Climate Links: 06/11/17

Temperature update. Arctic News.



Temperatures have increased 1.8, NOT 1.1C since pre-industrial times. Paul Beckwith via Seemorerocks.

Links: 06/06/2017

Pay attention to Donald Trump's actions, not his words. Zachary Karabell, Guardian. Jun 4, 2017.

There’s an emerging consensus that the presidency of Donald Trump has radically altered the warp and woof of American life. His supporters – which make up at least a third of all Americans – believe that he has accomplished great things in the past four months. His detractors, who are legion, see more harm than good in his record thus far. 

What remains striking about Trump, however, is how much of the pushback against him is provoked by his words, and how Americans are prone to ascribe weight to those words. This is not a Trump phenomenon. It is a very American one, stretching back many years, and starkly evident during Barack Obama’s tenure just as much as it is during Trump’s early months in the White House. 

In short, we pay too much attention to words and not enough to action. We have a cultural tendency to assume that words – political words – are reflections of reality, when very often they are not. 

The decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement is a case in point. It was immediately lauded by the Trump base and decried by most everyone else as a dramatic action. In terms of the symbolism of US global leadership, it is, but in terms of consequences for the environment it is not. 

American soft power may be damaged by Trump’s rhetoric, but progress toward a less carbon intensive future will likely not be dentedby that decision. The Paris climate deal is voluntary and non-binding, and much of the movement in the US toward reducing emissions has come from – and will continue to come from – major states such as California, large multinational companies such as GE and small businesses that see the economic advantages of using renewables. 

Trump’s words suggest major changes in American policies toward emissions, when even if the US does end up withdrawing from the accord in 2020 – which is how long it will take to withdraw – the reality is that forces other than the federal government are driving us toward a lower-carbon future. 

Then take immigration. By most accounts, the first months of the Trump administration have created a widespread climate of fear among the millions of undocumented immigrants who live in the US. That fear stems from the harsh rhetoric from multiple voices in the administration, including from the president himself and the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, combined with numerous stories of deportation raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). 

The shift in tone is undeniable. What is also undeniable is that the first months of deportation policy under the Trump administration don’t differ greatly from the deportation policies in place during Obama’s first term. 

Between 2009 and 2013, there were more deportations than at any other point in American history, close to 3 million people. Many have noted that, under Obama, authorities made a point of de-emphasizing non-violent undocumented immigrants and allowing them a degree of protection from deportation. But according to Ice records, about half of all deportations in those years were for non-violent immigrants. 

It is true that immigration policy changed during Obama’s second term, with much greater emphasis on criminal immigrants. But it is equally true that the actions of his first term should have created widespread panic that deportation was a clear and present threat.

Yet while many Hispanics, who tended to be more directly affected by these harsh immigration policies, were critical of Obama’s immigration approach in his first term, they remained supportive of him and positive about his administration overall. Unlike Trump, Obama’s soaring and inclusive words created a culture of hope that served to offset the way his actions were perceived. 

Deportations under Obama were rarely emphasized; Obama didn’t brag about them or draw attention to them. He emphasized instead the country’s healing from the Great Recession and its move away from the military entanglements of the Bush years. He spoke in uplifting tones about America and an inclusive vision for the future. 

Deportations weren’t the only disjuncture between words and deeds. Between 2006 and 2011, fencing and barriers were constructed along nearly 700 miles of the US-Mexico border; some of that began in 2006 under a law passed by Congress that then senator Obama voted for. It was not the big, beautiful fence touted by candidate Trump, but it was wire, and fence, and concrete and cameras and it did cost billions. Here again, Obama did not trumpet its construction, or point to it as an example of America first. But it was built nonetheless. 

Words can calm or agitate; they can uplift or depress; they can motivate or enervate. But in politics, they are not tantamount to action. The fact is that the immigration actions during Obama’s first term should have produced a climate of fear, while the actions during Trump first few months have arguably generated more fear than the actions themselves warrant. In both cases, words are driving our collective sense of reality out of proportion to the actions taken. 

Under Obama, supporters listened to the words and discounted the actions, while opponents often discounted the words and focused on the actions. Under Trump, the only difference is that both opponents and supporters take his words as indicative of far more action than is actually the case. 

This isn’t just an Obama-Trump phenomenon. For much of the 1950s, the explicit story Americans told themselves was that the country was charging ahead, enriching the middle-class with shiny new bedroom communities like Levittown, New York, and millions entering college for the first time. Politicians and the press touted the success of the American experiment, and optimism about how capitalism and technology combined with American liberty and democracy would lead to a glorious future for the US and the world. 

Yet in the mid-1960s, Americans seemingly shook off their Pollyannaish haze and discovered that tens of millions of African Americans were not sharing in that glorious dream, nor were tens of millions of poor white Americans. Hence Lyndon Johnson’s speech launching the Great Society in 1964 calling for an end to racial injustice and poverty. 

By the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, public rhetoric and private attitudes had turned considerably grimmer. The soaring words of the 1950s elided the reality of millions; official words painted a reality that lightly glossed over real problems. 

By the 1970s, public attitudes and words started to characterize the country as mired in crisis, losing its way, locked in a “malaise” as Jimmy Carter famously quipped. Yet those words universalized problems that were not universally shared, hence the ability of Ronald Reagan to change the language back to the uplifting patois of the 1950s, with equally distorting results. 

And so here we go again. Trump’s words are a dog whistle to both liberals and conservatives, as were Obama’s. Perhaps the only segment of society that appears to be ignoring Trump’s words are financial markets, which have been chugging along with very little volatility. They are waiting for actions on healthcare, infrastructure and tax reform rather than buying and selling based on hollow promises, exaggerated fears and false hopes. 

Words can predicate action, but not necessarily. That isn’t a prescription for ignoring objectionable or ominous language, but it is a reminder to maintain a healthy distinction between words and actions. Some Trump supporters routinely discount what he says in the anticipation that he will enact policies that restore jobs and income and some amorphous sense of security. They will judge him soon enough based on what he does, not by what he says. 

Detractors might be wise to do the same, in the recognition that words, even outrageous ones may presage outrageous action, or they may not. And comforting, unifying, and uplifting words can hide grim actions just as easily as they can motivate noble ones. 

Reacting to words as if they are one-to-one reflections of action can lead to a hall of mirrors, where the line between utterances and action blurs to the point where we lose sight of what is actually happening. Trump is a challenge in part because of the wide gap between what he says and what his administration has or ever could do. But he did not invent that gap, and Americans seems unusually prone to be caught in it. 

Unless we wish to spend the next years hurtling to its endless bottom, we’d be well served by more carefully distinguishing between what is said and what is done, and paying more attention to the latter than the former.

War and Empire III: Blowback

Theresa May wants to put restrictions on the internet; yup, that's the problem:


Theresa May calls on internet companies to eradicate 'safe spaces' for extremism in wake of London Bridge terror attack. Jack Maidment, Telegraph. Jun. 4, 2017.

or:

The Manchester Attack - A Blowback From Britain's Terror Support In Libya, Syria And Beyond. Moon of Alabama. May 24, 2017.

The Manchester Bombing: Blowback from British state collusion with jihadists abroad. Mark Curtis and Nafeez Ahmed, InsurgeIntelligence; medium. Jun 3, 2017.

John Pilger on "Terror in Britain: What did the Prime Minister Know?" youtube. Jun. 3, 2017.

You Can’t Understand ISIS If You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. Alastair Crooke, HuffPost.

Climate Links: 06/03/2017

Avoiding Two Degrees of Warming 'Is Now Totally Unrealistic'. Robinson Meyer, Atlantic. Jun. 3, 2017.

Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton scientist and longtime observer of UN climate talks, says that the world has lost its last shot at staving off dangerous global warming.

2°C to Midnight, or, In Paris We Trust. Mach was!? May 5, 2017.

Just a few months ago, in November 2016, the world celebrated the coming-into-effect of the 2015 Paris Agreement on limiting anthropogenic global warming – only to get disappointed shortly after by the announcement of the POTUS-elect that he intended to cancel the treaty. The leader of one of the planet's most polluting nations who is at the same time commander-in-chief of the US army, the single biggest polluter worldwide, has already started to dismantle mechanisms of environmental protection both at home and abroad. One could sing a very sad song about that, but I want to talk about something else here. As we will see by the end of this essay, the United States' adherence or non-adherence to the Paris Agreement might be of marginal significance to the unfolding of climate change, if at all.

The Paris Agreement which has been signed by numerous nations on the 21st UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21) has actually been a breakthrough, somehow, because, for the first time, a majority of the world's countries, including the US, have committed to far-reaching specific goals for environmental protection, in order to prevent catastrophic climate change. But that victory's value is only of symbolic nature; it will not achieve what it is supposedly meant to do. Quite the opposite. Various scientists have pointed out that the treaty is simply misleading public opinion. The action to be taken will not only be insufficient, it is coming too late – by decades – and will result in inappropriate handling of this truly existential crisis of our planet. Therefore it is suitable for leading to great damage. 

The Paris Agreement is mainly based on data collected, reviewed, evaluated, and presented by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its main goals – curbing global warming at 2°C above pre-industrial levels, ideally stopping it at 1.5°C, through national carbon budgets – derive from reports issued by the IPCC. Certainly it'd be unfair to demand infallibility of those good folks, but criticism of the IPCC has been getting louder and louder over the years, and point is adding to serious point. Those who believe that the tide is turning, climate-wise, should definitely have a look at what the general public is being served as a major breakthrough. Let's dive into matters from here on....

Quite a few fundamental climate factors have been missing from the IPCC's models, such as the greenhouse gases methane and water vapor, and the multiple effects of melting polar icecaps. Those factors are not merely adding up, they interact with each other. That means, instead of the expected (by IPCC) relatively steady increase we see a sudden escalation in figures, such as with global average temperatures and polar ice melt. Already more than seventy natural feedback processes have been identified which reinforce themselves and each other and drive the heating of the atmosphere without needing further human intervention. The IPCC does not acknowledge any of these feedback loops. 

That's why the IPCC has come to false predictions regarding polar ice melting, atmospheric temperature development and greenhouse gas concentrations, all of which are skyrocketing at unprecedented speed. No wonder – the models were completely inaccurate

Thawing permafrost will release powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Andrew Masterson, Cosmos. May 30 2017.

The Larsen C Iceberg Is on the Brink of Breaking Off. Brian Kahn, Climate Central. May 31, 2017.

Carbon Dioxide Set an All-Time Monthly High. Brian Kahn, Climate Central. Jun 2, 2017.

If emissions continue on their current trajectory, we’ll create an atmosphere unseen on this planet in 50 million years. Back then, the earth was 18°F warmer and the Arctic was more like the tropics with palms on the shores and crocodiles prowling the shallows.

Oceans are at the 'edge' of losing all oxygen: Event could lead to mass sea life extinction that will last a MILLION years. Shivali Best, Daily Mail Online. May 12, 2017.




Climate denialism among progressives. Steve Quilley, Navigators of the Anthropocene. May 2, 2017.

Climate denial is the preserve of god-fearing, right wing nutters right? Certainly, the denial of climate science is favourite pass time of shock jocks on the right. But what about climate politics? That is an entirely different matter. It cuts both ways. For instance on the progressive side, there is an enormous amount of bullshit and tech-hocus-pocus to the effect that we can have our cake (modern dentistry, antibiotics, consumer culture, highly progressive technology, ‘progress’) and eat it also (i.e. that we can do all the above ‘sustainably’). 

... 

It is disingenuous or self-denying for liberal academia and the sustainability industry to suggest otherwise. It is precisely those laudable social commitments that form a kind of climate denial. They [religious conservatives and neo-cons] deny the science. We [progressives] deny the social-political implications.

... 

The problem we have now is not simply or even most importantly the denial of climate science. It is a discourse that aligns denialism versus truth/facticity, with right versus left, and good versus bad. A conversation across the lines can’t take place when the choice is Clinton versus Trump; and it will never take place when liberals think that they have all the answers, that the science of climate change doesn’t pose terminal/existential questions to both the consumer economy BUT ALSO cosmopolitan diversity politics AND social democratic redistributive projects. As far as I can see, with regard to climate, Trump, Clinton, Obama and Trudeau are on the same side. I am with Paul Kingsnorth on that. Look at Trudeau! – Could there be a more attractive poster-boy for progressive politics? – He just signed off on pipe-lines for big oil! Clinton/Obama – global free-traders on steroids.

Trump pulls out of (ineffective, too-little-too-late, pointless, toothless) Paris agreement

Trump didn't kill the Paris agreement -- it was already dead. Arthur R. Wardle, Inside Sources. Jun. 2, 2017.

President Trump recently removed the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, heralded by many as a major win for global climate action. The Paris Climate Agreement, signed during the Obama administration, attempted to include the entire world and managed to amass 195 signatories. 

Given that international climate negotiations are notoriously difficult, that can only be evidence of two things: either the Paris agreement was a truly monumental agreement in which the entire world came together to respond effectively to a global problem or it was so toothless that nobody bothered to object. All things considered, it was probably the latter. 

The agreement itself contains very few direct requirements, instead relying on nations to interpret independently and work toward various ill-defined goals. This problem led James Henson, the “father of global awareness of climate change” and an ex-NASA scientist, to condemn the agreement as a fraud. It lacks any enforcement mechanism, instead relying on nations voluntarily to reduce emissions. 

Assuming that countries will voluntarily subject themselves to emissions reductions brings into question the need for an international agreement in the first place. Why else would Exxon, Shell, Peabody and other fossil fuel companies traditionally hated by the environmental movement defend the accord? The excitement of many Paris agreement supporters following these statements exposes their naivete. 

People worldwide lauded the accord for including 195 countries, but the inclusion of so much of the developing and undeveloped world may have neutered the agreement. Including undeveloped nations in a global climate agreement presents a double bind. Either the outcome will stymie much-needed and fossil fuel-dependent development, or the agreement will not do much at all. 

The Paris Agreement, again, took the latter approach by failing to make meaningful change. The agreement’s already vague and unenforceable requirements for developed countries are even more diluted for lower income countries. Interest in the agreement among many low-income countries likely stems from the $100 billion earmarked for payouts to assist in adaptation and mitigation. 

Yet even the source of these funds are up in the air, with international public pledges still well beneath the agreed-upon amount. If the money does materialize, the agreement fails to outline any monitoring to make sure funds are used appropriately or a mechanism for their transmission.

... 

Hand-wringing over the United States’ exit fails to recognize that the Paris agreement is more of a symbolic vanity project for world diplomats than an actionable plan for addressing climate issues.

James Hansen 12 years ago: ""If we pass 1°C, It's a point of no return for global warming". seemorerocks. Jun. 1, 2017.

Paris climate agreement can’t stop global warming: US scientist. spreaker.



Key greenhouse gases higher than any time over last 800,000 years. University of Melbourne.

Climate Links: 05/26/2017

Stop hoping we can fix climate change by pulling carbon out of the air, scientists warn. Chelsea Harvey, WashPo. May 22, 2017.

Scientists are expressing increasing skepticism that we’re going to be able to get out of the climate change mess by relying on a variety of large-scale land-use and technical solutions that have been not only proposed but often relied upon in scientific calculations.

... 

The solution that’s been proposed in numerous reports and climate models, including those released over the years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a technology known as bioenergy and carbon capture and storage, or BECCS. This strategy involves establishing large plantations of fast-growing trees, capable of storing large quantities of carbon, which can then be harvested and used for fuel. Biomass burning facilities would need to be outfitted with a special carbon-capturing technology, which would capture the carbon dioxide produced and store it safely away, potentially in geological formations deep underground. 

It’s an ambitious proposal, and one that many scientists have pointed out is nowhere near the point of becoming feasible, even from a technological perspective.

... 

Worryingly, they add, carbon dioxide removal is increasingly assumed by climate models and planning tools as a future mitigation tactic. While they encourage continued research and development of the technology, the authors also urge the necessity of “avoiding cavalier assumptions of future technological breakthroughs.”

Scientists puzzled by slowing of Atlantic conveyor belt, warn of abrupt climate change. Mike Gaworecki, Mongabay. May 27, 2017.

These currents are known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — or, more popularly, “the Atlantic conveyor belt” — and they have “mysteriously” slowed down over the past decade, according to Eric Hand, author of a Science article published this month. 

Scientists are increasingly warning of the potential that a shutdown, or even significant slowdown, of the Atlantic conveyor belt could lead to abrupt climate change, a shift in Earth’s climate that can occur within as short a timeframe as a decade but persist for decades or centuries.

... 

As far back as 2003, Robert Gagosian, who was then the President and Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (he’s now President Emeritus), warned that we ignore the threat of abrupt climate change induced by a slowing or shutdown of the AMOC at our own peril. 

“[T]he debate on global change has largely failed to factor in the inherently chaotic, sensitively balanced, and threshold-laden nature of Earth’s climate system and the increased likelihood of abrupt climate change,” he wrote in a post on the WHOI website.

Waves rippled through Greenland's ice. That's ominous. Brian Kahn, Climate Central. May 26, 2017.



Researchers Race to Understand Black Carbon’s Impact on Thawing Tundra. Madeline Ostrander, Arctic Deeply. May 22, 2017.

Black carbon is a product of incomplete combustion from forest fires and the burning of both wood and fossil fuels, and its influence on the Arctic is like the proverbial death by a thousand cuts. At the top of the world, black carbon can land on snow and ice, darkening them, which makes them soak up more heat from the sun and melt faster. It can also absorb and radiate heat from sunlight as it floats through the atmosphere. Black carbon may be worsening the extreme warming felt all over the Arctic, record temperatures that are making permafrost disintegrate and sea ice melt. And if the Arctic gets too much warmer, it is, in the long term, like setting off a giant Rube Goldberg machine – once Arctic ice melts, seas rise; ocean waters absorb more heat; methane, another potent greenhouse gas, escapes from the permafrost.

Arctic sea ice report: PIOMAS May 2017. Arctic Sea Ice Blog. May 4, 2017.

Then and Now: Essential Insanity, by Ian Welsh (2008); No Exit, by James Howard Kunstler (2017)

Essential Insanity, Ian Welsh, FireDogLake. Jan. 20, 2008.

this is from 2008; and the insanity in the last year seems to me exponentially worse

Walk with me a while and imagine you are mad. Crazy. Insane. It’s an interesting sort of insanity–you see the world as something other than it is. You are dead convinced that people are out to get you, but these people have almost no means to harm you and fear your retaliation greatly, because you’re a powerful person and they are weak. 

You believe that you are hale and hearty; but in fact you’re ghastly, obese and ill. You think you’re rich, but in fact you’re poor. You think you have the best doctor around, but in fact your doctor is worse than almost every other doctor and charges 50% more than them. You think you’re tough, and you certainly haven’t let the fact that two ninety pound weaklings seem to be able to stand up to you get in the way of that. 

You think that you have the most advanced technological toys, that what you have is the best, and once you did, but these days everyone else seems to have more advanced stuff. 

The illness goes deeper though, a deep decay in your brain. The parts of your brain that make most of the decisions for your body think everything is wonderful. They seem only able to take in sensations from the taste buds these days, and for the last thirty years you’ve been on a rich diet. So they think everything’s great. Your once lean body, packed with muscles, has been replaced by a flaccid one, paunchy and fat, but somehow the key parts of your brain don’t know that. They don’t feel your sore back, they don’t hear the broken down breathing and they don’t see the gut hanging over your belt. 

The you I’m referring to, as I’m sure many have figured out by now, is the US. For years I’ve been writing for the US and observing it carefully, and I’ve found it one of the most interesting problems I’ve encountered in my life. Because America and Americans are very unpredictable. Now, of course, the first thing I thought was “it’s me,” and in a sense, that’s true. 

Yet, here’s the thing, I have a very good record of predicting what will happen in Somalia, or Afghanistan, or Iraq. And when I get it wrong, I can look back and easily figure out why. Yet I’ve never visited any of those countries and really, know very little about them. On the other hand I grew up imbibing American media, know American history well, have visited America a number of times and spent 8 years in jobs that required me to deal with multiple Americans daily. 

Odd. Very odd. And something I’ve discussed with other foreign observers of American society and politics. 

The first clue to what was wrong came around the time of the Iraq war. It was obvious, dead obvious, to everyone outside of the US and to US citizens who were spending a lot of time parsing news, that the war was a joke and that Saddam had no nukes and was no threat to the US. Most Americans, however, didn’t get that. The reason, of course, was propaganda. 

Fair enough. Every country whips its citizens into war hysteria with propaganda. But what was truly remarkable wasn’t that, it was that somehow the majority of Americans, over 70%, thought that Iraq was behind 9/11. Iraq, of course, had nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing. 

Remarkable. Americans went along with going to war with Iraq then because they thought Iraq had attacked them and had nukes and could attack them again. A complete propaganda tissue of lies. But if you believe it all, well of course Iraq needed to be attacked. 

What looked to the rest of the world as crazy was entirely logical. It was, however, still insane. If I see a tentacled monster from the fourth dimension attack me and I respond by grabbing a knife and slashing apart my next door neighbour who’s waving at me, well, I had a logical, coherent reason for what I did, but I still murdered him, and I’m still insane. 

This is the first type of insanity in the US and it runs deep. I often feel like I spend more time correcting outright lies, outright propaganda, than anything else. Just this week I had to explain to a left wing blogger (who should know better) that single payer health insurance is cheaper and gives better results than private insurance system. Now in the US this is somehow still in doubt, but that’s insane–this isn’t in question, every other western nation that has single payer insurance spends about 1/3 less than the US and has as good health metrics or better either in most or all categories. This isn’t something that’s up in the air; this isn’t something that is unsettled. This is a bloody FACT. 

Americans think they are the most technologically advanced society in the world, yet the US does not have the fastest broadband, the fastest trains, the best cellphones, the most advanced consumer electronics (go to Japan and you’ll see what I mean) or the most advanced green energy technology. 

In the primary season Ron Paul was repeatedly cut out of media coverage and John Edwards was hardly covered. The majority of Americans thought that Edwards was running as the most right wing of the Democratic candidates. Huckabee was constantly called a populist when his signature tax program would gut the middle class and slap the poor onto a fiscal rack. 

And when all is said and done, politicians are still running on slashing taxes and having that make up for itself, while the US runs a balance of payments higher than any other country post World War II has ever done without going into an economic crash. 

That’s one type of insanity–thinking the world is something that it isn’t. 

The second is worse, in a sense. When Diamond wrote his book on why societies collapse he came to the conclusion that it occurred when elites weren’t experiencing the same things as the majority of the society–when they were isolated from the problems and challenges the society was facing. 

For 30 years ordinary Americans haven’t had a raise. And despite all the lies, Americans are beginning to get that. 

But for the people in charge the last thirty years have been absolutely wonderful. Seriously, things haven’t been this good since the 1890’s and the 1920’s. Everyone they know–their families, their mistresses and toyboys, their friends–is doing well. Wall Street paid even larger bonuses for 2007, the year they ran the ship into the shore, than they did in 2006 when their bonuses equalled the raises of 80 million Americans. Multiple CEOs walked away from companies they had bankrupted with golden parachutes in excess of 50 million. And if you can find a Senator who isn’t a millionaire (except maybe Bernie Sanders) you let me know. 

Life has been great. The fact that America is physically unhealthy, falling behind technologically, hemorrhaging good jobs and that ordinary Americans are in debt up to their eyebrows, haven’t seen a raise in 30 years and live in mortal fear of getting ill–because even if they have insurance it doesn’t cover the necessary care–means nothing to the decision making part of America because it hasn’t experienced it. America’s elites are doing fine, thanks. All they can taste, or remember is the caviar and champagne they swill to celebrate how wonderful they are and how much they deserve all the money federal policy has given them. 

This is the second insanity of the US–that the decision making apparatus in the US is disconnected from the results of their decisions. They make sure they get paid, that they’re wealthy, and let the rest of society go to hell. In the end, of course, most of them will find that the money isn’t theirs, and that what they’ve stolen is worth very little if the US has a real financial crisis. [MW: this was written in January 2008, remember]

The third insanity is simpler: it’s the wealth effect. At the end of World War II the US had about half the world’s economy. Admittedly that’s because Europe had been bombed into oblivion, but even when Europe rebuilt the US was still far, far ahead. The US was insanely rich and powerful. See, when you’re rich you can do stupid and unproductive things for a long time. There are plenty of examples of this but the two most obvious ones are the US military and the War on Drugs. 

The War on Drugs hasn’t reduced the number of junkies or drugs on the street in any noticeable way. It has increased the US’s prison population to the highest per capita level in the world, however. It has cost hundreds of billions of dollars. It has gutted civil liberties (the war on terror is just the war on drugs on crack, after all). And after 30 years does anyone seriously say “wait, this doesn’t work, it costs billions of dollars and it makes us a society of prisons?” Of course not, if anything people compete to be “tough on crime.” What’s the definition of insanity, again? Doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting different results? 

Then there’s the US military. It costs, oh, about as much as everyone else in the world’s military combined. It seems to be at best in a stalemate and probably losing two wars against a bunch of rabble whose total budgets probably wouldn’t equal a tenth of one percent of a US appropriations bill. And it is justified as “defending” America even though there is no nation in the entire world which could invade the US if the US had one tenth the military. 

But the US could (not can, they are now unaffordable, but could) afford to have a big shiny military and lots of prisons, so it does. Lots of people get rich off of both of them, lots of rural whites get to lock up uban blacks and lots of communities that wouldn’t exist otherwise get to survive courtesy of the unneeded military bases and prisons which should never have been built. 

Insane–believing things that aren’t true. 

Insane–decision makers are cut off from the consequences of their decisions and in fact are getting reverse feedback, as things get worse for most Americans and as America gets weaker and poorer, they are the richest they’ve ever been. 

Insane–so rich that no one will stop doing things that clearly don’t work and are harmful, because people are making money off the insanity. [MW: including, of course, dealing with climate change]

All of this is what makes predicting the US so surreal. It’s not just about knowing what the facts are and then thinking “ok, how would people respond to that?” You have to know what the facts are, what the population thinks the facts are, what the elites think the facts are, who’s making money off of it, and then ask yourself if these facts are having any real effect on the elites and if that effect is enough to outweigh the money they’re making off of failure (how many of them have children serving in Iraq? Right, not urgent to fix.) 

And then you have to go back to the facts and ask yourself “what effect will these have even if they’re being ignored.” Facts are ugly things, they tend not to go away. 

All of which makes the US damn near impenetrable, often enough even to Americans. 

But here’s what I do know–you can get away with being nuts as long as enough people are benefiting from you being insane. When the credit cards are all maxed out, when the relatives have stolen even the furniture, suddenly all the enablers go away and the kneebreakers or the men in white pay you a visit. At that point you can live in the real world, or you can go to the asylum. 

I wonder which way the US will go?

I guess, 9 years later, now we know... real world: not; asylyum, yup.



here's JHK:
No Exit. Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation. May 26, 2017.

A most curious feature in the current low state of American politics is the delusional thinking at both ends of the political spectrum. Both factions have gone off the rails mentally, and the parties they represent race toward oblivion like Thelma and Louise in their beater car. More ominously, there are no new factions with a grip on reality even beginning to form anywhere in the background - as in the 1850s when the Whigs foundered and the party of Lincoln segued into power. 

To see the Democrats go on about “Russian collusion” you would think we were watching a rerun of the John Birch Society in its heyday. Americans who have done business in Russia as private citizens are being persecuted as though they were trading with the enemy in wartime. Newsflash: we are not at war with Russia, which, by the way, is no longer the Soviet Union. It is one of many European countries that Americans are entitled to do business in — even in the case of General Mike Flynn accepting a $20,000 speaking fee from the RT news company. Has anyone noticed that Ben Bernanke routinely takes $200,000-plus speaking fees in many foreign countries whose interests are not identical to ours and no one is persecuting him. 

Likewise, the insane idea that it is malfeasant for high public officials to speak to Russian officials, or for the president to share sensitive strategic information with them, especially about genuine mutual enemies such the various Islamic jihad armies. Since when is that beyond the pale?Well, since January of this year when the Democrat Party ordained that members of the Trump transition team were forbidden to speak to Russian diplomats at the highest level. Do you suppose that, in the hothouse of Washington, incoming foreign policy officers of Obama’s government had no conversations with foreign diplomats between the election of 2008 and Obama’s inauguration? The idea is laughable. 

Even more disturbing to me personally, as someone who registered as a Democrat back in 1972, are the disgraceful and dangerous ideas emanating from the university world, which is universally dominated by the Left. For example, the recent movement on several campus to re-segregate student housing by race — in the name of “diversity and inclusion.” This is a species of doublethink that would make George Orwell gasp, and I have yet to hear of a college president or dean who dares to object. The sanctioning of this deranged hypocrisy is shaping a generation that could easily turn into political monsters when they eventually come into power — and that coming-to-power may coincide with much more desperate economic conditions on the road ahead. 

... 

The party of the right, the Republicans, have made themselves hostages to the marginal personality of Donald Trump, who prevailed over a cast of Republican empty suits in the pathetic and appalling primary contests of last spring. The Republican party has not demonstrated that it has the dimmest idea what is going on “out there” in the very flyover districts its minions and flunkies pretend to represent, or that they believe in anything not cynically calculated to bamboozle the economically immiserated classes left behind by their deliberate asset-stripping approach to the public interest. Since the very get-go of Trumptopia, it appears that the Golden Golem of Greatness will finally sink the Republican Party — or perhaps just drown it in Grover Norquist’s famous bathtub. 

My own guess is that in last-ditch desperation, the Republicans will not just abandon the president but actively join his adversaries on the other side to drive him out of the White House. 

And then, rightly, wrongly, or foolishly, you will see the immiserated former working class actually take up arms against the government for toppling their hero, and that will be the end of the fake faux-financialized economy that ought to be the real news you’re not reading about in The New York Times.

Climate Links: 05/22/2017

Early-Stage Antarctica Death Rattle Sparks NY Times Journalists Trip. Robert Hunziker, counterpunch. May 19, 2017.

“The acceleration is making some scientists fear that Antarctica’s ice sheet may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration,”

also, re: Alaska:

“The study, based on aircraft measurements of carbon dioxide and methane and tower measurements from Barrow, Alaska, found that from 2012 through 2014, the state emitted the equivalent of 220 million tons of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere from biological sources (the figure excludes fossil fuel burning and wildfires). That’s an amount comparable to all the emissions from the US commercial sector in a single year.” That is horrific news. It now appears that nature is cooperating in a positive feedback loop (which is extremely negative, as it is nature operating hands-free on auto pilot) in harmony with humans, overflowing the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases. That’s a perfect script for an end of the world apocalypse film project."

Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts. Damian Carrington, The Guardian. May 19, 2017.

‘We all knew this was coming’: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air. Chris Mooney, WashPo. May 8, 2017.

scientific articles:
Carbon dioxide sources from Alaska driven by increasing early winter respiration from Arctic tundra. PNAS.

Significance
Rising arctic temperatures could mobilize reservoirs of soil organic carbon trapped in permafrost. We present the first quantitative evidence for large, regional-scale early winter respiration flux, which more than offsets carbon uptake in summer in the Arctic. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Barrow station indicate that October through December emissions of CO2 from surrounding tundra increased by 73% since 1975, supporting the view that rising temperatures have made Arctic ecosystems a net source of CO2. It has been known for over 50 y that tundra soils remain unfrozen and biologically active in early winter, yet many Earth System Models do not correctly represent this phenomenon or the associated CO2 emissions, and hence they underestimate current, and likely future, CO2 emissions under climate change.

Abstract
High-latitude ecosystems have the capacity to release large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere in response to increasing temperatures, representing a potentially significant positive feedback within the climate system. Here, we combine aircraft and tower observations of atmospheric CO2 with remote sensing data and meteorological products to derive temporally and spatially resolved year-round CO2 fluxes across Alaska during 2012–2014. We find that tundra ecosystems were a net source of CO2 to the atmosphere annually, with especially high rates of respiration during early winter (October through December). Long-term records at Barrow, AK, suggest that CO2 emission rates from North Slope tundra have increased during the October through December period by 73% ± 11% since 1975, and are correlated with rising summer temperatures. Together, these results imply increasing early winter respiration and net annual emission of CO2 in Alaska, in response to climate warming. Our results provide evidence that the decadal-scale increase in the amplitude of the CO2 seasonal cycle may be linked with increasing biogenic emissions in the Arctic, following the growing season. Early winter respiration was not well simulated by the Earth System Models used to forecast future carbon fluxes in recent climate assessments. Therefore, these assessments may underestimate the carbon release from Arctic soils in response to a warming climate.

Climate Scientists

4 Climate Scientists & Their Fears for the Future. ABC Australia. video from youtube

Kevin Anderson

Duality in climate science. Oct. 2015.
The commentary demonstrates the endemic bias prevalent amongst many of those developing emission scenarios to severely underplay the scale of the 2°C mitigation challenge. In several important respects the modelling community is self-censoring its research to conform to the dominant political and economic paradigm. Moreover, there is a widespread reluctance of many within the climate change community to speak out against unsupported assertions that an evolution of ‘business as usual’ is compatible with the IPCC’s 2°C carbon budgets. With specific reference to energy, this analysis concludes that even a slim chance of “keeping below” a 2°C rise, now demands a revolution in how we both consume and produce energy. Such a rapid and deep transition will have profound implications for the framing of contemporary society and is far removed from the rhetoric of green growth that increasingly dominates the climate change agenda.

The hidden agenda: how veiled techno-utopias shore up the Paris agreement. Dec. 2015.

The deepest challenge to whether the Agreement succeeds or fails, will not come from the incessant sniping of sceptics and luke-warmers or those politicians favouring a literal reading of Genesis over Darwin. Instead, it was set in train many years ago by a cadre of well-meaning scientists, engineers and economists investigating a Plan B. What if the international community fails to recognise that temperatures relate to ongoing cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide? What if world leaders remain doggedly committed to a scientifically illiterate focus on 2050 (“not in my term of office”)? By then, any ‘carbon budget’ for even an outside chance of 2°C will have been squandered – and our global experiment will be hurtling towards 4°C or more. Hence the need to develop a Plan B.

Well the answer was simple. If we choose to continue our love affair with oil, coal and gas, loading the atmosphere with evermore carbon dioxide, then at some later date when sense prevails, we’ll be forced to attempt sucking our carbon back out of the atmosphere. Whilst a plethora of exotic Dr Strangelove options vie for supremacy to deliver on such a grand project, those with the ear of governments have plumped for BECCS (biomass energy carbon capture and storage) as the most promising “negative emission technology”. However these government advisors (Integrated Assessment Modellers – clever folk developing ‘cost-optimised’ solutions to 2°C by combining physics with economic and behavioural modelling) no longer see negative emission technologies as a last ditch Plan B – but rather now promote it as central pivot of the one and only Plan.

So what exactly does BECCS entail? Apportioning huge swathes of the planet’s landmass to the growing of bio-energy crops (from trees to tall grasses) – which, as they grow, absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Periodically these crops are harvested; processed for worldwide travel; shipped all around the globe and finally combusted in thermal powerstations. The carbon dioxide is then stripped from the waste gases; compressed (almost to a liquid); pumped through large pipes over potentially very long distances; and finally stored deep underground in various geological formations (from exhausted oil and gas reservoirs through to saline aquifers) for a millennium or so.

The unquestioned reliance on negative emission technologies to deliver on the Paris goals is the greatest threat to the Agreement. Yet BECCS, or even negative emission technologies, received no direct reference throughout the thirty-two-page Paris Agreement. Despite this, the framing of the 2°C and (even more) the 1.5°C, goals, is fundamentally premised on the massive uptake of BECCS sometime in the latter half of the century. Disturbingly, this reliance on BECCS is also the case for most of the temperature estimates (e.g. 2.7°C) ascribed to the national pledges (INDCs) prior to the Paris COP.

The sheer scale of the BECCS assumption underpinning the Agreement is breath taking

Jason Box

Earth's ice is melting much faster than forecast. Here's why that's worrying.

If the past decade of scientific inquiry is any indication, I’d say we are in for more surprises. That notion is further supported by the fact that climate models used to project future temperatures lack key processes that likely reinforce warming or the effects of warming, not regulate it.

Despite decades of progress by many clever scientists engaged with climate modeling, climate models used to inform policymakers don’t yet encode key pieces of physics that have ice melting so fast. They don’t incorporate thermal collapse — ice softening due to increasing meltwater infiltration.

Climate models also don’t yet incorporate increasing forced ocean convection at the ocean fronts of glaciers that forces a heat exchange between warming water and ice at the grounding lines.

Climate models don’t yet include ice algae growth that darkens the bare ice surface.

Climate models don’t yet prescribe background dark bare ice from outcropping dust on Greenland from the dusty last ice age.

Climate models don’t include increasing wildfire delivering more light-trapping dark particles to bright snow covered areas, yielding earlier melt onset and more intense summer melting.

As a result of some of these factors and probably some as yet unknown others, climate models have under-predicted the loss rate of snow on land by a factor of four and the loss of sea ice by a factor of two.

Climate models also don’t yet sufficiently resolve extended periods of lazy north-south extended jet streams that produce the kind of sunny summers over Greenland (2007-2012 and 2015) that resulted in melting that our models didn’t foresee happening until 2100.

While individual climate models come close to observations on this or that piece of the complex big picture, what ends up in global assessment reports intended to help guide policy decisions and national discussions of climate change are very conservative averages of dozens of models that don’t include the latest, higher sensitivity physics.

So, alas, when it comes to ice, how fast it can go and how fast the sea will rise, if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on it going faster than forecast.

Book Reviews: Drawdown

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Paul Hawken.

Drawdown.org.

Kirkus Reviews.

Drawdown and global warming's hopeful new math. Joel Makower, GreenBiz. Apr. 17, 2017.

A new book ranks the top 100 solutions to climate change. The results are surprising. David Roberts, vox. May 10, 2017.

Reversing Climate Change: An Interview with Paul Hawken. Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books. Apr. 18, 2017.

from a reviewer on GoodReads

This has some great stuff in it but unfortunately the "most comprehensive plan" includes a lot of really stupid crap. About half of the book is a pretty good summary of real solutions and the other half is basically a bunch of crazy techno-fixes. On the good side are things like ecosystem restoration (with particular emphasis on the importance of maintaining healthy oceans, peatlands and mangroves), agroecology, managed grazing systems, silvopasture, indigenous land management, lower methane-emitting approaches to rice cultivation and ruminant raising, replacing cotton with hemp, educating girls, empowering women, etc. The crazy techno stuff includes not only the typical electric cars, high speed rail, "green" cities, wind turbines, tidal energy, nuclear plants (how anyone can still support these I have no idea) and automated "smart" grids but also things like roads paved with solar panels, giant machines that suck carbon out of the air, vacuum tube trains and the possibility of nuclear fusion plants. To be fair there are caveats for a lot of these "solutions" but they really shouldn't even be considerations at this point.

I know global industrial civilization can be less destructive, that if we'd used the most efficient technologies and developed perfect recycling, stopped using planned obsolescence and shared things that we rarely use instead of all having our own possessions that sit idle 99% of the time then we could have gotten away with this for a pretty long time. Ignoring the fact that manufacturing these technologies at even a much reduced scale would still depend on horribly unethical behavior, it could technically be a lot better than it currently is. We're already on such thin ice though. If you're going 200 miles per hour towards a cliff that's only a few miles away then it doesn't make much difference if you reduce your speed to 50 miles per hour. Even 1 mile per hour in the same direction won't give you much time. Techno-fixes rely on too much infrastructure to ever be truly sustainable. Therefore better isn't necessarily good enough. What we really need is to wean ourselves off all this high-tech crap by losing our dependence on it. The low-tech solutions, like diversifying farmland with perennial crops and different species of grazing animals, can create human habitats where people are able to get everything they need from close by and without machines. And we're never going to see that happen without adopting degrowth economics (producing and consuming less crap without people being impoverished by job losses, etc.). This book doesn't just leave out a discussion on how inherently unsustainable our economic system is, it actually promotes certain solutions BECAUSE they contribute to economic growth.

I can agree with some of the "bridge solutions" and "regrets solutions" that are brought up. Clearly during a transition stage between the status quo and something sustainable we'll still be required to do some less than ideal things (like typing angry rants on internet sites). But there's a difference between things like properly disposing of HFC's from existing refrigerators and air conditioners and continuing to promote the manufacture of new refrigerators and air conditioners ("refrigerant management" is listed as the number 1 solution). A real solution for that problem long-term would be to use drying or root cellars for food storage and maybe PASSIVE cooling for houses. Cooling boxes can even be made with clay pots and sand, where evaporating water significantly cools down the contents without any power at all. Also capturing methane from landfills makes sense since it causes more damage if allowed to float away into the atmosphere but without addressing the growth imperative of our economic system it just becomes one more thing that people depend on for their livelihoods rather than something that can be intentionally phased out. Ignoring economic growth is just totally unforgivable for a book like this.

Part of me wants to give it a better rating for the good half at least (It's actually kind of surprising that with so much techno-utopian logic it doesn't promote GMOs, vertical urban farms with hydroponics and LED grow lights, more tech-based geoengineering schemes, etc.). I expect most people who read this book to just get excited by the wrong things though. Let's face it, science fiction tends to be a little sexier than farm animals. Overall, the good just can't make up for the bad.

Topic: Heatwaves

Heatwave builds across northern India and Pakistan. Al Jazeera. Apr. 15, 2017.

Pre-monsoon temperatures continue to rise, prompting health concerns.

2017 Asia summer forecast: Heat to roast northeastern China, Japan; Typhoons to hit Philippines to Vietnam. AccuWeather. May 17, 2017.

Historic Heat Wave Sweeps Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Dr. Jeff Masters, Weather Underground. Jun. 6, 2017.

Iran's Sistan in crisis mode as mercury shoots up 56 °C. seemorerocks. Jun 6. 2017.

A third of the world now faces deadly heatwaves as result of climate change. Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Jun. 29, 2017.

scientific articles:

Global risk of deadly heat. Mora, Dousset, et al, Nature Climate Change. Jun. 2, 2017.

War and Empire II: The Solution for Evil Empire? Abrupt Climate Change and the Collapse of Civilization

America's Globalization of Misery. Tom Engelhardt, via naked capitalism. May 15, 2017.

worth reading on its own merit, but in particular to read the comments, in particular the following comment posted at 2:07am on May 15 by Temporarily Sane:

Excellent piece. Americans by and large have no fu****g idea what the wars they support do to people and nations. Lulled into passively accepting these wars by stories of “humanitarian intervention”, “precision bombing” and cartoon villains who “massacre their own people” and a sycophantic press that is more propaganda and distraction service than news media, the American (and European) public are sold a package of obfuscating nonsense that anyone with half a brain should be able to challenge.

But it’s easier to believe comforting BS than to face uncomfortable truths that call into question some very fundamental beliefs about the nature of Western democracies.

Bonus Rant
The concept of “humanitarian war” is as ludicrous as it gets. Can you imagine any empire in history spending blood and treasure to wage long wars because human rights? That’s just insane. Yet a majority of Americans still believe America is “different.” Empires of time past fought wars on economic and tribal grounds (usually to preserve the status of the most powerful group) and to steal land from their neighbors etc. but the good ole U.S. does so because it is hopelessly altruistic and sentimental. That’s lol funny. United States’ foreign policy is simply a continuation of the pre-1945 European colonial project.

But repeat a lie often enough (which is what 75% of the west’s propaganda “technique” amounts to) and it percolates into the “collective unconscious” to become part of conventional wisdom. So why do people who were around for, or learned about, 2003 and Iraq’s vaporware WMD, 1990 and the incubator babies the Iraqi army wasn’t killing in Kuwait, the bailing out of the financial sector in 2008, the many shady intelligence agency/FBI ops we know about, the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” etc. etc. still trust our [sic] government and the powerful interests it represents? The events and revelations of the last few years especially should have made it clear to anyone with two neurons to rub together that the people in power are devious liars who will do anything to keep their power…and gain more of it… up to and including sending the sons and daughters of the people with the fewest options in our society to kill and be killed.

They sacrificed the wellbeing of millions of Americans – and continue to do so – so the 0.1% don’t have to suffer the indignity and hardship of having to make do with a billion or few hundred million dollars rather than the multiple billions they horde today. Hell, a single payer healthcare system is too much to ask for, but yeah the USG goes to war to free foreigners from tyranny because it cares. Haha… and I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale and a choice parcel of land in Florida I know you’re gonna love!

for readers of this blog, for which the topic of war and empire is just bonus coverage distraction from the posts predicting our imminent demise due to climate change, the following comment is particularly relevant:

at 3:44am, MoiAussie said:

IMO, globalization is with us until disrupted by widespread technological and societal collapse. That appears more likely than an uprising of the 99% bringing about a change in course, which itself is more likely than useful change happening within the existing political framework.

to which Pradeor responded at 7:47am:

Ecological collapse, and with it, societal and economic collapse are soon to come due directly to runaway greenhouse warming. Many of us will see this in our lifetimes. The scientists studying climate change are nearly all presenting the more conservative results, NOT the full, actual data that points to a human extinction event within 15-20 yrs. Methane seeps are becoming more prevalent on both coasts of the US, in the Arctic regions of the world, and methane is massively worse than CO2. Already baked in is a 4 degree rise in temperature globally without a near full stop of use of fossil fuels. That isn’t going to happen so we ARE finished. Sadly, this isn’t something that will just eliminate humans. It’s monstrous that we insist on taking out virtually all complex organisms with us – THEY are true innocent victims.

First will come ever more extreme weather events and mega drought wiping out food production in large areas. This will cause famine and massive refugee movement, but the bread basket of the US and Canada are not immune. They too will then start to collapse, and starvation and societal collapse will be upon us. It’s simply unavoidable at this point, and too late to stop it. It’s already baked in.

sadly, as readers of this blog know, I agree; more pointedly, the reason I continue to research this subject is not to punish myself with further despair, but to find some reason for hope, some promising light at the end of the tunnel (that may not be coming from the on-rushing train); no luck, still stuck, said the duck in the muck

I actually don't believe NTHE is likely (Guy McPherson has said, and repeatedly, I believe, that he can't imagine a human being alive on this planet in a decade... I would characterize that as largely a failure of his imagination.. really? you can't even imagine it? you can't even imagine a million surviving souls, out of nearly 8 billion?.. or a thousand, or just a dozen a decade from now??)

Nonetheless, I do believe in the near-term collapse of civilization... near-term meaning within my lifetime... that abrupt climate change will totally disrupt the systems that our civilization requires in order to keep running... and, as a result, billions will die... and that our future will look virtually nothing like our recent past (if we are lucky, it will look something like the world in James Howard Kunstler's fictional World Made by Hand series; if we are not so lucky, we may instead get something more like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. As for finding a wormhole, and going the Interstellar route, not so much.)

War and Empire I: The American Way of Life

War and Empire: The American Way of Life. Paul Atwood. 2010.

introduction via Strategic Culture Foundation. May 7, 2017.

A few months ago I received a message from a professor at the Khomeini Institute for Education and Research in Tehran, Iran, informing me that my 2010 book “War and Empire: The American Way of Life” (London, Pluto Press) had been translated into Farsi. He requested that I write an Introduction for Iranian readers. What follows is that Introduction. Two years ago the Xinhua Peoples’ Press in Beijing, China also published a translation in Mandarin.


In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s 1991 attempt to annex Kuwait the U.S. deliberately destroyed much of Iraq’s water and sewer infrastructure. The Pentagon even admitted on its website that these acts would lead to mass outbreaks of disease. These were certifiable war crimes under international law. After Saddam’s defeat the U.S. also imposed widespread sanctions on his regime that included preventing necessary medicines from reaching Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens perished as a result. In an infamous interview in 1996 Madeleine Albright, then the Secretary of State, was asked to justify the deaths of 500,000 children. She defended these atrocities by saying “I think this is a very hard choice but we think the price is worth it.” Twenty-one years have elapsed since Albright uttered her rationalization of this vicious barbarity and it has been virtually “disappeared” from the collective memory of Americans. But it is far from being the only one.

Today much the same is being visited upon the children of Mosul, Syria and Yemen. Fifty thousand more marines are slated for deployment to Afghanistan and the new Defense Secretary’s bellicose rhetoric threatens Iran.

When I undertook to write this book I could not imagine that it would ever be translated into Farsi or Mandarin Chinese. Over the course of my teaching career I had become increasingly concerned about the vacancy of knowledge about their nation’s past on the part of my students and by extension many millions of my fellow American citizens. This condition of ignorance is the effect of the incomplete and, too often, dishonest orthodoxy in required school texts and by the distortion of the real past by popular culture, Hollywood films and corporate controlled network television, especially the purported “news.” George Orwell was correct. “Who controls the present controls the past.” What the majority of Americans are conditioned to think they know about their past (and that of many other peoples) is myth, and too often, sheer illusion. Misdirection and manipulation about proclaimed threats from abroad since 1945 has led directly into wars and unjust armed interventions and coups in many other nations. The results are always tragic on a colossal scale.

None of this is accidental or new. Since the end of World War II the U.S. ruling elites have set forth an agenda claimed to foster what they call a “liberal world order” in which democracy and human rights for all are the declared goals. But little about real U.S. actions in the world supports these claims. Washington has overthrown elected governments and waged catastrophic war upon helpless civilians in many nations since 1945. The public is told that national security and “vital interests” are at stake and the corporate controlled media ensure that key realities are omitted, or distorted. It is no secret that today much of the human species is living in existential crisis-whether from war, economic exploitation or dire effects of climate change- and the profound ignorance about how the past shapes the present is a major factor in our failure to fashion a more peaceful and beneficial future. This volume is simply an attempt to illuminate much of the hidden history of the United States in the hope that more citizens in the United States will realize that we cannot continue on this destructive path and must find a way to cooperate with other nations instead of seeking to dominate them or outcompete them in a self-defeating contest for diminishing resources. Many American officials pay lip service to international cooperation but they really mean collaboration with the overarching American agenda.

The words of those who have formulated the grand strategy for American global dominance since the U.S. emerged as the most militarily dominant nation after WWII must be taken seriously but desires for global dominance were evident long before. Consider the oft-quoted language of George F. Kennan, the U.S. State Department’s architect of the Cold War with the Soviet Union immediately after World War II. In a top secret document circulated only to other key officials he took notice of the fact that the American population was (in 1948) only 6.3% of the world’s but that the U.S. effectively controlled about 50% of the world’s resources. The object of U.S. policy, he declared, should be to maintain that disparity and employ “straight power tactics” to enforce this global inequality, while avoiding all rhetoric about commitment to human rights, raising other peoples’ living standards, democratization and the like. Kennan’s vision, coupled with the U.S. creation of the World Bank and International Monetary fund, anticipated a globalized economy under firm control by American and allied European banks and industries, and backed by American firepower.

Much closer in time to the present is the comprehensive plan for complete American dominance of the planet projected in brutally frank and exacting detail by former national security chief Zbigniev Brzezinsky in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives.

Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Asia would dominate two of the three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination…About 75 percent of the world’s people live in Eurasia and most of the world’s wealth is there as well…Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s energy resources.

Upon assuming the presidency of the U.S. in 2001 George W. Bush filled his administration with so called Neo-Conservatives, members of the Project for a New American Century, who, with their allies in the Pentagon, called for nothing less than “full spectrum dominance” of planet Earth. Exploiting the hysteria mounted in the U.S. after the events of September 11, 2001 Bush II then proceeded to call for all-out war against what he termed the “axis of evil.” General Wesley Clark, a 2004 Democratic Party candidate for president, later revealed that the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld Administration had secret plans all along to overthrow the governments of Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan, and “finish off” Iran. All that was needed was a “new Pearl Harbor” and the events of September 11, 2001 provided that pretext, launching a state of permanent war primarily against the Muslim world.

Citizens of the U.S., like myself, who have long studied these matters and have opposed our nation’s imperial policies know that what these men, and many others like them, have proposed is exactly what they accused Nazi Germany and Communist Russia of attempting. Of course, proponents of what the first Bush deemed the “New World Order” in 1991 allege that this American imperium will constitute a radical departure from past empires and will instead usher in and guarantee a new age of democracy and human rights for all humanity. They assert this even as their bombs and those of their allies shatter the lives literally of millions in the Islamic world.

The U.S. began its history as a colony of the early British Empire and an outpost of nascent capitalism though this essential fact is de-emphasized in standard accounts in favor of the claim that the primary incentive for the colonial project was “freedom of religion.” The earliest British colonies in North America, Virginia and Massachusetts, were established as joint-stock companies, precursors of the modern corporation, to return profits to the mother country from resources of fish, game, furs, lumber and later, tobacco, cotton and the industries that followed. Acquisition of these valued assets required the conquest, displacement or extermination of the native populations already living here. The name, Massachusetts, for example, the state where I live, is all that remains of the people who once inhabited the area of what is now Boston. Later, the profits derived from forcible acquisition of the land, and the slave labor to cultivate it underwrote the industrial revolution and this catapulted the United States into position as the richest nation on earth and soon the militarily most powerful.

Only a century after breaking away from British rule the United States itself leapt upon the stage of empire to compete with other Europeans for dominance in the world, taking the former Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam by force, and annexing Hawaii. Brooks Adams, the descendant of two presidents, exulted that “this war is the first gun in the battle for ownership of the world.” In the Senate Albert Beveridge proclaimed that “The power that rules the Pacific rules the world.”

U.S. entry into both World Wars and all subsequent armed interventions is almost always mystified and characterized as a defense of democracy and human rights. In no case was American national security remotely threatened if by that we mean the vulnerability to invasion and military defeat.

Since the end of World War II the United States has waged numerous full scale wars and many smaller conflicts in the name of national security and claims of principle and high ideals. Americans are unremittingly habituated to believe Madeleine Albright’s all-encompassing contention that the United States is “the indispensable nation.” The end result of our actions has been many millions dead, maimed, reduced to penury, and desolated with grief. Americans are encouraged to see ourselves as humanitarians yet the widespread denial of our collective responsibility for the raw misery for those on the receiving end of our military firepower is nothing less than indefensible.

Until WWII the U.S. was perceived, if not exactly as a benevolent friend of Muslim peoples, at least it was not yet seen as one more imperial power set upon exploiting the greater Middle East. This positive estimation changed virtually the moment that war ended and the regional shift toward virulent anti-Americanism originated in Iran.

During World War II Iran had been co-occupied by Soviet, British and American troops. The Allies violated Iran’s declared neutrality because they thought that the country’s ruler, Reza Shah, was too friendly with Nazi Germany and they wished to use Iranian territory to transship supplies from the Persian Gulf to the USSR. The British owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now British Petroleum) had virtually monopolized production and profits from the industry and the Allies also wanted to prevent the country’s oil reserves from potential access by Germany. The three nations had agreed to withdraw from Iran within six months after the war’s end. In March of 1946 Soviet troops had still not withdrawn and Washington claimed that this was evidence of Stalin’s desire to expand communism and threaten the entire region. The reality was that the Soviet Union had suffered immense damage from the war and needed energy supplies to rebuild. Russians wanted some guarantee from Iran that they could purchase a certain quota of Iranian oil for this purpose and sought to gain an oil concession in the Azerbaijani region of Iran, which bordered the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Washington and the Iranian government feared that the Soviets might act to annex the territory when Iranian Azerbaijanis declared a separate republic. President Truman later claimed that he threatened the USSR with American military intervention. The U.S. State Department advised the Iranian prime minister, Ahmad Qavam, to negotiate and when Iran accepted the oil concession the Red Army withdrew. However, the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, later disavowed the agreement.

These actions undertaken by Washington constituted the first direct American intervention in the Middle East as well as the first skirmish of the post-WWII Cold War. Anti-Soviet rhetoric claimed that the Soviet Union was bent on “world conquest” and pointed to the occupation of Eastern Europe by the Red Army. Omitted was all mention of the fact that as Nazi Germany had marched through the nations of Eastern Europe it had subjected their governments and made them allies. Then many waged war themselves against the USSR. Thus, the Red Army was occupying those nations for the same reason the United States and Britain were occupying Germany, Austria and Italy. American elites had plans for the reconstruction of Europe that would reintegrate the entire region into a revived capitalist order under American authority and communist Russia’s occupation of Eastern Europe was seen to obstruct those goals. No consideration was given to the very real security concerns that the Soviets had, especially about their eastern borders from whence twice in the early 20th Century they had been invaded.

In fact, Russian non-actions at the time, not only with respect to Iran, indicated exactly the opposite of what Washington wanted the world to believe. The Red Army could easily have re-entered Iranian territory after the Majlis reneged on the oil concession and there was nothing, short of the atomic bomb that could have dislodged them. But it did not. Within a few years Soviet troops also withdrew from Austria and Manchuria quite in contradiction to the American assertion that they were intent on global conquest. There was no evidence whatever of Soviet designs to expand beyond what it declared to be its security zone in Eastern Europe. The U.S. had committed itself to an adversarial relationship with its former ally, in the absence of which the Nazis would never have been defeated, and it had initiated its long-term intervention into the internal affairs of Iran and many other nations, which, of course, continue to this day.

When the Shah was overthrown in 1979 few Americans had any sense of why this occurred, especially because most journalists supinely omitted any reportage of crimes committed by the “king of kings” against the Iranian people. The public had been conditioned to believe for decades that Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi was a benevolent sovereign, beloved by his people, a staunch ally of the United States, and a pillar of stability in the region. Most had no sense that the Shah was installed by the Central Intelligence Agency when it conspired with other Iranians to topple the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 because he had the temerity to insist that the oil resources of his nation were the birthright of the Iranian people rather than the property of western oil companies. The public had no understanding of how brutal the Shah’s dictatorship was in fact and no comprehension of the role Washington had played in enabling his feared secret police, the SAVAK, to terrorize all Iranians who objected to his policies. To the extent that the general public took any notice at all of Iran they accepted the claim that the Shah was America’s “policeman in the Gulf,” aiding the United States in its efforts to “contain” the threat of the Soviet Union.

The real menace to the interests of American corporate elites emanated from the upsurge in nationalism among all peoples around the globe who had been victims of western colonialism. World War II effectively finished Europe’s empires and nations from Indonesia, Vietnam, India, to Kenya, Congo, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile and many others were rising in the post-war period to obtain independence, and who, like Iran in the early 1950s, sought to nationalize their resources. From the perspective of the would-be American overlords this was their cardinal sin. Such appropriations of national reserves like Vietnam’s independence movement, Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, Mossadegh’s actions, or Qassim’s appropriations of oil in Iraq in 1956, if successfully carried out and allowed to stand, would have thwarted the grand strategy of the U.S. to exert American corporate control over such assets, markets and cheaper foreign labor and the immense profits that would acrue to American industrial and banking giants. Since communist ideology also promoted national independence for western colonies intense government and media propaganda convinced the American citizenry that resistance to the American agenda and global turmoil was all the work of the Soviet devil.

Even before WWII ended key members of the ruling elite sought preventive measures against a return to depression and mass unemployment. Sixteen million veterans were returning to civilian life. Would they face renewed unemployment and soup kitchens as so many had in the Great Depression of the 1930s? The director of war production, who had formerly been chief executive officer of the General Electric Company, a giant in what President Dwight Eisenhower would later designate the “Military-Industrial Complex,” argued that the U.S. needed a “permanent war economy.” Many of the massive corporations that now dominate the American political economy either grew exponentially during WWII or got their start as a result of government contracts financed by new taxation and borrowing. Only such massive government intervention put citizens back to work or in the military regiments. Given the nature of capitalism few among elite decision makers in the postwar could imagine restructuring such production to meet purely domestic purposes primarily because there was less profit to be made. War or the manufactured threat of war is the lifeblood of the military corporations and their financiers.

Thus the ally that had been indispensable in the defeat of Nazism overnight became the new menace to American national security, despite the fact that the USSR had suffered upwards of 30 million deaths and its principal cities lay in ruins. From that moment on the “Cold War” became the ideological organizing touchstone of American society. Even then many citizens resisted the new precepts. Henry Wallace, who had been vice president under Roosevelt, led the popular movement for cooperation between the two post-war giants but he was reviled by the high priests of political orthodoxy as a “fellow traveler” of the communists, as were any who dissented from the new agenda.

Inside the inner sanctum of the new “National Security State” a top secret document, NSC-68, specified a comprehensive blueprint to militarize American society, called for a tripling of taxation to expand the military budget and achieve nuclear supremacy by creating the hydrogen bomb. Even so the populace resisted until in the words of Secretary of State Dean Acheson “Thank God Korea came along.” Though Acheson himself had declared that Korea was outside of America’s “defensive perimeter,” warhawks in Washington and on Wall Street declared that the civil war between Korean factions on the other side of the planet imperiled the “free world.” What actually was at risk was the new militarized superstate, and the tax guaranteed profits to the corporations embedded in the war economy. The war that followed left 3 million Koreans and 37,000 US soldiers dead, threatened China with nuclear destruction, leading the Chinese to deploy their own nukes in short order.

To cite only some cases, from 1947 to the present the United States has intervened politically or violently in Iran, China, Ukraine, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Vietnam, Guatemala, Indonesia, Congo, Cuba, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Laos, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and most recently has intruded brutally in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria. Though internal domestic opposition to American interventions and wars has always surfaced the majority of the public historically succumbs to the incessant propaganda projected by U.S. governments of either party and their corporate allies and the media that military action is necessary for reasons of national security or to protect favored allies.

Recently “humanitarian intervention” has surfaced as justification for American deployments in Muslim countries. The doctrine’s principal exponent, former UN ambassador Samantha Power, was instrumental in toppling the Libyan regime of Muammar Qaddafi, with catastrophic results for innumerable civilians. Along with her boss Hillary Clinton, and National Security adviser Susan Rice, these “gentle” women also encouraged the Obama administration to support and arm the rebellion against the Assad regime in Syria leading to today’s incessantly violent chaos, uncountable deaths, the outflow of hundreds of thousands of refugees and the destabilization of numerous nations from Africa to Europe.

In 1991 the pretext of the communist menace disappeared with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That brief window of peaceful cooperation closed rapidly and Russia was soon demonized again as the principal menace to “liberal order.” The Trump Administration won election in great part because it promised a more cooperative relationship with Russia, one of the only ray’s of light in that dismal campaign. But what is now termed the American “deep state” is fostering a renewed condition of militarized tension with that nation. Trump also promised millions that he would renew the American economy and bring back jobs for millions who feel betrayed and impoverished by the flight of investment capital overseas in search of cheaper labor and the robotization of such industries that remain. “America First” is Trump’s watchword. Yet he has turned management of the U.S. economy over to the very bankers who orchestrated the swindles that led to the near collapse of the world economy in 2008.

As I write these words Trump has launched missiles at a Syrian airfield, employed the U.S.’s deadliest weapon short of nukes in Afghanistan, bombed Yemen, and sent troops to Somalia. His Secretary of Defense, former General James Mattis, affectionately called “mad dog” by his troops, threatens Iran, falsely accusing it of violations of the recently signed agreement on nuclear proliferation. Trump is recklessly threatening North Korea, potentially creating an extreme risk of a nuclear event that would certainly also engage China. He has called for an increase in military spending that by itself is almost larger than the entire military budget of any other country. Despite promises of prosperity for all the taxes to fund all this will fall on the shoulders of the broad American middle class and generations to come, not on the giant corporations that are all but tax exempt- as it appears Trump himself has been for decades. Rather than sanely reducing the risk of war as he promised his presidency looks increasingly worrying. As his foreign policies take shape they are indistinguishable from those of his Democratic Party opponents and the global dominance doctrines of Bush’s neo-conservatives. They [are] all fated to fail and unless derailed ensure yet more widespread war and suffering.



related articles:

Why trusting US government and mainstream media makes you a dupe. Eric Zeusse, Strategic Culture Foundation. Apr. 17, 2017.

The deep history of US, Britain's never-ending cold war on Russia. Finian Cunningham. Strategic Culture Foundation. Apr. 5, 2017.

Ukraine, Korea, Syria, Iran... Falsifying History is Uncle Sam's Way to War. Finian Cunningham, Strategic Culture Foundation. Apr. 22, 2017.

Things will get worse until US stops lying about Crimea. Eric Zeusse, Strategic Culture Foundation. Feb. 7, 2017.

Revenge of the polite men in green. Dmitry Orlov. May 2, 2017.

Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State. Mike Lofgren. Feb. 21, 2014. Bill Moyers.com

Stopping violent international aggression. Ian Welsh. Nov. 2, 2016.

Lying liars, the media and broken democracies. Ian Welsh. May 5, 2017.

Mainstream media as arbiters of truth. Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews. Apr. 4, 2017.

The most dangerous fake news of all is peddled by the corporate media. Mike Krieger.

How you can be absolutely certain that mainstream media lies about everything. Caitlin Johnstone, ContraPropa.

EXCLUSIVE: Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA. Tom Secker and Matthew Alford, InsurgeIntelligence.

The revolutionary distemper in Syria that wasn't. US-NATO sponsored Al Qaeda insurgency since the outset in March 2011. Steven Gowans, Global Research. Oct. 22, 2016.

Reporter actually IN SYRIA exposes media lies about everything. Eva Bartlett interviewed by Jimmy Dore via youtube. May 4, 2017.

Daesh, creature of the West. Pepe Escobar, sputnik news. Mar. 24, 2017.

How America armed terrorists in Syria. Gareth Porter, The American Conservative.

How al-Qaeda Became An American Ally In ‘The War On Terror’. Whitney Webb.

Fake news campaign on use of CWs in Syria. Stephen Lendman.

Shireen Al-Adeimi - Has The War In Yemen Become A Spectator Sport? MoA. Aug. 12, 2017.

Will Washington risk WWIII to block an emerging EU-Russia superstate? Mike Whitney, Counterpunch. Mar. 23, 2017.

The increasingly unhinged Russia rhetoric comes from a long-standing U.S. playbook. Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept. Feb. 23, 2017.

This is what's really behind North Korea's nuclear provocations. Bruce Cumings, The Nation. Mar. 23, 2017.

Why North Korea needs nukes... and how to end that. Moon of Alabama. Apr. 14, 2017.

The problem is Washington, not North Korea. Mike Whitney, Counterpunch.

U.S. to escalate its two years war on starving Yemen. Moon of Alabama. Mar. 27, 2017.

The new U.S. way of war. MoA. Oct. 17, 2016.

The Drone Papers. The Intercept. Part 1: The assassination complex. Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept. Oct. 15, 2015.

Whose sarin? Seymour Hersh, London Review of Books. Dec. 19 2013.

Trump's red line. also: Air strike in Syria: "We got a fuckin' problem". both by Seymour Hersh, Welt. Jun. 25, 2017.

Assessment of White House "intelligence" report about nerve agent attack in Syria. Dr. Theodore Postol, Global Research. Apr. 13. 2017.

"Thinking is Hard": The horror of the Deep State's plan exposed. Part I. Jim Quinn, zerohedge. May 1, 2017.

"The Brink of War": The horror of the Deep State's plan exposed. Part II. Jim Quinn, zero hedge. May 5, 2017.

Donald Trump and the coming fall of American empire. Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept.

Another step towards devastating war. PCR.

The world is going down with Trump. PCR.

We are inches from a new world war, and Clintonists are to blame. Caitlin Johnstone, CounterPropa.

Was a Cuban missile crisis averted in Syria? - Stephen Cohen. Seemorerocks.

Putin: US routinely meddles in Russian and other nations' elections. Eric Zuesse, Strategic Culture Foundation.

It Is the Presstitutes, Not Russia, Who Interfered in the US Presidential Election. PCR.

"This most extraordinary of failures demonstrates the complete separation of the West from reality."

Urgent steps to de-escalate nuclear flashpoints. Nuclear Crisis Group, Global Zero.

The actual terrorists. PCR. Aug. 11, 2017.


related books:

Because We Say So. Noam Chomsky. 2015.

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. Noam Chomsky. 2004.

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. Gore Vidal, 2002.

The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress. Chris Hedges. 2011.

The Neoconservative Threat to World Order: Washington's Perilous War for Hegemony. Paul Craig Roberts. 2015.

Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance. John Bellamy Foster. 2006.

The Untold History of the United States. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. 2012.

A People's History of American Empire. Howard Zinn. 2008.

America's Deadliest Export - Democracy: The Truth About U.S. Foreign Policy and Everything Else. William Blum. 2013.

9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed. David Ray Griffin. 2011.

Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11. Barrie Zwicker. 2006.

The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Mike Lofgren. 2016.

Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Spectre of Inverted Totalitarianism. Sheldon Wolin. 2008.

The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad. Tariq Ali. 2010.

Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War. Andrew Bacevich. 2010.

Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. Jeremy Scahill. 2013.

The New Rulers of the World. John Pilger. 2003.

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic. Chalmers Johnson. 2005.

Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. Tom Engelhard. 2014.

House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power. James Carroll. 2006.

Fool's Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions. Diana Johnstone 2003.

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Stephen Kinder. 2007.

The War Against Putin: What the Government-Media Complex Isn't Telling You About Russia. M.S. King. 2014.

We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age. Laurie Calhoun. 2015.

American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes. Rebecca Gordon. 2016.

The Culture of Make Believe. Derrick Jensen. 2004.

The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John Perkins. 2016.

A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption. Stephen Hiatt. 2007.

Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media. Michael Parenti. 1992.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Neil Postman. 1985.

Obedience to Authority. Stanley Milgram. 1983.

Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy. Lewis Lapham. 2005.

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. Charles Pierce. 2011.

Conspiracy Theory in America. Lance Dehaven-Smith. 2013.

A Propaganda System: How Canada's government, corporations, media and academia sell war and exploitation. Yves Engler. 2016.


others to read:
Ian Welsh
William Blum at American Empire Report
Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept
Stephen Cohen at The Nation
Eric Zuesse
Seymour Hersh
TomDispatch.com
James Howard Kunstler at Clusterfuck Nation
Mike Krieger
Dmitry Orlov at ClubOrlov
The Saker
Pepe Escobar
Moon of Alabama
Robin Westenra at SeeMoreRocks