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Donald Trump’s Top Ten Giveaways to Vladimir Putin

by jefferylasley9 Posted on July 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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The number of pro-Putin positions that Donald Trump has taken has assumed quite remarkable proportions:

  1. He wants to reduce America’s commitment to NATO and reorient its activities to the Middle East. This is perhaps Vladmir Putin’s greatest foreign policy desire.
  2. Says America has no moral standing to complain about human and civil rights violations.
  3. Welcomed Russia’s incursion into Syria.
  4. Considers Putin a great leader.
  5. Would consider eliminating sanctions against Russia and recognizing their annexation of Crimea.
  6. Wants to weaken American ties to its allies by insisting that he will walk away from them unless they pay us more for our military protection.
  7. Never mentions Russia in his otherwise endless litany of countries that are taking advantage of us.
  8. Opposes sending arms to Ukraine.
  9. Is pro-Brexit.
  10. Isn’t sure he would defend the Baltics if Russia attacked them.

Have I missed anything? I probably have. It’s hard to keep track.

Most of these are defensible positions on their own. I don’t support sending arms to Ukraine, for example. Plenty of conservatives are pro-Brexit. And plenty of lefties would like to see us reduce our military footprint worldwide.

But even if you personally agree with an item or three on this list, the whole thing adds up to something unprecedented for an American candidate for president. Donald Trump considers America at odds with virtually the entire world. He’s based his entire campaign on this. At various times he’s mentioned China, Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, and the entire Pacific Rim. But never Russia. On the contrary, his list of positions toward Russia is basically Vladimir Putin’s dream foreign policy. For a guy suffering under crippling sanctions, a tanking economy, low oil prices, and a demographic time bomb, Donald Trump is offering him everything he could possibly want. And what does Trump want in return? For Russia—and only for Russia—he wants nothing.

As much as I loathe Putin, I’m not among those who now think Mitt Romney was right when he listed Russia as our #1 geopolitical threat. Conservative fearmongering on the subject leaves me cold. Nonetheless, this list is not a coincidence. There’s something behind the scenes guiding it. But what?

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Donald Trump’s Top Ten Giveaways to Vladimir Putin

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Donald Trump Won’t Rule Out Using Nuclear Weapons in Europe

by ChongTrevizo637 Posted on March 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump refused to rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe during a town hall in Wisconsin on Wednesday. The Republican presidential front-runner was asked about his recent contradictory statements about nuclear proliferation—in which he said he was concerned about the spread of nukes while also suggesting that more countries, including Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia, should be allowed to acquire them.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the host of the town hall, tried to pin Trump down on what circumstances might compel President Trump to deploy the United States’ nuclear arsenal.

“Look, nuclear should be off the table, but would there a time when it could be used? Possibly,” Trump said.

Matthews asked Trump to tell the Middle East and Europe that he would never use nuclear weapons, but Trump continued to evade. Asked again if he’d use nuclear weapons in Europe, Trump held firm. “I am not—I am not taking cards off the table,” Trump responded.

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Donald Trump Won’t Rule Out Using Nuclear Weapons in Europe

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Trump manages to surprise us with strange “climate” obsession

by MayDeeter575 Posted on March 28, 2016

Trump manages to surprise us with strange “climate” obsession

By on 28 Mar 2016commentsShare

Leave it to Donald Trump to stumble onto a talking point that can still surprise us. Trump has told two newspapers in the last week that nuclear weapons are the only type of climate change that concerns him.

“I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons,” he told The Washington Post Editorial Board when asked about his concern for human-made warming. Trump then told The New York Times in an interview about his foreign policy, completely unprompted, “When people talk global warming, I say the global warming that we have to be careful of is the nuclear global warming.”

Trump’s nuclear-as-climate-change concern hasn’t yet reached the same level of infamy of lines like, “I’m not a scientist,” but he’s been tweeting on it since at least 2014:

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Apparently, it’s a reference to the Cold War-era debate over the threat of a nuclear winter if the United States and Soviet Union were to go to war, but now he means it in the context of North Korea and Iran. Conservatives might not normally compare nuclear weapons directly to climate change, though they do like to complain that President Obama overstates the risks of climate change compared to terrorism and foreign threats (see Mike Huckabee’s favorite quip, “I assure you that a beheading is much worse than a sunburn”).

In the same Post interview, Trump insisted he isn’t a “big believer in man-made climate change.” But he hasn’t mentioned his other two favorite theories in a while about how climate change is a hoax: Cold weather in New York debunks global warming, and the whole thing is a con “created by and for the Chinese.”

Trump could be following national Republican trends where politicians change the subject instead of jumping into science denial. Maybe that counts as something like progress? Or Trump is just giving us another flavor of climate denial.

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Trump manages to surprise us with strange “climate” obsession

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We Are Live-Blogging the Final GOP Debate of 2015

by Enrique8184 Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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This debate was a mess. I seriously wonder whether ordinary viewers were able to follow much of it at all. It left me with the impression of a bunch of super macho monks angrily arguing about angels on the head of a pin. The candidates went down a rabbit hole early on and never really came up for air.

My strongest impression is that Ben Carson was terrible. He really needed to show that he wasn’t a complete nitwit on national security, and he failed spectacularly. He was obviously out of his depth and had no clue how to answer even the simplest questions. He literally froze when Wolf Blitzer asked him his view of the USA Freedom Act. It was almost painful to watch. Later on he burbled about not being able to fix the Middle East, sending Syrian refugees back to Syria with a few defensive weapons, and then became completely incoherent when asked about North Korea. Carson did so badly that I think his campaign is over.

Donald Trump took a step backward to his persona from the first debate: lots of mugging for the camera and no apparent policy knowledge at all. He doubled down on killing the families of terrorists; he answered three or four different questions by saying he opposed the invasion of Iraq; and then produced one of the night’s most fatuous lines: “I think for me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me.” That’s his position on the nuclear triad? It’s hard to believe this isn’t going to hurt him in the polls, but this is not a normal world we live in these days. I’d say he’s going to lose a few points, but I won’t pretend to be confident about that.

Jeb Bush tried manfully to needle Trump, but the poor guy just can’t pull it off. All Trump had to do was make a face at him. As for substance, he was one of the most reasonable guys on the stage, but he seems incapable of stating his views in any kind of memorable way. He did nothing to help himself tonight.

Marco Rubio did his usual thing: he produced tight little canned responses to every question. I don’t like this approach, but I suppose it sounds coherent and forceful to some people. He did OK, and might pick up a few points. However, I would like to hear more about whether he thinks Ted Cruz exposed national secrets on live TV.

Ted Cruz probably did well, though he struggled with several questions. Does he really think we can carpet bomb only “the bad guys” and no one else? Does he really think arming the Kurds is the key to defeating ISIS? They aren’t going to fight ISIS anywhere outside Kurdistan. But I doubt this kind of stuff does him much harm. His tedious manhood fight with Wolf Blitzer over being allowed to speak when it wasn’t his turn didn’t make him look especially presidential, but maybe that doesn’t matter either. My sense is that he came out about even tonight.

Chris Christie said nothing except that he’s tough. Carly Fiorina just spouted her usual one-liners. John Kasich desperately wants people to pay attention to him and just can’t pull it off. And Rand Paul, bless his heart, didn’t try to out-macho everyone. But he also probably didn’t appeal to anyone either.

It’s hard to know how to react to this stuff. Kasich apparently wants a full-on re-invasion of Iraq. Trump wants to kill terrorist families. Cruz wants to carpet bomb ISIS but has no idea what that actually means. Rubio thinks our Middle Eastern allies will all magically provide lots of ground troops just as soon as the lily-livered Obama is out of office. Carson is just plain scary in his lack of knowledge of anything. The only thing they all agree on is that America needs a testosterone injection. It’s pretty depressing to watch.

But maybe I can cheer you up. Earlier today I told you that the latest issue of Mother Jones features a scarily-near-life-size picture of me, suitable for putting on your refrigerator if you buy a copy of the magazine. Did you think I was joking? I wasn’t, and I have photographic proof on the right. But I tell you what: If enough of you make a donation to MoJo tonight, I think I can convince them never to do this again. Deal?

Full debate transcript here.

Here we are for the….what is this? The fifth Republican debate? They fly by so fast! It seems like just yesterday that Carly Fiorina was a toddler in the undercard debate, but now look at her. Proudly up on the main stage and polling at 2.2 percent.

11:06 – And that’s a wrap.

11:04 – Trump: Our health care system is going to implode in 2017.

11:02 – Jeb mentions his “detailed plans” yet again. He probably ought to cool it on that.

10:55 – Commercial break! Then closing statements. While we wait with bated breath, how about making a donation to the hardworking bloggers here at Mother Jones? Just click here.

10:54 – Trump says he won’t run as an independent. At least, it seems like he said it. You never know with Trump.

10:52 – Trump and Rubio are now mugging together.

10:51 – Rubio wants to upgrade everything.

10:48 – Hugh Hewitt asks Trump what he’d upgrade first: missiles, subs, or bombers. Trump’s stream of conscious reply is on a whole new level. Hugh asks again. Trump: “I think for me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me.” OMG.

10:47 – Jeb continues the mindless China bashing. This is everyone’s favorite sport every four years.

10:46 – Christie wants us to dig up Chinese corruption and then tell the Chinese people about it. How? Leaflets?

10:44 – Carson is now literally babbling about national security. I can’t watch. It’s too embarrassing.

10:42 – What would Fiorina do about North Korea? Answer: we have to beat up on China. This will convince them to help us get rid of Kim Jong-un. What?

10:38 – Commercial break! And I’m working hard here, folks. How about a donation? Show us that you get it.

10:35 – Hmmm. I wonder what Chris Christie’s job used to be? I wish he’d let us know.

10:31 – Carson: We should settle Syrian refugees in…northwest Syria. All we need is a few weapons to defend it. But why do we send Kurdish arms through Baghdad? Does Carson really not know? This is almost painful to watch.

10:26 – FFS, will everyone stop griping about not getting called on?

10:20 – Bush once again needles Trump for getting his information from “the shows.” Sadly, he can’t really pull it off. It does seem to get under Trump’s skin, though.

10:18 – Trump has been mugging for the camera all night. Much like the first debate.

10:12 – Carly trying to sound tough. They’re all trying to sound tough. They’re the toughest toughs of all time. They’re all tougher than anyone else on the stage. I wonder if even conservatives get weary of this endless bluster?

10:09 – The overall impression of this debate is total chaos, despite the fact that everyone on stage except Rand Paul has pretty much the same foreign policy.

10:07 – Wolf desperately trying to shut up Ted Cruz. Finally succeeds. Cruz looks like an idiot.

10:05 – I’m losing the plot here. Who’s in favor of what these days?

10:03 – Carson: Middle East has been in turmoil for thousands of years. We’re not going to fix it. Huh? Does he even listen to his own words?

10:02 – Now it’s $3 trillion.

10:01 – Trump: We’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple dictators. Now the Middle East is a mess. Not totally clear what he means by this, but he’s certainly opened himself up for attack.

9:56 – Cruz manfully tries to defend teaming up with dictators as long as they’re our dictators.

9:52 – Commercial break! Why not take the time to make a donation to Mother Jones? All you have to do is click here. It only takes a few seconds.

9:51 – Carson: we have to destroy the caliphate. We have to “take their energy.” We have to cut off Raqqa. That’s his strategy?

9:48 – Um, no, Carly, Petraeus wasn’t “retired early” because he told Obama something he didn’t want to hear. You remember the real reason, don’t you?

9:47 – Rubio seems to think the only reason that Middle Eastern countries aren’t providing ground troops is because they don’t trust Obama. I hope he doesn’t actually believe that.

9:45 – Kasich appears to be proposing a massive re-invasion of Iraq.

9:44 – Now Trump doesn’t want to close down parts of the internet, he just wants to get a bunch of “smart guys” to infiltrate them. I wonder why no one has thought of that before?

9:37 – Should we kill the families of terrorists? Trump says he would be “very, very firm with families,” whatever that means.

9:35 – Cruz will destroy ISIS by “targeting the bad guys.” Okey dokey.

9:33 – Rubio says we need ground troops to defeat ISIS. This isn’t rocket science, but props to Rubio for actually saying it.

9:31 – Wolf asks Cruz again: would he carpet bomb cities? Cruz says he’d carpet bomb the places where ISIS is. This is, of course, in the cities.

9:30 – Cruz yet again seems to think the Kurds will fight outside Kurdistan if we arm them. This is pitiful.

9:28 – Trump desperately tries to tap dance around his idea of closing down parts of the internet. Eventually, he says yes, by God, he would shut down parts of the internet.

9:25 – Fiorina thinks we missed the San Bernardino shooters because we used the wrong algorithms. Also: we don’t need to force Silicon Valley companies to cooperate with NSA. We just need to ask them. Has she paid attention to anything at all over the past three years?

9:23 – Who’s right about the USA Freedom Act, Rubio or Bush? Carson looks like a deer in headlights and says Wolf should ask them. He doesn’t want to get in the middle of this. WTF? This is the new, well-briefed Carson?

9:20 – Christie just flat-out said that policy is boring. All we need is a guy who’s tough on terrorism. This legislation mumbo jumbo from the junior senators is for wimps.

9:18 – Rubio implies that NSA can’t access phone records with a warrant. But he didn’t quite come right out and say that, which means he can deny it later.

9:16 – This is great. Rubio has just implicitly accused Cruz of blabbing classified information on national TV.

9:15 – Rubio giving another one of his mini canned speeches. Do people really respond well to this?

9:13 – Cruz can’t abide the thought that he voted for a bill that Obama signed.

9:11 – So far, there’s been zero substance in this debate. Obama is horrible, ISIS must be destroyed, I’ll keep you safe, blah blah blah.

9:07 – These folks are still obsessed about whether Obama will say radical Islamic terror. Can someone please ask why they’re so fixated on this? Do they really think that saying this over and over actually makes a difference?

9:03 – Shouldn’t Obama get 30 seconds every time someone mentions him?

9:01 – Cell phones with ISIS flags on them? Have I missed something?

8:59 – Well, they’re all going to keep us safe.

8:51 – Chris Christie blaming LA school closure on Barack Obama.

8:49 – Rand Paul going after Trump and Rubio in his opening statement. OK then.

8:48 – And we’re off!

8:39 – Ben Carson has apparently been studying up on foreign policy. I so can’t wait for that. Do you think he’s figured out how to pronounce Hamas yet?

8:30 – Three minutes away from Reince Priebus! Then we get to see whatever ridiculous opening video CNN has concocted for us tonight.

8:22 – So how was the opening act? Did Lindsey Graham declare war on anyone?

8:13 – We have a few minutes while the CNN folks burble away, so why not donate some money to Mother Jones while we wait? I plan to harass you all evening about this, so you might as well do it now. Come on. What do you say?

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We Are Live-Blogging the Final GOP Debate of 2015

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Trump, Carson Duel For Title of Least Prepared Commander-in-Chief

by NeilMcgehee Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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One of the highlights of last night was watching the outsiders talk about foreign policy. Gerard Baker asked Ben Carson if he approved of President Obama’s decision to send special ops teams into Syria. Here’s his answer, in all its glory:

Well, putting the special ops people in there is better than not having them there, because they — that’s why they’re called special ops, they’re actually able to guide some of the other things that we’re doing there. And what we have to recognize is that Putin is trying to really spread his influence throughout the Middle East. This is going to be his base. And we have to oppose him there in an effective way.

We also must recognize that it’s a very complex place. You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians, and you have all kinds of factions there. What we’ve been doing so far is very ineffective, but we can’t give up ground right there. But we have to look at this on a much more global scale. We’re talking about global jihadists. And their desire is to destroy us and to destroy our way of life. So we have to be saying, how do we make them look like losers? Because that’s the way that they’re able to gather a lot of influence.

And I think in order to make them look like losers, we have to destroy their caliphate. And you look for the easiest place to do that? It would be in Iraq. And if — outside of Anbar in Iraq, there’s a big energy field. Take that from them. Take all of that land from them. We could do that, I believe, fairly easily, I’ve learned from talking to several generals, and then you move on from there.

Translation: I have no idea what to do in the Middle East. And even though I’ve been running for president for a year, I’m too lazy to learn even the first thing about it.

Then there was Donald Trump’s even more gloriously ADD response to a question about how he’d handle Russia:

Well, first of all, it’s not only Russia. We have problems with North Korea where they actually have nuclear weapons. You know, nobody talks about it, we talk about Iran, and that’s one of the worst deals ever made. One of the worst contracts ever signed, ever, in anything, and it’s a disgrace. But, we have somebody over there, a madman, who already has nuclear weapons we don’t talk about that. That’s a problem.

China is a problem, both economically in what they’re doing in the South China Sea, I mean, they are becoming a very, very major force. So, we have more than just Russia. But, as far as the Ukraine is concerned, and you could Syria — as far as Syria, I like — if Putin wants to go in, and I got to know him very well because we were both on 60 Minutes, we were stablemates, and we did very well that night. But, you know that.

But, if Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, 100%, and I can’t understand how anybody would be against it….They blew up a Russian airplane. He cannot be in love with these people. He’s going in, and we can go in, and everybody should go in. As far as the Ukraine is concerned, we have a group of people, and a group of countries, including Germany — tremendous economic behemoth — why are we always doing the work?

I’m all for protecting Ukraine and working — but, we have countries that are surrounding the Ukraine that aren’t doing anything. They say, “Keep going, keep going, you dummies, keep going. Protect us…” And we have to get smart. We can’t continue to be the policeman of the world. We are $19 trillion dollars, we have a country that’s going to hell, we have an infrastructure that’s falling apart. Our roads, our bridges, our schools, our airports, and we have to start investing money in our country.

….I don’t like Assad. Who’s going to like Assad? But, we have no idea who these people, and what they’re going to be, and what they’re going to represent. They may be far worse than Assad. Look at Libya. Look at Iraq. Look at the mess we have after spending $2 trillion dollars, thousands of lives, wounded warriors all over the place — who I love, OK? All over.

We have nothing. And, I said, keep the oil. And we should have kept the oil, believe me. We should have kept the oil.

Translation: Russia! North Korea! Iran! Ukraine! Syria! ISIS! Germany! Ukraine again! Assad! Libya! Iraq! Oil! Keep the oil! But we should let other people handle all this because our roads are falling apart.

Republicans can’t seriously be thinking about nominating either of these guys, can they?

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Trump, Carson Duel For Title of Least Prepared Commander-in-Chief

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Are We Really In Control of Our Own Outrage? The Case of Social Media and Tim Hunt.

by WayneKarpinski Posted on June 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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British scientist Tim Hunt. We all know his story by now, don’t we? Here’s a quick refresher:

  1. In 2001 he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
  2. In 2015, speaking in Korea, he decided to make a Sheldonian1 joke about women in the lab. “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry.”
  3. Social media immediately erupted into a firestorm. Within days he was fired by University College London and the European Research Council and had essentially been exiled from the scientific community in Britain.

There’s no disagreement about either the inappropriateness of Hunt’s remark or the insufficiency of his “explanation” the next day. What I’m more interested in, however, is the binary nature of the punishment for this kind of thing. As recently as 20 years ago, nothing would have happened because there would have been no real mechanism for reporting Hunt’s joke. At most, some of the women in the audience might have gotten together later for lunch, rolled their eyes, and wondered just how much longer they were going to have to put up with this crap. And that would have been that.

Today, remarks like this end up on social media within minutes and mushroom into a firestorm of outrage within hours. Institutions panic. The hordes must be appeased. Heads are made to roll and careers ended. Then something else happens to engage the outrage centers of our brains and it’s all forgotten.

Neither of these strikes me as the best possible response to something essentially trivial like this. Ignoring it presumes acceptance, while digital torches and pitchforks teach a lesson that’s far too harsh and ruinous, especially for a first-time offense.

The fact that media outlets had limited space and were unlikely to report stuff like this hardly made it right to ignore it in 1995. Likewise, the fact that social media has evolved into an almost tailor-made outrage machine for every offensive remark ever uttered doesn’t make it right to insist on the death penalty every time someone says something obnoxious.

I’m whistling into the wind here, but why do we allow the current state of the art in technology to drive our responses to things like this? Hunt deserved a reprimand. He deserved to be mocked on Twitter. That’s probably about it. He didn’t deserve the guillotine. One of these days we’re going to have to figure out how to properly handle affairs like this based on their actual impact and importance, not their ability to act as clickbait on Facebook. We all have some growing up to do.

1Sheldonian (Shell • doe’ • nee • un) adj. TVE < OE sheldon, valley with steep sides 1. awkward, socially inept behavior, esp. among male scientists toward women.

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Are We Really In Control of Our Own Outrage? The Case of Social Media and Tim Hunt.

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Spy agencies are snooping on enviros around the globe

by LachlanKreitmay Posted on February 26, 2015

Spy agencies are snooping on enviros around the globe

By on 26 Feb 2015commentsShare

Another week, another instance comes to light of governments targeting peaceful environmental activists. This latest document leak finds that South Korea asked for an assessment from South Africa of whether Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo constituted a “security threat against the president of South Africa during the G20 summit to be held in South Korea.”

The cables are part of a leaked cache from South Africa’s spy agency that shows efforts by a number of countries to keep close tabs on dissenters. The request was made in the run-up to the 2010 summit, and listed Naidoo alongside two other “dangerous persons” who were later arrested during a terrorist raid in Pakistan. In an otherwise unamusing document, Naidoo’s first name is amusingly misspelled “Kimi.”

Another document in the cache alluded to some sort of cooperative effort between the CIA and intelligence agencies in the U.K., Australia, and South Africa “to provide the CIA with a deeper understanding of the potential for ramping up renewable and clean energy in key parts of the world and a better understanding of the collection capabilities and interests on renewables in the UK, South Africa and Australia.” From The Guardian:

The reasons for the CIA’s interest are not clear. It may see climate change as a potential source of conflict and want to explore possible consequences. Some see a potentially more sinister motivation.

A senior US climate scientist, Alan Robock, based at Rutgers University in New Jersey, expressed concern this month that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were funding climate change research to learn if new technologies could be used as potential weapons.

The document casting Naidoo as a potential terroristic threat puts South Korea among a host of governments recently discovered to be targeting Greenpeace. The Indian government cracked down on the group, as well as other international environmental NGOs, ahead of Obama’s recent visit to the country, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, irked by the group’s anti-Keystone activism, named Greenpeace alongside the Sierra Club and Tides Canada in a leaked document outlining potentially violent threats to Canadian infrastructure.

Environmental activists have also faced some heat in the States recently. Grist’s own Heather Smith wrote last month that FBI agents have been paying visits to anti-Keystone activists, asking for information while also saying that there’s no investigation underway. Bloomberg reported this week that the intelligence behind those FBI visits could be coming from TransCanada, the company that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline. Reporter Isaac Arnsdorf writes that local authorities along the pipeline’s route had been warned that homegrown extremists were targeting the project:

That risk assessment, laid out in documents obtained through open-records requests, wasn’t provided by law enforcement. It was provided by TransCanada Corp., the Calgary-based company that has waged a long campaign to sell America on Keystone XL and the Canadian crude it would carry. President Barack Obama vetoed Congress’s approval of extending the pipeline, but the fight is far from over.

Few understand the threats facing corporations better than corporations, and few could argue with putting safety first. Yet the alarms TransCanada raised in Nebraska … were part of a broad campaign for Keystone XL, the documents suggest. Time and again, in private e-mails and closed-door meetings with federal, state and local law enforcement, the Canadian company characterized peaceful opponents engaged in constitutionally protected protest as dangerous radicals or worse. …

TransCanada representatives have met with law-enforcement officers in at least two states. Hundreds of pages of meeting logs, police e-mails and other documents obtained by Bloomberg suggest TransCanada provided intelligence on protesters’ activities and, at times, helped guide law enforcement’s response.

Kumi “Kimi” Naidoo, for his part, said he wasn’t particularly surprised that spy agencies were keeping tabs on him. “Sadly, the assumption that we make, especially after the Edward Snowden leaks and the Wikileaks information came out, is that we are heavily monitored and under constant surveillance,” he told Al Jazeera. “But it’s one thing assuming that it’s happening; it’s a little numbing and chilling to have it confirmed.”

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Spy agencies are snooping on enviros around the globe

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The U.S. and India keep pushing toward a climate deal

by WillardSomerset Posted on January 12, 2015

The U.S. and India keep pushing toward a climate deal

By on 12 Jan 2015 12:40 pmcommentsShare

Preparations are well underway for President Obama’s visit to India later this month. New Delhi is emptying the cattle from its streets. The U.S. Secret Service is installing anti-aircraft guns on the city’s rooftops. And U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry just made a visit himself to lay the groundwork for some big announcements — most notably on climate change.

Officials in the U.S. delegation traveling with Kerry told the Associated Press that there could soon be news about a solar energy deal, a joint effort to bring electricity to the country’s rural areas, and, possibly, a carbon-reduction pact, hinted about for months, that Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would both sign.

The possibility of a climate deal between the U.S. and India, the world’s third largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases, is inviting comparisons to the big U.S.-China announcement late last year. It’s unlikely, however, that we can expect anything so far-reaching; India has repeatedly reminded the world that its people are very poor, and argued that it therefore deserves some leeway on the whole emission-reduction thing. The country points out that even as its emissions continue to grow (see graph on the left below), its per-capita emissions are well below the world average (see graph on the right).

(Click to embiggen.)

Still, in the run-up to Obama’s visit, Kerry, who brokered the China-U.S. deal, has been putting climate change front and center. At a speech yesterday in Gujarat, Modi’s home state — at which both U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim were present — Kerry used dire terms to call for action in the face of an impending crisis.

“There is one enormous cloud hanging over all of us which requires responsibility from leaders,” Kerry said. “Global climate change is already violently affecting communities not just across India but around the world. It is disrupting commerce, development, and economic growth. It’s costing farmers crops. It’s costing insurance companies unbelievable payouts. It’s raising the cost of doing business, and believe me, if it continues down the current trend-line, we will see climate refugees fighting each other for water and seeking food and new opportunity.”

As India’s carbon emissions continue to grow, Modi has been making a number of decisions on the environment that combine a gung-ho attitude toward technology and innovation with a deregulatory approach to business. It makes for an interesting environmental agenda in which polluters anticipate facing less scrutiny while the country simultaneously pushes renewable energy and encourages building sustainability.

Modi has been particularly keen on seeking foreign investment for solar power, which, at the moment, still costs up to 50 percent more than India’s No. 1 source of power, coal. At the same investment summit where Kerry spoke on Sunday, U.S.-based SunEdison and the Indian energy conglomerate Adani Enterprises announced a $4 billion investment in a joint project to produce low-cost solar panels. The proposed factory would become one of India’s largest manufacturers of solar panels, with plans to make them so cheaply that they “can compete head to head, unsubsidized and without incentives, with fossil fuels,” according Ahmad Chatila, president and CEO of SunEdison. (Adani, apparently hedging its bets, also announced an agreement to explore liquified natural gas opportunities with an Australian energy company.)

The announcement of any emission-reduction agreement between the U.S. and India will come, if it comes, in two weeks, when Obama comes to New Delhi for the city’s Republic Day celebration. Reuters notes that there’s a possibility that the leaders will be wreathed in air pollution during a Jan. 26 parade, at which Obama will be guest of honor. New Delhi’s smog is dense, and lately it’s been bad enough, according to a U.S. EPA scale, to cause “significant aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly” and a “significant increase in respiratory effects in the general population.” At the 2010 Republic Day celebration, the pollution was so thick that the crowds couldn’t see that year’s guest of honor, the president of South Korea.

The pollution would tinge any environmental announcement between the two leaders with a bit of irony. Even if India, with its low per-capita emissions, wants to leave the fight against climate change up to countries that bear more historical responsibility for the problem, there is a strong interest in improving air quality for the tens of millions of Indians living in its major cities. That, too, could prompt the country to come up with a plan to shift away from or limit the use of dirty fuels.

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The U.S. and India keep pushing toward a climate deal

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, global climate change, LAI, LG, ONA, Prepara, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The U.S. and India keep pushing toward a climate deal

When Will China Finally Get Tired of Propping Up North Korea?

by Lazaro7386 Posted on December 22, 2014

Mother Jones

The United States might not have much leverage over North Korea, but China does. Virtually all of North Korea’s external trade is with China, and Chinese support is pretty much all that keeps North Korea from collapsing. This means that when the United States wants to pressure Pyongyang, it has limited options as long as Chinese support of the regime remains strong. But how long will that support last? Over the weekend, Jane Perlez of the New York Times reported that it might finally be faltering:

When a retired Chinese general with impeccable Communist Party credentials recently wrote a scathing account of North Korea as a recalcitrant ally headed for collapse and unworthy of support, he exposed a roiling debate in China about how to deal with the country’s young leader, Kim Jong-un.

….The parlous state of the relationship between North Korea and China was on display again Wednesday when Pyongyang commemorated the third anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-un, and failed to invite a senior Chinese official.

The last time a Chinese leader visited North Korea was in July 2013 when Vice President Li Yuanchao tried to patch up relations, and pressed North Korea, after its third nuclear test in February 2013, to slow down its nuclear weapons program. Mr. Li failed in that quest….After the vice president’s visit, relations plummeted further, entering the icebox last December when China’s main conduit within the North Korean government, Jang Song-thaek, a senior official and the uncle of Kim Jong-un, was executed in a purge. In July, President Xi Jinping snubbed North Korea, visiting South Korea instead. Mr. Xi has yet to visit North Korea, and is said to have been infuriated by a third nuclear test by North Korea in February 2013, soon after Kim Jong-un came to power.

So does this mean that China might help us out in our current dispute with North Korea over the Sony hack? Probably not—or not much, anyway. North Korea’s very weakness is also its greatest strength: if it collapses, two things would probably happen. First, there would be a flood of refugees trying to cross the border into China. Second, the Korean peninsula would likely become unified and China would find itself with a US ally right smack on its border. Given the current state of Sino-American relations, that’s simply not something China is willing to risk.

Not yet, anyway. But who knows? There are worse things in the world than a refugee crisis, and relations with the US have the potential to warm up in the future. One of these days North Korea may simply become too large a liability for China to protect. If that ever happens, North Korea’s lifespan can probably be measured in years or months.

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When Will China Finally Get Tired of Propping Up North Korea?

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Here’s How President Obama Is Using the ‘Oil Weapon’—Against Iran, Russia, and ISIS

by JonathaBateson Posted on October 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

It was heinous. It was underhanded. It was beyond the bounds of international morality. It was an attack on the American way of life. It was what you might expect from unscrupulous Arabs. It was “the oil weapon”—and back in 1973, it was directed at the United States. Skip ahead four decades and it’s smart, it’s effective, and it’s the American way. The Obama administration has appropriated it as a major tool of foreign policy, a new way to go to war with nations it considers hostile without relying on planes, missiles, and troops. It is, of course, that very same oil weapon.

Until recently, the use of the term “the oil weapon” has largely been identified with the efforts of Arab producers to dissuade the United States from supporting Israel by cutting off the flow of petroleum. The most memorable example of its use was the embargo imposed by Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on oil exports to the United States during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, causing scarcity in the US, long lines at American filling stations, and a global economic recession.

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Here’s How President Obama Is Using the ‘Oil Weapon’—Against Iran, Russia, and ISIS

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s How President Obama Is Using the ‘Oil Weapon’—Against Iran, Russia, and ISIS