https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-conclusion-american-power/5685416
The Rise of China and the Decline of American Power
The imperialist powers have a long history of colonialism in China, of reducing its people to beggars in their own land. The British, the French, the Germans, the Americans, the Japanese, all are guilty of crimes against China that cannot be expiated or expunged from the record. Defeated finally in 1949, the colonial powers have never abandoned their ambitions to reduce China to a colony once again and are, once again, actively engaged in trying to undermine China as a sovereign nation, to slander it, to sabotage its economy, to threaten it with armed force, to break it into manageable pieces, as they want to do with Russia.
The range of attack is wide. The Canadians, on US orders, have essentially kidnapped and still hold hostage Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer of the technology company, Huawei. At the same time, the US used the arrest as a warning to others trading with Iran. They have increased their military provocations off the Chinese coast with the US and its vassal states sending naval ships, time and again, through the Taiwan Strait, claiming to be enforcing “freedom of navigation” but in reality declaring that Taiwan, a province of China, is their protectorate.
They have allowed the premier of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, to meet high level officials in the US, in violation of the avowed US One-China policy, providing recognition to her as the head of an independent nation instead of governor of a Chinese province, and have sold billions of dollars worth of military equipment to the regime in Taiwan against Chinese protests. The US even claimed that Taiwan gave their guided missile cruiser, Antietam, permission to sail through the Strait, authority Taiwan does not have, further exacerbating the situation.
Very large-scale military exercises, that appear to involve all branches of the Peoples Liberation Army, that is land, air, naval, rocket and strategic forces began on Sunday, July 28. They will last most of the week and begin one day after China’s J20 advanced stealth fighter-bombers were moved to the east coast. They are meant to convey the message to the US and to Taiwan that China will not tolerate any more interference and is prepared to take military action to solve the issue once and for all and achieve the final reunification of the country and the defeat the remnants of the reactionary regime that fled the mainland in 1949. The Chinese government has closed vast swathes of the coastal seas to marine and air traffic to carry out the exercises. The Global Times quoted an “insider” source as stating,
“The more Taiwan secessionists stir up trouble and the more foreign support Taiwan secessionists receive, the sooner the day arrives when China becomes reunified.”
The Chinese defence ministry issued a warning on July 25, the same day that the Antietam transited the Strait, a week after a Canadian destroyer and support ship did the same, and just after the completion of joint Chinese-Russian air force exercises, that any move toward Taiwan’s secession could lead to war. The on-going exercises are clearly meant to send the message that China is prepared for the worst-case scenario in defence of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
On Wednesday, July 24, China warned that it could use force against anyone who intervenes in its efforts to reunify Taiwan. Wu Qian, a spokesman for the defence ministry stated, during a briefing on the new national defence white paper, that
“If anyone dares to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will certainly fight, resolutely defending the country’s sovereign unity and territorial integrity.”
But it is worthwhile to quote the paper itself:
“To solve the Taiwan question and achieve complete reunification of the country is in the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation and essential to realizing national rejuvenation. China adheres to the principles of “peaceful reunification”, and “one country, two systems”, promotes peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, and advances peaceful reunification of the country. Meanwhile, China resolutely opposes any attempts or actions to split the country and any foreign interference to this end. China must be and will be reunited. China has the firm resolve and the ability to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will never allow the secession of any part of its territory by anyone, any organization or any political party by any means at any time. We make no promise to renounce the use of force, and reserve the option of taking all necessary measures. This is by no means targeted at our compatriots in Taiwan, but at the interference of external forces and the very small number of “Taiwan independence” separatists and their activities. The PLA will resolutely defeat anyone attempting to separate Taiwan from China and safeguard national unity at all costs. “
And,
“Though a country may become strong, bellicosity will lead to its ruin. The Chinese nation has always loved peace. Since the beginning of modern times, the Chinese people have suffered from aggressions and wars, and have learned the value of peace and the pressing need for development. Therefore, China will never inflict such sufferings on any other country. Since its founding 70 years ago, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never started any war or conflict. Since the introduction of reform and opening-up, China has been committed to promoting world peace, and has voluntarily downsized the PLA by over 4 million troops. China has grown from a poor and weak country to be the world’s second largest economy neither by receiving handouts from others nor by engaging in military expansion or colonial plunder. Instead, it has developed through its people’s hard work and its efforts to maintain peace. China has made every effort to create favorable conditions for its development through maintaining world peace, and has equally endeavored to promote world peace through its own development. China sincerely hopes that all countries will choose the path of peaceful development and jointly prevent conflicts and wars.”
And,
“The socialist system of China, the strategic decision to follow the path of peaceful development, the independent foreign policy of peace, and the best of cultural traditions, considering peace and harmony as fundamentals, determine that China will pursue a national defense policy that is defensive in nature.”
Then comes the central tenet of the new Chinese defense strategy,
“The military strategic guideline for a new era adheres to the principles of defense, self-defense and post-strike response, and adopts active defense. It keeps to the stance that “we will not attack unless we are attacked, but we will surely counterattack if attacked.”
And,
“China is always committed to a nuclear policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones unconditionally. China advocates the ultimate complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons. China does not engage in any nuclear arms race with any other country and keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security. China pursues a nuclear strategy of self-defense, the goal of which is to maintain national strategic security by deterring other countries from using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against China.”
It concludes,
“Peace is an aspiration for all peoples, and development is an eternal theme of humanity. Faced with global security challenges that are becoming ever more intricate and choices that have to be made at a crossroads of human development, China firmly believes that hegemony and expansion are doomed to failure, and security and prosperity shall be shared. China will remain committed to peaceful development and work with people of all countries to safeguard world peace and promote common development.”
Yet, the western imperialist powers continue to do the opposite. The pressure on China continues in Hong Kong with US and British backed 5th column elements taking to the streets, attacking government buildings, police, Chinese government symbols, anything they can do to create chaos, undermine order, embarrass China, and act as provocateurs to try to spread the chaos further into China. On July 30 the western stooges in Hong Kong succeeded in paralyzing the subway system, by blocking doors and harassing passengers, all applauded and supported by western leaders and media who at the same time support Macron’s repressive police tactics against protestors who do not engage in the violence and the vandalism we see in Hong Kong.
I wrote earlier on the political and financial connections between a number of the leaders of the rioters and US and UK governments, agencies and high level officials including meetings of some of them with Mike Pompeo and Paul Wolfowitz. But their orientation is apparent when they carry British flags or the old British colonial Hong Kong flag. They are the usual opportunists and traitors available in any country for the right price. But they are a serious threat and the central Chinese government and Hong Kong government have made a series of statements warning the 5th columnists that their patience is wearing very thin; that they will act in accordance with the threat they pose.
The western powers, by their aggressive actions and support of 5th column elements, their active agents, are in violation of the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter, and the long established principle of international law of non-interference in the affairs of another state. Supporting political parties that seek to overthrow a government and insurrection by them is a major breach of international law, yet the American arrogance has reached heights where it assumes the right to do so wherever it wishes, while its vassal states, from NATO to Australia to Japan, follow the American path of collective ruin in hope of catching some crumbs falling from Uncle Sam’s beard.
Reasonable people ask what can be done about the aggressive policies of the United States leadership. Russia and China talk about containment of the threat, renew calls for peaceful diplomacy, support dialogue with Iran to reduce the imminent danger of war in the Persian Gulf, with Venezuela, with respect to all the nations attacked occupied or threatened by the United States. But the Trumps and Obamas, the Bushes and Clintons of the American world, respond with all the more arrogance and fall all over themselves as to who among them is the most bellicose, the most ready to go to war to “make America great again, the most able to “support the spread of democracy,” that is, their rule over the world.
History teaches us lessons and one is that leaderships that become inflated with their own vanity, egoism, and omnipotence while regarding their own people as useful pawns, bring ruin on themselves and their nation. Napoleon thought he had the world, until Russian arms, a Russian winter, and a Czar with intelligence defeated him, a defeat that led to British troops humiliating the French by restoring the Bourbon monarchy in 1815, to Napoleon begging favours from Wellington. Hitler thought he too could conquer the world, but again, like Napoleon, his ambition was defeated by the reality of Soviet Russia, his nation destroyed, his body reduced to a pile of ashes.
When the conclusion of American power will take place no one can predict. But we can predict it will be bloody for the Americans only remember their victories and excuse their defeats. They have a morbid faith in war as a means of policy, a naïve belief in their superiority, and a contempt for other nations that is the corollary of that superiority. So the logic of the situation leads us to foresee a catastrophe, barring some miracle of diplomacy or a miraculous and fundamental change in the nature of American society, but then, I don’t believe in miracles.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Monday, August 5, 2019
SC194-9
https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2019/08/05/things-fall-apart/
Things Fall Apart
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
You’re not losing your mind, everybody else is. Things are crazy and getting crazier. Something must be done. Somebody, please do something.
If paying attention to global events overwhelms and results in a combined sense of dread, concern and bewilderment, you’re not alone. It’s not simply because humans have more access to more information than ever before that you feel this way, there does appear to be a quickening in the pace of the unfolding of humanity’s latest chapter. Things are genuinely falling apart, but things are always falling apart. Likewise, things are always being built and created. Governments come and governments go, as do global empires and monetary systems. Everything is dying and being born all at once, constantly and forever. This will not change.
That said, there are periods in history when the entire paradigm you’ve been accustomed to living under changes rather abruptly and for good. A change of this nature alters the entire game on a global basis and happens perhaps once in a lifetime. The last such shift happened during World War 2 and we’re living in the next one. How big of a change this will represent in the context of human history remains unknown, but we know it’s big. Really, really big.
The most significant challenge most of us face when confronted with such a moment is to remain focused and emotionally stable during the transition. This doesn’t suggest apathy, but it does mean staying grounded and not giving in to the constant news and pundit cycle of incensed outrage and anger about every single event that unfolds. After all, it’s important to recognize that almost everything you see in the news is a symptom of something far bigger happening in the background. Namely, that the global order most of the planet has known in the post-WW2 period is coming apart at the seams. If you don’t stay focused on the big picture, you’ll be easily and hopelessly manipulated without even knowing it.
The primary shift that’s occurring is the U.S. empire has lost its ability to dictate all terms to all countries at all times. This capacity to dictate has been enforced via a two-pronged approach for decades. The prongs are global military dominance and control of the financial system.
The first is threatened by the fact we’ve already entered a world in which it’s easier to frustrate global empire than it is to maintain it. We’ve seen this manifest in numerous places over the course of the 21st century. The war in Afghanistan is an ongoing failure despite it being the longest conflict in U.S. history, and the Iraq war (based on fake news) resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands and merely strengthened Iran’s position in the region. Meanwhile, U.S. regime change plans in Syria were thwarted despite the empire’s best efforts, and Trump’s deranged crew of neocons still can’t even get rid of Maduro in Venezuela. Deny it all you want, but the geopolitical map has fundamentally changed.
Meanwhile, the financial system itself (a tremendous source of U.S. imperial power) is also fundamentally broken. The first major failure in this regard happened back on August 15, 1971 when Richard Nixon closed the gold window. Whether you believe this was a primary contributor to many of the negative trends that emerged afterwards likely depends on your personal ideology, but it’s undeniable that shortly after this event we started to see a major ramp up in the financialization of everything as well as a stagnation in median wage growth. A global buildup of financialization and fraud-based financial products played a key role in bringing us to where we are today, and also culminated in the second major failure of the global financial system in 2008.
That was the moment when serious reform and severe consequences for the criminal perpetrators of economic collapse could’ve reset the system and brought the world back to a sustainable path, but we all know that’s not what happened. Instead, the “elites” in charge of addressing the situation decided instead to temporarily prop up a broken system while ensuring they’d be the primary beneficiaries of the specific polices that supposedly “saved the economy.” In fact, nothing was saved. A dead system was put on life support while our self-proclaimed heroic elite grabbed everything not nailed down. A stealth crime spree that is ongoing to this day.
The consequences of past actions and the imminent failure of a global paradigm that’s dominated human existence for decades can no longer be delayed. They’re coming to the fore as I write this and yet all the media and most people can focus on are the symptoms of failure. Past events lead to future events and there are in fact consequences for irresponsible actions. The various things people panic about on a daily basis are typically symptoms that can be traced back to a macro system failure, but nobody wants to talk about that. It’s too big, too daunting and seemingly impossible to fix absent collapse.
Yet outrage, anger and a cry to “do something” about symptoms of a much bigger problem will only result in an even more entrenched surveillance state going forward. Focusing on symptoms is not just short-sighted and a waste of energy, but it’s also likely to lead toward more authoritarian solutions and tendencies over time. Misdiagnosing a disease can be as deadly for a civilization as it can be for an individual.
Unfortunately, we’re misdiagnosing things all over the place as we’re incessantly bombarded with myriad things to be outraged about while lacking proper context. That context is that the global paradigm we’ve been living under for decades has failed and is now entering its death throes. Such shifts are never easy, safe or rational. I don’t expect this one to be any different.
Which brings me to the main point of this piece. It’s imperative those of us who can see the bigger picture stay as focused and as humane as possible while things fall apart. It’s possible to fight for what’s right without dehumanizing other people. We must resist all efforts by the media, pundits and even those around us to suck us into the collective insanity vortex infecting people across the political spectrum. After all, if we don’t, who will?
Things falling apart is never fun or safe; it never has been. Something else will surely replace that which is going away, and the best we can do is try to ensure the world of the future builds upon the best of what came before, while discarding the destructive and unethical. It means being honest about what’s good about the current system and what’s rotten to the core....
Things Fall Apart
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
– Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
You’re not losing your mind, everybody else is. Things are crazy and getting crazier. Something must be done. Somebody, please do something.
If paying attention to global events overwhelms and results in a combined sense of dread, concern and bewilderment, you’re not alone. It’s not simply because humans have more access to more information than ever before that you feel this way, there does appear to be a quickening in the pace of the unfolding of humanity’s latest chapter. Things are genuinely falling apart, but things are always falling apart. Likewise, things are always being built and created. Governments come and governments go, as do global empires and monetary systems. Everything is dying and being born all at once, constantly and forever. This will not change.
That said, there are periods in history when the entire paradigm you’ve been accustomed to living under changes rather abruptly and for good. A change of this nature alters the entire game on a global basis and happens perhaps once in a lifetime. The last such shift happened during World War 2 and we’re living in the next one. How big of a change this will represent in the context of human history remains unknown, but we know it’s big. Really, really big.
The most significant challenge most of us face when confronted with such a moment is to remain focused and emotionally stable during the transition. This doesn’t suggest apathy, but it does mean staying grounded and not giving in to the constant news and pundit cycle of incensed outrage and anger about every single event that unfolds. After all, it’s important to recognize that almost everything you see in the news is a symptom of something far bigger happening in the background. Namely, that the global order most of the planet has known in the post-WW2 period is coming apart at the seams. If you don’t stay focused on the big picture, you’ll be easily and hopelessly manipulated without even knowing it.
The primary shift that’s occurring is the U.S. empire has lost its ability to dictate all terms to all countries at all times. This capacity to dictate has been enforced via a two-pronged approach for decades. The prongs are global military dominance and control of the financial system.
The first is threatened by the fact we’ve already entered a world in which it’s easier to frustrate global empire than it is to maintain it. We’ve seen this manifest in numerous places over the course of the 21st century. The war in Afghanistan is an ongoing failure despite it being the longest conflict in U.S. history, and the Iraq war (based on fake news) resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands and merely strengthened Iran’s position in the region. Meanwhile, U.S. regime change plans in Syria were thwarted despite the empire’s best efforts, and Trump’s deranged crew of neocons still can’t even get rid of Maduro in Venezuela. Deny it all you want, but the geopolitical map has fundamentally changed.
Meanwhile, the financial system itself (a tremendous source of U.S. imperial power) is also fundamentally broken. The first major failure in this regard happened back on August 15, 1971 when Richard Nixon closed the gold window. Whether you believe this was a primary contributor to many of the negative trends that emerged afterwards likely depends on your personal ideology, but it’s undeniable that shortly after this event we started to see a major ramp up in the financialization of everything as well as a stagnation in median wage growth. A global buildup of financialization and fraud-based financial products played a key role in bringing us to where we are today, and also culminated in the second major failure of the global financial system in 2008.
That was the moment when serious reform and severe consequences for the criminal perpetrators of economic collapse could’ve reset the system and brought the world back to a sustainable path, but we all know that’s not what happened. Instead, the “elites” in charge of addressing the situation decided instead to temporarily prop up a broken system while ensuring they’d be the primary beneficiaries of the specific polices that supposedly “saved the economy.” In fact, nothing was saved. A dead system was put on life support while our self-proclaimed heroic elite grabbed everything not nailed down. A stealth crime spree that is ongoing to this day.
The consequences of past actions and the imminent failure of a global paradigm that’s dominated human existence for decades can no longer be delayed. They’re coming to the fore as I write this and yet all the media and most people can focus on are the symptoms of failure. Past events lead to future events and there are in fact consequences for irresponsible actions. The various things people panic about on a daily basis are typically symptoms that can be traced back to a macro system failure, but nobody wants to talk about that. It’s too big, too daunting and seemingly impossible to fix absent collapse.
Yet outrage, anger and a cry to “do something” about symptoms of a much bigger problem will only result in an even more entrenched surveillance state going forward. Focusing on symptoms is not just short-sighted and a waste of energy, but it’s also likely to lead toward more authoritarian solutions and tendencies over time. Misdiagnosing a disease can be as deadly for a civilization as it can be for an individual.
Unfortunately, we’re misdiagnosing things all over the place as we’re incessantly bombarded with myriad things to be outraged about while lacking proper context. That context is that the global paradigm we’ve been living under for decades has failed and is now entering its death throes. Such shifts are never easy, safe or rational. I don’t expect this one to be any different.
Which brings me to the main point of this piece. It’s imperative those of us who can see the bigger picture stay as focused and as humane as possible while things fall apart. It’s possible to fight for what’s right without dehumanizing other people. We must resist all efforts by the media, pundits and even those around us to suck us into the collective insanity vortex infecting people across the political spectrum. After all, if we don’t, who will?
Things falling apart is never fun or safe; it never has been. Something else will surely replace that which is going away, and the best we can do is try to ensure the world of the future builds upon the best of what came before, while discarding the destructive and unethical. It means being honest about what’s good about the current system and what’s rotten to the core....
Sunday, August 4, 2019
SC194-8
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/08/01/americas-collapse-2-in-a-series/
America’s Collapse: An Economy Based on Plunder
Capitalists have claimed responsibility for America’s past economic success. Let’s begin by setting the record straight. American success had little to do with capitalism. This is not to say that the US would have had more success with something like Soviet central planning.
Prior to 1900 when the frontier was closed, America’s success was a multi-century long success based on the plunder of a pristine environment and abundant natural resources. Individuals and companies were capitalized simply by occupying the land and using the resources present.
As the population grew and resources were depleted, the per capita resource endowment declined.
America got a second wind from World War I, which devastated European powers and permitted the emergence of the US as a budding world power. World War II finished off Europe and put economic and financial supremacy in Washington’s hands. The US dollar seized the world reserve currency role from the British pound, enabling the US to pay its bills by printing money. The world currency role of the dollar, more than nuclear weapons, has been the source of American power. Russia has equal or greater nuclear weapons power, but it is the dollar not the ruble that is the currency in which international payments are settled.
The world currency role made the US the financial hegemon. This power together with the IMF and World Bank enabled the US to plunder foreign resources the way vanishing American resources had been plundered.
We can conclude that plunder of natural resources and the ability to externalize much of the cost have been major contributors right through the present day to the success of American capitalism. Michael Hudson has described the plunder process in his many books and articles (for example, http://www.unz.com/mhudson/u-s-economic-warfare-and-likely-foreign-defenses/ ), as has John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Essentially, capitalism is a plunder mechanism that generates short-run profits by externalizing long-run costs. It exhausts natural resources, including air, land, and water, for temporary profits while imposing most of its costs, such as pollution, on the environment. An example is the destruction of the Amazon rain forest by loggers. The world loses a massive carbon sink that stabilizes the global climate, and loggers gain short-run profits that are a tiny percentage of the long-run costs.
This destructive process is amplified by the inherently short-run time perspective of capitalist activity which seldom extends beyond the next quarter.
US economic success was also a result of a strong consumer demand fed by rising real wages as technological advances in manufacturing raised the productivity of labor and consumer purchasing power. The middle class became dominant. When I was an economics student, Paul Samuelson taught us that American prosperity was based entirely on the large American consumer market and had nothing to do with foreign trade. Indeed, foreign trade was a minor factor in American GDP. America had such a large domestic consumer market that the US did not need foreign trade to enjoy economics of scale.
All of this changed with the rise of free market ideology and the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I was a student we were taught that boards of directors and corporate executives had responsibilities to their employees, their customers, their communities, and to their shareholders. These responsibilities were all equally valid and needed to be kept in balance.
In response to liberals, who tried to impose more and more “social responsibilities” on corporations, free market economists responded with the argument that, in fact, corporations only have responsibilities to their owners. Rightly or wrongly, this reactive argument is blamed on Milton Friedman. Conservative foundations set about teaching jurists and legislators that companies were only responsible to owners.
Judges were taught that ownership is specific and cannot be abridged by government imposing obligations on the investments of owners for responsibilities that do not benefit the owners. This argument was used to terminate all responsibilities except to shareholders and left profit maximization as the corporate goal.
Thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed and China and India opened their economies to foreign capital, US corporations were free to desert their work forces and home towns and use cheaper labor abroad to produce the goods and services sold to Americans. This increased their profits and, thereby, executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains at the expense of the livelihoods of their former domestic work force and tax base of their local communities and states. The external costs of the larger profits were born by their former employees and the impaired financial condition of states and localities. These costs greatly exceed the higher profits.
Generally speaking, economists assume away external costs. Their mantra is that progress fixes everything. But their measures of progress are deceptive. Ecological economists, such as Herman Daly, have raised the issue whether, considering the neglect of external costs and the inaccurate way in which GDP is measured, announced increases in GDP exceed in value the cost of producing them. It is entirely possible that GDP growth is simply an artifact of not counting all of the costs of production.
As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the long history of American capitalism fed by plunder seems to be coming to an end simultaneously with the ability of the US central bank to protect existing financial wealth by creating ever more money with which to support stock, bond, and real estate prices. The US has a long history of overthrowing reformist governments in Latin America that threatened American control over their resources. Washington’s coups against democracy and self-determination succeeded until Venezuela. Washington’s coup against Chavez was overturned by the Venezuelan people and military, and so far Washington’s attempt to overthrow Chavez’s successor, Maduro, has failed.
Washington’s attempt to overthrow the Syrian government was prevented by Russia, and most likely Russia and China will prevent Washington from overthrowing the government of Iran. In Africa the Chinese are proving to be better business partners than the exploitative American corporations. To continue feeding the empire with its heavy costs is becoming more difficult.
Washington’s policy of sanctions is making it even more difficult. To avoid the arbitrary and illegal sanctions, other countries are starting to abandon the US dollar as the currency of international transactions and arranging to settle their international accounts in their domestic currencies. China’s Silk Road encompasses Russia with much of Asia in a trade bloc independent of the Western financial system. Other countries hoping to escape US control are turning to Russia and China to achieve sovereignty from Washington. These developments will reduce the demand for dollars and impair US financial hegemony. Alternatives to the World Bank will remove areas of the world from the reach of US plunder.
As plunderable resources diminish, American capitalism, which is heavily dependent on plunder, will have one foundation of its success removed. As aggregate consumer demand collapses from the absence of growth in real income, absence of middle class jobs, and the extreme polarization of income and wealth in the US, another pillar of American capitalism disintegrates. As business investment has also collapsed, as indicated by the use of corporate profits and borrowing to repurchase the corporations’ equity, thus decapitalizing the companies, total aggregate demand itself collapses.
The absence of growth in aggregate demand will make the gap between high stock prices and dismal prospects for corporate profits too great to be bridged by the Federal Reserve flooding money into financial assets. Without the ability to prop up financial asset prices with money creation, flight from dollar-denominated assets could bring down the US dollar.
What is left will be a ruin.
America’s Collapse: An Economy Based on Plunder
Capitalists have claimed responsibility for America’s past economic success. Let’s begin by setting the record straight. American success had little to do with capitalism. This is not to say that the US would have had more success with something like Soviet central planning.
Prior to 1900 when the frontier was closed, America’s success was a multi-century long success based on the plunder of a pristine environment and abundant natural resources. Individuals and companies were capitalized simply by occupying the land and using the resources present.
As the population grew and resources were depleted, the per capita resource endowment declined.
America got a second wind from World War I, which devastated European powers and permitted the emergence of the US as a budding world power. World War II finished off Europe and put economic and financial supremacy in Washington’s hands. The US dollar seized the world reserve currency role from the British pound, enabling the US to pay its bills by printing money. The world currency role of the dollar, more than nuclear weapons, has been the source of American power. Russia has equal or greater nuclear weapons power, but it is the dollar not the ruble that is the currency in which international payments are settled.
The world currency role made the US the financial hegemon. This power together with the IMF and World Bank enabled the US to plunder foreign resources the way vanishing American resources had been plundered.
We can conclude that plunder of natural resources and the ability to externalize much of the cost have been major contributors right through the present day to the success of American capitalism. Michael Hudson has described the plunder process in his many books and articles (for example, http://www.unz.com/mhudson/u-s-economic-warfare-and-likely-foreign-defenses/ ), as has John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Essentially, capitalism is a plunder mechanism that generates short-run profits by externalizing long-run costs. It exhausts natural resources, including air, land, and water, for temporary profits while imposing most of its costs, such as pollution, on the environment. An example is the destruction of the Amazon rain forest by loggers. The world loses a massive carbon sink that stabilizes the global climate, and loggers gain short-run profits that are a tiny percentage of the long-run costs.
This destructive process is amplified by the inherently short-run time perspective of capitalist activity which seldom extends beyond the next quarter.
US economic success was also a result of a strong consumer demand fed by rising real wages as technological advances in manufacturing raised the productivity of labor and consumer purchasing power. The middle class became dominant. When I was an economics student, Paul Samuelson taught us that American prosperity was based entirely on the large American consumer market and had nothing to do with foreign trade. Indeed, foreign trade was a minor factor in American GDP. America had such a large domestic consumer market that the US did not need foreign trade to enjoy economics of scale.
All of this changed with the rise of free market ideology and the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I was a student we were taught that boards of directors and corporate executives had responsibilities to their employees, their customers, their communities, and to their shareholders. These responsibilities were all equally valid and needed to be kept in balance.
In response to liberals, who tried to impose more and more “social responsibilities” on corporations, free market economists responded with the argument that, in fact, corporations only have responsibilities to their owners. Rightly or wrongly, this reactive argument is blamed on Milton Friedman. Conservative foundations set about teaching jurists and legislators that companies were only responsible to owners.
Judges were taught that ownership is specific and cannot be abridged by government imposing obligations on the investments of owners for responsibilities that do not benefit the owners. This argument was used to terminate all responsibilities except to shareholders and left profit maximization as the corporate goal.
Thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed and China and India opened their economies to foreign capital, US corporations were free to desert their work forces and home towns and use cheaper labor abroad to produce the goods and services sold to Americans. This increased their profits and, thereby, executive bonuses and shareholder capital gains at the expense of the livelihoods of their former domestic work force and tax base of their local communities and states. The external costs of the larger profits were born by their former employees and the impaired financial condition of states and localities. These costs greatly exceed the higher profits.
Generally speaking, economists assume away external costs. Their mantra is that progress fixes everything. But their measures of progress are deceptive. Ecological economists, such as Herman Daly, have raised the issue whether, considering the neglect of external costs and the inaccurate way in which GDP is measured, announced increases in GDP exceed in value the cost of producing them. It is entirely possible that GDP growth is simply an artifact of not counting all of the costs of production.
As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the long history of American capitalism fed by plunder seems to be coming to an end simultaneously with the ability of the US central bank to protect existing financial wealth by creating ever more money with which to support stock, bond, and real estate prices. The US has a long history of overthrowing reformist governments in Latin America that threatened American control over their resources. Washington’s coups against democracy and self-determination succeeded until Venezuela. Washington’s coup against Chavez was overturned by the Venezuelan people and military, and so far Washington’s attempt to overthrow Chavez’s successor, Maduro, has failed.
Washington’s attempt to overthrow the Syrian government was prevented by Russia, and most likely Russia and China will prevent Washington from overthrowing the government of Iran. In Africa the Chinese are proving to be better business partners than the exploitative American corporations. To continue feeding the empire with its heavy costs is becoming more difficult.
Washington’s policy of sanctions is making it even more difficult. To avoid the arbitrary and illegal sanctions, other countries are starting to abandon the US dollar as the currency of international transactions and arranging to settle their international accounts in their domestic currencies. China’s Silk Road encompasses Russia with much of Asia in a trade bloc independent of the Western financial system. Other countries hoping to escape US control are turning to Russia and China to achieve sovereignty from Washington. These developments will reduce the demand for dollars and impair US financial hegemony. Alternatives to the World Bank will remove areas of the world from the reach of US plunder.
As plunderable resources diminish, American capitalism, which is heavily dependent on plunder, will have one foundation of its success removed. As aggregate consumer demand collapses from the absence of growth in real income, absence of middle class jobs, and the extreme polarization of income and wealth in the US, another pillar of American capitalism disintegrates. As business investment has also collapsed, as indicated by the use of corporate profits and borrowing to repurchase the corporations’ equity, thus decapitalizing the companies, total aggregate demand itself collapses.
The absence of growth in aggregate demand will make the gap between high stock prices and dismal prospects for corporate profits too great to be bridged by the Federal Reserve flooding money into financial assets. Without the ability to prop up financial asset prices with money creation, flight from dollar-denominated assets could bring down the US dollar.
What is left will be a ruin.
Saturday, August 3, 2019
SC194-7
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52037.htm
Tainted Meat Market
The Democratic Livestock Sales signal the start of our Presidential election root canal with its pimps and whores money scramble, evoking the pathos of a 4H sale of prize hogs and heifers. 4-H stock is pure blue ribbon, though, which can’t be said of this sad herd of pampered bipeds, bawling and bellowing through their own live auction.
What if their number were an embarrassment of riches instead of an embarrassment? What if there were a basis in the derelict Democratic Party for elevation of the most visionary, acute, and ethically, ecologically, economically rigorous and penetrating minds America could offer?
A fantasy, of course. The Parties--malformed twins joined at the wallet--are giant filtering mechanisms to identify and exclude minds of integrity and the morally courageous. They are the Praetorian Guard of Capitalist Imperialism that has abused the world with impunity for so long that it believes it’s invincible, despite its serial humiliations. That hubris--that vulgar, ugly arrogance--and the cruelty and folly that define it, is a poison always fatal to empires.
The hardening of America’s aged political arteries has had the odd result that neither political Snake Oil Wagon owns a massive tranche of the people. Odder yet, people get it.
Republicans, ever the liveried footmen of wealth, are just window dummies, performing seals cued by the decrepit Kentucky swamp turtle, shilling for the Capitalist Cancer’s owners, conning both the prosperous, and gullible hicks, that theirs is the true gospel of virtue. Finally, with Main Street dissed and dismissed by Republicans, and the hillbillies dumped on and disabused, they aren’t buying the old catechism, and instead are rallying to the Standard of No Standards, the What Me Worry Banner of The Bozo, where the pustulent sores of their closet racism, sexism and xenophobia can be flaunted openly as MAGA badges.
Democrats? A clique run by a brittle, doddering Crone and Geezer Politburo mired in mendacity, paralyzed in a retro Cold War brainfreeze, smelling of yesteryear, of betrayals and cowardice and moral failure, like the cowboy in the song,“...always in search of, and one step in back of, himself and his slow-moving dreams”. In deep thrall to Big Money, they stand foursquare for the few who own it all, and are horrified by rising demands of the young, sharp and vital who might be theirs if they offered anything but visionless stasis, baseless, perilous hatred of Russia, and endless money for the War Machine that will destroy us.
And the answer..? Don’t look for it, as Saint George of Carlin told us. Ain’t gonna be one. Vote, if you like; do a citizen’s paramount duty, if it you pleaseth. But don’t hold your breath for hope and change. Don’t chant yes, we can, again. And never fool yourself that we did it before and we can do it again, because we’ve never done this before. Never. Greenland lost 10 billion tons of ice yesterday. We’re in uncharted waters. Here be dragons.
Tainted Meat Market
The Democratic Livestock Sales signal the start of our Presidential election root canal with its pimps and whores money scramble, evoking the pathos of a 4H sale of prize hogs and heifers. 4-H stock is pure blue ribbon, though, which can’t be said of this sad herd of pampered bipeds, bawling and bellowing through their own live auction.
What if their number were an embarrassment of riches instead of an embarrassment? What if there were a basis in the derelict Democratic Party for elevation of the most visionary, acute, and ethically, ecologically, economically rigorous and penetrating minds America could offer?
A fantasy, of course. The Parties--malformed twins joined at the wallet--are giant filtering mechanisms to identify and exclude minds of integrity and the morally courageous. They are the Praetorian Guard of Capitalist Imperialism that has abused the world with impunity for so long that it believes it’s invincible, despite its serial humiliations. That hubris--that vulgar, ugly arrogance--and the cruelty and folly that define it, is a poison always fatal to empires.
The hardening of America’s aged political arteries has had the odd result that neither political Snake Oil Wagon owns a massive tranche of the people. Odder yet, people get it.
Republicans, ever the liveried footmen of wealth, are just window dummies, performing seals cued by the decrepit Kentucky swamp turtle, shilling for the Capitalist Cancer’s owners, conning both the prosperous, and gullible hicks, that theirs is the true gospel of virtue. Finally, with Main Street dissed and dismissed by Republicans, and the hillbillies dumped on and disabused, they aren’t buying the old catechism, and instead are rallying to the Standard of No Standards, the What Me Worry Banner of The Bozo, where the pustulent sores of their closet racism, sexism and xenophobia can be flaunted openly as MAGA badges.
Democrats? A clique run by a brittle, doddering Crone and Geezer Politburo mired in mendacity, paralyzed in a retro Cold War brainfreeze, smelling of yesteryear, of betrayals and cowardice and moral failure, like the cowboy in the song,“...always in search of, and one step in back of, himself and his slow-moving dreams”. In deep thrall to Big Money, they stand foursquare for the few who own it all, and are horrified by rising demands of the young, sharp and vital who might be theirs if they offered anything but visionless stasis, baseless, perilous hatred of Russia, and endless money for the War Machine that will destroy us.
And the answer..? Don’t look for it, as Saint George of Carlin told us. Ain’t gonna be one. Vote, if you like; do a citizen’s paramount duty, if it you pleaseth. But don’t hold your breath for hope and change. Don’t chant yes, we can, again. And never fool yourself that we did it before and we can do it again, because we’ve never done this before. Never. Greenland lost 10 billion tons of ice yesterday. We’re in uncharted waters. Here be dragons.
SC194-6
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51947.htm
Hubris Before the Fall
Hubris is usually a forewarning of impending calamity. Extreme arrogance blinds the hubristic person to the limits of their power. So, blindly, they push on with reckless excess, leading to potentially disastrous results.
The US and Britain are exemplars of this kind of mad hubris in the present mounting tensions with Iran.
After Iran seized a British cargo ship this week in the Persian Gulf, Britain’s foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt condemned the Iranian action as “unacceptable” and warned that Tehran is “choosing a dangerous path”.
American President Donald Trump also rebuked Iran. “We have the greatest ships – the most deadly ships, we don’t want to have to use them,” he said to reporters Friday at the White House. “We hope for their [Iran’s] sake they don’t do anything foolish. If they do, they will pay a price like nobody’s ever paid.”
Britain is claiming that Iran’s impounding of a British-operated ship is unlawful and violates “freedom of navigation”. Iran said it seized the vessel after it collided with an Iranian fishing boat and disobeyed safety regulations for passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz.
Whatever the exact circumstance are, London has very little legal or moral authority to remonstrate with Iran. Tehran says it is carrying out an investigation into the alleged infringement by the British ship. Iran has the sovereign right to do so.
As for the official British reaction, it smacks of downright hypocrisy. An Iranian oil tanker is currently detained in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar after Royal Marines boarded the vessel on July 4 and took it into custody over claims it was transporting oil to Syria – allegedly in breach of European Union sanctions on Damascus.
Iran slammed that British seizure as “piracy” and disputes the legality of Britain’s motives. There are good grounds to believe that Britain’s actions were conducted in league with Washington to deliberately aggravate Iran.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the British apply “laws” on alleged shipping transgressions by Iran, then Tehran has every right to do likewise on suspected British ships in or near its territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
The arrogance of Britain and the US is astounding. Hypocrisy and double standards are tumbling over themselves.
Washington and London’s accusations that Iran is “escalating” tensions are an absurd inversion of reality. Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif just this week requested the US to enter negotiations to resolve the stand-off – if Trump reciprocated by lifting harsh sanctions off Iran. You can’t get fairer than that.
Let’s recall the bigger picture. The dangerous situation has been created by Washington’s reprehensible tearing up last year of the international nuclear accord with Iran. Then in April, Trump reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran driving the Iranian economy into even further turmoil. Such economic warfare is illegal under international law. It’s “economic terrorism”, as Iranian-American writer Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich aptly puts it.
In May, the Trump administration shifted gear and embarked on a policy of what can only be called military aggression by sending warships and B-52 nuclear-capable bombers to the Persian Gulf, purportedly to “defend” against alleged – though unsubstantiated – Iranian security threats.
For the past two months there have been a series of sabotage incidents against commercial shipping which the US has blamed on Iran. Iran denies any involvement and has instead speculated that the incidents are being orchestrated by malign forces to incriminate Tehran.
The seizure of the Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar earlier this month by British commandoes fits into the same pattern of deliberate provocation.
So when Britain’s Jeremy Hunt gets on his high horse of legal probity and righteousness, the hubris is way too much to stomach.
Washington and London have said in public that they don’t want a war with Iran. But all other signs suggest that war is something they are prepared to wage. Maybe they expect that the display of military power and bragging about it will be enough to make Iran cower and beg for mercy. That, in short, is state terrorism.
But Iran is nobody’s fool nor play thing, as its leaders have time and again warned. Tehran says that the US and Britain may start a war, but it will be Iran that “finishes it”.
There is no doubt Iran’s military defenses are formidable and its missiles could dispatch American and British warships to a watery grave.
Then we are in extremely red-alert geopolitical territory where military conflict could explode into a regional war and even world war. With the Americans and their British bulldog getting a bloody nose, the truly worrying thing is that their extreme arrogance will tempt them to salvage their disaster with the unthinkable – nuclear weapons.
Hubris before the fall could be a fall involving just the corrupt American and British rogue regimes. But awful to contemplate is the fall might also include vast numbers of innocent people, or even the planet as we know it.
One things seems irrefutable, however. The American and British criminal bullying towards Iran and the rest of the world has to stop. The world can no longer afford to tolerate their extreme lawlessness.
Hubris Before the Fall
Hubris is usually a forewarning of impending calamity. Extreme arrogance blinds the hubristic person to the limits of their power. So, blindly, they push on with reckless excess, leading to potentially disastrous results.
The US and Britain are exemplars of this kind of mad hubris in the present mounting tensions with Iran.
After Iran seized a British cargo ship this week in the Persian Gulf, Britain’s foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt condemned the Iranian action as “unacceptable” and warned that Tehran is “choosing a dangerous path”.
American President Donald Trump also rebuked Iran. “We have the greatest ships – the most deadly ships, we don’t want to have to use them,” he said to reporters Friday at the White House. “We hope for their [Iran’s] sake they don’t do anything foolish. If they do, they will pay a price like nobody’s ever paid.”
Britain is claiming that Iran’s impounding of a British-operated ship is unlawful and violates “freedom of navigation”. Iran said it seized the vessel after it collided with an Iranian fishing boat and disobeyed safety regulations for passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz.
Whatever the exact circumstance are, London has very little legal or moral authority to remonstrate with Iran. Tehran says it is carrying out an investigation into the alleged infringement by the British ship. Iran has the sovereign right to do so.
As for the official British reaction, it smacks of downright hypocrisy. An Iranian oil tanker is currently detained in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar after Royal Marines boarded the vessel on July 4 and took it into custody over claims it was transporting oil to Syria – allegedly in breach of European Union sanctions on Damascus.
Iran slammed that British seizure as “piracy” and disputes the legality of Britain’s motives. There are good grounds to believe that Britain’s actions were conducted in league with Washington to deliberately aggravate Iran.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the British apply “laws” on alleged shipping transgressions by Iran, then Tehran has every right to do likewise on suspected British ships in or near its territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
The arrogance of Britain and the US is astounding. Hypocrisy and double standards are tumbling over themselves.
Washington and London’s accusations that Iran is “escalating” tensions are an absurd inversion of reality. Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif just this week requested the US to enter negotiations to resolve the stand-off – if Trump reciprocated by lifting harsh sanctions off Iran. You can’t get fairer than that.
Let’s recall the bigger picture. The dangerous situation has been created by Washington’s reprehensible tearing up last year of the international nuclear accord with Iran. Then in April, Trump reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran driving the Iranian economy into even further turmoil. Such economic warfare is illegal under international law. It’s “economic terrorism”, as Iranian-American writer Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich aptly puts it.
In May, the Trump administration shifted gear and embarked on a policy of what can only be called military aggression by sending warships and B-52 nuclear-capable bombers to the Persian Gulf, purportedly to “defend” against alleged – though unsubstantiated – Iranian security threats.
For the past two months there have been a series of sabotage incidents against commercial shipping which the US has blamed on Iran. Iran denies any involvement and has instead speculated that the incidents are being orchestrated by malign forces to incriminate Tehran.
The seizure of the Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar earlier this month by British commandoes fits into the same pattern of deliberate provocation.
So when Britain’s Jeremy Hunt gets on his high horse of legal probity and righteousness, the hubris is way too much to stomach.
Washington and London have said in public that they don’t want a war with Iran. But all other signs suggest that war is something they are prepared to wage. Maybe they expect that the display of military power and bragging about it will be enough to make Iran cower and beg for mercy. That, in short, is state terrorism.
But Iran is nobody’s fool nor play thing, as its leaders have time and again warned. Tehran says that the US and Britain may start a war, but it will be Iran that “finishes it”.
There is no doubt Iran’s military defenses are formidable and its missiles could dispatch American and British warships to a watery grave.
Then we are in extremely red-alert geopolitical territory where military conflict could explode into a regional war and even world war. With the Americans and their British bulldog getting a bloody nose, the truly worrying thing is that their extreme arrogance will tempt them to salvage their disaster with the unthinkable – nuclear weapons.
Hubris before the fall could be a fall involving just the corrupt American and British rogue regimes. But awful to contemplate is the fall might also include vast numbers of innocent people, or even the planet as we know it.
One things seems irrefutable, however. The American and British criminal bullying towards Iran and the rest of the world has to stop. The world can no longer afford to tolerate their extreme lawlessness.
Friday, August 2, 2019
SC194-5
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greenland-ice-sheet-melt-865803/
Greenland Is Melting Away Before Our Eyes
“I have my fingers crossed for it not being washed away”
Amid an ongoing heat wave, new data show the Greenland ice sheet is in the middle of its biggest melt season in recorded history. It’s the latest worrying signal climate change is accelerating far beyond the worst fears of even climate scientists.
The record-setting heat wave that sweltered northern Europe last week has moved north over the critically vulnerable Greenland ice sheet, triggering temperatures this week that are as much as 25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal.
Weather models indicate Tuesday’s temperature may have surpassed 75 degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of Greenland, and a weather balloon launched near the capital Nuuk measured all-time record warmth just above the surface. That heat wave is still intensifying, and is expected to peak on Thursday with the biggest single-day melt ever recorded in Greenland. On August 1 alone, more than 12 billion tons of water will permanently melt away from the ice sheet and find its way down to the ocean, irreversibly raising sea levels globally.
A tweet from the Danish Meteorological Institute, the official weather service of Greenland, said “almost all the ice sheet, including Summit” measurably melted on Tuesday. According to a preliminary estimate, that melt covered 87 percent of the ice sheet’s surface, which would be the second-biggest melt day in Greenland’s recorded history. Separate weather monitoring equipment at Summit Camp at the top of the 10,000-foot-thick Greenland ice sheet confirmed the temperature briefly reached the melting point.
Downhill, meltwater was seen dramatically streaming off the edge of the ice sheet in massive waterfalls. Climate scientist Irina Overeem, who placed a meltwater monitoring station in western Greenland eight years ago, recorded a dramatic video of a rushing torrent of water. In a comment posted on Twitter, she said “I have my fingers crossed for it not being washed away.” In an email to Rolling Stone, Overeem described the nature of life in Greenland these days: After recording that video, she spotted a warning of the major glacial water runoff on the announcement board of the main supermarket in the capital city. A similar glacial flood in 2012 was so intense it washed away bridge.
Ice core records show melt days like these have happened only a handful of times in the past 1,000 years. But, with the advent of human-caused climate change, the chances of these full-scale melt events happening are sharply increasing.
Even just a few decades ago, an event like this would have been unthinkable. Now, island-wide meltdown days like this are becoming increasingly routine. The ongoing melt event is the second time in seven years that virtually the entire ice sheet simultaneously experienced at least some melt. The last was in July 2012, where 97 percent of the ice sheet simultaneously melted.
In the 1980s, wintertime snows in Greenland roughly balanced summertime melt from the ice sheet, and the conventional wisdom among scientists was that it might take thousands of years for the ice to completely melt under pressure from global warming.
That’s all changed now.
With a decade or two of hindsight, scientists now believe Greenland passed an important tipping point around 2003, and since then its melt rate has more than quadrupled.
This week alone, Greenland will lose about 50 billion tons of ice, enough for a permanent rise in global sea levels by about 0.1mm. So far in July, the Greenland ice sheet has lost 160 billion tons of ice — enough to cover Florida in about six feet of water. According to IPCC estimates, that’s roughly the level of melt a typical summer will have in 2050 under the worst-case warming scenario if we don’t take meaningful action to address climate change. Under that same scenario, this week’s brutal, deadly heat wave would be normal weather in the 2070s.
Xavier Fettweis, a polar scientist at the University of Liège in Belgium who tracks meltwater on the Greenland ice sheet, told Rolling Stone in an email that the recent acceleration of these melt events means the IPCC scenarios “clearly underestimate what we currently observe over the Greenland ice sheet” and should revisit their projections for the future.
“This melt event is a good alarm signal that we urgently need change our way of
living,” said Fettweis. “It is more and more likely that the IPCC projections are too optimistic in the Arctic.” Altogether, the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 24 feet.
This isn’t happening in isolation: This summer has been horrific all across the Arctic.
Unusual wildfires across Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska, and Greenland have been raging all summer, and by one estimate released about 50 million tons of carbon dioxide in the month of June alone — equivalent to the annual emissions of Sweden. In Switzerland, some glaciers melted so rapidly during last week’s heatwave that they sent swirling mudflows racing downhill. In the Arctic Ocean, sea ice is at a record-low extent as the melt season continues to lengthen. In Alaska, ecosystems are rapidly changing, especially in the Bering Sea region where this year’s ice-free season began in February....
Greenland Is Melting Away Before Our Eyes
“I have my fingers crossed for it not being washed away”
Amid an ongoing heat wave, new data show the Greenland ice sheet is in the middle of its biggest melt season in recorded history. It’s the latest worrying signal climate change is accelerating far beyond the worst fears of even climate scientists.
The record-setting heat wave that sweltered northern Europe last week has moved north over the critically vulnerable Greenland ice sheet, triggering temperatures this week that are as much as 25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal.
Weather models indicate Tuesday’s temperature may have surpassed 75 degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of Greenland, and a weather balloon launched near the capital Nuuk measured all-time record warmth just above the surface. That heat wave is still intensifying, and is expected to peak on Thursday with the biggest single-day melt ever recorded in Greenland. On August 1 alone, more than 12 billion tons of water will permanently melt away from the ice sheet and find its way down to the ocean, irreversibly raising sea levels globally.
A tweet from the Danish Meteorological Institute, the official weather service of Greenland, said “almost all the ice sheet, including Summit” measurably melted on Tuesday. According to a preliminary estimate, that melt covered 87 percent of the ice sheet’s surface, which would be the second-biggest melt day in Greenland’s recorded history. Separate weather monitoring equipment at Summit Camp at the top of the 10,000-foot-thick Greenland ice sheet confirmed the temperature briefly reached the melting point.
Downhill, meltwater was seen dramatically streaming off the edge of the ice sheet in massive waterfalls. Climate scientist Irina Overeem, who placed a meltwater monitoring station in western Greenland eight years ago, recorded a dramatic video of a rushing torrent of water. In a comment posted on Twitter, she said “I have my fingers crossed for it not being washed away.” In an email to Rolling Stone, Overeem described the nature of life in Greenland these days: After recording that video, she spotted a warning of the major glacial water runoff on the announcement board of the main supermarket in the capital city. A similar glacial flood in 2012 was so intense it washed away bridge.
Ice core records show melt days like these have happened only a handful of times in the past 1,000 years. But, with the advent of human-caused climate change, the chances of these full-scale melt events happening are sharply increasing.
Even just a few decades ago, an event like this would have been unthinkable. Now, island-wide meltdown days like this are becoming increasingly routine. The ongoing melt event is the second time in seven years that virtually the entire ice sheet simultaneously experienced at least some melt. The last was in July 2012, where 97 percent of the ice sheet simultaneously melted.
In the 1980s, wintertime snows in Greenland roughly balanced summertime melt from the ice sheet, and the conventional wisdom among scientists was that it might take thousands of years for the ice to completely melt under pressure from global warming.
That’s all changed now.
With a decade or two of hindsight, scientists now believe Greenland passed an important tipping point around 2003, and since then its melt rate has more than quadrupled.
This week alone, Greenland will lose about 50 billion tons of ice, enough for a permanent rise in global sea levels by about 0.1mm. So far in July, the Greenland ice sheet has lost 160 billion tons of ice — enough to cover Florida in about six feet of water. According to IPCC estimates, that’s roughly the level of melt a typical summer will have in 2050 under the worst-case warming scenario if we don’t take meaningful action to address climate change. Under that same scenario, this week’s brutal, deadly heat wave would be normal weather in the 2070s.
Xavier Fettweis, a polar scientist at the University of Liège in Belgium who tracks meltwater on the Greenland ice sheet, told Rolling Stone in an email that the recent acceleration of these melt events means the IPCC scenarios “clearly underestimate what we currently observe over the Greenland ice sheet” and should revisit their projections for the future.
“This melt event is a good alarm signal that we urgently need change our way of
living,” said Fettweis. “It is more and more likely that the IPCC projections are too optimistic in the Arctic.” Altogether, the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 24 feet.
This isn’t happening in isolation: This summer has been horrific all across the Arctic.
Unusual wildfires across Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska, and Greenland have been raging all summer, and by one estimate released about 50 million tons of carbon dioxide in the month of June alone — equivalent to the annual emissions of Sweden. In Switzerland, some glaciers melted so rapidly during last week’s heatwave that they sent swirling mudflows racing downhill. In the Arctic Ocean, sea ice is at a record-low extent as the melt season continues to lengthen. In Alaska, ecosystems are rapidly changing, especially in the Bering Sea region where this year’s ice-free season began in February....
Thursday, August 1, 2019
SC194-4
https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-replaces-director-of-national-intelligence-dan-coats-with-right-wing-extremist-rep-john-ratcliffe/5685178
Trump Replaces Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats with Right Wing Extremist Rep. John Ratcliffe
Most often when White House officials step down, they were sacked, usually allowed to submit a resignation letter — likely the fate of former senator/Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats.
His departure is effective on August 15, right-wing extremist Rep. John Ratcliffe replacing him. More on him below.
***
Coats and Trump reportedly clashed over key national security issues, notably on Iran, North Korea, and Russia — including about Trump believing no Kremlin US election meddling occurred.
Indeed not, but the Big Lie persists anyway, pushed by virtually everyone in Washington and the entire establishment fourth estate.
The DNI is a White House cabinet position, the appointee overseeing (not running) 17 agencies making up the US intelligence community, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, and DHS intelligence.
Much of it has open-checkbook funding, no budgetary constraints, the annual amount likely exceeding $100 billion.
The total amount is classified, especially for the CIA, NSA, and DOD. A reported 2015 $66.8 billion total way understated reality.
Former DNI head James Clapper once said the following:
“Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities and sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats.”
The CIA poses the most ominous threat, former agency consultant/the late Chalmers Johnson once saying:
We’ll “never again know peace, nor in all probability survive very long as a nation, unless we abolish” the agency.
Originally it had five missions. Four involved collection, coordination and dissemination of intelligence.
The fifth is vague, letting operatives perform other missions. They include toppling sovereign independent governments, assassinating foreign leaders and key officials, propping up friendly dictators, involvement in global torture prisons, along with operating drone command centers worldwide together with or separately from the Pentagon.
Operating extrajudicially, the CIA produces fake intelligence to justify policy.
Including defense budgets, known national security state spending likely way exceeds $1.5 trillion annually — a black hole of waste, fraud and abuse. Last year, the Pentagon couldn’t account for $21 trillion: repeat $21 trillion, an unfathomable amount.
Yet the US hasn’t had an enemy since WW II ended. They’re invented to perpetuate the national security state — at the expense of vital homeland needs, the rule of law, and social justice, fast eroding, heading for eventual elimination to maintain a permanent state of war on humanity.
Following the July 2018 Putin/Trump Helsinki summit, Coats said the following:
“We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy (sic), and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.”
The above claim has no evidence backing it because none exists. House, Senate, and Mueller probes found nothing. The Big Lie persists through official and media supported repetition.
In mid-August, right-wing extremist/staunch Trump supporter John Ratcliffe will take over as DNI.
The former Bush/Cheney appointed Eastern District of Texas attorney general then served as congressional representative for the state’s 4th district since January 2015.
Coats was hostile toward Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other sovereign independent nations the US doesn’t control.
As DNI head, Ratcliffe may exceed his extremism. In 2016, the hard-right Heritage Foundation called him the most conservative Texas congressman, second most right-wing one in the House.
His intelligence background is scant, on January 30, 2019, appointed to serve on the House Intelligence Committee.
He also serves as minority ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
Along with the US intelligence community, DHS serves as enforcer of privileged interests at the expense of the public welfare and rule of law.
It was established at a time of post-9/11 hysteria, granting unchecked powers to the executive, creating grave threats to civil liberties at the same time.
The Bush/Cheney launched war OF on terrorism, not on it, was and continues to wage endless wars on invented enemies, including at home against invented threats — what police state rule is all about.
In his capacity as DNI, Ratcliffe, like his predecessors, will serve the interests of the national security state — what poses the gravest threat to world peace and stability.
The US needs enemies to unjustifiably justify its belligerent agenda. None exist so they’re invented to pursue Washington’s imperial agenda.
The GOP-controlled Senate will likely confirm Ratcliffe to succeed Coats. He’ll serve security state interests — hostile to everyone everywhere.
Trump Replaces Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats with Right Wing Extremist Rep. John Ratcliffe
Most often when White House officials step down, they were sacked, usually allowed to submit a resignation letter — likely the fate of former senator/Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats.
His departure is effective on August 15, right-wing extremist Rep. John Ratcliffe replacing him. More on him below.
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Coats and Trump reportedly clashed over key national security issues, notably on Iran, North Korea, and Russia — including about Trump believing no Kremlin US election meddling occurred.
Indeed not, but the Big Lie persists anyway, pushed by virtually everyone in Washington and the entire establishment fourth estate.
The DNI is a White House cabinet position, the appointee overseeing (not running) 17 agencies making up the US intelligence community, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, and DHS intelligence.
Much of it has open-checkbook funding, no budgetary constraints, the annual amount likely exceeding $100 billion.
The total amount is classified, especially for the CIA, NSA, and DOD. A reported 2015 $66.8 billion total way understated reality.
Former DNI head James Clapper once said the following:
“Our budgets are classified as they could provide insight for foreign intelligence services to discern our top national priorities, capabilities and sources and methods that allow us to obtain information to counter threats.”
The CIA poses the most ominous threat, former agency consultant/the late Chalmers Johnson once saying:
We’ll “never again know peace, nor in all probability survive very long as a nation, unless we abolish” the agency.
Originally it had five missions. Four involved collection, coordination and dissemination of intelligence.
The fifth is vague, letting operatives perform other missions. They include toppling sovereign independent governments, assassinating foreign leaders and key officials, propping up friendly dictators, involvement in global torture prisons, along with operating drone command centers worldwide together with or separately from the Pentagon.
Operating extrajudicially, the CIA produces fake intelligence to justify policy.
Including defense budgets, known national security state spending likely way exceeds $1.5 trillion annually — a black hole of waste, fraud and abuse. Last year, the Pentagon couldn’t account for $21 trillion: repeat $21 trillion, an unfathomable amount.
Yet the US hasn’t had an enemy since WW II ended. They’re invented to perpetuate the national security state — at the expense of vital homeland needs, the rule of law, and social justice, fast eroding, heading for eventual elimination to maintain a permanent state of war on humanity.
Following the July 2018 Putin/Trump Helsinki summit, Coats said the following:
“We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy (sic), and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.”
The above claim has no evidence backing it because none exists. House, Senate, and Mueller probes found nothing. The Big Lie persists through official and media supported repetition.
In mid-August, right-wing extremist/staunch Trump supporter John Ratcliffe will take over as DNI.
The former Bush/Cheney appointed Eastern District of Texas attorney general then served as congressional representative for the state’s 4th district since January 2015.
Coats was hostile toward Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other sovereign independent nations the US doesn’t control.
As DNI head, Ratcliffe may exceed his extremism. In 2016, the hard-right Heritage Foundation called him the most conservative Texas congressman, second most right-wing one in the House.
His intelligence background is scant, on January 30, 2019, appointed to serve on the House Intelligence Committee.
He also serves as minority ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
Along with the US intelligence community, DHS serves as enforcer of privileged interests at the expense of the public welfare and rule of law.
It was established at a time of post-9/11 hysteria, granting unchecked powers to the executive, creating grave threats to civil liberties at the same time.
The Bush/Cheney launched war OF on terrorism, not on it, was and continues to wage endless wars on invented enemies, including at home against invented threats — what police state rule is all about.
In his capacity as DNI, Ratcliffe, like his predecessors, will serve the interests of the national security state — what poses the gravest threat to world peace and stability.
The US needs enemies to unjustifiably justify its belligerent agenda. None exist so they’re invented to pursue Washington’s imperial agenda.
The GOP-controlled Senate will likely confirm Ratcliffe to succeed Coats. He’ll serve security state interests — hostile to everyone everywhere.
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