UN: Earth heading to 16% Increase in Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2030, Risking Climate Instability
Informed Comment – September 18, 2021 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2021/09/greenhouse-emissions-instability.html
I want to stand back and underline this outcome. This is a study of the countries who signed the Paris climate accords in 2015 and who have stepped up and submitted their carbon dioxide and methane emissions plans by 2020. These are the good guys. And they are villains. We are villains. This is like if you made a New Year’s resolution to drop from 300 pounds to 250 and you end up weighing 400 pounds… The UN study finds that unless the countries of the world (and especially the biggest emitters– North America, Europe and China) get serious, we are going to blow past the 2.7 degrees F. limit, beyond which many climate scientists fear the earth’s climate could start to experience severe instability… The U.N. study is telling us that we aren’t doing it right, and our planet, our children and grandchildren depend on us doing it right.
Climate activists are being killed for trying to save our planet. There is a way to help
The Guardian – September 13, 2021 – Bill McKibben
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/13/murdered-climate-activists-environment
Each year, we learn more about the climate crisis. The data flows: ever-rising heat, unprecedented deforestation, record rainfall. And once a year, we also learn more about the human impact of the crisis too, as data is released on the killings of land and environmental activists, the very people highlighting and protesting at the breakdown of our climate. As Global Witness’ annual report reveals, in 2020, that number rose to a record 227 killings worldwide… The rest of us need to realise that the people killed each year defending their local places are also defending our shared planet – in particular our climate… That we have to fight simply to get our leaders to pay attention to science is frustrating, but there’s a big difference between fighting and dying: the names of these activists should be on our lips and in our hearts. We owe them debts that can’t be repaid – only paid forward.
The climate advocates who say Harvard’s oil divestment is a mistake
The Guardian – September 14, 2021 – Chris McGreal
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/14/fossil-fuel-divestment-harvard-oil-exxon-shell
Even as climate activists celebrated Harvard University’s promise to cleanse its multibillion-dollar investment fund of holdings in fossil fuel companies last week, others dedicated to the fight against the climate crisis wondered if the real winner was the oil industry… Other major oil industry investors, who are also committed to addressing the climate crisis, regard the dumping of shares as a mistake. They say it removes a key area of leverage over fossil fuel companies… Companies for decades have been trying to shape the narrative on climate change and make individuals feel like they’re responsible and the fossil fuel companies are honest actors in this fight. But they’re not… They were undermining science. Exxon was attacking scholars, including at Harvard. So when divestment makes clear who is perpetrating the harms, we think that there’s got to be a financial impact to them as well.
Climate investments can’t wait
The Boston Globe – September 13, 2021 – Ayanna Pressley and Roseann Bongiovanni
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/09/13/opinion/climate-investments-cant-wait/
Due to decades of structural racism and discrimination, extreme weather is impacting our most vulnerable communities disproportionately… Congress cannot afford to tinker around the edges. We must advance bold infrastructure investments that support our environmental justice communities, create a nationwide Civilian Climate Corps, and invest in climate resiliency across the nation. The United States must finally end our reliance on fossil fuels and enact a just, clean transition to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy to ensure a healthier planet. How we meet this moment will have lasting impacts, and history will remember us for it.
As the Climate Changes, Where Are the Safest Places to Live?
The Revelator – September 7, 2021 – Tara Lohan
https://therevelator.org/climate-change-moving/
As this summer so cruelly illuminates, climate change will present a barrage of challenges — including droughts, floods and hurricanes — no matter where you live… As far as I can tell, our best bet is to do everything — big and small. First and foremost, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and speed up the energy transition — equitably. At the same time, we’ll need to protect and restore critical habitats, green urban areas and increase resilience wherever we are — including curbing new developments in areas we know will flood and burn… Maybe, instead of focusing on where we should go, it would be better to ask, “What more can we do to stay in the homes and communities we already love?”
Meat Accounts for Nearly 60% of All Greenhouse Gases From Food Production, Study Finds
The Guardian – September 13, 2021 – Oliver Milman
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study
The entire system of food production, such as the use of farming machinery, spraying of fertilizer and transportation of products, causes 17.3bn metric tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, according to the research. This enormous release of gases that fuel the climate crisis is more than double the entire emissions of the US and represents 35% of all global emissions, researchers said…. Scientists have consistently stressed that if dangerous global heating is to be avoided, a major rethink of eating habits and farming practices is required.
The dirty secret about clothes is getting aired
The Boston Globe – September 17, 2021 – Veronique Greenwood
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/09/17/opinion/dirty-secret-about-clothes-is-getting-aired/
Elizabeth Cline is a journalist whose books “Overdressed” and “The Conscious Closet” revealed the environmental and human costs of fashion — an industry that puts out as much greenhouse gas emissions each year as the economies of France, Germany, and the UK combined… But last year it hit her: Things had reached a new low…. Nearly 10 years after Cline helped jumpstart the grassroots consumer movement to extend the lifetime of clothes, the movement has picked up speed. People now pledge on social media to buy nothing new. Younger generations show increasing awareness of the fashion industry’s waste problem.
The Winner in Afghanistan: China
Tom Dispatch – September 12, 2021 – Alfred McCoy
https://tomdispatch.com/the-winner-in-afghanistan-china/
The stunning capture of Kabul highlighted an American loss of leadership that extended into Asia and Africa, with profound geopolitical implications for the future of U.S. global power. Above all, the Taliban’s victory will effectively force Washington out of Central Asia and so help to consolidate Beijing’s already ongoing control over parts of that strategic region. It, in turn, could prove to be the potential geopolitical pivot for China’s dominance over the vast Eurasian land mass, home to 70% of the globe’s population and productivity… China’s capture of Eurasia, should it be successful, will be but one part of a far grander design for control over what Victorian geographer Halford Mackinder, an early master of modern geopolitics, called the “world island.” He meant the tricontinental land mass comprising the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa… after watching a Washington that’s invested so much in its military be humiliated in Afghanistan, we might add: Who does not command the World Island cannot command the World.
9/11 and the Saudi Connection
The Intercept – September 11, 2021 – James Risen and Eric Lichtblau
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/11/september-11-saudi-arabia/
Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband was killed in the attacks, said in an interview that the families are fighting not just the Saudis, but their own government, which she said appears more intent on protecting an important foreign ally than aiding the victims’ families… “We’re fed up. We want accountability and transparency,” Breitweiser said. “I want to know why the Department of Justice is protecting the Saudi kingdom. I’m being robbed of justice for the murder of my husband. It’s just a cover-up, I’m sorry to say.”
Twenty Years Ago, the Saudi Government Got Away With the Crime of the Century
Jacobin – September 12, 2021 – Branko Marcetic
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/9-11-attacks-saudi-arabia-government-ties-cover-up-war-on-terror
The war on terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq should never have happened, for reasons entirely unrelated to Saudi government culpability for the attacks: they were not only counterproductive and catastrophic but an immoral collective punishment of millions of innocent people for the sins of a few, the same twisted logic embraced by the terrorists Washington has spent this century hunting. But the evidence we have of Saudi involvement makes the military adventurism of the past decades especially, tragically absurd. With twenty years having passed since the attacks, it is high time there was some accountability for those responsible.
9/12, The Greatest Regret of My Life
Edward Snowden’s website – September 11, 2021
https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/9-12
The two decades since 9/11 have been a litany of American destruction by way of American self-destruction, with the promulgation of secret policies, secret laws, secret courts, and secret wars, whose traumatizing impact—whose very existence—the US government has repeatedly classified, denied, disclaimed, and distorted. After having spent roughly half that period as an employee of the American Intelligence Community and roughly the other half in exile, I know better than most how often the agencies get things wrong. I know, too, how the collection and analysis of intelligence can inform the production of disinformation and propaganda, for use as frequently against America’s allies as its enemies—and sometimes against its own citizens. Yet even given that knowledge, I still struggle to accept the sheer magnitude and speed of the change, from an America that sought to define itself by a calculated and performative respect for dissent to a security state whose militarized police demand obedience, drawing their guns and issuing the order for total submission now heard in every city: “Stop resisting.”… In retrospect, my country could have done so much with this opportunity. It could have treated terror not as the theological phenomenon it purported to be, but as the crime it was. It could have used this rare moment of solidarity to reinforce democratic values and cultivate resilience in the now-connected global public.
9/11 Made the Media Whitewash What Really Happened in Bush v. Gore
The New York Magazine – September 9, 2021 – Jonathan Chait
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/9-11-made-the-media-whitewash-bush-vs-gore.html
Twenty years on, not only does the impulse to follow Bush’s foreign policy look worse, but so too does the impulse to overlook the method by which he gained his office. His party’s terrifying will to power, including mobs shutting down a legitimate government proceeding over groundless fears that Democratic cities would manufacture fake votes, was an eerie precursor to its future. The truth we’ve suppressed is that Bush not only misused his office, but never should have held it in the first place.
September 11 and the Debacle of ‘Nation-Building’ in Iraq and Afghanistan
Informed Comment – September 11, 2021 – Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus
https://www.juancole.com/2021/09/september-building-afghanistan.html
Nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq was the resurrection of a doctrine that had been discredited in Vietnam. It should have remained buried, but it was dredged up to provide a justification for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and serve as a handbook for reconstituting the state following military victory in the Bush administration’s drive to reshape the global political environment in a unipolar direction. But lacking the preconditions for success present in the Philippines and Japan, the venture collapsed in Iraq and Afghanistan in much the same way it did in Vietnam. Hopefully, this time around, nation-building or liberal democratic reconstruction will be buried once and for all.
As War Keeps Poisoning Humanity, Organizing Continues to Be the Antidote
Reader Supported News – September 13, 2021 – Norman Solomon
https://www.rsn.org/001/rsn-as-war-keeps-poisoning-humanity-organizing-continues-to-be-the-antidote.html
It’s not easy, to put it mildly, to go against the powerful flood of megamedia, of big money in politics, of the ways that issues are constantly framed by powerful elites. But in the long run, peace activism is essential for overcoming militarism. And organizing is what makes that possible.
Average People Still Have the Power to Stop Wars
Jacobin – September 16, 2021 – J.C. Pan and Ariella Thornhill interview Noam Chomsky
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/noam-chomsky-jacobin-show-interview-antiwar-afghanistan
Do you think we’ve arrived at the end of an era? Are we witnessing the end of American empire, or at least the beginning of a new stage?… I think the withdrawal will have practically no effect on US imperial policy. The current commentary on Afghanistan is almost entirely about what the war cost us. You find virtually nothing about what it cost Afghans… There was no reasonable basis for the war in the first place. Osama bin Laden was only a suspect when the United States started bombing Afghanistan. If there’s a suspect whom you want to apprehend, you carry out a small police operation. They could’ve apprehended him, then worked to discover if he was actually responsible, which they didn’t know… My old friend Howard Zinn put it pretty well once. He said that “what matters are the countless small deeds of unknown people who lay the basis for the events of history.” I think that’s the point. We don’t even know the names of the people who’ve done the really significant and important work, just as we don’t know the names of the people overseas who are struggling for their rights courageously under horrible conditions. We can help them in many ways. It’s been done in the past and can be done more in future. But we don’t have a lot of time now. The problems are much more urgent than they were in the past.
Justice Dept. to Investigate Georgia Prisons
The New York Times – September 14, 2021 – Katie Benner
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/us/politics/georgia-prisons-justice-department.html
The moves, announced on Tuesday, broadly address issues of violence in law enforcement and incarceration that have become a rallying point for criminal justice advocates and led to protests and civil unrest around the country.
‘Truth-telling has to happen’: the museum of America’s racist history
The Guardian – September 19, 2021 – Ed Pilkington
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/19/the-legacy-museum-america-racist-history
The visitor is taken on a white-knuckle ride through some of the most painful elements of America’s long history of racial injustice – slavery, lynching, segregation, all the way to the present-day epidemic of police killings of African American teenagers and the societal addiction to putting Black people behind bars. The museum pulls no punches. One section memorializes the children killed in racial terror lynchings: “Four-year-old Black girl Lillie Mike, her six-year-old sister Emma Mike, lynched by a white mob 1884, Calhoun County, Georgia.” Bryan Stevenson, the mastermind behind the Legacy Museum, sees such searing detail as bitter but necessary medicine for the American soul… Later rooms explore the battle to secure fundamental freedoms in the civil rights era, including Montgomery’s own bus boycott. Then the Legacy Museum arrives at the present day. It is here at the end of the museum’s journey that Stevenson’s holistic vision becomes clear – history must be understood not only as an end in itself but as a cure to the sickness coursing through the veins of modern America.
Gun manufacturers quietly target young boys using social media
Salon – September 18, 2021 – Jon Skolnik
https://www.salon.com/2021/09/18/manufactures-quietly-target-young-boys-using-social-media/
“It doesn’t take a marketing expert to understand what they’re trying to appeal to,” Kris Brown, President of Brady, said of Smith & Wesson’s marketing practices in an interview with Salon. “They’re trying to market the gun as a totem – a substitute for masculinity to teenagers.”… The gun lobby’s alleged effort to foist guns onto young men and adolescents is not a novel phenomenon. For decades, gun manufacturers have sought to sustainably capture the interest of younger buyers, using new methods of marketing and merchandising to give their products a more youthful appeal.
The $3.5 Trillion Bill Corporate America Is Terrified Of
Robert Reich’s Blog – September 13, 2021
https://robertreich.org/post/662251614028120064
Don’t listen to spending hawks who claim it’s too expensive or too radical. For far too long, our government has ignored the needs of everyday Americans, catering instead to the demands of corporations and the super-rich. No more. It’s time to get this landmark bill passed and build a fairer America.
Request daily housekeeping at a hotel, and you’ll help save a job
The Boston Globe – September 5, 2021 – Shirley Leung
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/09/05/business/request-daily-housekeeping-hotel-youll-help-save-job/
Request daily housekeeping next time you check into a hotel, and tip generously. Room by room, we can help save the jobs of housekeepers everywhere.
Canada election: Why it’s easier to vote in Canada than the US
BBC – September 18, 2021 – Robin Levinson-King
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58589809
Perhaps the most fundamental difference between Canadian and American elections is that Canadian federal elections are all run by one, non-partisan federal body, Elections Canada, while in the US, elections are run at the state level. That guarantees that a voter in Nova Scotia has the same system as a voter in Nunavut. In the US, a person’s voting rights vary widely state by state. These myriad rules make it easier for partisanship to creep in, says Matthew Lebo, who teaches political science at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, and specialises in American political systems. “In Canada everything is done by Elections Canada – it’s non-partisan, and they work hard to be non-partisan,” he told the BBC. “In the states, every state is doing it themselves, they are definitely not non-partisan.”
Occupy Wall Street at 10: What It Taught Us, and Why It Mattered
The New Republic – September 17, 2021 – Micah L. Sifry
https://newrepublic.com/article/163680/occupy-wall-street-10-year-anniversary-lessons
So why did Occupy succeed in capturing public attention? Because it wasn’t slick. Other than an initial push from Adbusters magazine, which offered September 17 as the start date and created an iconic poster for the movement of a ballerina atop the Wall Street bull, it wasn’t organized by professional activists… Occupy took off because it was authentically filled with desperate, hopeful ordinary people, many of them students burdened by extraordinary college debt. After mainstream journalists got over their initial skepticism, many were impressed by the Occupiers’ authenticity and shared that in their coverage… Because of its participatory model, Occupy turned many sympathizers into community organizers, while never anointing anyone as its leader. Mainstream commentators were flummoxed by this, insisting that the movement couldn’t have a coherent message if it didn’t have a few leaders at the top who spoke for and directed the group. But Occupy’s broad message obviously broke through. It changed the national conversation, putting inequality on the agenda in a powerful way and paving the way for the message of economic populists like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren… What’s hardest to track is how being an Occupier shaped a generation of young organizers, both by giving them a taste of utopic community showing that a world beyond capitalism might be possible and by teaching them, through a negative example, about patterns of leftist thought and behavior that they now are trying to get past.
The Real Story of Occupy Wall Street Is What’s Happened Since
Rolling Stone – September 17, 2021 – Nathan Schneider
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/occupy-wall-street-10-year-anniversry-1227856/
Protesters took over Zuccotti Park 10 years ago today. The movement’s biggest legacy may be the 10-year crackdown that followed… The right-wing reaction to Occupy and its related movements has been so all-consuming that it’s hard to remember the feeling of 2011, when it seemed like a deeper kind of democracy was on the rise. Protesters everywhere tried out radical forms of self-governance in their camps, inspired by the texture of online networks. Rather than making demands of politicians, they debated how to make politicians obsolete. Whatever ideology any individual held, together they were anarchists, in the sense of trying to root out hierarchy wherever it appeared. Egyptian Google employee Wael Ghonim created the Facebook page that brought thousands to the streets in Cairo, but he refused the mantle of leadership, calling the movement “leaderless.” A document passed by Occupy Wall Street’s consensus-based mass assembly described its participants as “autonomous political beings” who were “engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy.”… Democracy must be rediscovered in every generation or it withers. It must evolve with what people long for… The reaction against the movements of 2011 has demonstrated how dangerous real democracy can seem to those who gain from its decline. The consequences are everywhere around us. So much of the mess of the world right now happened because, for some, the noise of democracy was unbearable. In the decade to come, that noise needs to grow louder.