Category Archives: Issues

Russia lays claim to vast areas of Arctic seabed

The Guardian reports: Russia has submitted a bid to the UN claiming vast territories in the Arctic, the country’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry said in a statement that Russia is claiming 1.2m sq km (over 463,000 sq miles) of sea shelf extending more than 350 nautical miles (about 650km) from the shore.

Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway have all been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the planet’s undiscovered oil and gas. Rivalry for resources has intensified as shrinking polar ice is opening up new exploration opportunities.

Russia was the first to submit a claim in 2002, but the UN sent it back for lack of evidence. [Continue reading…]

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World’s glacier melt speeding up

Stuff reports: The world’s glaciers are melting at the fastest rate since record-keeping began and those keeping track say the trend will continue with climate change.

A study published in the Journal of Glaciology on Tuesday combined data from hundreds of glaciers worldwide to show the global trend is one of retreat.

The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), led by the University of Zurich, gathers glacier data from more than 30 countries. The new analysis shows the rate of retreat between 2001 and 2010 was greater than any decade last century. [Continue reading…]

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Experts slam New York Times for ‘gullible’ puff piece on ‘amazing’ Kochs

Joe Romm writes: The New York Times published a fawning front-page profile of the Koch brothers last Friday. The article never mentions their efforts to secure unfettered fossil fuel consumption, which would destroy humanity’s livable climate. It was quickly criticized by leading experts as “poor journalism” and “gullible.”

The Times wants you to believe that the Kochs are “very private” but “brave,” that they are “sensitive to criticism,” and that “Charles [Koch] obviously is a classical liberal, who believes in the Bill of Rights.” What’s next for the Times — rehabbing the misunderstand Bernie Madoff?

This 1300-word piece never once mentions the Koch’s insidious efforts to fund climate science denial, block all climate action, and roll back clean energy standards at a state level. The Koch’s belief in the First Amendment extends to being the leading funder in the world of efforts to spread disinformation, smear and harass climate scientists, and generally destroy any honest national discussion of how to spare Americans and billions of people worldwide needless misery for centuries to come. Any classical liberal would do the same. [Continue reading…]

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California is ahead of the game as Obama releases Clean Power Plan

The Los Angeles Times reports: President Obama’s plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants over the next 15 years will force states to address climate change by pushing them to act more like California.

The Clean Power Plan announced Monday poses significant challenges for states that rely on coal-fired power plants for much of their electricity, but complying with the rules will be a breeze for California. That’s because the state has practically eliminated coal from its energy portfolio and leads the nation with the toughest regulations to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet.

California officials said Monday that their existing climate change programs put the state on course to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon-dioxide emissions target years ahead of schedule. [Continue reading…]

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The U.S. uses more electricity for air conditioning than Africa uses for everything

Ana Swanson writes: Some people take frequent breaks outside. Others bring in a sweater, a scarf or an “office blanket.” Some block air vents with cardboard, or quietly switch on space heaters under their desks. If you’ve ever sat shivering in your office in the dead of summer, you too may be a victim of excessive air conditioning.

Even as the temperature outside rises to sweltering temperatures, America’s extreme air conditioning habit mean that people in offices, movie theaters and restaurants end up being chilled like TV dinners.

How did this happen? How did America become the land of overpowering air conditioners? Will it ever change?

It’s not just a matter of taste or personal comfort. Some studies have found that worker productivity falls with the temperature. Customers aren’t happy either: In a 2008 survey, 88 percent of people said they find at least some retail establishments too cold, and 76 percent said they bring extra layers of clothing with them to movies and restaurants. The Post’s Petula Dvorak has observed that in offices, the trend exacts a particular toll on women, and, of course, it wastes huge amounts of energy. The U.S. uses more electricity for air conditioning than Africa uses for everything.

America, it turns out, is addicted to A/C for reasons of fashion, physiology, gender norms, architecture and history. Over the last century, air conditioning improved our health, happiness and productivity. But somewhere along the way we grew dependent on it, and now we don’t know how to find our way back. [Continue reading…]

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Asia takes leadership on renewables, but only out of necessity

The Guardian reports: As the Paris climate conference draws ever nearer, and with it the prospect of a global agreement that all countries will cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Europe can look on its contribution to the fight against climate change with pride.

But having fostered the fledgling renewable energy sectors of wind and solar power, and created the world’s first emissions trading scheme (ETS), it now looks as if Europe is ceding its leadership on environmental matters to Asia.

China was the world’s leading market for renewable power in 2014, the $83.3bn invested there being 33% higher than in 2013. Japan was in third place, India was in the top 10 and more than $1bn was also invested in Indonesia, according to a report for the United Nations Environment Programme. All saw double digit growth in investment. Europe was still a major destination for investment in clean energy, attracting $57.5bn , but the market grew by less than 1%.

Meanwhile, as carbon prices on the EU ETS languish far below the level that would incentivise low-carbon investment, China has launched seven regional pilot carbon markets that will be scaled up to national level next year and Korea has introduced its own market.

And while governments in Europe, from Bulgaria to Spain, scramble to cut support payments to renewable energy projects – most recently in the UK – India has increased its solar power target for 2022 from 20GW to 100GW. [Continue reading…]

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Is Turkey creeping toward civil war?

Der Spiegel reports: Newal Bulut grew up in war, and now she fears it could return. She is a 27-year-old graphic designer from the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey. Sometimes she asks herself whether that night in June, when the pro-Kurdish party HDP won seats in the Turkish parliament thanks in part to Turkish voters, was only a beautiful, ephemeral dream?

Bulut spent several nervous months with Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chairman of the HDP. She applauded at his speeches, and convinced friends and relatives to support the young party leader, who not only promised but also embodied change in Turkish politics. At school and later at university, Bulut saw how friends who had advocated for more rights for Kurds, were arrested as suspected terrorists. She hoped that the HDP’s success in the June 7 election would help Turkey become a peaceful, pluralistic country.
Just two months later, Bulut walks through downtown Diyarbakir, wearing black leggings, dark nail polish and piercings. She strolls past armored police cars as fighter jets roar overhead. Anti-government protesters erected barricades and set cars on fire the night before. The words “Kobane is everywhere” and “Freedom for Öcalan” are spray-painted on walls. “I was naïve,” says Bulut.

The same ritual repeats itself night after night: At around 9 p.m., fighter jets take off from the military base outside the city to conduct air strikes against positions held by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq, and its offshoots in Syria. Only a few of the air strikes target Islamic State (IS) positions. At the same time, young Kurds are setting downtown Diyarbakir on fire. Where roadblocks are erected, the police respond with water guns and tear gas. But the protesters are not easily deterred. They chant: “This is only the beginning.” In Istanbul and other cities, violent clashes with police have erupted, resulting in injuries and death.

The Kurdish Spring has turned into a hate-filled, violent summer. Many people in Diyarbakir believe that civil war is inevitable. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS woos Kurdish attackers in Turkey

The Wall Street Journal reports: Orhan Gonder was a quiet, studious Kurdish teenager who went out of his way to help people, according to those who knew him in this small Turkish city near the Syrian border.

So when he started frequenting a tea house known as an Islamic State recruiting center last year, his parents went to the police and implored them to detain their son before he could do any harm. On June 5, the 20-year old set off a bomb at a Kurdish political rally in the nearby city of Diyarbakir, killing four people and injuring dozens, officials said.

And two weeks ago, another young Kurd from Adiyaman blew himself up in the middle of a rally of student activists, killing 31 people preparing to go help rebuild Kobani, the Syrian-Kurdish town that overcame a long Islamic State assault in January.

The two attacks exposed a troubling phenomenon: Islamic State appears to be successfully wooing young Turkish Kurds, while their kinsmen in Iraq and Syria — for the most part — are taking up arms against Islamic State. Kurdish militants in Syria, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, have become the single most effective fighting force on the ground against the extremist group. [Continue reading…]

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25 years in Iraq, with no end in sight

Greg Myre writes: It started so well. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the United States swiftly cobbled together a broad coalition, unleashed a stunning new generation of air power and waged a lightning ground offensive that lasted all of four days. Iraqi troops were so desperate to quit that some surrendered to Western journalists armed only with notebooks.

Kuwait was liberated, U.S. commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf was a hero, and the pundits confidently declared the U.S. had buried its “Vietnam syndrome,” the fear of being sucked into a quagmire. In the annals of war, it doesn’t get much easier than this.

So on the 25th anniversary of that first Iraq conflict, how is it possible that the U.S. is still entangled in a messy, complicated war with no end on the horizon? [Continue reading...]

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Give me your tired, your poor … the Europeans embracing migrants

The Guardian reports: Judging from the headlines, it sometimes seems no one in Europe wants to help refugees. Record numbers are arriving in Italy and Greece this year, and yet other European governments have agreed to share less than a fifth of them. Hungary is building a wall to keep them out. For the same reason, France has sealed its border with Italy. In Greece, for much of this year there were doubts over the legality of giving a refugee a lift.

But on a local level, there are thousands of people across the continent who are braving the vitriol of their peers, and filling the void left by the politicians. Many Europeans back their governments’ stance but their xenophobia masks another phenomenon – that of a huge drive by ordinary citizens to welcome refugees, rather than reject them. From the Hungarian volunteers providing round-the-clock support to Syrian and Afghani newcomers, to the Spanish priests assisting migrants with paperwork, here are seven movements from across Europe that are fighting for refugees’ rights. [Continue reading…]

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Rohingya women flee violence only to be sold into marriage

The New York Times reports: The young woman had been penned in a camp in the sweltering jungle of southern Thailand for two months when she was offered a deal.

She fled Myanmar this year hoping to reach safety in Malaysia, after anti-Muslim rioters burned her village. But her family could not afford the $1,260 the smugglers demanded to complete the journey.

A stranger was willing to pay for her freedom, the smugglers said, if she agreed to marry him.

“I was allowed to call my parents, and they said that if I was willing, it would be better for all the family,” said the woman, Shahidah Yunus, 22. “I understood what I must do.”

She joined the hundreds of young Rohingya women from Myanmar sold into marriage to Rohingya men already in Malaysia as the price of escaping violence and poverty in their homeland. [Continue reading…]

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Germany breaks a renewable energy record

Takepart reports: Germany’s transition from coal- and oil-fired power to carbon-free electricity hit a new milestone on July 25 when solar, wind, and other sources of renewable energy met 78 percent of the day’s energy demand.

That beat the old record of 74 percent, made in May 2014, according to Craig Morris, a journalist who has covered Germany’s energy scene for more than a decade.

Helping set the record was an unusual weather pattern that brought heavy winds where most of the nation’s wind turbines are located. As the turbines generated more power, utilities ramped down coal- and gas-fired power plants.

But Morris found the power mix a few days earlier even more encouraging. During the night of July 22, even with darkness reducing solar output to zero and no big winds in the forecast, renewables—wind, biomass, and hydropower—generated nearly 25 percent of Germany’s electricity. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s clean power plan hailed as U.S.’s strongest ever climate action

The Guardian reports: Hundreds of businesses including eBay, Nestle and General Mills have issued their support for Barack Obama’s clean power plan, billed as the strongest action ever on climate change by a US president.

The rules, being announced on Monday, are designed to cut emissions from power plants and have been strengthened in terms of the long-term ambition as originally proposed by the president last year, but slightly weakened in the short-term in a concession to states reliant on highly-polluting coal.

White House adviser Brian Deese said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules represented the “biggest step that any single president has made to curb the carbon pollution that is fuelling climate change”. The US is the world’s second biggest carbon emitter after China. [Continue reading…]

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Karen J. Greenberg: The mass killer and the national security state

You want to profile America’s mass killers? No need at all for the FBI or the national security state. You don’t have to secretly read anyone’s emails or check their phone metadata. You don’t need to follow them on Twitter. All you have to do is narrow down the possibilities in a logical way by looking at the history of mass killing in recent years. That means, as a start, leaving aside half the population, since women make up close to 0% of American mass shooters.

So, start with men. Admittedly, that’s a pretty broad category. Still, among men, you can narrow the field fast. Begin with age. Generally, mass killers are young. Unfortunately, this category isn’t quite as blanket as the no-woman rule. Just recently, in what looked like a copycat mass killing — a repeat of the 2012 shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater — a mentally unstable 59-year-old white man in Lafayette, Louisiana, with a chip on his shoulder about women (as well as blacks), opened fire in a theater showing the new Amy Schumer hit, Trainwreck, a film drawing female audiences, and killed two women. Similarly, in February, a disturbed and mentally unstable 36-year-old white man, barred from owning guns, carried out a mass killing of seven in the tiny Missouri town of Tyrone. Nonetheless, when you’re conjuring up the next mass killer, think young man (16-24) and think white.

Now, we’re getting somewhere. One more obvious thing: look for someone carrying a gun, generally obtained quite legally — most likely a semi-automatic pistol or an assault rifle — or come to think of it, three or four or more weapons and lots and lots of ammo. Now, given the 300 million or so guns floating around this country and the spread of “right-to-carry” laws that let anyone bring lethal weaponry just about anywhere, this may not narrow things down quite as much as we’d like. But it should be helpful. And yes, there are other factors, too, that might aid you in setting your sights on the next mass killer. As Karen Greenberg, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and TomDispatch regular, points out today, these would undoubtedly include feelings of hopelessness and anger, a history of mental instability, depression, and drug or alcohol abuse.

In the grips of a much overblown panic about ISIS-inspired terror in the U.S., the government, Greenberg reports, is about to spend a pile of taxpayer money doing a version of what I just did. Here’s my guarantee: it will cost you a boodle, most of which, as she makes clear, won’t go where it might do some good — that is, to helping unnerved or disturbed young men. And I’ll also guarantee you one more thing: the massed thinking and resources of the national security state won’t do much better than I’ve done above when it comes to the problem of identifying lone-wolf killers. But that state within a state will, as ever, emerge from the experience more powerful and more entrenched. And, as novelist Kurt Vonnegut might once have said, so it goes. Tom Engelhardt

Dealing with mass killings in America
Funding our children, not our wars
By Karen J. Greenberg

Imagine that you’re in the FBI and you receive a tip — or more likely, pick up information through the kind of mass surveillance in which the national security state now specializes. In a series of tweets, a young man has expressed sympathy for the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda, or another terrorist group or cause. He’s 16, has no criminal record, and has shown no signs that he might be planning a criminal act. He does, however, seem angry and has demonstrated an interest in following ISIS’s social media feeds as they fan the flames of youth discontent worldwide. He’s even expressed some thoughts about how ISIS’s “caliphate,” the Islamic “homeland” being carved out in Syria and Iraq, might be a place where people like him could find meaning and purpose in an otherwise alienated life.

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What everyone with a Top Secret security clearance knows – or should know

Peter Van Buren writes: In the world of handling America’s secrets, words – classified, secure, retroactive – have special meanings. I held a Top Secret clearance at the State Department for 24 years and was regularly trained in protecting information as part of that privilege. Here is what some of those words mean in the context of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The Inspectors General for the State Department and the intelligence community issued a statement saying Clinton’s personal email system contained classified information. This information, they said, “should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system.” The same statement voiced concern that a thumb drive held by Clinton’s lawyer also contains this same secret data. Another report claims the U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that Clinton’s private email account contains multiple instances of classified information, with some data originating at the CIA and NSA.

A Clinton spokesperson responded that “Any released emails deemed classified by the administration have been done so after the fact, and not at the time they were transmitted.” Clinton claims unequivocally her email contained no classified information, and that no message carried any security marking, such as Confidential or Top Secret.

The key issue in play with Clinton is that it is a violation of national security to maintain classified information on an unclassified system. [Continue reading…]

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Spy software gets a second life on Wall Street

The Wall Street Journal reports: Spies are infiltrating Wall Street.

A wave of companies with ties to the intelligence community is winning over the world of finance, with banks and hedge funds putting the firms’ terrorist-tracking tools to work rooting out employee misconduct before it leads to fines or worse.

“Both Wall Street and the intelligence world want the same thing: to find unknown unknowns in the data,” said Roger Hockenberry, the former chief technology officer of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine services and now a partner at the consulting firm Cognitio Corp. in Washington.

“Financial firms aren’t looking for terrorists, but good customers and attempts at fraud,” he said.

The CIA gave many of these companies their big break: After the terror attacks of September 2001, a private-equity arm of the CIA known as In-Q-Tel began seeding companies that could help it sift through vast repositories of data to quickly identify threats. Those skills have become more valuable on Wall Street as firms try to keep up with rogue traders in increasingly complex and rapidly moving markets.

Of 101 companies publicly seeded by In-Q-Tel, 33 have taken on Wall Street clients in recent years, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal. [Continue reading…]

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Turkey’s Kurdish party leader suspects government instigated Suruc bombing as a pretext for war

Der Spiegel reports: Selahattin Demirtas, 42, co-chairman of the HDP, is widely regarded as the winner of the election in early June. His charismatic demeanor was mainly due to the fact that his People’s Democratic Party (HDP) received 13 percent of the popular vote, becoming the first Kurdish party to win a mandate in Turkey’s parliament and deny the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) an absolute majority. For an interview, Demirtas received SPIEGEL in his parliamentary party’s new offices in Ankara. The room is large and bright and his desk is flanked by both the Turkish flag and that of his party.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Demirtas, your success two months ago gave hope to many people in- and outside of Turkey, who hailed it as a milestone for democracy. But today, the country threatens to return to civil war-like conditions. How could it come to this?

Demirtas: The AKP, the party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has brought about this situation deliberately. Until the elections in June, they had ruled Turkey unilaterally for more than a decade. But they weren’t able to block our ascent to power any longer, so they opted to foment chaos in the country instead. This is the only possible explanation for their war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

SPIEGEL: You go so far as to claim that the attack by the terrorist militia Islamic State in Suruc, in which 32 people were killed, was instigated by the government as a pretext for armed conflict. Do you have any proof?

Demirtas: If by that you mean documents that prove that the state was involved then, no, we don’t. But there are clear indications. Our research suggests that this attack by IS was made possible by the AKP government, which for years tolerated the extremists’ activities in Turkey. [Continue reading…]

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An anti-YPG campaign on Facebook

Akbar Shahid Ahmed writes: The Syrian Kurds believe their militia lost its Facebook verification as part of an online campaign by members of the U.S.-recognized nationalist opposition who are based in Turkey and have links with the Turkish government. Ankara dislikes the YPG and the PYD because of their ties to the PKK, a Kurdish militant group that has battled Turkey for decades. Turkish officials have argued for months that the PKK is as great a threat as the Islamic State — and in recent days, Turkey has responded to that perceived threat with a bombing campaign against PKK holdouts in the Kurdish region of Iraq that Syrian Kurds claim has extended into their territory.

That stance explains why the Syrian Kurds believe the Facebook move was part of a concerted effort by Syrian Arabs and their Turkish backers to damage their credibility. They argue that media reports about Kurds targeting Arabs in areas they take from the Islamic State are part of that effort as well. Arab residents of northern Syria have told multiple outlets, including The WorldPost, that they fear ethnically motivated persecution by the YPG.

Mutlu Civiroglu, a Washington-based analyst who closely monitors the Syrian Kurds, told HuffPost that Kurdish sources have identified what they say are two signs of evidence that there is an anti-YPG campaign extending to Facebook. [Continue reading…]

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