Trump ditching INF Treaty

SUBHEAD: Experts sound alarms after Trump confirms plans to ditch nuclear arms control treaty with Russia.

By Jessica Corbett on 20 October 2018 for Common Dreams -
(https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/20/colossal-mistake-experts-sound-alarms-after-trump-confirms-plans-ditch-nuclear-arms)


Image above: The US presidency wears down the occupant of the White House. Trump appears to have degenerated worse than most in less than two years in office. This photo of Trump was taken last Saturday. He looks unhealthy, worn out, disheveled and miserable. Who's doing his hair? From original article.

Trump says that he is abandoning the INF treaty, basically confirms a renewed arms race, and absolves himself from any responsibility to lead efforts to reduce nuclear tensions around the globe.

Concerns are mounting after President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that he will withdraw from a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty with Russia following reports that National Security Adviser John Bolton had been pushing the plan behind closed doors despite warnings from experts that ditching the agreement "would be reckless and stupid."

The Guardian had reported Friday that Bolton and an ally in the White House have been working to convince members of the administration to support the United States withdrawing from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) on the grounds that Russia is violating it. Nuclear arms control experts and others rapidly responded with alarm.

Many agreed that Russia's alleged violation "merits a strong response" but noted a withdrawal could alienate European allies and raise the chances of armed conflict.

The president's comments on Saturday spurred more alarm, with Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association calling the looming withdrawal "an epic mistake."

Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey agreed. "This is a colossal mistake," he told the Guardian. "I doubt very much that the U.S. will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters."

"By declaring he will leave the INF Treaty, President Trump has shown himself to be a demolition man who has no ability to build real security," responded Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. "Instead, by blowing up nuclear treaties he is taking the U.S. down a trillion dollar road to a new nuclear arms race."

Journalist Glenn Greenwald tied the update to broader narratives about the Trump administration's relationship with Russia, and in particular President Vladimir Putin:

This is a major (and dangerous) provocation toward Russia by Trump that - like his lethal arms to Ukraine, the bombing of Assad's forces, & sanctions/expulsions - should cause anyone who peddled the "Putin-controls-Trump-with- kompromat" conspiracy tripe to apologize in shame.

 Trump revealed his withdrawal plans to reporters after campaign event in Nevada on Saturday. "Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years. I don't know why President [Barack] Obama didn't negotiate or pull out," he said. "And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons [while] we're not allowed to."

While claiming he would be receptive if both Russia and China concluded, "'Let's all of us get smart and let's none of us develop those weapons," under current circumstances, Trump appears hellbent on making more weapons.

"If Russia's doing it and if China's doing it and we're adhering to the agreement, that's unacceptable," he said. "So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military."

"We are going to terminate the agreement and we are going to develop the weapons. If we get smart and if others get smart, and say 'Let's not develop these horrible nuclear weapons,' I would be extremely happy with that," he added. "But as long as somebody's violating that agreement then we're not going to be the only ones to adhere to it."

The signing of the INF treaty during the nuclear arms race of the Cold War, as CNN pointed out, had "marked a watershed agreement."

It required both Russia and the United States to eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles.

The treaty "wasn't designed to solve all of our problems with the Soviet Union," but was "designed to provide a measure of some strategic stability on the continent of Europe," explained former State Department spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby, now a CNN military and diplomatic analyst.

"I suspect our European allies right now are none too happy about hearing that President Trump intends to pull out of it."

Kingston Reif of the Arms Control Association outlined in a pair of tweets the impact a withdrawal could have on American foreign relations:

Our response to Russia’s INF Treaty violation shld be guided by the following:

• Ensure Russia doesn't gain a military advantage
• Keep allies on our side
• Ensure Russia left holding bag if treaty collapses
• Exhaust all diplomatic options

Withdrawal is not in keeping with these principles.

Withdrawal would make the problem far worse by:

• Removing all constraints on Russia’s production and fielding of the illegal 9M729 missile
• Dividing NATO
• Allowing Russia to blame US for killing the treaty
• Undermining US leverage to attempt to bring Russia back into compliance

And thanks to the president's warmonger of a national security adviser, the INF treaty isn't the only arms control agreement with Russia currently under threat of termination. As the Guardian reported:

Bolton and the top arms control adviser in the National Security Council (NSC), Tim Morrison, are also opposed to the extension of another major pillar of arms control, the 2010 New Start agreement with Russia, which limited the number of deployed strategic warheads on either side to 1,550. That agreement, signed by Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, then president of Russia, is due to expire in 2021. 

"This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s," said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute. "If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time since 1972."

Responding to the developments in a series of tweets, Alexandra Bell, a former senior arms control official at the State Department who is now at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said:

"Trump says that he is abandoning the INF treaty, basically confirms a renewed arms race, and absolves himself from any responsibility to lead efforts to reduce nuclear tensions around the globe."

"This administration has damaged, perhaps irreparably, an international order that has served U.S. interests for decades, turned a blind eye to catastrophic climate change, corroded our govt, [and] poisoned our national discourse," she added. "Now it will ask you to fund a nuclear arms race..

Missile launcher at Standing Rock

SUBHEAD: I woke up today to the news that the Avenger missile launchers are now out of sight.

By Ray Cook on 19 January 2017 for Truth Out -
(https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/mobile-avenger-missile-launcher-appears-standing-rock/)


Image above: At Standing Rock the US military has placed an Avenger missile platform (in black) and a supporting Humvee on a ridge aimed at the Sioux encampment.  From original article.

On Monday morning I was visiting a friend who is on the Standing Stone Camp security force. We were in my truck rolling around looking at things in and around the camp.

The night before I had been patrolling near the Turtle Island where the Morton County Sheriff deployed some of his soldiers. Bright lights, concertina wire was all in check. Nothing moved or changed. The scene had remained the same for weeks.

Nothing to see here, so I decided to cruise around near the Cannon Ball ice river and on fields well suited for pasture, no rocks or obstructions. l was charging around testing the limits of my 4-wheel
drive truck and its traction.

I plan on establishing a thruway on the river ice when I get back from D.C. Friday night. The weather out there was warming up; on the night in question, Sunday, it was a balmy 25 degrees. But, the ice remains at about 2 to 3 feet on top, more than enough to support vehicles.

On Monday, my friend and I finished our drive and ended up at the Backwater Bridge. By then half the blockade had been removed by North Dakota law enforcement.

We were talking as we were testing my new pair of Air Force military binoculars with enhanced night vision and range finder. Boo yeah. They work great. We could see the hinges on the outhouse the cops have on the hill due south-by-southeast.

We were talking and I spotted something different, something very different: An additional obstacle did I see. Darker than the desert dust-colored Humvees that have so far been commonplace.

I zeroed in on the new site and to my surprise, to my befuddlement, as clear as day there sat parked a modified Humvee. Modified how? Well, the Humvee was a platform for a Mobile Avenger Missile Launcher. We’re talking some pretty savvy laser-aimed, heat-seeking bad-to-the-bone weaponry, complete with night vision sensors and range finder and 50-caliber gun.

“What on god’s green earth is this exactly?” I exclaimed, in a voice near like to a scream.

Later, a veteran buddy looked it up to be sure, matched it up with our pictures, and based on his experience noted:

“My suspicion is that the Avenger Missile Systems deployed to Standing Rock are a cost-effective alternative to having an Apache Helo flying overhead when they need it.

The Avenger system has Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) Capabilities. The civilian plane and helicopter probably don’t have FLIR and that is when they need an Apache Helo to “monitor” situations under darkness and record for evaluation later. Instead of calling up the Apache, they can have Avengers on-site for instant intelligence day or night.

The Avenger system also has video capabilities. It costs them far less to have an Avenger system on the ground 24 hrs a day than to deploy an Apache Helo occasionally. The security ground forces have Night Vision but the Avenger has FLIR and a laser rangefinder along with video capabilities.

The FLIR will be at least a plate-sized round lense mounted on the weapon rail on the left side (driver side) if there is one. Just a suspicion. If I am correct, there should be more info to request in a FOIA. The sheriff’s Department can’t all have TS Sec clearances so if they brief them all using Avenger footage, it should be low hanging fruit that would be unclassified.”

I thought to myself, “Imagine that, a missile locking on a prayer. Ghandi would understand this image.”

Remember Barney Fife in the Andy Griffith show of the early 60s? Andy would allow Barney only one bullet for his revolver.

Well, someone on some government level (Homeland Security is my guess) gave these badged yokels not one but two Avengers, each housing 8 rounds of missiles. It would be only a matter of time before one of the Barney’s over there would come to work still buzzed from the Super Bowl festivities and while leaning over, to puke, say, accidentally put his hand up to balance himself on the FIRE button.

Or, worse, intentionally and meanly FIRE the thing.

By the way, the missile launchers were aimed at the Camp.

Wednesday afternoon, my colleagues and I had the chance to accept an invite by Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell to conduct an exit interview with her on all things Indian country. During the interview I took the chance to show her the pictures I had on my phone.

The expression on her face was one of horror. She maintained her composure quickly and simply said, “This looks like something out of Star Wars.” She was referring not just to the strange sight of the Avenger, but its grey brown surroundings. Frankly, it looks like death follows this launcher where-ever it goes. And, indeed it does.

I woke up today to the news that the Avenger missile launchers are now out of sight. The Daily Beast carried a statement from National Guard spokesperson William Prokopyk: “Its removal demonstrates our commitment to deescalating any tensions its presence may have caused.”

Apparently, according to this statement, my buddy’s initial reaction was correct.

The Guard insists the launcher’s role was “passive”—merely a warm place to observe the camp with high-tech vision equipment that they had quietly used for over a month in lieu of employee expensive Apache helicopters.

Oh, and they say the thing was not armed: “All munitions are strictly controlled by the United States Army.”

It appears the military has abandoned its number one rule: Don’t carry an empty gun to a fight. Doesn’t that make us all feel better?

---

Weaponized Law Enforcement

SUBHEAD:  They are bringing in law enforcement in full riot gear with batons and plastic masks from all over the country.

By Dahr Jamail on 24 January 2017 for Truth Out -
(http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39243-missile-launchers-at-standing-rock-weaponized-law-in-action)

On Tuesday, January 24, President Donald Trump signed an order to move full steam ahead with the Dakota Access fracked oil pipeline (DAPL) at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

The move was a blow to the thousands of people who successfully resisted the pipeline through an Indigenous-led movement in which many people put their bodies on the line, spending months at camps outside Standing Rock.

Trump's order will certainly lead to further resistance in the weeks and months to come.

As we anticipate further protest and look back on the monumental resistance of the past few months, it's important to recognize and acknowledge the draconian legal measures that have been taken by local, state, and even federal authorities at Standing Rock.

Even while most media attention has stayed away from the Water Protectors' camps, arrests have continued. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 16, three peaceful prayer walkers were arrested and charged with Trespass, Inciting Riot (felony), Preventing Arrest, Engaging in Riot (misdemeanor), and Criminal Mischief. The Morton County Sheriff's Department posted a video of these arrests.

Later that evening, another confrontation resulted in 11 arrests with several injuries reported, and at least one Water Protector being carted away in an ambulance. In the wake of this, several were charged with Trespass and Engaging in Riot.

January 18 saw 21 more arrests, most of which took place on the Backwater Bridge near the camp, during another peaceful demonstration. Charges included carrying a concealed weapon, criminal trespass, physical obstruction of a government function, and preventing arrest.

In the wake of these arrests, the Morton County Sheriff's Department released a statement saying that "field commanders authorized use of less-than-lethal munitions of direct impact sponge rounds, drag stabilizer bean bag rounds, hand deployed pepper spray canisters and smoke riot control CS canisters."

Sarah Hogarth, the Communications Coordinator for the Water Protector Legal Collective told Truthout of these arrests, "One of our local attorneys reported that the judges are considering holding people/increasing bond if they do not have a local North Dakota address and phone number."

Meanwhile, other harsh measures from law enforcement authorities include the deployment of an "Avenger missile launcher system" at camp, purportedly to observe Water Protectors, and on January 20 Morton County released a video attempting to explain why the police are wearing tactical gear.
Additionally, North Dakota Republican lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would protect drivers who "accidentally" hit and kill protesters.

The DAPL pipeline, a project of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), is slated to transport more than half a million barrels of fracked oil every day, and if ETP gets its way, will pass underneath the Missouri River a mere half mile upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's drinking water source. That means the pipeline would affect millions of people and at least 28 tribes.

Navajo attorney Stephanie Tsosie, who works for Earthjustice and represents the tribe at Standing Rock, has also expressed concerns about the desecration of tribal burial and sacred sites.

In September, Tsosie told Democracy Now!, "It is important to remember that this land is an area that these tribes have inhabited for time immemorial, and there are sacred sites around the entire area."

A Water Protector who was shot in the leg, face, and back of the leg by beanbags and harassed by law enforcement, a Navajo man named Marcus Mitchell, recently shared his testimony, saying, "One officer was leaning on my head … they yelled at me to stop resisting as I lay there motionless."

Mitchell was arrested and taken away in a police vehicle while a police officer pinned one of his arms behind him, making it difficult for him to breathe.

Amnesty International, which sent a team to Standing Rock to investigate human rights abuses, even stated that some of the treatment of those arrested violates the prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment -- and that is not the only violation of international law that has occurred at Standing Rock.

Even the United Nations recently sent experts to Standing Rock in order to investigate human rights abuses by the pipeline company and its security henchmen.

The World Health Organization (WHO) stated in its 2010 Fact Sheet on The Right To Water, "Access to safe drinking water by indigenous peoples is closely linked to their control over their ancestral lands, territories and resources. Lack of legal recognition or protection of these ancestral lands, territories or resources can, therefore, have far-reaching implications for their enjoyment of the right to water."

Meanwhile, according to the Water Protector Legal Collective, Acting Morton County States Attorney Ladd Erickson has threated Water Protectors "with bills for their court appointed attorneys and his scandalous misrepresentations of those on trial is designed to create local bias and poison the jury pool … before trial."

Ladd's efforts would mean that defendants would, whether innocent or guilty, be responsible for repaying the state for money paid to their court appointed lawyers, an action that "would only apply to Defendants charged with opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline."

"The rhetoric used by Prosecutor Erickson castigates the defendants and their attorneys for availing themselves of their most fundamental first amendment rights to speech, assembly, and meaningful protest, and to their sixth amendment right to a defense attorney in a criminal trial," the Water Protector Legal Collective wrote of Erickson's actions. "Moreover his unfounded accusations done maliciously and intentionally seek to and may have prevented them from getting an unbiased jury and a fair trial."

The Water Protector Legal Collective has even called for Mr. Erickson to step down as prosecutor, noting, "He is clearly acting more out of personal animosity than fairly representing the People of the State of North Dakota in this matter."

For nearly half a century, Jeffreyaas has been working as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney representing progressive movements and victims of police abuse. He was a founding partner of the People's Law Office in Chicago (1969-2003), was co-counsel in Hampton vs. Hanrahan, which exposed the police and FBI murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, and ran a successful campaign to expose Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge's legacy of torture. He is the author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther.

Haas is now a member of the Indigenous-led Water Protector Legal Collective. He recently spoke at length with Truthout about draconian legal measures being used against the Water Protectors at Standing Rock.

Truthout: From a legal perspective, what are some of the more extraordinary things you're seeing at Standing Rock?

Jeff Haas: There are almost 500 criminal cases pending right now. There is a history of over-charging people, and some of the judges there are saying the preliminary evidence does not support the felony charges.

There were several particular incidents that occurred on September 3rd. DAPL was bulldozing sites that the day before had been identified as historic sacred and grave sites of the Lakota Sioux.

Immediately following the archeologists' identification of these sites and their location in a court case, the very next day DAPL came out and bulldozed those sites. That was the day they [DAPL] had their own security guards there with dogs.

People were surprised this was going on, but it was just a few hundred yards from a peaceful demonstration … so the people went to the bulldozers to protest and they were attacked with dogs.

This was some of the footage on Democracy Now! Eleven people were bitten by dogs of the security guards. I witnessed this firsthand and interviewed some of the victims on site, who then had to be treated for open wounds on their arms, chest, and legs.

The DAPL security guards were actually siccing the dogs on people, and the dogs had blood in their mouths.

That was September 3. There were probably 300 people there who stopped the bulldozers. The only people charged that day were Amy Goodman, a journalist, and Cody Hall, an organizer of peaceful demonstrations and who had been recognized by law enforcement.

They were not arrested that day … they instead were charged with trespassing and the prosecutor asked that their charges be raised to riot, and the judge refused, so their cases were dismissed when they went to court. When Cody Hall got to the jail there were FBI personnel there seeking to interview him, probably in order to intimidate him since he was a spokesman.

The prosecutor has often accused the Water Protectors as appealing to social media and trying to get arrested and ignoring their claims of protecting their water and working to stop the "black snake" that is carrying the oil.

More than 200 nations have joined the Sioux nation, and there has been [the largest] coming together of Native nations … in at least 150 years, and they've set up three camps at Standing Rock.

It is a place where people are welcome, with a kitchen, clinic, a school, and cultural sensitivity training. There was an amazing spirit in the camp that swelled to as many as 10,000 over December 4 when more than 2,000 veterans joined the camp to oppose the attempt to shut it down.

What are the overall themes/strategies/tactics you see being used against the Water Protectors and their supporters?

Law enforcement response has escalated from a smaller presence to far larger. The dogs were those of the private security guards, and there's been a militarization of the law enforcement response. This means they are bringing in law enforcement in full riot gear with batons and plastic masks from all over the country.

More recently in their sweeps they've used sound cannons, rubber bullets, and tear gas. On November 20, when it was freezing cold and people were on the bridge, they used water cannons. They are shooting projectiles that explode, that have injured a number of people. These explosive projectiles are thrown or shot into concentrated groups, along with a massive amount of tear gas.

Most recently, they've cordoned off the road between the camp and where the pipeline crosses the highway.

They won't even let people get to where they were protesting before, because the pipeline has proceeded right up to Lake Oahe, next to the river. DAPL now has an outpost near the river that looks something like a military Forward Operating Base in Iraq, with concertina wire, guards, spotlights, and armed guards.

A judge has said he won't open back up the protest area until the protestors leave and promise not to protest anymore. There has been a repression of free speech, and the sheriff, Kirscheimer, and the prosecutor, Erickson, have claimed the Water Protectors were violent, which is untrue, as it’s the law enforcement that have been violent.

The prosecution has attempted to vilify Protectors, saying they are dupes of radical lawyers, that they shouldn't be allowed free attorneys, and that they should have to pay the state back for the law enforcement costs for arresting them, which could easily be $1,000 a case for a misdemeanor.

With all these cases, the local bar association has been overwhelmed. Neither the local courts nor lawyers are prepared to handle this number of cases. We've asked the North Dakota Supreme Court to allow extra lawyers to come in and act without a local lawyer present, but they've thus far not allowed this.

Are you seeing any laws being broken by the authorities?

Authorities are saying they don’t have to produce the discovery the defendants are entitled to because there are so many drones being used by the Protectors and their supporters … but the defendants, under the constitution, are entitled to this.

We are seeing them overcharging people, where 120 people were arrested and charged with reckless endangerment for using fire, even though they set some hay bales on a road on fire as a symbolic act to stop the onslaught of law enforcement, and it was well away from the main demonstration. All those felony cases by fire were dismissed.

In many cases people have applied for lawyers and been turned down because they didn't fill the forms out the right way.

On October 22, hundreds of people were walking across a field to find out where the construction was going on. They were met by a phalanx of law enforcement in full riot gear, there was no warning, and they were told they were under arrest for trespassing and if they fled they'd be charged with fleeing. Trespass requires a sign or notice to be given, and none of that was done.

On November 20th, a DAPL worker was approaching protesters in a vehicle from the rear in a truck, driving fast and carrying a gun. Some of the security people with the Water Protectors stopped him, took his gun, and none of them were armed, and turned him over to the Indian police.

Later on the three people who helped disarm him and turned him over to the local authorities were charged. One of them was charged with terrorizing this person, [but] this person [who was] charged was unarmed and got the guy to put his gun down.

So the guy who had the gun was let go, yet the authorities ended up prosecuting these other guys who peacefully disarmed him and handed him over to the authorities. Then it turns out that the guy with the gun was a DAPL worker.

So this case shows collusion between law enforcement and the pipeline, as they were sharing information, and law enforcement was clearly doing the bidding of DAPL. If DAPL needed the pathway cleared, then law enforcement would show up and do that.

Law enforcement was much less concerned with the constitutional rights of the citizens and more concerned with DAPL getting their pipeline constructed.

How is the legal counterattack against the Water Protectors extending outside of North Dakota state lines?

We are discovering there is a grand jury going on. One of the Water Protectors was hit by a projectile in the arm and shoulder and has lost functioning of her arm.

It looked like it was going to be amputated, but so far it remains attached, but still has 10 more operations to keep it functioning. She was airlifted to a hospital in Minneapolis, but they have a grand jury going to show it was the Protectors or she herself who blew herself up that caused the injury, despite eyewitnesses having reported seeing her hit by both rubber bullets and an exploding projectile.

Department of Homeland Security went to the hospital where she was and took her clothing and got the fragments removed by surgery from her shoulder, and they are trying to build a case and say the fragments match petrol or some kind of igniting canisters that they say came from the Protectors.

We are finding criminal investigation departments of various state police departments that are following up with people who have been arrested, questioning them about why they went to Standing Rock, and asking them about other cases of people who went there. This happened in Indiana, when a plain-clothes cop with the Indiana State Criminal Police Intelligence showed up at an activist's house to question them.

Given your law experience in the late 1960s and early 1970s … how does what you are seeing at Standing Rock compare?

The tactics of the dogs reminded me of Birmingham, Alabama, where the dogs used there were let loose on civil rights marchers. As do the water cannons that were used in Alabama against the kids. We've not seen these tactics used in a long time.

At the same time it's a much more sophisticated surveillance methodology. In camp anytime you look up there are drones, planes, helicopters, and chemicals being sprayed on people at night that left folks with chronic respiratory symptoms. Very strange thing, and we don't know what those chemicals might have been.

They want you to be aware of their ongoing surveillance, which is ever-present.

In response, some of the people in camp had drones, which is legal as long as they are registered, in order to watch law enforcement and the pipeline. But in one case a guy's drone was following the police, and they knocked down his drone and charged him with stalking, and that is now a pending case.

Another situation when they were going to clear the roadway, the FAA declared it a no-fly zone, so water protectors couldn’t fly their drones, so there is that coordination going on between DAPL and the feds on a federal level as well.

There is a pact of sheriffs from states all over, so various sheriffs, under this pact, are sending their police there to arrest water protectors.

And now there is a lawsuit that many local landowners are suing DAPL for defrauding them to sell easement rights for too cheap, or under false information. A number of families were intimidated [in]to selling their easements under eminent domain, or offering bonuses that were never delivered, etc. … That's what the suit alleges, and that was filed in federal court.

The attitude of the courts up there is really something else. For example, the pipeline filed a "slap suit" to stop the protesting, and the judge granted them a TRO without the other side given an opportunity to respond.

The disdain some of the courts have shown the Water Protectors has been clear. They see them as outsiders, and [are] not giving them credit for protecting their water and sacred sites, and are not recognizing the legitimate claims of the tribes.

Under the Treaty of Laramie in 1871, the land the water protectors are on was given to the Sioux. So the US never took it back from them, so even though it's not technically reservation land, it belongs to the Sioux, and that's where this is all happening.

One of the most egregious and racist things about this is the pipeline was proposed to go through Bismark, but since there was so much objection as it threatened their water, as Bismark is 98 percent white, they moved it to just upstream of the Standing Rock Reservation. So the pipeline is only there because the white people didn't want it on their land.

What are your concerns with the Trump administration as to how much worse this could become, particularly after his recent executive order? 

Trump has been an investor in the pipeline. He says he's decreased his investment, which I question. He's made the construction of pipelines and general fossil fuel development a large part of his program.

I think he'll make Standing Rock a target.

Instead of the Army Corps of Engineers having a new EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] done, as it is calling for, he'll erase that, and tell the pipeline if they drill under the lake they won't be prosecuted anyway.

I fear that law enforcement will feel they have a free hand to use excessive, and possibly lethal, force on the Water Protectors.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock has changes us 12/9/16
Ea O Ka Aina: As Standing Rock celebrates... 12/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Army Corps denies easement 12/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: My Whole Heart is With You 12/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Loving Containment of Courage 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Beginning is Near 12/1/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Feds to shutdown NoDAPL Camp 11/25/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL people are going to die 11/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Hundreds of vets to join NoDAPL 11/22/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama must support Standing Rock 11/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump's pro oil stance vs NoDaPL 11/15/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai NoDAPL Demonstration 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama to Betray Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump impact on Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Ann Wright on Standing Rock 11/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Turning Point at Standing Rock 11/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jackson Browne vs DAPL owner 11/5/16
Democracy Now: Boycott of DAPL Owner's Music Festival
Ea O Ka Aina: World responds to NoDAPL protests 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL victory that was missed 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL hid discovery of Sioux artifacts 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Dakota Access Pipeline will leak 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Route of the Dakota Access Pipeline 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sanders calls for stopping DAPL 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: New military attack on NODAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How to Support NoDAPL 11/3/16
Unicorn Riot: Tweets from NoDAPL 11/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock & the Ballot Box 10/31/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL reclaim new frontline 10/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How far will North Dakota go? 10/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodman "riot" charge dropped 10/17/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodwin to face "Riot Charge" 10/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Shutdown of all tar sand pipelines 10/11/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why Standing Rock is test for Oabama 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why we are Singing for Water 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Labor's Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Firm for Standing Rock 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Contact bankers behind DAPL 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL demo at Enbridge Inc 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Militarized Police raid NoDAPL 9/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Stop funding of Dakota Access Pipeline 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: UN experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now!" 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16
 


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COP21 Expectations

SUBHEAD: Ambition and Smoke, Love and Courage - What to expect from the climate treaty negotiations in Paris.

By John Foran on 30 November 2015 for Resilience  -
(http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-11-30/ambition-and-smoke-love-and-courage-what-to-expect-from-the-climate-treaty-negotiations-in-paris)


Image above: A clever logo design used by protesters of COP21combines elements of COP21 symbol of the Eiffel Tower, the international peace Sign and the symbol for anarchy. From original article.

“The most important question raised by the climate summit may be: Does the power to change the world belong to the people in the conference rooms of Le Bourget or to the people in the streets of Paris?”
- Rebecca Solnit, “Power in Paris“

The Paris COP 21 UN climate summit is upon us, now, starting on Monday, November 30.  I have spent the last year, ever since the dust of Lima was wiped from my shoes, trying my best to get a grasp on what was going to happen and communicating what I found out to all interested parties.  This has led to two long pieces, “Just Say ‘No’ to the Paris COP:  A Possible Way to Win Something for Climate Justice” and “A History of the Climate Negotiations in Six Videos.”

In the last two months, the world’s attention has really started to focus on climate, the COP, and the possibilities and probabilities of “success” and (gasp!) “failure.”  The murder of 129 people in the streets of Paris on Friday, November 13, has only trained hearts and minds more on this ground zero in the interlaced struggles for peace on Earth with justice.

Within twenty-four hours, the French government and the UNFCCC had reassured us that the COP would proceed exactly as planned, with added layers of security.

The incredible and creative plans of civil society for making sure that the world’s demand for climate justice will be heard in Paris hung in the balance until the government of François Hollande made it known that the twin bookends of our strategy – the massive march on Sunday, November 29 and the nonviolent civil disobedience and other acts of protest scheduled for the outcome of the COP on Friday and Saturday, December 11 and 12 – would be prohibited from occurring.

A COP without the full-throated participation of global civil society, however, has a less than zero chance of succeeding, whatever that nebulous term connotes.  Just as the COP must go on, so, too, will we, the countless members of the global climate justice movement, whether marching under that banner in Paris or simply showing up in our hearts and heads.

But the carefully prepared script that global elites have been busy writing for Paris may not end up to end the way they think, and here’s why.

Ambition and Smoke:  The Negotiations Will Take Unexpected Turns
In “Just Say ‘No’ to the Paris COP,” I developed an argument that the best possible outcome would be a conference that ended in disarray, without an agreement that would lock in catastrophic climate change or be hailed by most of the world as the first step on the road to a future without climate chaos and social turmoil (as if).  I have seen nothing on the part of the negotiating process in the intervening weeks that makes me think differently.

What is it that the governments of the world are being asked to do in Paris?  Their remit is to agree on a global treaty that would address several key elements:

1. an ambitious upper limit on the amount of warming that humanity should countenance as acceptable and somehow safe for future generations, 
2. a legally binding set of measures that all countries would agree on to achieve that goal, and
3. mobilization of the technical and financial resources to ensure that all countries would have the means to make the transition to a low or zero carbon way of life, and to do so in a way that enables the rapid emergence of the global South from poverty and inequality in the name of social justice.

Operationally, this means choosing between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius as the temperature target, creating a mechanism to close the widening emissions gap to put us on that path, and securing at least $100 billion annually for a Green Climate Fund, and something similar for the Loss and Damage mechanism that will provide immediate emergency aid countries hit by extreme weather events.

At the moment, all the national pledges for climate action – the Individually Determined National Contributions (INDCs) – are in.  Unfortunately, the best estimates for the warming that they will give us vary between an optimistic 2.7 degrees and around 3.3 degrees or a little more.

The calculations are rendered more difficult because the UNFCCC failed to agree on any uniform ways of making these pledges in the four years that they gave themselves at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, in 2011 to make this happen.

In Climate Action Tracker’s estimation, after careful review of pledges “covering about 71% of global emissions, 17 have not been rated as ‘sufficient’…. Two are sufficient but cover only 0.4% of global emissions.”  They conclude that the current level of ambition would give us a 66 percent chance of staying under 3 degrees Celsius!

There is a major risk that if current INDCs are locked in for 2030 and not reviewed and strengthened every five years, starting in 2020, that achievement of the 1.5°C goal called for by all the most vulnerable countries may be locked out, and achievement of the 2°C goal fundamentally threatened.
Based on the climate action promised under the INDCs it is now clear that governments at the Paris climate conference need to consider a formal acknowledgement that there is an insufficient level of mitigation ambition for 2025 and 2030 to limit warming below 2°C.

In November a group of NGOs including 350.org, Friends of the Earth International, the PanAfrican Climate Justice Alliance, and others issued “Fair Shares:  A Civil Society Equity Review of INDCs,” which finds that

The INDC commitments will likely lead the world to a devastating 3°C or more warming above pre-industrial levels. The current INDCs amount to barely half of the emissions cuts required by 2030.  Moreover, the INDCs submitted by all major developed countries fall well short of their fair shares. From the list of countries highlighted in the report, Russia’s INDC represents zero contribution towards committing its fair share. Japan’s represents about a tenth, the United States’ about a fifth, and the European Union’s just over a fifth of its fair share….  On the other hand, the majority of developing countries’ mitigation pledges exceed or broadly meet their fair share, including Kenya, the Marshall Islands, China, Indonesia, and India. Brazil’s INDC represents slightly more than two thirds of its fair share.

So, on the main question, what is on the table will warm the planet at least three times more above pre-industrial levels than what we currently have done, about 0.85 degrees Celsius.  No one wants to see worse effects from climate change than we are experiencing now, but that is inevitable since there is already enough carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the air to take us to 1.4 degrees, even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow.

To make matters worse, these “pledges” will not be legally binding commitments.  They will not even go into effect until 2020.  They will not be reviewed so they can be “ratcheted up” for five more years till 2025.  And they will take us well beyond the supposedly “safe” threshold of 2 degrees in the next quarter century.

This is what Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, President Obama, and other world “leaders” will hail as a success, if all goes well for them in Paris.

But to get agreement even on these dispiriting and ecocidal targets, they will need nearly every government of the world to agree that this is fair and reasonable.  To do so, they are going to have to come up with about $90 billion more for the Green Climate Fund than has been pledged so far.  And they will have to do something for Loss and Damage as well.

And herein lies a little room for hope.  Many countries – more than 100 – have said that they cannot live (in some cases literally) with 2 degrees of warming, and are demanding that the treaty inscribe 1.5 degrees as the target.

Many are insisting that $100 billion for the GCF is a non-negotiable promise (it was made at COP 15 back in 2009 in Copenhagen).  And others, such as the Philippines, need substantial funding for Loss and Damage as well.

So how exactly will the global North get an agreement under these circumstances?

The negotiating text has not shrunk below 50 pages in the multiple “intersessional” meetings that took place in 2015.

 Most of the text is in brackets, meaning that there are competing proposals for all of the clauses that involve these and other crucial issues.  There are seemingly unbridgeable differences of opinion among the nations at the table.

And the working time and process at a COP are simply not constructed to produce efficiency or progress in the negotiations.

Thus even if the will existed, and it doesn’t, it strikes me as absurd to think that these two weeks in Paris will get to the finish line.  They have kicked the can down the road for four years, avoiding all the intractable differences, barely making progress on the shape of the treaty itself, let alone the content.

On the other hand, Sunita Narain, who along with Chandra Bushan of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment is the author of a devastating critique of US proposals on climate change – “Captain America:  U.S. Climate Goals – A Reckoning“ – has made perhaps the best case for how world leaders (and there are no world leaders in climate change, except perhaps for Pope Francis, who doesn’t have a country to bring to the table) are going to pull an agreement out of the hat.

So, what is likely to happen? Let me use my 20-COP past to map out the likely scenario and explain what it means for us in the emerging South that is already affected by unseasonal weather but needs its right to development.
First, there will be a Paris deal. This is a given. But to make it happen the French will make some clever moves, given that the current draft has been negotiated for over four years, is more than 50 pages long and full of disagreements. They have already changed the order of things by inviting heads of state on the first day and not the last. Everyone from Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is coming. The French will produce (and I hope with more finesse than the Danish government) a zero draft with the bare bones of the agreement at the start of the two-week meeting. The heads of state will have little room but to endorse this broad agreement. Then for the next two weeks negotiators will idle away time till the gavel comes down on the midnight of the last day.
Second, this zero draft for the Paris treaty will be minimalist and, therefore, seemingly non-controversial. It will endorse the submission of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), which are voluntary commitments made by countries to cut carbon emissions. It will admit that the sum of these commitments does not add up to keeping the world below 2°C rise, which is seen to be the least risky option. But it will say that the agreement provides a stable and predictable foundation to ratchet up the commitments in the future.
Third, it will not make the commitment or the expected result legally binding. Instead it will make the procedure of submitting reports binding. It will also sidestep the tricky issue of review of INDCs, which countries like India have strangely objected to. It will simply say that in five years there will be a stock take of the aggregate of all INDCs. So no individual country’s progress will be reviewed, only the sum of their actions and how close it is to keeping the temperature rise below 2°C. On the really tricky issue of additional finance it will not mention specifics, just make a broad promise. And to keep the Americans happy it will try and do the finance bit on another piece of paper. In this way, the Paris Climate Change Treaty will be ready for signature even before the leaders leave. It will be weak but aspirational. The spin will be that it lays the ground for future action.

She goes on to pass judgment on what this would mean:

What it means is a little more than this. The world would have agreed to a framework, pushed by the US, which is voluntary, bottom up – countries decide what they will do rather than get targets based on their contribution to the problem – and most importantly universal. It breaks once and for all the distinction between developing and developed countries. As agreed in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, developed countries had to take the first and drastic action because of their historical responsibility.
It also means the US will appropriate an even greater share of the carbon budget, simply because its intended action is unambitious. The world is left with a limited space to emit greenhouse gases, if it wants to stay within a not-too-dangerous threshold. The still developing world – India and all of Africa – needs to increase emissions for its development. But by 2030, the timeframe of the intended Paris treaty, almost all the carbon budget would be gone. Our future right to development will be surrendered. We will be told to find a different way to grow economically. Ours has to be a low-carbon growth and if it is expensive, it is our problem. There will be no money or technology to aid us to get there.

This would be clever indeed.  It is precisely the dangerous scenario we have to block, to figure out how to throw a wrench with “climate justice” etched into it into its gears.

Where is the ambition in these rooms?
So who might make it awkward for the architects of this disastrous treaty in Paris?  In addition to the dozens of countries who are on record for a 1.5° temperature ceiling and the nearly unanimous desire for a legally binding treaty worthy of the name, there is the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a diverse set of countries who have formed a loose negotiating bloc for the summit.  Their Founding Communique gives some hope, insisting that “the minimum deliverable for the UN Climate Change Conference at Paris (UNFCCC COP21) is an agreement entirely consistent with the non-negotiable survival of our kind.”

AOSIS, the 44-member strong Alliance of Small Island States, has also endorsed keeping warming under the safer, if more difficult limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius, and has called on the nations of the world to be fully de-carbonized by 2050.

The 48-member Least Developed Countries bloc issued a statement in February calling for “emissions peaking for developed countries in 2015, with an aim of net zero emissions by 2050 in the context of equitable access to sustainable development.”

On the truly poignant side, Peru, Mexico, and Colombia have pledged money to the Green Climate Fund, shaming the wealthy nations of the world, who have so far put up only about $10 billion of the promised $100 billion annually by 2020 (the claim that there is actually now $62 billion promised to the Fund is full of double counting and includes forms of “aid” that come with plenty of strings attached).  Perhaps the wealthy should just ask the global South to fund the rest!

Hope and Possibility:  
Climate Justice at Cop 21 and Beyond, or, Why We Are Going and What We Hope to Do There for Climate Justice

I have just argued that the best possible outcome of the COP 21 negotiations would be not to agree on a treaty, but instead for the talks to descend into chaos in the halls in a scenario where nations inside the negotiations blocked any outcome because what is on the table is completely unacceptable.

 As this is the position of the vast majority of the global climate justice movement – that the COP process is hopelessly compromised and inadequate – we might ask:  What can or should the movement do in Paris to enable such an outcome, however slight the chance of it may seem?

In “Just Say ‘No’ to the Paris COP,” I outlined the variety of actions that the movement has planned for Paris.  I’d like to return to them here, updated under new circumstances, and with the COP itself (no pun intended) fast on our heels.

Global Climate Marches will take place (almost) everywhere
The November 29 marches in Paris and around the world are intended by their big NGO organizers such as Avaaz and 350.org to take the rhetoric of global leaders and turn it into a weapon with which to shame or encourage them into doing the right thing.

Their potential to appeal to newly active people in a variety of ways, taking into account that different people respond to different messages, aim to help forge a truly broad and deep climate justice movement, which will require moving more and more people into and through climate action to climate justice.

Now, of course, the situation on the ground in Paris is vastly altered after the November 13 massacre of 129 people by the terrorists of ISIS/Daesh.

So the organizers are calling for a huge turnout around the world to replace the momentum stolen by the French authorities from a march that would have numbered in the several hundred thousands – indeed, with the solidarity of the climate justice movement for real peace throughout the world based on social justice, it would not be too far-fetched to imagine that closer to a million people would have been in the streets of Paris, with Parisians responding to this solidarity.

After the Charlie Hebdo murders in January, some 1.6 million people marched in Paris and three million across France a week later;  think what could have been this time.
Meanwhile the People’s Pilgrimage, inspired by Pope Francis’s bracing climate encyclical Laudato Si, is set to arrive in Paris just before the COP opens on November 30. Yeb Saño, one of its co-organizers, points out that “Paris is not our destination.

Our real destination will be the hearts and minds of people, so our journey continues even after Paris.”  He told a group I was with this summer that “Paris is merely a six-year delay of what was promised in Copenhagen.

Paris will give us a ten to fifteen page ‘Motherhood’ statement with lots of ‘creative ambiguity.’  Unless we change the system, the same system that got us into the crisis, the negotiations process cannot, for the life of me, I cannot see it get us out of it.”

The question remains:  what will happen in Paris on November 29?  I will be there with a dozen other members of the Climate Justice Project with the aim of participating fully in the actions and doing our best to report on them.  I know that I will show up at the duly appointed place and time, and we will have to see who else does.

The Climate Games
Creative ideas abound in this movement, and there will be many thousands of imaginative, passionate people on hand to enact them.  In the aftermath of the French crackdown on public demonstrations, the role that will be played throughout COP 21 by participants in the Climate Games looms even larger than before.

Organized by the Laboratory of Insurrectional Imagination (le Labofii) as an open call to anyone who feels moved to do express their views about the COP and the larger forces behind it, conceived as the Mesh – “austerity-dictating politicians, fossil fuel corporations, industry lobbyists, peddlers of false solutions and greenwashers,” it anticipates a joyful chaos that will bring together “artists, activists, designers, scientists, hackers, architects, gamers, performers and other citizens together to conceptualise, and build and rehearse ef­fective new tools and tactics of resistance to be used during the COP21.”

Teams of activists will form to engage in “a mass participation transmedia action framework that merges the street, disobedient bodies and cyberspace, and turns the city into a total resistance performance event open to all.”

The Climate Games organizers’ eloquent response to November 13 merits quoting in full:

First of all, we want to clearly state our solidarity with all victims of all forms of terror. Machine guns and explosives hurt the same whether in Paris or Beirut, Ankara or Yola, Damascus or Kobane, Baghdad or elsewhere. The hurt feels the same whether it comes from the gun of a jihadist or a police officer, the missiles of a fighter plane or a drone.
These attacks must not change the conversation but deepen it. We want to clearly state that our dedication for social and climate justice remains as strong as ever. We are convinced that the geopolitical and economic dynamics that underpin climate chaos are the same as those that feed terrorism. From the oil wars in Iraq to the droughts in Syria caused by ecological collapse, all feed the same inequalities that lead to cycles of violent conflict.
We are writing this from a city under a state of emergency. The government has announced that the COP21 negotiations will go on, but all public outdoor demonstrations across France, including the Global Climate March and the day of mass actions on December 12th, have been banned. We refuse this shadow of the future, we will not bend to the politics of fear that stifle liberties in the name of security. The biggest threat to security, to life in all its forms, is the system that drives the climate disaster. History is never made by those who ask permission.
We believe that COP21 can not take place without the participation or mobilizations of civil society while governments and multinationals continue with business as usual. Only the Climate Justice movements with their disobedient bodies will be able to do the necessary work of keeping 80% of the fossil fuels in the ground.
We are still and more than ever dedicated to forms of actions that aim to address the root causes of climate chaos in determined non-violent ways. Our playing field has been totally transformed in Paris, but everywhere else in the world we encourage people to continue with their plans and adventures. We call all teams in Paris to take into account the exceptional circumstances and to not put anyone in fear or danger.
The decentralised creative nature of the Climate Games could become the alternative nonviolent response to this state of emergency. Like the mushrooms that emerge at dawn, the ants that scuttle across borders at night we will rise out of fear and shock, we will adapt and resist. We are not fighting for nature, we are nature defending itself.

For details, and to enter, stay tuned here.

A People’s Climate Strike Builds Out from Paris
Another intriguing and promising new strategy for the movement that will have its premiere in Paris is that of a global or people’s climate strike.  As Ben Manski and Jill Stein explain:  “What makes a strike different from mere protest? A strike is an economic stoppage. A strike does not plead. It does not demand. It simply does.”

 A People’s Climate Strike is being planned – to bring the engines of economic and ecological destruction to a grinding halt, demonstrate our growing power, and promote community-controlled, just, and green alternatives. The People’s Climate Strike will move us from the symbolism of marches towards the assertion of power in the streets. We will begin to develop a tool that has been essential for democratic social change throughout history.

In Paris, there is a call for students (including children) to skip classes or turn their schools into sites of climate action on November 30, the day the COP opens.  There are actions planned for seventy countries on that day.  In the eyes of the organizers, “The adult generations have promised to stop the climate crisis, but they have skipped their homework year after year. Climate strike is a wake-up call to our own generation. And it is the start of a network that will solve the greatest challenge in human history. Together. We need your hands and hearts and smarts!”  The measure of its success will be the number of people who raise their hands:

“The open hand is the symbol of Climate Strike. If you agree to the three demands of Climate Strike: 

1. fossils should stay in the ground, 
2. transition to 100% clean energy,
3. help people impacted by climate change then show the world your hand.”

Creating a People’s Alternative to the COP 
At every COP, movements seek to create strong counter-spaces and projects, whose impact on countless activists over the years would be hard to overestimate.

In Paris, the network of French and global organizers who have come together as Coalition Climat21 has shown an astonishing capacity to make it possible to share insights, teach skills, strengthen bonds, plan actions, and envision futures across a variety of venues.

One of these will be a two-day Citizen Climate Summit or “Village of Alternatives” on December 5 and 6, in Montreuil, a working-class neighborhood of Paris where my group will be staying.  In the words of the organizers of the Coalition Climat21, this will be a place “to put forward solutions tackling climate change.

Let’s show decision-makers that these solutions already exist and are building a better world: with more justice, more solidarity, more happiness! … Putting in common our experience, analyses, struggles, and hopes will enable us to anchor our movement for the long-term.”

This will be followed between December 7 and 11 at the Climate Action Zone (ZAC) at the CENTQUATRE-PARIS in the northern part of Paris, where “All people are welcome – from the activists who will come from every corner of the world to local French high school students.  Here one can get basic information on the climate crisis and the UN negotiations, as well as meet with others to share information, create, and organize.”

During the “crunch time” of the second week of the COP when the negotiations will likely be floundering, participants in the Climate Action Zone will generate plans for their movements’ actions and messages at the end of the COP on Friday, December 11, and Saturday, December 12, seizing our chance to “have the final word” on COP21.  As Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! puts it:  “If the leaders fail, many will be there to storm the Bastille.”

The Streets Await Us
Things are most definitely heating up (so to speak) for Paris.  While the French state cries for a war on terrorism and denies our civil liberties, this is being met with a cry for a just peace with climate justice.
COP 21 is a litmus test of where power lies.  The balance of forces has greatly changed, and the climate justice movement is much savvier than at Copenhagen in 2009.  In the heart-wrenching words of the Network of Spiritual Progressives:

What if the wake-up call of these kinds of acts are to help us see that the only real response (once we recognize the existential crisis of being alive, being vulnerable, not knowing if we will live or die today and try to find some acceptance and peace with that while we go about living our lives and perhaps in remembering our vulnerability we choose to live our lives more fully, love more unconditionally, and be more generous and kind) is to build a movement and take back our country and our world. Perhaps this moment is a call to action – not to create a false sense of safety or security or to turn more inward – for ordinary people to rise-up and lead because our leaders are failing us.

In this crucial moment of history, I don’t think I could rise out of bed in the morning if it wasn’t for the global climate justice movement – its creativity, growing numbers, passion, imagination, grit, and joyfulness.

In hopes to see you or your spirit on the streets of Paris!

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Marshall Islands sues US

SUBHEAD: They suffered 67 US nuclear bomb tests. They're suing for violating 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

By Staff on 25 April 2014 for Counter Currents -
(http://www.countercurrents.org/cc250414B.htm)


Image above:  Oil painting of "The Baker Blast" by eye witness Charles Bittingert, 1946. The Baker blast produced millions of gallons of water that hung in the atmosphere, where they mixed with fission particles and became highly radioactive. From (http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/bikini/bikini6.htm).

In an unprecedented move for a peaceful, nuclear arms free-world, the Marshall Islands, a Pacific nation, has sued nine nuclear-armed powers including the US. The country has also sued the US president Barack Obama and three US secretaries.

Media reports said:

• The tiny Pacific country was used for 67 US nuclear tests after World War II over a 12-year period.
• The tiny country’s lawsuit demands that the nuclear armed powers meet their obligations toward disarmament.
• It accuses them of 'flagrant violations' of international law.

The island group-country filed suit on April 24, 2014 against each of the nine countries in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

It also filed a federal lawsuit against the United States in San Francisco, naming President Barack Obama, the departments and secretaries of defense and energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The Marshall Islands claims the nine countries are modernizing their nuclear arsenals instead of negotiating disarmament, and it estimates that they will spend $1 trillion on those arsenals over the next decade.

"I personally see it as kind of David and Goliath, except that there are no slingshots involved," David Krieger, president of the California-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, told the news agency AP. He is acting as a consultant in the case. There are hopes that other countries will join the legal effort, he said.

The countries targeted also include Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. The last four are not parties to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but the lawsuits argue they are bound by its provisions under "customary international law."

None of the countries had been informed in advance of the lawsuits.

The US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said he was unaware of the lawsuit, however "it doesn't sound relevant because we are not members of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty."

"Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons, and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities," the country's foreign minister, Tony de Brum, said in a statement announcing the lawsuits.

The country is seeking action, not compensation.

It wants the courts to require that the nine nuclear-armed states meet their obligations.

"There hasn't been a case where individual governments are saying to the nuclear states, 'You are not complying with your disarmament obligations," John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, part of the international pro bono legal team, told the AP. "This is a contentious case that could result in a binding judgment."

Several Nobel Peace Prize winners are said to support the legal action, including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Iranian-born rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi.

"We must ask why these leaders continue to break their promises and put their citizens and the world at risk of horrific devastation," Tutu said in the statement announcing the legal action.

The Marshall Islands is asking the countries to accept the International Court of Justice's jurisdiction in this case and explain their positions on the issue.

The court has seen cases on nuclear weapons before. In the 1970s, Australia and New Zealand took France to the court in an effort to stop its atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific.


Image above:  Detail of watercolor painting of "Remains of Bikini Village" by Arthur Beaumont, 1446. The Baker blast wave swept ashore and caused extensive damage to the village. From (http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/bikini/bikini6.htm).

The idea to challenge the nine nuclear-armed powers came out of a lunch meeting in late 2012 after the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation gave the Marshall Islands foreign minister a leadership award, Krieger said.

"I've known Tony long time," he said. "We both have had a strong interest for a long time in seeing action by the nuclear weapons states."

Frustration with the nuclear-armed states has grown in recent years as action toward disarmament appeared to stall, Burroughs and Krieger said.

"One thing I would point to is the US withdrawal in 2002 from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; that cast a shadow over future disarmament movement," Krieger said. The treaty originally had bound the U.S. and the Soviet Union. "One other thing, in 1995, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty had a review and was extended indefinitely. I think the nuclear states party to the treaty felt that once that happened, there was no longer pressure on them to fulfill their obligations."

In 1996, the International Court of Justice said unanimously that an obligation existed to bring the disarmament negotiations to a conclusion, Burroughs said.

Instead, "progress toward disarmament has essentially been stalemated since then," he said.

Some of the nuclear-armed countries might argue in response to these new lawsuits that they've been making progress in certain areas or that they support the start of negotiations toward disarmament, but the Marshall Islands government is likely to say, "Good, but not enough" or "Your actions belie your words," Burroughs said.

The Marshall Islands foreign minister has approached other countries about filing suit as well, Krieger said. "I think there has been some interest, but I'm not sure anybody is ready.”

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TPP - Poison for Resilience

SUBHEAD: Congress is about to vote on whether to fast-track trade agreements like the TPP; the treaty to hand sovereignty to corporations.

By Richard Heinberg on 15 January 2014 for Resilience.org -
(http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-01-15/tpp-poison-for-community-resilience)


Image above: President Obama has bean leading the effort to ram corporate written trade agreements through US Congress. From (http://economyincrisis.org/content/ready-or-not-the-battle-over-fast-track-has-commenced).

The past couple of decades of globalization have been a disaster for planetary ecosystems, indigenous peoples, and most middle-class citizens, but a gravy train for big investors, investment bankers, and managers of transnational corporations. 

This unprecedented expansion of international trade was driven by the convergence of key resources, developments, and inventions: cheap oil, satellite communications, container ships, computerized monitoring of inventories, the flourishing of multinational corporations, the proliferation of liberal trade treaties (including NAFTA), and the emergence of transnational bodies such as the World Trade Organization.

Economists said everyone would eventually benefit, but casualties quickly mounted. Inflation-adjusted wages for American workers stagnated. Manufacturing towns throughout the Northeast and Midwest withered.

Meanwhile, China began burning immense amounts of coal to make mountains of toys, furniture, clothing, tools, appliances, and consumer electronics, cloaking its cities in a pall of toxic fumes and driving its greenhouse gas emissions to world record-setting levels. In effect, the United States has been importing cheap consumer goods while exporting jobs and polluting industries. In both China and the US, levels of economic inequality have soared.

Now comes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a new trade deal among 11 nations, negotiated in secret (only corporations get to contribute to, and look at, the draft language).TPP’s environment chapter was leaked today by Wikileaks.

The point of the Treaty: to double down on globalization at precisely the moment in time when the entire enterprise is beginning to fail as a result of stubbornly high oil prices, worsening climate change impacts (floods, droughts, wildfires), debt deflation, and middle-class fears of losing even more ground.

The entire text of TPP is vast—thousands of pages—and it contains little-known provisions that would give companies sweeping powers to sue local governments or entire countries over any law a company deems an impediment to reaping maximum profits. 

For example, if a city, county, or state were to ban fracking within its jurisdiction, oil companies could overturn the ban and sue for millions of dollars in lost profits. Want to label GM foods? Sorry, that’s a barrier to trade. Want local schools to buy healthy food from local farmers? Nope, that might violate the rights of Big Ag. Want to protect a forest? Stand aside, you’re in the way of profits.

Congress is about to vote on whether to fast-track TPP. If approved, fast tracking would mean an up-or-down vote with no possibility for Representatives or Senators to reject or amend any provision within the Treaty. 

If fast track fails, the Treaty will immediately bog down in legislative limbo, so this vote effectively seals TPP’s fate. Who’s for fast track? Pro-big-business Republicans and pro-big-business Democrats. Who’s against it?

Rabid-right Republicans who want to deny President Obama any legislative achievement whatever, and pro-labor, pro-environment Democrats. The latter groups, contradictory as their interests may otherwise be, just might control enough votes to kill TPP.

For the community resilience movement, a great deal rides on this vote. TPP would grease the tracks leading to ecosystem ruin while frustrating efforts to build sustainable local economies. Educate yourself on the issue (see this fact sheet) and let your congressional representatives know what you think.

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COP19 conclusion

SUBHEAD: Although a CO2 "contribution" limit was accepted, the COP19 ends with UN admission of failure on 2ºC limit.

By Bryan Dyne on 25 November 2013 for Worls Socialist Website -
(http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/25/clim-n25.html)


Image above: Non-governmental organizations walked out of the COP19 climate talks here last Thursday. From (http://www.iwnsvg.com/2013/11/22/green-groups-walk-out-of-global-climate-summit-in-protest-video/).

During the final press conference of the 19th Conference of Parties (COP19), the latest international climate change summit, which ended on November 23 in Warsaw, a top UN official admitted that current efforts were not adequate to halt the pace of global warming.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said that the summit “does not put us on track for a two-degree world.”

“Two-degree world” has become the catch-phrase for containing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally so that average world temperatures in 2100 do not increase by more than 2° C above what they were at the beginning of the 20th century. This has been taken as the benchmark by the UNFCCC to stop catastrophic results caused by climate change from occurring. These primarily include mass droughts, more powerful hurricanes, large floods and rising ocean levels.

Figueres then posed as mutually exclusive the “two realities” of “the urgency of the science and the boundaries that science imposes on us with respect to greenhouse gas emissions with an international policy evolution process that is necessarily a gradual and progressive process.”

She was referring to the divisions between the major powers that exist over any agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a timely manner. While every country, including the US and major imperialist powers, states that global warming should be brought under control, all are determined to do it on their own terms. Major corporate interests must be appeased, including the national fossil fuel industries of both developed and developing nations.

There is an overwhelming body of scientific evidence of the ever-growing threat to the world's population caused by continued emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. During COP19, a group of scientists from the Climate Action Tracker released a report saying that if current trends continue, the likely warming will not be 2° C, but 3.7° C and possible as high as 4.6° C. That world governments cannot agree on how to resolve the climate change crisis underscores the basic inability of capitalism—based on private property and rival nation-states—to defend the natural environment necessary for life.

COP19 is the most recent in a series of international summits—Copenhagen, Cancún, Durban, and Doha, to name a few—that were called in the attempt to create a post-Kyoto Protocol climate treaty. At each instance, there has not been an agreed-upon structure for all participating countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The most that these conferences have achieved is a commitment to a new treaty by 2015 that will go into force in 2020.

As with previous summits, the divisions have occurred largely across the lines of the industrialized versus the developing countries. During the first international climate talks in 1992 and then again in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, it was established that “developed” nations would have obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions while “developing” nations would not. Since the Copenhagen summit in December 2009, the US and the European Union have staunchly refused to accept this framework, insisting that emerging economies, particularly India, China and others such as Brazil, should also be beholden to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

These tensions flared when China and India sharply rejected the phrasing of “commitments” by all parties towards greenhouse gas emissions in the penultimate draft. “Only developed countries should have commitments,” stated Chinese lead negotiator Su Wei. It was only when “commitments” was changed to “contributions” that both countries backed down.

Tensions became so overt that Poland was forced to remove Marcin Korolec, the host of the conference, from his position as environment minister. It did not help matters when Japan—the country of origin of the Kyoto Protocol—revealed that it would not be meeting its 2020 emission reduction deadline.

The second sticking point was over financial allocations to developing countries over losses and damages caused by global warming. They demanded that a new institution be formed called a “loss-and-damage mechanism” to deal with the financial impacts of weather events exacerbated by climate change. Furthermore, the developing nations wanted this body to be independent of a previously existing UN body that deals with similar issues, which was agreed upon.

While these are being hailed as victories, both proposals are largely face-saving measures. They do nothing to concretely reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This theme was taken up by a variety of environmentalist groups including Greenpeace International, the World Wildlife Fund, Oxfam International, ActionAid International, Friends of the Earth Europe and the International Trade Union Confederation. In a coordinated action, the groups walked out of the conference, accusing the participating governments of giving in to the interests of the “dirty energy lobby” and not working towards solving the “climate crisis.” They vowed to “return with the voice of the people” to put “pressure” on world governments.

The idea of putting “pressure” on governments has been taken up by environmentalist activists in the past. Their perspective is that with enough letters written and enough protests held, world leaders will finally take initiative and solve global warming.

To call this politically bankrupt and impotent is an understatement. As shown through this conference and countless others, there is a fundamental inability, in the face of inter-imperialist rivalries and the predatory exploitation of the poorer countries by the richer ones, to come to any agreement on reorganizing the world economy to head off an environmental disaster.

There are powerful financial interests at stake. According to one report issued for the Warsaw conference, just 90 corporations worldwide are responsible for two-thirds of the greenhouse gas buildup over the past 200 years that is driving global warming. These corporations—mainly giant oil and gas monopolies and coal mining companies—cling to their profit interests in the face of threats to the survival of the human race.

If the available technology that exists today is to be utilized to carry out the urgent restructuring of energy generation, transportation, industry and agriculture to halt carbon emissions, while simultaneously raising worldwide living standards, it must be done under a rationally planned world socialist society.
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