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How Climate Change Will Alter New York City’s Skyline

by epxxatlw Posted on March 6, 2015

green4us

A warming world means big changes in the Big Apple. T photography/Shutterstock Last week, the New York City Panel on Climate Change released a new report detailing exactly how climate scientists expect New York City to change over over the next 100 years, focusing on projected increases in temperature and sea level. Sea level rise will certainly transform the shape of the city’s coastline. But Manhattan’s edges are basically a man-made pile of garbage already—they can go ahead and disintegrate. What climate will really change is the true shape of New York: Its iconic skyline, and the buildings in it. New York has a head start on adapting its buildings to its flooded future. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the city made zoning changes to support elevating homes, and mandated that new construction and substantial alterations meet the newest flood maps. “Flooding issues were felt most strongly after Sandy,” says Russell Unger, president of the Urban Green Council. “There was a vigorous response to adapt the building and zoning codes.” But those changes won’t be nearly enough. Last week’s report estimates that average annual rainfall in New York City will increase between 5 and 13 percent by the 2080s. Sea levels could be as high as six feet by 2100, doubling the area of the city currently at risk for severe flooding. And that’s without taking into account results published this week in Nature that found coastal sea level north of New York City had jumped temporarily by more than five inches between 2009-2010—an extreme, unprecedented event scientists partially blame on climate change. Read the rest at Wired.

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How Climate Change Will Alter New York City’s Skyline

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How Climate Change Will Alter New York City’s Skyline

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China’s Surprise Viral Hit: An Environmental Documentary

by Myrna Posted on March 6, 2015

A film criticizing Beijing’s pollution record has logged millions of views, and the government now appears to be acknowledging its failures to implement reforms. Screenshot: Under the Dome/YouTube On Saturday, Chai Jing, a former television journalist from China, released a feature-length documentary film that, unusually for China, took the government to task. Titled Under the Dome, the video featured Chai giving a presentation on stage, using both photographs and slides to examine how China’s notorious air pollution got so extreme—and why the Communist Party has failed to fix it. Jing’s interest was personal: Her daughter underwent surgery soon after her birth to remove a tumor that, Chai claims, was caused by pollution. Under ordinary circumstances, the Chinese government might have swiftly removed the video from Youku, China’s YouTube, before it could gain much traction. But the film has been left untouched, amassing tens of millions of views and touching off a spirited discussion online. Under the Dome, which is embedded below, has even received praise from senior government officials. Read the rest at The Atlantic. This article is from: China’s Surprise Viral Hit: An Environmental Documentary

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China’s Surprise Viral Hit: An Environmental Documentary

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The Case for Making Fun of ISIS

by NorbertoXPF Posted on March 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last weekend, Dakota Johnson starred in a Saturday Night Live skit in which she played a young woman being dropped off by her father for her first foray into independent living. She was not going off to college or a new job, but rather to a waiting truckload of ISIS fighters. “Dad, it’s just ISIS,” she explained, with the typical exasperation of an adolescent facing a parent’s lack of imagination.

The skit aired shortly before news broke that approximately 60 young British women joined ISIS in Syria, and it provoked heated responses. Viewers immediately criticized the bit over social media, prompting CNN to ask, “Did ‘SNL’ skit cross a line?” Fox News charged SNL with being “insensitive,” and Fox & Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck observed, “I don’t think there is anything funny about ISIS.”

Yet throughout the Middle East, ISIS is routinely ridiculed on television shows, within plays, and by cartoons. For many entertainers and satirists in the region, comedy is a way to fight ISIS’s often effective propaganda and to counter the murderous group’s narrative. “These people are not a true representation of Islam and so by mocking them, it is a way to show that we are against them,” Nabil Assaf, a producer of a satirical show now airing in Lebanon, told the Associated Press.

In Iraq, a state-funded television channel, Al Iraqiya, funneled an unprecedented $600,000 into producing Dawlat al-Khurafa, a satirical Iraqi show that features comical songs and skits acted out by a cast who satirize ISIS members living in a mythical Iraqi town. One recent song was about ISIS’s ban on adultery; it noted the ban is ignored when it comes to ISIS fighters and the women they enslave. Al Iraqiya also hosts an animated show called Dashawi, which chronicles the pratfalls and failures of a group of bumbling and hypocritical ISIS fighters who have set up base in Iraq. In the cartoon series, one young militant attempts to fire a rocket launcher and drops it on his commander’s foot, while ISIS’s go-to drunkard is tasked with enforcing an alcohol ban. The show is a mix of Looney Tunes and South Park. Al Iraqiya is the most successful and most accessible of domestic and foreign news networks in Iraq; it reaches 93 percent of Iraqis. Dawlat al-Khurafa’s theme song even went viral in Iraq, racking up more than 200,000 times on YouTube. Many viewers find the show funny, and share and comment on the videos online.

In Lebanon, the Ktir Salbe Show, a comedy series that airs on a local station north of Beirut, produces short skits that depict extremist Islamists not living by their own premodern rules as they talk on cellphones and ride in cabs. ISIS’s regional terrorism and hypocrisy are recurring themes on the Palestinian satirical TV show Watan ala Wata. A Jordanian play lampooning ISIS is touring theaters. In October, a group of Iraqi Kurds made their own SNL-style musical parody video of ISIS, in which a group of militants play air guitar with rifles and juggle with human skulls. Most of these videos are available on YouTube. One Palestinian ISIS parody video has almost 800,000 views.

A group of Iraqi Kurds pretend to be a band of ISIS members. KurdSat TV/The Middle East Media Research Institute

Satirical poetry and performances are a centuries-long tradition in the Middle Eastern countries. Cartoonists and satirists in the region were a major force during the Arab Spring uprisings of late 2010 through 2012. Bassem Youssef, dubbed “the Jon Stewart of Egypt” by viewers and the media, hosted a satirical news show that spent most of its time criticizing Egyptian political regimes prior to and during the Arab Spring. He canceled his show last summer, fearing retribution from the Egyptian government.

Middle Eastern television representatives insist that satire is an important weapon against ISIS, whose team of graphic designers, media spokespeople, and artists craft the sophisticated videos and messaging that lure in foreign recruits. As Ala’a Al Majedi, who works on Al Iraqiya’s satirical shows, said in an interview with the Middle Eastern news site Al Arabiya, “Comedy is one way to raise awareness” about the opposition to ISIS and other terrorist organizations.

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The Case for Making Fun of ISIS

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Marco Rubio Has a Peculiar Idea of How to Defeat ISIS

by CarmelaSilvers Posted on February 27, 2015

Mother Jones

Steve Benen points me to Marco Rubio today. Here is Rubio explaining how his ISIS strategy would be different from President Obama’s:

“ISIS is a radical Sunni Islamic group. They need to be defeated on the ground by a Sunni military force with air support from the United States,” Rubio said. “Put together a coalition of armed regional governments to confront ISIS on the ground with U.S. special forces support, logistical support, intelligence support and the most devastating air support possible,” he added, “and you will wipe ISIS out.”

Hmmm. As Benen points out, this sounds awfully similar to what Obama is already doing. Local forces? Check. Coalition of regional governments? Check. Logistical support? Check. Air support? Check.

But there is one difference. Rubio thinks we need a Sunni military force on the ground to defeat ISIS. The Iraqi army, of course, is mostly Shiite. So apparently Rubio thinks we should ditch the Iraqi military and put together a coalition of ground forces from neighboring countries. But this would be….who? Yemen is out. Syria is out. That leaves Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey. Does Rubio think these countries are willing to put together a ground force to invade Iraq? Does he think the Iraqi government would allow it?

It is a mystery. What exactly does Marco Rubio think?

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Marco Rubio Has a Peculiar Idea of How to Defeat ISIS

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The Ultimate Guide to Womanhood, According to the Female Jihadis of ISIS

by UCNMatthia Posted on February 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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ISIS’s men aren’t the only ones publishing magazines and manifestos anymore. Last month, the al-Khansa Brigade—the entirely female ISIS militia that spreads pro-ISIS propaganda and recruits Middle Eastern women for ISIS service—reportedly published a semiofficial Arabic guide for women on living life under ISIS rule. On Thursday, the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based counterterrorism think tank, published a translated version of the guide.

The guide was published by the al-Khansa Brigade’s media arm and portrays the “ideal model for Muslim women,” according to its author, who describes it as “semiofficial” because ISIS leadership didn’t specifically approve it or endorse it. The guide is necessary, the author writes, because the role of the Muslim woman has become so confused by others “that both she and we have forgotten it…and (the reason for) our existence in this world.”

The 10 chapters are divided into three sections, combining quotations from the Koran and the Prophet Muhammed’s teachings, also known as hadiths, with the author’s experiences. The first part lists the failings of Western society in feminism, education, and science and the positive alternative offered in Islam. The second is an eyewitness account of life in ISIS’s strongholds, both the Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, and the third attempts to link life within the boundaries of the so-called Islamic State to life beyond, in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

The Quilliam Foundation‘s translator notes that the existence of the third chapter section, as well as the fact that the guide was never translated into English or another Western language by ISIS, suggest that Arab women are the primary audience—that it wasn’t meant for broader distribution. “There has been a huge amount of speculation about what the role of the women who join Islamic State—often dubbed jihadist brides—is,” wrote Quilliam Foundation director Haras Rafiq in a press release. “This translation…allows us to look past the propaganda bandied about on social media by Western supporters of IS, enabling us to get into the mind-set of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women who willingly join its ranks.”

For example, the author describes how women should conduct their daily lives in terms of study and community service. A woman’s one “true purpose,” she writes, is to serve a man, which is true “even in ‘liberal’ states and for today’s ‘free’ societies.” According to the author, a girl may be married between the ages of 9 and 17. Once she is a wife, she must remain at home, her face and body nearly always covered.

There are some exceptions. Women who join jihad are chosen for that life, but how is not described. Others who study religion, practice medicine, or teach are able to leave their homes and go into the world, but only for three days a week.

The author’s description of life in the war zones of Mosul and Raqqa is in radical contrast to other reports from the devastated areas. She traveled there, she wrote, to “check on the happy situation that Muslim women face” under Sharia law. She writes that “a sense of security” has swept over the land, with people living peacefully despite the ongoing battle with the US-led coalition; hospitals, shops, and schools, she adds, are much improved since the so-called Caliphate began.

The treatise concludes with a message to all enemies: “Throw the sputum of your culture, your civilization, and your thinking into the sea. God fights you and you are not of us and we are not of you.”

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The Ultimate Guide to Womanhood, According to the Female Jihadis of ISIS

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Letter From an Army Ranger: Here’s Why You Should Think Twice About Joining the Military

by LynellLamothe Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Dear Aspiring Ranger,

You’ve probably just graduated from high school and you’ve undoubtedly already signed an Option 40 contract guaranteeing you a shot at the Ranger indoctrination program (R.I.P.). If you make it through R.I.P. you’ll surely be sent off to fight in the Global War on Terror. You’ll be part of what I often heard called “the tip of the spear.”

The war you’re heading into has been going on for a remarkably long time. Imagine this: you were five years old when I was first deployed to Afghanistan in 2002. Now I’m graying a bit, losing a little up top, and I have a family. Believe me, it goes faster than you expect.

Once you get to a certain age, you can’t help thinking about the decisions you made (or that, in a sense, were made for you) when you were younger. I do that and someday you will, too. Reflecting on my own years in the 75th Ranger regiment, at a moment when the war you’ll find yourself immersed in was just beginning, I’ve tried to jot down a few of the things they don’t tell you at the recruiting office or in the pro-military Hollywood movies that may have influenced your decision to join. Maybe my experience will give you a perspective you haven’t considered.

I imagine you’re entering the military for the same reason just about everyone volunteers: it felt like your only option. Maybe it was money, or a judge, or a need for a rite of passage, or the end of athletic stardom. Maybe you still believe that the US is fighting for freedom and democracy around the world and in existential danger from “the terrorists.” Maybe it seems like the only reasonable thing to do: defend our country against terrorism.

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Letter From an Army Ranger: Here’s Why You Should Think Twice About Joining the Military

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Obama’s Foreign Policy: Frustrating, Perhaps, But Better Than Most of the Alternatives

by LeiaDeloach Posted on December 30, 2014

Mother Jones

I guess I missed this in the coverage yesterday about the official end of the war in Afghanistan:

The ceremony in Kabul honoring 13 years of mostly-American and British troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan had to be held in a secret location because the war has gone so badly that even the capital city is no longer safe from the Taliban.

That’s from Max Fisher, who also provides us today with a “highly subjective and unscientific report card for US foreign policy.” As top ten lists go, this one is worth reading as a set of interesting provocations, though I think Fisher errs by focusing too heavily on military conflicts. There’s more to foreign policy than war. Beyond that, I think he often ends up grading President Obama too harshly by judging him against ideal outcomes rather than the best plausible outcomes. Giving him a C+ regarding ISIS might be fair, for example, since it’s quite possible that quicker action could have produced a better result1. But a D- on Israel-Palestine? Certainly the situation itself deserves at least that low a grade, but is there really anything Obama could have done to make better progress there? I frankly doubt it. I’d also give him a higher grade than Fisher does on Ukraine and Syria (I think that staying out of the Syrian civil war was the right policy even though the results are obviously horrific), but a lower grade on China (A+? Nothing could have gone better?).

Overall, I continue to think that Obama’s foreign policy has been better than he gets credit for. He’s made plenty of mistakes, but that’s par for the course in international affairs. There are too many moving parts involved, and the US has too little leverage over most of them, to expect great outcomes routinely. When I look at some of the worst situations in the world (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Israel-Palestine) I mostly see places that the US simply has little control over once you set aside straight-up military interventions. Unfortunately, that’s a big problem: the mere perception that an intervention is conceivable colors how we view these situations.

Take the long, deadly war in the Congo, for example. Nobody blames Obama for this because nobody wants us to send troops to the Congo—and everyone understands that once a military response is off the table, there’s very little we can do there. Conversely, we do blame Obama for deadly civil wars in places like Iraq and Syria. Why? Not really for any good reason. It’s simply because there’s a hawkish domestic faction in US politics that thinks we should intervene in those places. This, however, doesn’t change the facts on the ground—namely that intervention would almost certainly be disastrous. It just changes the perception of whether the US has options, and thus responsibility.

But that’s a lousy way of looking at things. US military intervention in the broad Middle East, from Lebanon to Somalia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya, has been uniformly calamitous. In most cases it’s not only not helped, but made things actively worse. No matter what Bill Kristol and John McCain say, the plain fact is that there’s very little the US can do militarily to influence the brutal wars roiling the Middle East and Central Asia. Once you accept that, Obama’s recognition of reality looks pretty good.

For the record, I’d give Obama an A or a B for his responses to Syria and Ukraine. Is that crazy? Perhaps. But the hard truth is that these are just flatly horrible situations that the US has limited control over. When I consider all the possible responses in these regions, and how badly they could have turned out, Obama’s light hand looks pretty good.

1Or maybe not. But it’s plausible that it might have.

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Obama’s Foreign Policy: Frustrating, Perhaps, But Better Than Most of the Alternatives

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Book Review: The Dogs Are Eating Them Now

by CarolynAPJ Posted on December 26, 2014

Mother Jones

The Dogs Are Eating Them Now

By Graeme Smith

COUNTERPOINT

With Iraq and Syria hogging the headlines, it’s remarkable how quickly we’ve forgotten our longest war. Graeme Smith’s memoir is a cutting account of how the Afghanistan conflict unraveled. His recollections—of embedding with a coalition offensive and covering a Taliban jailbreak, for example—underscore the emotions (revenge, hate, distrust) that made the fight unwinnable. Michael Herr’s Dispatches it’s not, but Smith’s illuminating postmortem is worth reading and remembering the next time we’re tempted to repeat our mistakes.

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Book Review: The Dogs Are Eating Them Now

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We’re Four Months Into the New Iraq War. Has Anything Gone Right?

by VickieVeilleux Posted on November 10, 2014

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Karl von Clausewitz, the famed Prussian military thinker, is best known for his aphorism “War is the continuation of state policy by other means.” But what happens to a war in the absence of coherent state policy?

Actually, we now know. Washington’s Iraq War 3.0, Operation Inherent Resolve, is what happens. In its early stages, I asked sarcastically, “What could possibly go wrong?” As the mission enters its fourth month, the answer to that question is already grimly clear: just about everything. It may be time to ask, in all seriousness: What could possibly go right?

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We’re Four Months Into the New Iraq War. Has Anything Gone Right?

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Kobani Still Holding Out — But Is That Good News?

by AlfredoMoffet Posted on October 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Like Mark Thompson, I’ve been a bit out of circulation for the past couple of weeks—enough to pay only minimal attention to Iraq, anyway—and also like Thompson, I’m a little surprised to come back and discover that Kobani is still holding out against ISIS. This is largely thanks to the US bombing campaign, and Thompson isn’t sure what to think of this success:

While that’s obviously good news in the short term for the city’s 200,000 largely-Kurdish residents, it’s tougher to handicap what it means for the long-term U.S.-led effort to “degrade and destroy” ISIS.

Earlier this month, U.S. military officers were speaking of ISIS’s “momentum,” and how its string of military successes over the past year meant that quickly halting its advance would likely prove difficult if not impossible. Yet, as far as Kobani is concerned, that seems to be what is taking place.

But that raises the stakes for the U.S. and its allies. Having smothered ISIS’s momentum, an eventual ISIS victory in the battle for Kobani would be a more devastating defeat for the U.S. military than an earlier collapse of the town.

There are concerns that the focus on saving Kobani is giving ISIS free reign elsewhere in its self-declared caliphate—that the U.S., in essence, could end up winning the battle while losing the war.

“The U.S. air campaign has turned into an unfocused mess,” Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote Friday. “The U.S. has shifted limited air strike resources to focus on Syria and a militarily meaningless and isolated small Syrian Kurdish enclave at Kobani at the expense of supporting Iraqi forces in Anbar and intensifying the air campaign against other Islamic State targets in Syria.”

The flip side of this is the obvious one: have patience. “Here we are not three months into it and there are critics saying it’s falling apart; it’s failing; the strategy is not sound,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. “The strategy is sound and it’s working and there’s no plans to deviate it from right now.”

If we’re really engaged in a years-long battle against ISIS, then a few months here or there doesn’t matter much. And saving Kobani isn’t just a moral good, but can also demonstrate to others that ISIS is not some magical, unstoppable force destined to overrun Iraq. It’s just an ordinary group of guerrilla soldiers who can be defeated with determination and patience. Stay tuned.

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Kobani Still Holding Out — But Is That Good News?

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