Author Archives: News Sources

Obama exposes the daylight separating American and Israeli Jews

The Jerusalem Post reports: Were Israel America’s 51st state, it is clear – at least based on various polls in Israel over the last five months – that it would be giving its hypothetical 13 electoral votes (based on the size of its population) to Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the upcoming US elections.

In other words, Israel – in American political terms – is a deep red state. Unlike the popular stereotypes of Jews, we here in Israel are Texas, Nebraska and Indiana.

What is so jarring about this is the degree to which it stands in sharp contrast to the voting trends of American Jews.

An Israel Democracy Institute/Tel Aviv University Peace Index poll released this week found that when asked “in terms of Israeli interests, who would be preferable to win the elections next month in the US,” 57.2 percent of Israeli Jews said Romney, and only 21.5% said Obama.

These findings are consistent with other findings over the last few months, including a Jerusalem Post poll in mid October that found that only 18% of Israelis believe Obama is pro- Israel, while 28% believe him to be pro-Palestinian; another Peace Index poll from August showing that 40% of Israeli Jews believe Romney assigns “more importance to defending Israel’s national interests,” compared to 19% for Obama; and a Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies poll from June showing that 29% of Israelis believe Romney would better promote Israel’s interests, as opposed to 22% for Obama.

What is clear from all those figures is that over the past four years Obama has not exactly won over the Israeli Jewish public. In other words, Israelis have not felt the love. The same, of course, cannot be said of Israel’s American Jewish brethren.

Jews, according to 2008 exit polls, voted for Obama over John McCain by a 78% to 22% margin.

And Obama’s numbers among American Jews, four years down the line, are still very high, though not as high as they were back then, something that could play a significant role in a close election.

A Gallup tracking poll from July 1 – September 10 found that Jews planned to vote for Obama over Romney by a 64% – 25% margin. And an American Jewish Committee poll in mid September put that number at 65% for Obama, 24% for Romney and 10% undecided. [Continue reading…]

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American amateurism on display in Syria

Rami G Khouri writes: A famous American coloring shampoo advertisement years ago used the effective slogan, referring to whether or not the woman in the ad dyed her hair, “Does she or doesn’t she?” The same question can be asked today about Hilary Clinton’s attitude to the Syrian opposition and the uprising to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s regime. Does she or doesn’t she truly support the uprising? To judge by her comments a few days ago that the U.S. will no longer view the Syrian National Council as the leading opposition group and instead wants to help shape a new coalition of groups to finish the job of removing Assad from power, the truth is that we really do not know the answer to that question. Now the U.S. is working with Qatar and the Arab League to hold a gathering in Doha this week to shape a new coalition of opposition groups that more credibly represents “those who are on the front lines, fighting and dying today to obtain their freedom … the Syrian National Council can no longer be viewed as the visible leader of the opposition … the opposition must include people from inside Syria and others who have a legitimate voice that needs to be heard.”

The irony of this is that the points Clinton makes are very sensible. The Syrian opposition must be led by credible people on the ground who have legitimacy and impact on the ground. The problem with her statement is that it creates a political reality that is a lose-lose situation for all concerned, because it hinders both the U.S.’s own standing in the region and the efficacy of the opposition groups it says it supports.

The U.S. seems to deal with the Syrian opposition like a consumer shopping for a car or a dress – it shops around the available markets because it is not sure of what it wants to buy, looks favorably upon one item it likes at first, and then changes its mind as it looks around to find the product that best matches its specifications. The U.S. seems to support freedom, dignity and democracy around the world in a very American-specific manner, not as a consistent or principled policy.

Three specific problems emerge from this new American attitude to the Syrian opposition. The first is about the United States itself. The U.S. appears increasingly unsure about how it wants to respond to the Syrian uprising, and having changed its mind this week it will be seen by most people as an unreliable partner that can change its mind again and again. If it wants, correctly, to support opposition groups on the ground, why did it not do this from the start? It could have engaged with the SNC and assisted other groups inside Syria through the available entry points into Syria. Or, it could simply quietly provide more assistance to other groups than the SNC, without making a public spectacle of its erratic behavior. [Continue reading…]

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The Syrian revolution becomes more Islamist

By Robin Yassin-Kassab, Pulse, November 2, 2012

Like ‘armed gangs’, armed Islamists are one of the Syrian regime’s self-fulfilling prophecies. Most grassroots organisers and fighters are secularists or moderate Islamists, but the numbers, organisational power and ideological fervor of more extreme and sectarian Islamists are steadily rising. So why is the revolution taking on an increasingly Islamist hue? Here are some points in order of importance.

First, the brute fact of extreme violence. As the saying goes, “there are no atheists in foxholes.” Not only is faith intensified by death and the threat of death, and by the pain and humiliation of torture, but tribal and sectarian identities are reinforced. We want to feel like we when in death’s presence, not like I, because I is small and easily erased. So in Syria at the moment many Sunnis are identifying more strongly as Sunnis, Alawis as Alawis, Kurds as Kurds, and so on. This is very sad and it immeasurably complicates the future task of building a civil state for all, but it is inevitable in the circumstances. The violence was started by the regime, and the regime is still by far the greatest perpetrator of violence, including aerial bombardment of villages and cities, and now the liberal use of child-killing cluster bombs.

Second, beyond patriotic feelings for Palestine and Iraq and an unarticulated sense that their government was corrupt, two years ago most men in the armed resistance were apolitical. Finding themselves having to fight, and suddenly entered onto the political stage, they search for an ideology within which to frame their exciting and terrifying new experience. At present, the most immediately available and simplest ideology on offer is Salafism. As well as for their stark message, Salafists are winning recruits because of their organisational and warfaring skills honed in Iraq and elsewhere, and because of their access to private funds from the Gulf. If this were the sixties, the revolutionaries growing beards would have had Che Guevara in mind (and if much of the ‘left’ in the world were not writing off the revolution as a NATO/Saudi/Zionist conspiracy, the left might have more traction). At present, Salafism is in the air. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the historical moment. And why were all these young men apolitical before the revolution? Why hadn’t they learned more of debate and compromise? Simply put: because politics was banned in Asad’s Syria.

Third, the perception that Alawis (and to varying extents other minorities too) are siding with the regime as it destroys the country and slaughters the masses has produced a Sunni backlash. To a large extent the perception is correct. The regime’s crucial officers, its most loyal troops, and most of the shabeeha in Homs, Hama and Latakkia are Alawis. It’s true that some prominent Alawis have joined the revolution, that Alawis were targetted by Asad’s sectarian propaganda from the start, and that Alawis have good historical reasons to fear the rule of the majority, but all this is academic to some of the men in the firing line. The situation has been made much worse by the lining up of supposedly ‘Shia’ forces in defence of the criminal regime. Iran, Iraq and Hizbullah each have their own (horribly mistaken) strategic reasons for opposing the revolution, but a fighter with no time for geostrategic analysis sees only a Shia alliance opposing his life and freedom. By their words and actions, Iran and its clients have confirmed the discourse of anti-Shia propagandists. Many Syrians who now chant threats against Hassan Nasrallah previously loved the man, and scorned those who muttered about his heresy or Iranian loyalties. Like racism, sectarian hatred is not something inherent in a society or in an individual’s heart. It is generated by propaganda and political reality. (Please someone tell this to Joshua Landis). So we have to worry about the Sunni backlash, but we also have to blame the propaganda and bad politics which catalysed the backlash.

Next, in the ears of many Syrians the phrase ‘Islamic government’ doesn’t signify ‘amputations’ or ‘women in burkas.’ Many Syrians hear the phrase as ‘just government’ or ‘clean government.’ Leftist and rightist Islamophobes made a fuss of the news that certain liberated areas of Syria have set up sharia courts, but this development isn’t necessarily as scary as it sounds. Family law was already run according to sharia in Asad’s Syria. In places where the state has collapsed, where corrupt officials have fled or been arrested, it is logical that local fighters and organisers would recruit respected clerics to practise a law which everyone understands. In rural Syria in particular sharia is more trusted than civil law, because the experience of civil law in Asad’s Syria has been an experience of grotesque corruption.

Then the regime went out of its way to kill or detain secularist or anti-sectarian activists. Secularist activists are in some ways the greatest threat to the regime, because their existence contradicts the regime’s sectarian propaganda. There are tens of thousands of disappeared, and amongst them many civil society organisers. We don’t know how many are still alive, but if and when these people leave prison their ideas will be reinjected into the revolutionary debate.

Finally, some units of the resistance that have recently grown beards and thrown a more Islamic twist on their videos are really only pretending. They are wearing Islamic clothing in the hope of attracting weapons and money from the Gulf. They are doing so out of necessity. This is what the regime’s violence has reduced the country to.

Is the increase in radical Islamism a problem? Of course it is. There is no reason to think that post-Asad Syria, once united and fed (for these will be the first tasks), will accept an undemocratic Islamism, but in the perhaps very long gap between here and there, radical Islamism poses a great threat. It makes it much more difficult to start building a civil state for all. It scares minority communities. It scares the West (which, anyway, is doing almost nothing to help). It means that at some point there will have to be a showdown between the majority of fighters who want a Syrian democracy and the small minority who want an emirate on the path to a global ‘caliphate’.

Should we refuse to support the resistance for fear of its Islamism? Absolutely not. The factors generating scary forms of Islamism are factors introduced by the criminal regime. The situation will continue to deteriorate until the regime is made inoperative.

(This article was originally posted at Pulse and appears here with the author’s permission.)

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Why seas are rising ahead of predictions: Estimates of rate of future sea-level rise may be too low

Science Daily reports: Sea levels are rising faster than expected from global warming, and University of Colorado geologist Bill Hay has a good idea why. The last official IPCC report in 2007 projected a global sea level rise between 0.2 and 0.5 meters by the year 2100. But current sea-level rise measurements meet or exceed the high end of that range and suggest a rise of one meter or more by the end of the century.

“What’s missing from the models used to forecast sea-level rise are critical feedbacks that speed everything up,” says Hay. He will be presenting some of these feedbacks in a talk on Nov. 4, at the meeting of The Geological Society of America in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

One of those feedbacks involves Arctic sea ice, another the Greenland ice cap, and another soil moisture and groundwater mining.

“There is an Arctic sea ice connection,” says Hay, despite the fact that melting sea ice — which is already in the ocean — does not itself raise sea level. Instead, it plays a role in the overall warming of the Arctic, which leads to ice losses in nearby Greenland and northern Canada. When sea ice melts, Hay explains, there is an oceanographic effect of releasing more fresh water from the Arctic, which is then replaced by inflows of brinier, warmer water from the south.

“So it’s a big heat pump that brings heat to the Arctic,” says Hay. “That’s not in any of the models.” That warmer water pushes the Arctic toward more ice-free waters, which absorb sunlight rather than reflect it back into space like sea ice does. The more open water there is, the more heat is trapped in the Arctic waters, and the warmer things can get. [Continue reading…]

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Why Europe deserves your respect: They had first word on Hurricane Sandy

Jim Galloway writes: If you’re familiar with Republican talking points, then you understand that “Europe” has become political shorthand for “socialist, debt-ridden mediocrity.”

We must now make an exception for the art of weather forecasting. How did U.S. meteorologists first learn that Hurricane Sandy would make a deadly beeline for the Jersey shore? Socialist, debt-ridden Europe told them.

Specifically, while U.S. computer models still had Hurricane Sandy dying in the deep Atlantic, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, located in the United Kingdom town of Reading, declared that Sandy was about to give the northeastern United States a devastating right hook.

European superiority is an accepted fact within the forecasting craft. Which is why – nine days ago — Marshall Shepherd pointed to the calculations coming out of Britain and told his students in Athens to keep their eyes open.

“It’s fairly well known that the European model is a bit better than our model because they use something called four-dimensional data assimilation in their weather model,” said Shepherd, a professor of geography and director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia.

We’ll offer a translation later.

For the moment, what you need to know is that, in January, Shepherd will become president of the 15,000-member American Meteorological Society. Which means that both he and Hurricane Sandy will have significant parts to play in the next chapter of the ongoing debate on the size and role of our federal government.

While Republicans would prefer to discuss Benghazi, Sandy is all but certain to dominate the final days of the presidential contest. President Barack Obama will push photos of himself touring the devastation with a well-known Republican governor of New Jersey.

Mitt Romney will continue to fend off questions about that 2011 primary debate in which he suggested a return of disaster relief duties to the states, or privatizing the process. (The Federal Emergency Management Agency is “really important,” but states are “first responders,” a Romney aide said Thursday.)

But the debate over the reach of federal government won’t disappear after next Tuesday. Rather, it will ratchet up, as Congress turns its attention toward a lame-duck session and a “fiscal cliff” of automated tax hikes and spending cuts.

“When you have a Katrina, or you have a Sandy, that’s the time to get things done in the policy world,” Shepherd said. “With Sandy, I think it’s raising the right questions about the role of government.” [Continue reading…]

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A two-state solution is the most practical route for Israel and Palestine

David Wearing writes: Obituaries for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are appearing with increasing regularity, with examples including recent pieces in the Guardian by Rachel Shabi and Ghada Karmi. Among supporters of the Palestinian national struggle, those now calling for a single bi-national state are clearly in the ascendency, but the view is not unanimous. People such as Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky continue to advocate the establishment of two states along the 1967 borders “subject to very minor and mutual adjustments”. The disagreement is over tactics and analysis, rather than politics or principle, but it is no less significant for that.

The case for a single, bi-national state is now reasonably familiar. Israel’s illegal settlements are so entrenched that uprooting them to make way for a viable Palestinian state has become impossible. We should therefore call instead for a single, democratic state in the whole of the former British Mandate for Palestine.

But the logic is incomplete. Declaring the two-state solution unrealistic does not, by itself, make self-evident the greater feasibility of one bi-national state. The latter would entail the end of Israel, and of Zionism, as we understand those terms today. Is this really a more likely scenario than the colonial infrastructure in the occupied territories being dismantled? Recent polls showing alarming levels of racism in Israeli public opinion, reflected in the new hard-right alliance between Likud and Yisrael Beitenu, suggest a polity that is not currently minded to dissolve itself under any amount of political pressure. [Continue reading…]

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Anatomy of a deal with Iran

Rajan Menon writes: The on-again, off-again musings about a deal between Washington and Tehran are on again. A deal might reconcile the most important demands of each side: Iran’s insistence that it has a legal right to an independent fuel cycle for what it insists is a nonmilitary nuclear program and the declaration of the United States that Iran must not be permitted to build nuclear weapons. The latest round of speculation follows recent press reports that the two parties have agreed to hold bilateral negotiations following the U.S. presidential elections.

Yet soon after the news broke, both sides weighed in with their own spin. The White House, while reiterating that it has always been open to direct talks, insisted that there has been no formal agreement to hold them. Was this clarification meant to ensure that the American pubic received an accurate account? Was the denial of a formal agreement, preceded as it was by what appears to have been a leak about possible talks between Tehran and Washington, meant to prevent rising expectations that could then be dashed, making the Obama administration look feckless? Or was it, given that Election Day is nigh, designed to show that the administration is making progress on a diplomatic solution but to do in a way that would provide parry charges by Mitt Romney that Obama is rushing toward talks that would allow Iran time to build nuclear arms? There is no clear answer.

Iran quickly dismissed the reports about impending one-on-one talks. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi insisted that Iran was engaged in negotiations with the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, the so-called P5+1 but that it was not conducting talks with the United States. This was a tad ambiguous: given his choice of words, Salehi did not deny that Iran had broached the idea of talks or that it had responded positively after the United States had done so.

Is Iran trying to prove that the economic sanctions and the resulting tumble in the rial’s value have not forced it to change course and deal directly with the United States in hopes of relief? Is Salehi’s denial just a tactic designed to allow Tehran to negotiate with Washington eventually but without seeming desperate in the run-up to talks? Is it meant to calm Iranian hard-liners, ever vigilant for indications that the regime is yielding to pressure? Is it a sign that, despite the power attributed to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there is no consensus within Iran’s leadership about how to cope with the pressures created by the sanctions? (The rial has lost some 40 percent of its value, Iran has lost half the revenue it gets from oil sale and ordinary Iranians are facing rising prices for basic goods.) Again, this remains unclear. [Continue reading…]

(Note – The web servers of The National Interest got knocked out by Hurricane Sandy — while they are being fixed TNI is using a WordPress backup site.)

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Mahmoud Jibril says NATO departure from Libya ‘premature’

The Libya Herald reports: The United States and NATO were premature in withdrawing from Libya and suffered their own “mission accomplished” moment when the Qaddafi regime fell last year, Mahmoud Jibril [who served as interim Prime Minister of Libya] has controversially claimed.

The National Forces Alliance chief said that the decision had risked opening up a power vacuum in Libya, which could be exploited by militant Islamists and other armed groups.

“After the collapse of the regime, the immediate task of our friends was to help us rebuild the government before they withdrew from Libya,” Jibril said on Wednesday, during a visit to the United States.

“The moment the regime fell down, they felt that their mission has been accomplished. I think it was a premature decision.”

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CIA rushed to save diplomats as Libya attack was underway

The Washington Post reports: The CIA rushed security operatives to an American diplomatic compound in Libya within 25 minutes of its coming under attack and played a more central role in the effort to fend off a night-long siege than has been acknowledged publicly, U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday.

The agency mobilized the evacuation effort, took control of an unarmed U.S. military drone to map possible escape routes, dispatched an emergency security team from Tripoli, the capital, and chartered aircraft that ultimately carried surviving American personnel to safety, U.S. officials said.

The account provided by senior U.S. intelligence officials offers the most detailed chronology yet of the Sept. 11 assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. The attack has become a flash point in the U.S. presidential campaign.

The decision to give a comprehensive account of the attack five days before the election is likely to be regarded with suspicion, particularly among Republicans who have accused the Obama administration of misleading the public by initially describing the assault as a spontaneous eruption that began as a protest of an anti-Islamic video.

U.S. officials said they decided to offer a detailed account of the CIA’s role to rebut media reports that have suggested that agency leaders delayed sending help to State Department officials seeking to fend off a heavily armed mob.

Instead, U.S. intelligence officials insisted that CIA operatives in Benghazi and Tripoli made decisions rapidly throughout the assault with no interference from Washington. [Continue reading…]

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What’s the foreign policy agenda for the next four years?

Stephen Walt writes: Is it too early to talk about the foreign policy and national security agenda that will face the next president? No matter who wins on November 6, the feature that is going to dominate U.S. national security planning over the next four years is constraint. Even if we avoid going off the sequestration cliff, there is going to be considerable pressure on the defense budget. Forget all those promises that Romney made about ramping up defense spending, expanding the Navy, etc. If he does beat Obama and has to face reality (as opposed to his Etch-a-Sketch approach to campaigning) he’ll figure out that budget math is real and unforgiving. And given the budget picture these days, that means limits.

Of course, foreign policy and national security tends to produce a lot of surprises; it’s probably the least predictable part of a president’s agenda. Remember that George W. Bush was totally blindsided by 9/11, an event that shaped almost everything he subsequently did in foreign and defense policy. Barack Obama didn’t see the Arab spring coming, yet he’s had to devote a lot of time and attention to figuring out what to do (or not to do) in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere. No list of agenda items will cover all the possible topics, and it’s a safe bet the next president will get to deal with something that hardly anybody anticipated.

That said, what do I see as some obvious items that the next president will have to address? Obviously, he’ll have to manage the withdrawal from Afghanistan, keep relations with China on an even keel, cultivate reasonable ties with Mexico and other neighbors in the western hemisphere, and hope that the Eurozone mess doesn’t get worse. But here’s my list of the items that might take up even more of his time. [Continue reading…]

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It’s global warming, stupid

Paul M. Barrett writes: Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us — and they’re right — that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.

Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.

An unscientific survey of the social networking literature on Sandy reveals an illuminating tweet (you read that correctly) from Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. On Oct. 29, Foley thumbed thusly: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”

In an Oct. 30 blog post, Mark Fischetti of Scientific American took a spin through Ph.D.-land and found more and more credentialed experts willing to shrug off the climate caveats. The broadening consensus: “Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.” Even those of us who are science-phobic can get the gist of that.

Sandy featured a scary extra twist implicating climate change. An Atlantic hurricane moving up the East Coast crashed into cold air dipping south from Canada. The collision supercharged the storm’s energy level and extended its geographical reach. Pushing that cold air south was an atmospheric pattern, known as a blocking high, above the Arctic Ocean. Climate scientists Charles Greene and Bruce Monger of Cornell University, writing earlier this year in Oceanography, provided evidence that Arctic icemelts linked to global warming contribute to the very atmospheric pattern that sent the frigid burst down across Canada and the eastern U.S..

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Bloomberg endorses Obama, citing climate change

The New York Times reports: In a surprise announcement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday that Hurricane Sandy had reshaped his thinking about the presidential campaign and that as a result he was endorsing President Obama.

Mr. Bloomberg, a political independent in his third term leading New York City, has been sharply critical of both Mr. Obama, a Democrat, and Mitt Romney, the president’s Republican rival, saying that both men have failed to candidly confront the problems afflicting the nation. But he said he had decided over the past several days that Mr. Obama was the best candidate to tackle the global climate change that the mayor believes contributed to the violent storm, which took the lives of at least 38 New Yorkers and caused billions of dollars in damage.

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of next Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Mr. Bloomberg wrote in an editorial for Bloomberg View.

“Our climate is changing,” he wrote. “And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s announcement is another indication that Hurricane Sandy has influenced the presidential campaign. The storm, and the destruction it left in its wake, has dominated news coverage, transfixing the nation and prompting the candidates to halt their campaigning briefly. [Continue reading…]

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Sandy forces climate change on U.S. election despite fossil fuel lobby

Bill McKibben writes: Here’s a sentence I wish I hadn’t written – it rolled out of my Macbook in May, part of an article for Rolling Stone that quickly went viral:

“Say something so big finally happens (a giant hurricane swamps Manhattan, a megadrought wipes out Midwest agriculture) that even the political power of the industry is inadequate to restrain legislators, who manage to regulate carbon.”

I wish I hadn’t written it because the first half gives me entirely undeserved credit for prescience: I had no idea both would, in fact, happen in the next six months. And I wish I hadn’t written it because now that my bluff’s been called, I’m doubting that even Sandy, the largest storm ever, will be enough to make our political class serious about climate change.

Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe – just maybe – the arrival of a giant wall of water in the exact middle of the financial and media capital of our home planet will be enough to get this conversation unstuck. Maybe that obscene slick of ocean spreading unnaturally into the tubes and tunnels of the greatest city on earth will shock enough people to change the debate. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, at a press conference Tuesday afternoon, allowed as how:

“There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement, that is a factual statement … Anyone who says there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think, is denying reality.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg added:

“What is clear is that the storms we’ve experienced in the last year or so around this country and around the world are much more severe than before.”

Truthfully, I think I’d just as soon see statements like that as carefully thought-out endorsements of climate science. It’s experience that changes people: the summer’s drought left more than half of American counties as federal disaster areas, and meteorologist Jeff Masters estimates Sandy hit 100 million Americans with “extreme weather”. Add in the largest forest fires in Colorado and New Mexico, the hottest month in US history, and the completely absurd summer-in-March heatwave that kicked off our year of living sweatily, and you can begin to understand why the percentage of Americans worrying about global warming has spiked sharply this year. Spiked high enough that even a few politicians are willing to speak out. [Continue reading…]

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A convenient excuse

Wen Stephenson writes: On October 2, I led a climate protest inside the offices of the Boston Globe.

OK, it was really a meeting in a small conference room with editorial page editor Peter Canellos and members of his staff. But it was, in essence, a protest.

I used to be a card-carrying member of the mainstream media; just a few years ago, I was the editor of the Globe‘s Ideas section. Peter is a former colleague.

With me was Craig Altemose, founder and executive director of Better Future Project, a Cambridge-based non-profit dedicated to climate action, on whose working board I serve as a volunteer. We were joined by two members of BFP’s advisory board: MIT’s Kerry Emanuel, one of the country’s leading climate scientists (and, until recently, a Republican); and Boston College’s Juliet Schor, a sociologist and economist who is a respected thinker on climate and the economy. Last year, Altemose was arrested protesting the Keystone XL pipeline at the White House along with another advisory board member, Bill McKibben of 350.org, and 1251 other concerned citizens.

After a quick round of introductions, I explained to my former Globe colleagues that I wasn’t there to “save the planet” or to protect some abstraction called “the environment.” I’m really not an environmentalist, and never have been. No, I said, I was there for my kids: my son, who’s 12, and my daughter, who’s 8. And not only my kids — all of our kids, everywhere. Because on our current trajectory, it’s entirely possible that we’ll no longer have a livable climate — one that allows for stable, secure societies to survive — within the lifetimes of today’s children.

And I told them that I was there, in that room, because the national conversation we’re having about this situation, this emergency, is utterly inadequate — or, really, nonexistent. And I looked Peter in the eye, and told him that I’m sorry, but that’s completely unacceptable to me. If we can’t speak honestly about this crisis — if we can’t lay it on the line — then how can we look at ourselves in the mirror?

Since I had requested the meeting, I told Peter that I hoped to frame the discussion around two points:

First: We need to see a much greater sense of urgency in the media’s coverage of climate change, including in the Globe’s editorial and opinion pages. This is more than an environmental crisis: it’s an existential threat, and it should be treated like one, without fear of sounding alarmist, rather than covered as just another special interest, something only environmentalists care about. And it should be treated as a central issue in this election, regardless of whether the candidates or the political media are talking about it.

Second: Business-as-usual, politics-as-usual, and journalism-as-usual are failing us when it comes to addressing the climate threat. If there’s to be any hope for the kind of bold action we need, a great deal of pressure must be brought from outside the system, in the form of a broad-based grassroots movement, in order to break the stranglehold of the big-money fossil fuel lobby on our politics. And in fact, there is a movement emerging on campuses and in communities across the country — especially here in New England — and the Globe should be paying attention to it.

But that wasn’t the conversation Peter was prepared to have — and we never got around to having it.

Canellos, the paper’s former Washington bureau chief, was more interested in the short-term politics of the Keystone pipeline debate, and the economic impact of natural gas expansion in Massachusetts, and what raising renewable energy standards would mean for regional jobs. Smart, sensible questions. Balanced. Analytical. Above the fray. In short, what counts as serious on the opinion pages of mainstream American newspapers.

And, it has to be said, they were questions that revealed precisely the kind of narrow, incremental, politically straitjacketed mindset that’s leading us off the climate cliff. Indeed, they were the kind of questions that make you wonder whether the speaker is even aware of the cliff we’re racing toward — or what planet we’re living on. [Continue reading…]

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Mitt Romney offers answer on his FEMA stance

The Associated Press reports: There’s nothing like a natural disaster to test the depth of politicians’ preference for small government.

And so it turns out that after superstorm Sandy battered the East Coast, Mitt Romney is far more supportive of the government agency in charge of coordinating disaster relief. Only last year, as Romney hewed to the right while battling for the GOP nomination, he seemed to downplay the federal government’s role in disaster response.

“Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction,” Romney said at a debate last June. “And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

Asked by moderator John King of CNN whether that would include disaster relief, Romney said: “We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids.”

Now, a week before Election Day, after of a massive disaster, Romney’s campaign is reassuring voters that his administration wouldn’t leave disaster victims in the lurch. The public’s attention is locked on the devastation caused by Sandy at a time when Romney and President Barack Obama are locked in a close presidential campaign. With Obama heavily involved in getting federal funds to those in trouble, the Romney campaign moved quickly to reassure the public it supports a strong program of storm relief.

“I believe that FEMA plays a key role in working with states and localities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters,” Romney said in a statement supplied by his campaign Wednesday. “As president, I will ensure FEMA has the funding it needs to fulfill its mission, while directing maximum resources to the first responders who work tirelessly to help those in need, because states and localities are in the best position to get aid to the individuals and communities affected by natural disasters.”

Wednesday’s statement came after the candidate ducked a spate of opportunities Tuesday to personally clarify his position and the statement essentially endorsed the current disaster aid system.

But what the campaign wouldn’t do is say whether a President Romney would insist that help for disaster victims be funded by cutting other programs in the federal budget, as many conservative Republicans insist. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian rebels arm Palestinians against Assad

Reuters reports: Syrian rebels said on Wednesday they had begun arming sympathetic Palestinians to fight a pro-Assad faction in a Palestinian enclave in Damascus – a move which could fuel spiraling intra-Palestinian violence.

Two rebel commanders told Reuters they expected their Palestinian allies to fight the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) which dominates the Yarmouk enclave – a one-time refugee camp turned sprawl of apartment blocks which is run by the Palestinians themselves.

“We’ve been arming Palestinians who are willing to fight…We have formed the Liwa al-Asifah (the Storm Brigade)which is made up of Palestinian fighters only,” a rebel commander from the Suqour al-Golan (Golan Falcons) brigade said.

“Its task is to be in charge of the Yarmouk camp. We all support it and back it,” he told Reuters.

Earlier, AFP reported: Fierce clashes broke out before dawn Tuesday in a major Palestinian refugee camp south of Syria’s capital, pitting rebels against troops backed by pro-regime Palestinian fighters, activists and a watchdog said.

The fresh violence came after the feast of Eid al-Adha came to a close on Monday, with 560 people, including 235 civilians, reported killed during a failed ceasefire attempt over the four-day Muslim holiday.

“Clashes broke out overnight in al-Hajar al-Aswad district between rebels and the army, spreading into the adjacent Yarmuk Palestinian camp. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command joined on the side of the army,” the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog, Rami Abdul Rahman, told AFP.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports: After a week of clashes between anti-government rebels and Kurdish militants in Syria’s Aleppo province, the two sides are observing a tenuous truce.

It is a war within a war which neither side wants.

“We want to fight the regime and instead we are fighting a new front that we don’t need or have time for,” said a fighter of the rebel Free Syria Army, warming himself over a fire on a on a mountain overlooking olive groves and stone villages.

“We should be in Aleppo fighting, instead we are camping.”

The situation exemplifies the tangle of alliances, loyalties and rivalries – local and international – complicating the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The FSA counts on the backing of Turkey, which gives it sanctuary over its border and is in the forefront of the diplomatic campaign against Assad.

The Syrian Kurdish militants are allied to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which is locked in a long struggle against the Turkish army to carve out an autonomous Kurdish region in southeast Turkey.

The Syrian Kurds have maintained their own unaligned militias and administer Kurdish areas in Aleppo province – scene of heavy fighting in the civil war. They are believed to be cutting deals with both the government and the opposition in order to maintain their autonomy.

The side conflict risks weakening the mostly-Arab rebels fighting Assad’s better-armed forces.

Dozens of rebels and Kurdish fighters of the separatist Democratic Union Party (PYD) were killed in the past week in clashes that began in Aleppo city and have now spread to the countryside, just a few kilometers away from Turkey.

On the mountain dividing rebel-held areas from Kurdish towns to the northwest of Aleppo city, heavy clashes raged for days.

“We are not against all Kurdish groups, but these PKK-linked groups are helping the regime by attacking us, we had no choice but to act,” says Mohammed Hamadeh, head of a rebel unit on the mountain.

The Associated Press reports: China on Thursday called for a phased-in cease-fire and negotiations on a gradual political transition to end the ongoing bloodshed in Syria.

A four-point proposal issued by the Foreign Ministry stopped short of calling for the ouster of President Bashar Assad and omitted mention of any measures to compel compliance. Alongside Russia, China has steadfastly blocked any outside intervention that could force Assad from power, much to the consternation of the U.S. and other countries seeking a swift end to the 19-month-old conflict, which has killed more than 35,000 people.

The proposal called on the international community to support the work of the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and other mediation efforts. Assistance should be provided to refugees, but humanitarian work should not be politicized or militarized, it said.

The ministry’s proposal was an elaboration of remarks made Wednesday by Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to Brahimi during a meeting in Beijing, and echoed China’s position since the start of the conflict, ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regularly scheduled news conference.

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