Several newspapers, including The New York Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges were put on hold, according to US officials involved in the process then.

All that said, CNN's sources seem to believe those same prosecutors have now found a way to move forward...though we're sure the New York Times won't receive similar arrest warrants.

Of course, it's unclear what immediate purpose the charges will serve given that Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the sole purpose of avoiding political persecution.

That said, somehow we suspect that some form of 'leverage' is about to be applied against Ecuador to help them 'remember' that they have other immediate and critically important uses for Assange's London bedroom.

.

How to drain the Deep Swamp

SUBHEAD: The WikiLeaks files made accusations of Russian hacking, and Trump links meaningless.

By Raul Ilargi Meijer on 8 March 2017 for the Automatic Earth -
(https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/03/how-to-drain-the-deep-swamp/)


Image above: Wired Magazine "Wanted" cover detail from November 2012 subtitled "How  Kim Dotcom outsmarted the FBI and Hollywood to become the hunted man on the internet". Should he be advising Trump. From (http://www.networkagency.com.au/story/wired-magazine-kim-dotcom).

[IB Publisher's note: Just when you thought things could not get crazier... they just have. This Automatic Earth article shows how schizophrenic the Western world has become. We now know that the CIA is competing with the NSA to not only gather all communication data and content between Americans through their electronic devices; but they are also in the business of creating "fake news" and attributing their activity as originating in Russia. Russia is likely doing the same. Trump, the fool, has been a gullible tool of his worst enemies. His selfishness, narcissism and eight year old bully mentality are leading us into real trouble. Those still holding onto a hope that his operations will lead to a more peaceful and prosperous world are delusional. The real enemy of America (and the rest of the "civilized" world is the inability to get off "growth" and fossil fuels that feed it. Hunker down folks, the storm is about to engulf us.]

Obviously, like hopefully many people, I’ve been following the WikiLeaks CIA revelations, and closely. It’s too early for too many conclusions, if only because WikiLeaks has announced much more will flow from that same pipeline.

But one thing is already clear: the CIA is -still- a club that sees enemies behind every tree, and behind every TV set too. Which is not as obvious a world view as it may seem; it’s just something we’ve become used to.

Moreover, as we see time and again, organizations like the CIA and NATO have no qualms about ‘creating’ enemies if they are in short supply. The flavor du jour has now been, for years, Russia, but don’t be surprised if another one is cultivated alongside it. ISIS, China, North Korea, plenty of options, and plenty of media more than willing to aid the cultivation process.

It’s a well-oiled machine geared towards making something out of nothing, a machine very adept at making you believe anything it wants you to.

In this way, our friends can become our enemies, and our enemies our friends.

What gets lost in translation is that this way in reality we become our own worst enemies.

While the upper and most secretive layers of society, filled with folk of questionable psychological constitution -sociopaths and psychopaths-, get to chase their dreams of wealth and power, those who try to live normal decent lives are, for that very purpose, increasingly subjected to poverty, misery and fear. As our economies decline further, this will only get worse.

Who needs your -conscious- vote or voice if these can be easily manipulated? Or do you not think you’re being manipulated? How many of you, American or European, think Russia is an actual threat to you? I’m afraid by now there’s a majority on each continent who perceive Putin as an evil force.

The president of a country that spends one-tenth on its military of what the US does. Trump’s announced military spending increase alone is almost as much as Russia spends in a whole year.

If Putin is really the threat he’s made out to be, to both Europe and the US, he must be extremely smart; merely devious wouldn’t do it. A man who can be an active threat to two entire continents and almost a billion people while spending a fraction on building that threat of what those he threatens do, must be a genius. Or the victim of media-politico manipulation.

But we don’t stop there. As the CIA spying and hacking files once again make abundantly clear, America increasingly seeks its enemies at home. This may be presented in the shape of Donald Trump, or terrorists on US soil, imported or not, but claiming that we can still tell a real threat from an invented one is no longer credible.

We are led along on a propaganda leash 24/7, and the best thing about it is we believe we are not.

That’s why it’s a good idea to pay close attention to what WikiLeaks is telling us.

The most extreme example of the political machinery turning our friends into enemies is probably right there, in the WikiLeaks and whistleblower corner of society. Earlier today I wrote:

The CIA spent a huge wad of taxpayer money on this, and then lost it all. It’s early days to say what this will mean for the agency’s abilities, and the nation’s safety, as well as that of American citizens, but it’s not good. Question is: who’s going to investigate how this could have happened? (Snowden and Kim Dotcom could)… And who’s going to repair the damage done? Anyone could be spying on your phone and your TV by now, not just the CIA -as if that wouldn’t be bad enough.

Then later I saw I wasn’t the only one who had thought of this. Dotcom tweeted:

Hi @realDonaldTrump, you're in real danger. You need good intel on CIA threat. We can help you. Conf with Julian, Edward and myself? RT

Edward Snowden and Kim Dotcom and Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are ‘the enemy’, so say our ‘leaders’. They have received this honorable label for exposing secrets these same leaders were trying to hide from us. Secrets most of us, if we think it over, would say should not be kept from us.

The NSA spying on the American people, or the CIA turning your phones and TVs and cars into objects that can be used against you, these are things that don’t belong in our societies.

Still, as I’ve always said, if they can do it -from a technical point of view-, they will, damn the law. So we will have to make very sure the laws keep up with these developments, or we’re defenseless.

The Obama administration hasn’t been much help with this, and the rest of Washington won’t be either, they’re not just part of the machine, they are the engine that drives the machine. Obama allegedly gave in to the CIA for fear of ending up like JFK and the rest, along with the press, is under control too.

So perhaps Trump is our best chance at putting a stop to this coup, this deep state, from taking over. If we still can. And for that we might well need Snowden and Dotcom and Assange, who are not the enemies they are made out to be, they are the smartest among us, or at least they belong right up there.

And they are not only the smartest, they are the bravest too.

Locking them up would be a huge disservice to our societies, it would be much better to ask them to help us figure out what game the hell is being played.

One thing the WikiLeaks files accomplished is they made all accusations of Russian hacking, and of links between Trump and Russia, utterly meaningless in one fell swoop.

Because the CIA has acquired the capability, both through hacking Russian files and through coding, to leave ‘footprints’ that make it look like the Russians left them. And the only ‘proof’ there ever was for all these accusations was based on these footprints. That’s one narrative that must now be restarted from scratch -just one of many.

All we need now is for Trump to figure out who his enemies are, and who his friends. He already knows the CIA is not his friend, but has he figured out yet that the whistleblowers are not his enemy? And has his crew?

Kim Dotcom is right, Trump is in real danger, he’s been watched, and being watched, 24/7. Whether Obama ordered that or not is not very relevant. There are more urgent matters at hand.

And somewhere along the way he’s going to have to figure out that chasing women and children around the country and out of it is not just ugly, it’ll cost him too much sympathy too.

But so far all protests come from the Democrats and their supporters, who have all been left voiceless and shapeless by the election and now see their Russian conspiracy narratives blown to smithereens too, so why wouldn’t he please his own voters for a bit longer?

Well, for one thing, because he has to start to realize he’s going to need very broad support, and soon, be a president for all Americans so to speak, to fend off the CIA et al, and in what may be the hardest thing to do, he needs to invoke transparency, explain to people exactly what he does, and why, to drain the deep swamp.

If he fails in all this, and for now the odds point in that direction, those who protest him today will feel validated, right, and winners. They will be tragically wrong. Because if Trump loses this, the CIA wins. And then we will all live in 1984 for as far into the future as we can see.

I know there’s a lot that’s not to like about Trump and Bannon and all those guys. However, look at it this way: they are the only ones who can keep the doors of the vault from slamming shut for the rest of our lives, leaving time for y’all to wake up and find a president who doesn’t seek to turn your friends into your enemies.

At least you’ll still have that choice.

With present-day Washington, Democrat or Republican, there’s no such choice. They’re CIA, as are the media. Kim Dotcom tweeted this too today:


Image above: An excerpt from the first chapter of George Orwell's "1984" that begin with "Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig iron and the overfulfillment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan..." Those were the good old days when Ronald Reagan was President. See (http://www.theorwellreader.com/excerpt.shtml).

IB Publisher's end note: This from Wikipedia:
"Kim Dotcom, also known as Kimble^[7] and Kim Tim Jim Vestor,^[8] is a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur, businessman, musician, and political party founder who resides in Auckland, New Zealand.^[9] He first rose to fame in Germany in the 1990s as a teenage Internet entrepreneur. Dotcom is best known for being the founder of now-defunct file hosting service Megaupload (2005-2012).^[10][11] Earlier, he achieved notoriety in Germany as a teen hacker who was booked 2 years suspended sentence for selling identities that he had siphoned from telephone operators’ client database. After the closure of Megaupload, he has been accused of criminal copyright infringement and other charges, such as money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud, by the U.S. Department of Justice.^[12] Dotcom has denied the charges, and is currently fighting attempts to extradite him to the United States.^[13] On February 20, 2017, a New Zealand court ruled that Kim, as well as co-accused Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato, could be extradited to the US on charges related to Megaupload. Kim and his lawyer will appeal the decision." 

Could this be a reason for his approach to Donald Trump - a pardon?

.

Fear and Loathing in America

SUBHEAD: As we descend into Donald Trump's America we are reminded of Hunter Thompson's nightmare journeys.

By Juan Wilson on 20 Janaury 2017 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2017/01/fear-and-loathing-in-america.html)


Image above: Mashup of scene from movie version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" sporting Vladimir Putin as "Raoul Duke" and Donald Trump as Dr. Gonzo. They are on a road trip fueled by LSD, amphetamine and alcohol. Out of touch with nature and reality. From (https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/01/debt-rattle-january-20-2017/).

Yes we are beginning a long and weird journey. And Donald Trump behind the wheel. Is there any way to bail out?

I don't take much stock in those that think the Trump phenomena is one arranged by Russian trickery. The CIA is perfectly capable of doing something like that here or anywhere else all by itself. Our "normal" channels of communication (the press, journalism, media, netowrks) seem to have failed us.

We are left with the outlier sources. There you can find both "Truth" and "Bat Shit Crazy". Go find what works for you but be skeptical.

Hunter Thompson was a reporter who has been credited with inventing "gonzo journalism". Two of his books made a profound impression on me in the 1970's - "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail".

In "Campaign Trail" he follows and befriends Richard Nixon. The book reveals aspects of Nixon no one else talked about - and is like lifting a rock and finding a scorpion, poisonous centipede or rattlesnake. Something dangerous, alien and fascinating.

Thompson wrote:

Richard Nixon  was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. 

Such a person is The Donald. My take on this guy is that he is not much different than Nixon in personality - a megalomaniac substance abusing alcoholic out of tune with the flow of life around him. . Both men have displayed vindictive mean streaks.

However far he came up in the system Nixon always, neurotically demonstrated his "low" background".  On the other hand in Trump we have a Medici. A pampered spoiled rich kid used to bullying those beholden to his inherited fortune. An greedy and twisted individual.

Who better to be at the helm when our ship of state grinds into shoals that we are nearing now?

With the players on the incoming Trump Team it is hard to imaging a worse set of administrators, and directors of our government agencies. Some are simply incompetent, like Texas ex-governor of  Rick Perry named to head the Energy Department. There are also sly ones who either despise and plan to subvert or dismantle the agency they will be running.

Some have called this kind of leadership "kakistocracy": A government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens. From the root Greek word "kakistos" the root of the English word "catastrophe".

Today I posted Richard Heinberg's article about what he plans to do this Inauguration Day (A Good Day for a Walk in the Woods). A point he made their really struck me as profoundly true. He wrote:

"In my view, the most revealing personal characteristic of Trump may be his complete disconnection from the natural world.

Here is an individual who grew up in a city, who sees land only in terms of profit potential, who proudly covers the tortured ground with high-rise buildings, who lives in a penthouse, and who walks outdoors only on golf courses."

Having lived in Manhattan for almost a decade of my life I can substantiate that living there (or perhaps in the middle of any urban area of millions of people) isolates and separates an individual from Nature in a profound way. One begins to believe there is nowhere else that really matters.

That "Nature" is a view of Central Park from Trump Tower.

In answer to the question: "Is there any way to bail out?" I would answer "Yes". Hunker down in a locale that is the most resilient you can find.  Gather your friends and family close. Be self reliant and stay away from the government.

Good Luck and Bon Voyage! It's going to be a wild ride.
.

Climate Emergency Truths

SUBHEAD: Editorial on necessity of communal solutions to intractable problem of Global Warming.

By Staff on 7 December 2016 for Share the World's Resources -
(http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/articles/stwr-editorial-home-truths-about-climate-emergency)


Image above: Climate activists hold sign reading "1.5 to Stay Alive" referring to rise in centigrade temperature rise that insures life remains on Earth. From original article.

COP22 again highlighted the mismatch between illusive policy making and the stark reality of global warming. As always, it was left to civil society groups to uphold a vision of global cooperation and economic sharing as the only path towards a sustainable future.

As 2016 draws to a close, we appear to be living in a world that is increasingly defined by its illusions, where the truth is a matter of subjective interpretation or argumentative debate.

Indeed, following the United States election and Brexit referendum there is much talk of a new era of post-truth politics, in which appeals to emotion count more than verifiable facts.

But there are some facts that cannot be ignored for much longer, however hard we may try. And the greatest of all these facts is the escalating climate emergency that neither mainstream politicians, nor the public at large, are anywhere near to confronting on the urgent scale needed.

This was brought home once again at the latest Conference of the Parties held in Morocco last month, following the so-called ‘historic’ Paris Agreement of November 2015.

Dubbed the ‘implementation’ or ‘action COP’, the main purpose of the summit was to agree the rules for implementing the new agreement, as few countries have set out concrete plans for how they will achieve future emissions reductions post-2020.

 Far from justifying its nickname, however, the almost 200 nations participating in COP22 decided that the overarching goals and framework for international climate action will not be completed until 2018, with a mere review of progress in 2017.

Before the talks even commenced, the latest ‘emissions gap’ report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) highlighted the continued divergence between political and environmental/scientific reality.

According to UNEP’s analysis, the non-binding pledges made by governments in Paris could see temperatures rise by 3.4°C above pre-industrial levels this century, far beyond the 2°C considered a minimally safe upper limit.

To hit the more realistic 1.5°C target—which in itself will only mitigate, rather than eliminate severe climate impacts—the world must dramatically step up its ambition within the next few years before we use up the remaining carbon budget.

Yet this reality was not even a key focus of the COP22 discussions, where most delegates from developed countries spoke mainly of their post-2020 commitments, as if the deadline for an emergency mobilisation of effort can be postponed by another few years.

Ironically, several developed countries have not even ratified the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which comprises the pre-2020 period.

So after 24 years of negotiations, we are still heading towards a future that is “incompatible with an organised global community”, with no sign that the mismatch between rhetoric and action is near to closing.

As always, it was left to civil society groups to uphold the real hope and vision for how nations can begin traversing a path towards 1.5°C.

In an updated report for COP22, a coalition of campaigning organisations outlined the last chance we have of halting our race to environmental disaster, which will require massive emissions reductions before 2020 and major shifts in the real economy.

All of these transformations are technically viable and economically practicable, despite their apparent political infeasibility—such as a fossil energy investment and development moratorium; a necessary shift to agro-ecological farming practices; and a planned global transition to 100% renewable energy.

What remains central to achieving an effective programme of action, however, is a degree of international cooperation and economic sharing that is unprecedented in human history.

Such is the implicit message of both the 2016 and 2015 civil society equity reviews, which give a compelling justification for integrating the principle of ‘fair shares’ into a global effort-sharing framework.

Using an equity modelling approach based on domestic mitigation pledges and indicators for capacity and historical responsibility, the reports show how developed countries are offering a share of effort that is markedly less ambitious than developing countries.

Moreover, both reports demonstrate how developed countries have fair share obligations that are too large to be fulfilled solely within their own borders, even with extremely ambitious domestic actions.

So there is a moral, political and economic case for the wealthiest nations to vastly scale up their help to poorer countries in terms of international finance, technology sharing, and capacity-building support.

Put simply, campaigning organisations have used the most up-to-date scientific data to back up the argument that there cannot be hope for limiting global warming unless the principles of sharing, justice and equity are operationalised in a multilateral climate regime.

But it is also an argument based on common sense and fundamental notions of fairness, given the urgency of drastically cutting global emissions within the context of interdependent nations at starkly disparate levels of economic and material development.

As the civil society review for COP22 concludes, reiterating a basic truth of the climate justice movement: “Many of the changes needed to address the climate crisis are also needed to create a fairer world and better lives for us all. …Climate change affirms the urgency and necessity to shift to an equitable and just pathway of development.”

Of course, there is no sign that those countries with a higher capacity to act than others are facing up to their obligations to redistribute massive technological and financial resources to developing countries, thus enabling them to leapfrog onto rapid, low-carbon development paths.

Activists at COP22 used the slogan “WTF?” to ask “Where’s The Finance?”, as only between $18 billion and $34 billion has been granted of the $100 billion per year that developed countries committed to find by 2020.

A supposed “$100 Billion Roadmap” from the OECD was roundly debunked by both developing countries and civil society for using misleading numbers and various accounting tricks.

 All the while, new analysis shows that the true needs of the world’s poorest countries is in the realm of trillions of dollars, if they are to plausibly meet their Paris pledges by 2030 and help avoid catastrophic warming. But no increases in public financial contributions were forthcoming in Morocco, pushing any substantive decisions on the issue back for another two years.

So once again, we are left to wonder at the mismatch between illusive policymaking and the stark reality of global warming. 2016 broke all previous records for being the hottest year, while military leaders warned that climate change is already the greatest security threat of the 21st century, potentially leading to refugee problems on an unimaginable scale.

Yet developed countries continue to evade and postpone their responsibilities for mobilising an appropriate response, while often making decisions on national infrastructure and energy that directly contradict their putative climate change commitments.

Whether or not the United States withdraws from the Paris accords or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) altogether, the prospect of global carbon emissions beginning to decline before 2020 currently remains dim, to say the least.

Still none of this changes the core reality, which has remained the same ever since the UNFCCC negotiations began in the early 1990s. For there can be no hope of real and meaningful progress on tackling climate change, without a major commitment to North-South cooperation based upon a fairer sharing of global resources.

The simple truth is unavoidable, but time is running out before the world finally embraces its momentous implications.

COP22 again highlighted the mismatch between illusive policymaking and the stark reality of global warming. As always, it was left to civil society groups to uphold a vision of global cooperation and economic sharing as the only path towards a sustainable future. 

---

As 2016 draws to a close, we appear to be living in a world that is increasingly defined by its illusions, where the truth is a matter of subjective interpretation or argumentative debate. Indeed, following the United States election and Brexit referendum there is much talk of a new era of post-truth politics, in which appeals to emotion count more than verifiable facts. But there are some facts that cannot be ignored for much longer, however hard we may try. And the greatest of all these facts is the escalating climate emergency that neither mainstream politicians, nor the public at large, are anywhere near to confronting on the urgent scale needed.
This was brought home once again at the latest Conference of the Parties held in Morocco last month, following the so-called ‘historic’ Paris Agreement of November 2015. Dubbed the ‘implementation’ or ‘action COP’, the main purpose of the summit was to agree the rules for implementing the new agreement, as few countries have set out concrete plans for how they will achieve future emissions reductions post-2020. Far from justifying its nickname, however, the almost 200 nations participating in COP22 decided that the overarching goals and framework for international climate action will not be completed until 2018, with a mere review of progress in 2017.
Before the talks even commenced, the latest ‘emissions gap’ report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) highlighted the continued divergence between political and environmental/scientific reality. According to UNEP’s analysis, the non-binding pledges made by governments in Paris could see temperatures rise by 3.4°C above pre-industrial levels this century, far beyond the 2°C considered a minimally safe upper limit. To hit the more realistic 1.5°C target—which in itself will only mitigate, rather than eliminate severe climate impacts—the world must dramatically step up its ambition within the next few years before we use up the remaining carbon budget.
Yet this reality was not even a key focus of the COP22 discussions, where most delegates from developed countries spoke mainly of their post-2020 commitments, as if the deadline for an emergency mobilisation of effort can be postponed by another few years. Ironically, several developed countries have not even ratified the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which comprises the pre-2020 period. So after 24 years of negotiations, we are still heading towards a future that is “incompatible with an organised global community”, with no sign that the mismatch between rhetoric and action is near to closing.
As always, it was left to civil society groups to uphold the real hope and vision for how nations can begin traversing a path towards 1.5°C. In an updated report for COP22, a coalition of campaigning organisations outlined the last chance we have of halting our race to environmental disaster, which will require massive emissions reductions before 2020 and major shifts in the real economy. All of these transformations are technically viable and economically practicable, despite their apparent political infeasibility—such as a fossil energy investment and development moratorium; a necessary shift to agro-ecological farming practices; and a planned global transition to 100% renewable energy.
What remains central to achieving an effective programme of action, however, is a degree of international cooperation and economic sharing that is unprecedented in human history. Such is the implicit message of both the 2016 and 2015 civil society equity reviews, which give a compelling justification for integrating the principle of ‘fair shares’ into a global effort-sharing framework. Using an equity modelling approach based on domestic mitigation pledges and indicators for capacity and historical responsibility, the reports show how developed countries are offering a share of effort that is markedly less ambitious than developing countries.
Moreover, both reports demonstrate how developed countries have fair share obligations that are too large to be fulfilled solely within their own borders, even with extremely ambitious domestic actions. So there is a moral, political and economic case for the wealthiest nations to vastly scale up their help to poorer countries in terms of international finance, technology sharing, and capacity-building support.
Put simply, campaigning organisations have used the most up-to-date scientific data to back up the argument that there cannot be hope for limiting global warming unless the principles of sharing, justice and equity are operationalised in a multilateral climate regime. But it is also an argument based on common sense and fundamental notions of fairness, given the urgency of drastically cutting global emissions within the context of interdependent nations at starkly disparate levels of economic and material development. As the civil society review for COP22 concludes, reiterating a basic truth of the climate justice movement: “Many of the changes needed to address the climate crisis are also needed to create a fairer world and better lives for us all. …Climate change affirms the urgency and necessity to shift to an equitable and just pathway of development.”
Of course, there is no sign that those countries with a higher capacity to act than others are facing up to their obligations to redistribute massive technological and financial resources to developing countries, thus enabling them to leapfrog onto rapid, low-carbon development paths. Activists at COP22 used the slogan “WTF?” to ask “Where’s The Finance?”, as only between $18 billion and $34 billion has been granted of the $100 billion per year that developed countries committed to find by 2020. A supposed “$100 Billion Roadmap” from the OECD was roundly debunked by both developing countries and civil society for using misleading numbers and various accounting tricks. All the while, new analysis shows that the true needs of the world’s poorest countries is in the realm of trillions of dollars, if they are to plausibly meet their Paris pledges by 2030 and help avoid catastrophic warming. But no increases in public financial contributions were forthcoming in Morocco, pushing any substantive decisions on the issue back for another two years.
So once again, we are left to wonder at the mismatch between illusive policymaking and the stark reality of global warming. 2016 broke all previous records for being the hottest year, while military leaders warned that climate change is already the greatest security threat of the 21st century, potentially leading to refugee problems on an unimaginable scale. Yet developed countries continue to evade and postpone their responsibilities for mobilising an appropriate response, while often making decisions on national infrastructure and energy that directly contradict their putative climate change commitments. Whether or not the United States withdraws from the Paris accords or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) altogether, the prospect of global carbon emissions beginning to decline before 2020 currently remains dim, to say the least.
Still none of this changes the core reality, which has remained the same ever since the UNFCCC negotiations began in the early 1990s. For there can be no hope of real and meaningful progress on tackling climate change, without a major commitment to North-South cooperation based upon a fairer sharing of global resources. The simple truth is unavoidable, but time is running out before the world finally embraces its momentous implications.
- See more at: http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/articles/stwr-editorial-home-truths-about-climate-emergency#sthash.LWjJYgGD.dpuf

COP22 again highlighted the mismatch between illusive policymaking and the stark reality of global warming. As always, it was left to civil society groups to uphold a vision of global cooperation and economic sharing as the only path towards a sustainable future. 

---

As 2016 draws to a close, we appear to be living in a world that is increasingly defined by its illusions, where the truth is a matter of subjective interpretation or argumentative debate. Indeed, following the United States election and Brexit referendum there is much talk of a new era of post-truth politics, in which appeals to emotion count more than verifiable facts. But there are some facts that cannot be ignored for much longer, however hard we may try. And the greatest of all these facts is the escalating climate emergency that neither mainstream politicians, nor the public at large, are anywhere near to confronting on the urgent scale needed.
This was brought home once again at the latest Conference of the Parties held in Morocco last month, following the so-called ‘historic’ Paris Agreement of November 2015. Dubbed the ‘implementation’ or ‘action COP’, the main purpose of the summit was to agree the rules for implementing the new agreement, as few countries have set out concrete plans for how they will achieve future emissions reductions post-2020. Far from justifying its nickname, however, the almost 200 nations participating in COP22 decided that the overarching goals and framework for international climate action will not be completed until 2018, with a mere review of progress in 2017.
Before the talks even commenced, the latest ‘emissions gap’ report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) highlighted the continued divergence between political and environmental/scientific reality. According to UNEP’s analysis, the non-binding pledges made by governments in Paris could see temperatures rise by 3.4°C above pre-industrial levels this century, far beyond the 2°C considered a minimally safe upper limit. To hit the more realistic 1.5°C target—which in itself will only mitigate, rather than eliminate severe climate impacts—the world must dramatically step up its ambition within the next few years before we use up the remaining carbon budget.
Yet this reality was not even a key focus of the COP22 discussions, where most delegates from developed countries spoke mainly of their post-2020 commitments, as if the deadline for an emergency mobilisation of effort can be postponed by another few years. Ironically, several developed countries have not even ratified the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which comprises the pre-2020 period. So after 24 years of negotiations, we are still heading towards a future that is “incompatible with an organised global community”, with no sign that the mismatch between rhetoric and action is near to closing.
As always, it was left to civil society groups to uphold the real hope and vision for how nations can begin traversing a path towards 1.5°C. In an updated report for COP22, a coalition of campaigning organisations outlined the last chance we have of halting our race to environmental disaster, which will require massive emissions reductions before 2020 and major shifts in the real economy. All of these transformations are technically viable and economically practicable, despite their apparent political infeasibility—such as a fossil energy investment and development moratorium; a necessary shift to agro-ecological farming practices; and a planned global transition to 100% renewable energy.
What remains central to achieving an effective programme of action, however, is a degree of international cooperation and economic sharing that is unprecedented in human history. Such is the implicit message of both the 2016 and 2015 civil society equity reviews, which give a compelling justification for integrating the principle of ‘fair shares’ into a global effort-sharing framework. Using an equity modelling approach based on domestic mitigation pledges and indicators for capacity and historical responsibility, the reports show how developed countries are offering a share of effort that is markedly less ambitious than developing countries.
Moreover, both reports demonstrate how developed countries have fair share obligations that are too large to be fulfilled solely within their own borders, even with extremely ambitious domestic actions. So there is a moral, political and economic case for the wealthiest nations to vastly scale up their help to poorer countries in terms of international finance, technology sharing, and capacity-building support.
Put simply, campaigning organisations have used the most up-to-date scientific data to back up the argument that there cannot be hope for limiting global warming unless the principles of sharing, justice and equity are operationalised in a multilateral climate regime. But it is also an argument based on common sense and fundamental notions of fairness, given the urgency of drastically cutting global emissions within the context of interdependent nations at starkly disparate levels of economic and material development. As the civil society review for COP22 concludes, reiterating a basic truth of the climate justice movement: “Many of the changes needed to address the climate crisis are also needed to create a fairer world and better lives for us all. …Climate change affirms the urgency and necessity to shift to an equitable and just pathway of development.”
Of course, there is no sign that those countries with a higher capacity to act than others are facing up to their obligations to redistribute massive technological and financial resources to developing countries, thus enabling them to leapfrog onto rapid, low-carbon development paths. Activists at COP22 used the slogan “WTF?” to ask “Where’s The Finance?”, as only between $18 billion and $34 billion has been granted of the $100 billion per year that developed countries committed to find by 2020. A supposed “$100 Billion Roadmap” from the OECD was roundly debunked by both developing countries and civil society for using misleading numbers and various accounting tricks. All the while, new analysis shows that the true needs of the world’s poorest countries is in the realm of trillions of dollars, if they are to plausibly meet their Paris pledges by 2030 and help avoid catastrophic warming. But no increases in public financial contributions were forthcoming in Morocco, pushing any substantive decisions on the issue back for another two years.
So once again, we are left to wonder at the mismatch between illusive policymaking and the stark reality of global warming. 2016 broke all previous records for being the hottest year, while military leaders warned that climate change is already the greatest security threat of the 21st century, potentially leading to refugee problems on an unimaginable scale. Yet developed countries continue to evade and postpone their responsibilities for mobilising an appropriate response, while often making decisions on national infrastructure and energy that directly contradict their putative climate change commitments. Whether or not the United States withdraws from the Paris accords or the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) altogether, the prospect of global carbon emissions beginning to decline before 2020 currently remains dim, to say the least.
Still none of this changes the core reality, which has remained the same ever since the UNFCCC negotiations began in the early 1990s. For there can be no hope of real and meaningful progress on tackling climate change, without a major commitment to North-South cooperation based upon a fairer sharing of global resources. The simple truth is unavoidable, but time is running out before the world finally embraces its momentous implications.
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