Esbjörn Svensson — April 16, 1964 – June 14, 2008
Music: Esbjörn Svensson Trio — ‘Tuesday Wonderland’
Seven charts that show how climate change is already altering life in the U.S.
Mashable: The White House released the most comprehensive U.S.-focused climate science assessment ever conducted on Tuesday. It makes clear that global warming is no longer a phenomenon that will rear its ugly head in a far-off time and place. Instead, it is affecting everyone in the U.S. already, be it a farmer in Oklahoma dealing with heat waves and drought, or a coastal resident in New York City, still recovering from Hurricane Sandy’s flooding.
Here are some of the report’s key findings, in graphics. [Continue reading…]
U.S. National Climate Assessment
The National Climate Assessment summarizes the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future.
A team of more than 300 experts guided by a 60-member Federal Advisory Committee produced the report, which was extensively reviewed by the public and experts, including federal agencies and a panel of the National Academy of Sciences.
Youths sue U.S. government over climate inaction
Al Jazeera reports: Young people across the country are suing several government agencies for failing to develop a climate change recovery plan, conduct that amounts to a violation of their constitutional rights, says their lawyer Julia Olson.
Their futures are at stake, say the young plaintiffs.
“Climate change is the biggest issue of our time,” said 13-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez, a member of nonprofit Kids vs. Global Warming, a plaintiff in the suit.
“It’s not every day you see young people getting involved politically, but the climate crisis is changing all that. Every generation from here on out is going to be affected by climate change,” added Roske-Martinez, who founded environmental nonprofit Earth Guardians and organized successful actions in his hometown of Boulder, Colorado.
The federal suit, which has made its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is part of a groundbreaking nationwide legal campaign spearheaded by youth and backed by some of the world’s leading climate scientists and legal scholars. [Continue reading…]
Stanford University will divest from coal companies
Bloomberg: Stanford University said it will stop investing in coal companies in response to a student-led campaign aimed at curbing climate change.
The university’s board of trustees voted today to no longer make direct investments in publicly traded companies that mine coal for energy generation. The vote followed the recommendation of a panel including students, faculty, staff and alumni that has been studying the impact of fossil-fuel companies for several months, Stanford said.
“Moving away from coal in the investment context is a small but constructive step while work continues at Stanford and elsewhere to develop broadly viable sustainable energy solutions for the future,” John Hennessy, Stanford’s president, said in a statement.
Americans are outliers in views on climate change
The New York Times: As President Obama sets out to convince the public that climate change requires immediate attention, he has his work cut out for him.
Perhaps more than people in any other rich nation, Americans are skeptical that climate change is a dire issue. In Pew Research Center surveys conducted last spring, 40 percent of Americans said that global climate change was a major threat to their country. More than 50 percent of Canadians, Australians, French and Germans gave that answer. More than 60 percent of Italians and Spaniards did. And more than 70 percent of Japanese did.
Similarly, a Gallup survey conducted in early March found that a third of Americans said they personally worry about global warming or climate change a great deal.
Americans rarely cite environmental concerns when asked in polls to name the most important problem facing the country. In the last several years, the economy, jobs, the budget deficit and health care garnered the most mentions, with the environment barely registering. In the Pew poll, fewer Americans cited climate change as a top threat than cited financial instability, Islamic extremism, Iran’s nuclear program or North Korea’s nuclear program. [Continue reading…]
Trying to ‘win’ Ukraine could lead to its collapse
James Goldgeier and Andrew S. Weiss write: With the Ukraine crisis now entering its sixth month, policymakers ought to step back from the daily torrent of bad news and ask whether the West’s current approach is yielding positive results.
The honest answer has to be: not really.
The tragic loss of life in Odessa on May 2 and the stepped-up fighting in and around separatist strongholds in eastern Ukraine appear to be setting in motion precisely the series of events that the West has sought to avoid: full-scale armed conflict between Moscow and Kiev and the prospect of Ukraine’s collapse as a unitary state.
Ever since the dramatic overthrow of the Viktor Yanukovich government in late February, U.S. and EU leaders have failed to come to terms with an unpleasant reality. As former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer put it, Vladimir Putin “cares a whole lot more about losing Ukraine than the West cares about keeping it.”
There are no excuses for the reckless policies Putin has pursued. His annexation of Crimea, and his unapologetic embrace of Russian chauvinism and ultra-nationalist themes are evocative of the worst aspects of European power politics during the first half of the twentieth century. It is deeply disconcerting to see far-right wing European politicians, from Marine Le Pen to Geert Wilders, touting Putin as their ideological soul-mate and comrade-in-arms in the fight against European elites and the soulless EU bureaucracy.
But even if events do not come to a head in coming days, a protracted crisis in Ukraine may, over time, simply exhaust Western capabilities to counter a Russian campaign to destabilize Ukraine or to keep its basket-case economy afloat. What we are looking at now is nothing less than a bigger, messier version of Georgia across a territory the size of France with the potential for a lot more bloodshed.
Rather than developing a new approach to avoid catastrophe, Western leaders are doubling down. President Barack Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last week that the derailing of the May 25 presidential elections could be the basis for imposition of so-called sectoral sanctions on Russia. While they and other Western leaders continue to profess their desire to see a diplomatic solution to the crisis, high-level dialogue with the Kremlin amounts to little more than exchanging public statements. Nor are we aware of any serious back-channel diplomatic moves to resolve the crisis. The West has said elections or else, but Moscow shows no sign of acquiescing to a smooth internal political transition. Quite the contrary. [Continue reading…]
Even Russian human rights body finds Crimean referendum falsified
Khpg.org reports: Vladimir Putin’s own Council on the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights has confirmed that the turnout for the so-called “referendum” on the Crimea’s status was much lower than reported, and the results also far less overwhelmingly in favour of joining Russia. The same results have been reported from other sources, however this report can hardly be dismissed as seditious US propaganda. The confirmation that Russia used falsified figures to justify the annexation comes on the eve of other supposed “referendums” planned for two east Ukrainian oblasts.
The report finds that while the overwhelming majority of residents of Sevastopol voted for joining Russian (turnout of 50-80%), the turnout for all of Crimea was from 30-50% and only 50-60% of those voted for joining Russia.
The authors also noted that Crimean residents voted less for joining Russia, than for what they called an end to corrupt lawlessness and thieving rule of people brought in from Donetsk (where Viktor Yanukovych and most of his people were from). It was only in Sevastopol, they say, that people genuinely voted for joining Russia. They add that the fear of “illegal armed formations” was higher in Sevastopol than in other regions of Crimea. [Continue reading…]
Ukrainian events a delayed reaction to USSR’s peaceful disintegration in 1991, Vedomosti says
Paul Goble writes: Commentators have long celebrated the fact that the USSR broke up with little violence in 1991 – the conflicts in Abkhazia, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transdniestria and Chechnya typically have been treated as exceptions that prove the rule. But now, many of the unresolved issues from 23 years ago are leading to violence as in Ukraine.
In an editorial article in today’s Vedomosti, Nikolay Epple and Maksim Trudolyubov argue that for two decades, Russia and Ukraine sought to avoid the outcome that had occurred in Serbia and Croatia, but that did not mean that “the revolutionary processes” in the two were “overcome but only “put off”.
The ongoing crisis in Ukraine shows more sharply than ever before that Ukrainians cannot avoid facing some critical issues any longer, including “the geopolitical choice between Europe and Russia, real sovereignty or dependence on ‘the elder brother,’ the unification of the country on the basis of a new national self-consciousness or its split via ‘federalization.’”
And “the development of the postponed revolution in Ukraine will inevitably have an impact on Russia as well” because “the exit of Ukraine from the post-Soviet space will confront Russia with the need to reformat its own historical matrix.” [Continue reading…]
Ukraine crisis showcases Russian military revamp
Reuters reports: Holding military drills on Ukraine’s border and sending bombers to the edge of NATO airspace, Russia’s newly reformed armed forces are in just the kind of regional confrontation it was redesigned for, experts say.
Moscow has increased defence spending by about 30 percent since its 2008 war with Georgia, and those who study it say the money has been spent not just on hardware but on a much more flexible military structure.
The result, they say, is a more streamlined force that can mobilise key units in a matter of days and support President Vladimir Putin’s goal to reassert Russian influence over countries it once controlled within the former Soviet Union. [Continue reading…]
Tom Engelhardt: What, me worry?
Mapping the Chinese conquest of the planet
By Tom Engelhardt
In high school, I was one of those kids you probably loved to loath. You know, the one who grabbed a front-row seat and every time the teacher asked a question waved his hand so manically that he was practically screaming, me, me, call on me! But truth be told, amid all the things that made me unhappy in those years, school — actual schoolwork — wasn’t one of them. Yes, I was confounded by the math problems in which the current of a river flowed at one speed and a boat was heading the other way at a different speed, and a few more bits of weird information were tossed into the eddies and you were supposed to do something with it all. But generally speaking I enjoyed school.
I liked my teachers — at least the ones who challenged me to think or, as we would start saying only a few years after I was out of high school, “blew my mind,” the ones who seemed to bend the world in interesting directions. I liked to learn. I liked to read by myself in my room. I went to the local library regularly and came home with piles of books. I was a dino-nerd (with the American Museum of Natural History’s T. rex on the brain), and a Civil War nut (no Bruce Catton volume went unread) with a sideline in advanced sci-fi. And it being the 1950s, I harbored the sort of nuclear fears that you barely thought about and didn’t really speak about, but that, in my case, appeared repetitively in unsettling dreams in which I found myself wandering through an atomically devastated world.
I was, above all, fascinated by history, in part perhaps because my parents were of a post-immigrant generation in flight from their past. Undoubtedly, that fascination represented an early, particularly nerdish form of rebellion (not that anyone noticed). Perhaps it was also comforting to nail myself into a narrative of American life in those years when the past, as my parents and so many other Americans saw it, was hardly worth thinking about, not when the future was so promising.
But let me hasten to add that not every class in high school thrilled me. There was, for instance, my American history teacher. He was a grey-haired ancient (though undoubtedly younger than I am now) who had, we kids then assumed, been passing news of the New World on to students since at least 1776. He must once have been inspirational, but by the time I came along he was lecturing off ancient notes on yellowed paper. I used to imagine those notes dissolving into a cloud of dust with the first gust of wind through the window by his desk. I was then teaching myself a version of American history at home at night and I couldn’t have found the daytime version less impressive.
The textbook we used then — I still have it — was Living in Our America: A Record of Our Country, History for Young Citizens. Unit One (“The Beginnings”) started with this poem:
“In our great country can be found factories
with parking lots of full of automobiles —
not just cars of officials and factory owners,
but cars of the workmen, too.“These cars are something more than pieces of
machinery to own and ride around in.“They are symbols.
“They are symbols that in our country we can
and do earn much more
than a bare living.“They are symbols, too, that their owners are free —
free to live in city, town, or country,
free to move on to other work,
free to seek other ways of life,
free in body and spirit.”
I’m sure history texts are just as uninspiring today, but in different ways. After all, I was living then in the American Age of Steel, so long gone that — who can remember?
Netanyahu pushes to define Israel as nation state of Jewish people only
The Guardian reports: Binyamin Netanyahu will push ahead with a rare change to Israel’s basic laws – which amount to the country’s constitution – to insist Israel is “the nation state of one people only – the Jewish people – and of no other people”.
At Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the civil rights of minorities, including Arabs, would be guaranteed, and the move was vital at a time when aspects of Israel’s legitimacy were “under a constant and increasing assault from abroad and at home”.
Netanyahu proposed the change last week during a visit to Tel Aviv’s Independence Hall, attracting fierce criticism from political rivals and support from some of his allies. The move follows a Palestinian refusal in peace talks to recognise the status that Netanyahu described.
The proposed law would be in addition to Israel’s declaration of independence of May 1948 – the anniversary of which is celebrated on Tuesday – which defines Israel as a Jewish state. [Continue reading…]
Persistent Saudi-U.S. differences hurt Syria strategy
Reuters reports: Differences between the United States and Saudi Arabia over Middle East policy persist, despite attempts to shore up their old alliance, and may prove calamitous for Syrian rebels.
Although there is evidence that some American weapons are starting to find their way to more moderate groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, disagreements over what to supply, and to whom, have hindered the fight.
Rebels lament a lack of anti-aircraft missiles to help counter Assad’s air force.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been funding the rebels for years now, arguing that the war in Syria is a battle for the future of the Middle East, pitting pro-Western forces against Riyadh’s main enemy Iran and Islamist militants.
However, while the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama also blames Assad for the violence and wants him to leave power, it sees the conflict very differently.
American officials fear involvement in a messy civil war for which they see no clear military solution and which threatens to radicalize a new generation of Islamists who hate the West.
Among the rebels, the failure of the Saudis and the Americans to cooperate better stirs disillusion. Two hours of talks between Obama and Saudi King Abdullah in March appear to have done little to alter that sentiment. [Continue reading…]
Saudi Arabia’s military exercise was a goodbye wave to America
Faisal Al Yafai writes: When one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East holds the largest military exercise in its history, the region and allies would be wise to look beyond the explosions and manoeuvres at the political intent.
Last week’s “Abdullah Sword” military exercises in the north-east of Saudi Arabia brought together 130,000 troops, as well as military jets, helicopters and ships. With the notable exception of Qatar, all the GCC countries were there to observe the exercises, as well as the head of Pakistan’s army.
On the surface, the exercises were timed to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the accession of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. But military movements of this order send messages. But to whom?
The obvious answer is Iran, Saudi’s great regional rival, or one of the three states that the Saudis are most concerned about – Syria, Iraq or Yemen. And it will not have escaped Tehran’s notice that the CSS-2 ballistic missiles that Riyadh paraded for the first time last week can easily reach any part of Iran.
Certainly, a message of strength was being telegraphed to the region. But there was also another one, over the heads of the region, to the United States: if you leave, the region can defend itself. [Continue reading…]
Sisi says Muslim Brotherhood will not exist under his reign
The Guardian reports: Egypt’s former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Monday night that the Muslim Brotherhood – the group he removed from power last year – will not exist if he is elected president later this month.
The comments, in an interview broadcast on two Egyptian television stations, were the clearest indication yet there was no prospect for political reconciliation with the Islamist group that propelled Mohamed Morsi to the presidency in 2012.
“There will be nothing called the Muslim Brotherhood during my tenure,” Sisi said on Egypt’s privately-owned CBC and ONTV television channels.
The Brotherhood has been subject to an aggressive state-led crackdown in the months since Morsi’s overthrow. The movement was formally blacklisted as a terrorist organisation on Christmas Day and continues to be blamed for bomb attacks across Egypt, although many have been claimed by militant groups, including the al-Qaida-linked Ansar Beit el Maqdis.
Sisi said he had survived two assassination attempts in the months since Morsi’s ousting in July last year.
The former field marshal’s claims appeared to vindicate the tight security measures that have dominated his campaign. Instead of taking to the campaign trail like his sole opponent, Nasserist candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi, Sisi will reportedly be sending emissaries to his rallies across the country. [Continue reading…]
Britain cancels three arms contracts to Sisi’s Egypt
Middle East Eye reports: Britain cancelled export licenses for three arms contracts to Egypt’s military backed government in October last year, fearing the arms would be used for internal repression, the Middle East Eye can reveal.
The contracts were cancelled during a prolonged correspondence between officials of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the legal team acting on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. The lawyers claim that it was a result of their representations that a second review of the contracts was carried out in October. An earlier blanket suspension was implemented in August last year, after the mass shootings of protesters in Cairo.
Edward Bell, head of export control and organization wrote to ITN solicitors on 13 January that “we consider there is now sufficient information available about the situation in Egypt to consider each extant licence and new application on a case-by-case basis rather than applying the blanket suspension which we implemented in August”. [Continue reading…]
CIA falls back in Afghanistan
The Daily Beast reports: The CIA is dismantling its frontline Afghan counterterrorist forces in south and east Afghanistan, leaving a security vacuum that U.S. commanders fear the Taliban and al Qaeda will fill—and leaving the Pakistan border open to a possible deluge of fighters and weapons.
“The CIA has started to end the contracts of some of those militias who were working for them,” said Aimal Faizi, spokesman for outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a longtime critic of the CIA’s Afghan operatives. “Some of them were in very important locations, so we deployed our troops there.”
U.S. and Afghan military commanders tell The Daily Beast that Afghan forces are stretched too thin to replace many of those departing CIA paramilitaries. Thousands more CIA-trained operatives are about to get the boot ahead of what already promises to be a bloody summer fighting season. That could mean spectacular attacks against U.S. and Afghan targets just as the White House is weighing its long-term commitment to Afghanistan. And it could give the now-small al Qaeda movement inside the country more freedom to grow and eventually hatch new plots more than a decade after the invasion meant to wipe out the perpetrators of the Sept. 11th attacks. [Continue reading…]
Debate on state surveillance: Greenwald and Ohanian vs Hayden and Dershowitz
“Be it resolved state surveillance is a legitimate defence of our freedoms….”
Pro: Michael Hayden and Alan Dershowitz
Con: Glenn Greenwald and Alexis Ohanian
Hosted by Munk Debates