Europe Can No Longer Trust the United States. Better Look Eastwards

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

Brian Cloughley

October 15, 2019

It has recently become more obvious that the European Union cannot trust the United States, in which sentiment it has much in common with other groupings and individual nations around the world. The Trump policy debacle over Turkey and Syria is a significant sign in the expansion of general distrust.

The first round in Washington’s latest erratic performance on the international stage was the seeming decision by Trump to abandon the Kurds who have been strongly supporting the US against the extremist barbarians of Islamic State. No matter what anyone might think of the rights or wrongs of Kurdish separatism, the fact remains that they were staunch allies of Washington. But they are also enemies of Turkey. When the White House announced that Trump would not prevent or disagree with a Turkish operation to expel Kurdish forces from the Turkey-Syria border region the Kurds considered it was now open day for their slaughter — as did Europe.

Trump’s White House statement was “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria. The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation…” President Erdogan had told Trump about it being “long-planned” and he naturally thought he had US endorsement for whatever he wanted to do.

Then Trump appeared to back-pedal by tweeting “As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families. The US has done far more than anyone could have ever expected, including the capture of 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. It is time now for others in the region, some of great wealth, to protect their own territory. THE USA IS GREAT!”

While Britain, France and Germany disapprove of Turkey’s assault, there is no indication of agreement with many of Trump’s semi-coherent twitter diatribes, which is the major factor that European nations should be considering.

It is obvious in European capitals (and around the world) that Trump America, the arrogant “USA is Great” of modern times, is far from consistent in its policies regarding trade, military operations, alliances or indeed any facet of international relations. Before taking action against perceived enemies, Washington rarely if ever consults with nations or groupings that have reason to regard themselves as relevant to the US decision.

The case of the Kurds is one of the more egregious examples of Trump’s go-it-alone fixation, as exemplified by his tweet of October 7 stating he intends to “bring our soldiers home” from regions in which they are engaged in warfare, such as Syria, whereupon, after his unilateral action, “Turkey, Europe, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia and the Kurds will now have to figure the situation out.”

Successive America governments have engaged in massive military operations throughout the Middle East in their flailing determination to prove to the electorate that they are ensuring safety for the “Homeland” — that magic word that persuades all Americans that if they do not support all official activities connected with their native land, they are being unpatriotic and disloyal to The Flag.

At the moment the US is headed by an extremely strange person whose erratic behaviour is dangerous for his country and the world. No trust can be placed in the man who on October 9 tweeted that “in no way have we Abandoned the Kurds, who are special people and wonderful fighters” and then declared disjointedly that “they didn’t help us in the Second World War. They didn’t help us with Normandy, as an example.”

His comments about Europe as a grouping and regarding individual nations of the European Union have been similarly inconsistent and often even illogical.

A year ago Trump told NBC’s ‘Sixty Minutes’ that “The European Union was formed in order to take advantage of us on trade, and that’s what they’ve done.” It is verging on the incredible that the leader of the world’s richest and most influential country should make such a bizarre public announcement, which displays not only profound ignorance of history but reveals spiteful maliciousness. In July the US Congressional Research Service noted that the EU is the United States’ largest trading and investment partner and that “ties have broadened as the EU’s membership has grown, and have deepened with the growth of global supply chains, trade in services, and cross-border investment.”

Yet Trump is intent on insulting Europe and when on July 14 (French National Day) he was asked by NBC News who he thought to be America’s greatest enemy declared “I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us is in trade. Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe.” He went on in a rambling fashion, but left no doubt about his stance regarding the EU.

In July the French government legislated that US digital services’ companies should pay a modest tax — just three percent — on the vast profits they make from France. To most people this is reasonable action by a sovereign government, but Trump tweeted that “France just put a digital tax on our great American technology companies. If anybody taxes them, it should be their home Country, the USA. We will announce a substantial reciprocal action on Macron’s foolishness shortly. I’ve always said American wine is better than French wine!”

Until the arrival of Trump on the international political scene it had been practice for world leaders to refrain from personal insult but, while most of them continue to observe politeness, Trump loses no opportunity to abuse and disparage those he regards as opponents. At last July’s NATO summit in Brussels he went out of his way to attack “you, Angela” saying that Germany is “totally controlled by Russia” because of their mutually beneficial agreement concerning the Nord Stream pipeline. He tweeted “What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and energy? The US is paying for Europe’s protection, then loses billions on Trade.” In June, in an unprecedented instance of interference in the domestic politics of an ally he tweeted “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”

Given Trump’s bizarre behaviour concerning the Turkey-Kurd debacle, when he failed to consult European allies about his intentions, together with his repetitive pronouncements assailing the EU and its leaders, collectively and individually, for their level-headed governance and supposed weaknesses, it is surprising that Europe is standing by Washington to the extent it seems to be doing.

It must be faced that the Trump impeachment initiative is likely to fail, and that he could be re-elected next year by the millions of Americans who actually admire his personality, his disjointed and incoherent tirades, and his constant repetition that “The USA is Great”.

Europe must plan for its economic future, and its considerations should include the likelihood of a further Trump presidency and, therefore, further economic confrontation and other erratic behaviour. The solution is not to formally cut ties with Washington but to foster and develop economic links with Russia, its obvious and geographically convenient partner for the future. The United States can no longer be trusted by the EU — but Russia beckons.

Brian CLOUGHLEY

British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan

Brexit is a necessary crisis – it reveals Britain’s true place in the world

 

Source

http://www.theguardian.com

David Edgerton

Wed 9 Oct 2019 

A determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism is bringing about a long-overdue audit of British realities

 The Commons in 1966: ‘The Conservative party was the party of national capitalism.’ Photograph: Bentley Archive/Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images

Who backs Brexit? Agriculture is against it; industry is against it; services are against it. None of them, needless to say, support a no-deal Brexit. Yet the Conservative party, which favoured European union for economic reasons over many decades, has become not only Eurosceptic – it is set on a course regarded by every reputable capitalist state and the great majority of capitalist enterprises as deeply foolish.

If any prime minister in the past had shown such a determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism, the massed ranks of British capital would have stepped in to force a change of direction. Yet today, while the CBI and the Financial Times call for the softest possible Brexit, the Tory party is no longer listening.

Why not? One answer is that the Tories now represent the interests of a small section of capitalists who actually fund the party. An extreme version of this argument was floated by the prime minister’s sister, Rachel, and the former chancellor Philip Hammond – both of whom suggested that hard Brexit is being driven by a corrupt relationship between the prime minister and his hedge-fund donors, who have shorted the pound and the whole economy. This is very unlikely to be correct, but it may point to a more disconcerting truth.

The fact is that the capitalists who do support Brexit tend to be very loosely tied to the British economy. This is true of hedge funds, of course – but also true for manufacturers such as Sir James Dyson, who no longer produces in the UK. The owners of several Brexiter newspapers are foreign, or tax resident abroad – as is the pro-Brexit billionaire Sir James Ratcliffe of Ineos.

But the real story is something much bigger. What is interesting is not so much the connections between capital and the Tory party but their increasing disconnection. Today much of the capital in Britain is not British and not linked to the Conservative party – where for most of the 20th century things looked very different. Once, great capitalists with national, imperial and global interests sat in the Commons and the Lords as Liberals or Conservatives. Between the wars, the Conservatives emerged as the one party of capital, led by great British manufacturers such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. The Commons and the Lords were soon fuller than ever of Tory businessmen, from the owner of Meccano toys to that of Lyons Corner Houses.

After the second world war, such captains of industry avoided the Commons, but the Conservative party was without question the party of capital and property, one which stood against the party of organised labour. Furthermore, the Tories represented an increasingly national capitalism, protected by import controls, and closely tied to an interventionist and technocratic state that wanted to increase exports of British designed and made goods. A company like Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) saw itself, and indeed was, a national champion. British industry, public and private, was a national enterprise.

Since the 1970s things have changed radically. Today there is no such thing as British national capitalism. London is a place where world capitalism does business – no longer one where British capitalism does the world’s business. Everywhere in the UK there are foreign-owned enterprises, many of them nationalised industries, building nuclear reactors and running train services from overseas. When the car industry speaks, it is not as British industry but as foreign enterprise in the UK. The same is true of many of the major manufacturing sectors – from civil aircraft to electrical engineering – and of infrastructure. Whatever the interests of foreign capital, they are not expressed through a national political party. Most of these foreign-owned businesses, not surprisingly, are hostile to Brexit.

Continue:

Source

Climate Catastrophe Comes for Europe

Source

http://www.strategic-culture.org

dispatchesfromtheedgeblog

Conn M. HALLINAN

September 19, 2019

• On Aug. 18, several dozen people gathered around a patch of snow in Iceland to commemorate the demise of the Okjokull glacier, a victim of climate change. Further to the west, Greenland shed 217 billion tons of ice in the month of July alone.
• Paris reached 108.7 degrees on July 25, and normally cold, blustery Normandy registered 102 degrees. Worldwide, July 2019 was the hottest month on record.
• Melting Russian permafrost—which makes up two-thirds of the country—is buckling roads, collapsing buildings, and releasing massive amounts of methane, a gas with the ten times the climate-warming potential of carbon dioxide,
• Some 1.500 residents of Whaley Bridge were recently evacuated when a dam—overwhelmed by intense rainfall that pummeled northern England—threatened to break. The rains washed out roads and rail lines and swamped homes and business.

Ever since coal was partnered with water to generate steam and launch the industrial revolution, Europeans have been pouring billions of tons of atmospheric warming compounds into the planet’s atmosphere. While scientists were aware of the climate-altering potential of burning hydrocarbons as early as 1896, the wealth generated by spinning jennies, power looms and drop forges was seductive, as was the power it gave countries to build colonial empires and subjugate populations across the globe.

But the bill is finally coming due.

Swedish fires 2019

When most people think of climate change, what come to mind are the poles, Asia’s fast vanishing glaciers, or Australia, where punishing droughts are drying up the sub-continent’s longest river, the Murray. But climate change is an equal opportunity disrupter, and Europe is facing a one-two punch of too much water in the north and center and not enough in the south.

According to recent projections, drought regions in Europe will expand from 13 percent of the continent to 26 percent and last four times as long, affecting upwards of 400 million people. Southern France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece will be particularly hard hit, though how hard will depend on whether the planet’s temperature hike is kept to 1.5 degrees centigrade or rises to 3 degrees centigrade.

Northern and Central Europe, on the other hand, will experience more precipitation and consequent flooding. Upward of a million people would be effected and damage would run into the hundreds of billions of Euros. While weather is battering away at Europe, sea rises of from four to six feet over the next century would inundate Copenhagen, the Netherlands, many French and German ports and London. If the Greenland ice sheet actually melted, the oceans would come up 24 feet.

Food production will be another casualty. According to David Wallace-Wells in “The Uninhabitable Earth,” cereal crops will decline 10 percent for every degree the temperature goes up. When crops fail, people will move and the logical place to go is north. It is not just war and unrest that is driving refugees toward Europe, but widespread crop failures brought about by too little or too much water.

The warming climate also allows insects, like the bark beetle, to attack Europe’s forests. The beetles are increasingly active in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Norway and, particularly, Russia, which host the largest temperate forests in the world.

Each tree that dies is one less carbon sink to transmute CO2 to oxygen. And dead trees are also more susceptible to forest fires, which can pump yet more of the climate warming gas into the atmosphere. Fires are not only increasing in countries like Spain, Greece and Portugal, but also in Sweden and Finland.

Black Forest fires

For many years climate change deniers—funded by hydrocarbon industry think tanks and sophisticated media campaigns—managed to inject a certain amount of doubt concerning global warming, but a rash of devastating hurricanes and last year’s wildfires in California have begun to shift public opinion. Last spring’s European elections saw Green parties all over the continent do well, and polls indicate growing alarm among the public.

A number of different European parties, including the British Labour Party, are pushing a “Green New Deal For Europe” based on a call by the United Nations to reduce green house gas emissions to zero by 2050.

The European Green Deal proposes using public investment banks to fund much of the plan, which is aimed at keeping rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees centigrade. While the price for rolling back emissions will certainly be high, the costs for not doing so are far greater, including the possibility that worldwide temperatures could go by as much as 5 degrees centigrade, a level that might make much of the world unlivable for human beings.

A jump of that magnitude would be similar to the kind of temperature rise the world experienced at the end of the Permian Era, 250 million years ago. Called the “Great Extinction,” it killed 96 percent of life in the sea and 70 percent on land.

A major reason for the Permian die off was the expansion of cynobacteria, which produce a toxic cocktail that can kill almost anything they comes in contact with. Such cynobacteria blooms are already underway in more than 400 places throughout the world, including a large dead zone in the Baltic Sea. Some New York lakes have become so toxic that the water is fatal to pets that drink from them.

The major fuel for cynobacteria is warm water coupled with higher rainfall—one of the consequences of climate change—that washes nutrients into lakes and rivers.

Of the 195 countries that signed the Paris Climate Accords, only seven are close to fulfilling their carbon emission pledges. And one of the world’s biggest sources of global warming gasses, the US, has withdrawn. If all 195 countries met their goals, however, the climate is still on target to reach 3 degrees Celsius. Even if the rise can be kept to 2 degrees, it will likely melt the Greenland ice cap and possibly the Antarctic ice sheets. Greenland’s melt would raise ocean levels by 24 feet, the Antarctic by hundreds of feet.

As overwhelming as the problem seems, it can be tackled, but only if the world mobilizes the kind of force it did to fight World War II. It will, however, take a profound re-thinking of national policy and the economy.

The US organization most focused on climate change these days is the Pentagon, which is gearing up to fight the consequences. But our enormous defense apparatus is a major part of the problem, because military spending is carbon heavy. According to Brown University’s “Cost Of War” project, the Pentagon is the single largest consumer of hydrocarbons on the planet. Yet a number of European countries—under pressure from the Trump administration—are increasing their military spending, exactly the wrong strategy to combat the climate threat.

The world will need to agree that keeping hydrocarbons in the ground is essential. Fracking, tar sands and opening yet new sources for oil and gas in the arctic will have to halt. Solar, hydro and wind power will need to be expanded, and some very basic parts of the economy re-examined.

This will hardly be pain free.

For instance, it takes 1,857 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, compared to 469 gallons for a pound of chicken. Yogurt uses 138 gallons. While beef production uses 60 percent of agricultural land, it only provides 2 percent of human caloric intake.

It is unlikely that people will give up meat—although growing economic inequality has already removed meat from the diet of many—but what we eat and how we produce it will have to be part of any solution. For instance, a major source of green house gases is industrial agriculture with its heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, close to 30 percent of food production goes to waste, most of it in wealthy countries. A fair distribution of food supplies would not only feed more people, it would use less land, thus cutting green house gasses up to 10 percent. Add to that curbing beef production, and hundreds of millions of square miles of grange land would be freed up to plant carbon absorbing trees.

Can this be done incrementally? It may have to be, but not for long. Climate change is upon us. What that future will be is up to the current generation to figure out, and while there is no question that concerted action can make a difference, the clock is ticking. When next the bell tolls, it tolls for us all.

 

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Times

Source

consortiumnews.com

By Roberto Savio
in Rome
Inter Press Service

July 25, 2019 

Roberto Savio confronts an era of greed, fear and “populocracy.”

 

When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong.

From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.

A survey in Brazil found out that 7 percent of citizens believe that the Earth is flat (40 percent of American schools teach that the world was created in a week, according to the Bible, so there cannot be ancient civilizations). Another survey, this time of members of the British Tory party, who just elected Boris Johnson as prime minister (not exactly a triumph of reason) are so in favor of a “hard” Brexit that they do not care if this means the exit of Scotland and the end of the United Kingdom. Finally, in order to win the election, U.S. President Donald Trump has made racism one of his banner issues and, in a country of immigrants, this has given him an increase of 5 points in opinion polls.

There are so many signs of barbarisation that they would fill a book… and, as Euripides famously wrote: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

White supremacists clash with police in Charlottesville, Virginia, Aug. 12, 2017. (Evan Nesterak, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

It is not a popular task, but we have to look at the reality and observe that, in the most scientifically and technologically developed period of history, we are living in times of precipitous barbarisation.

Social inequality has become the basis for the new economy. People have now lowered their expectations and are prepared to work part-time in a precarious job, where young people (according to the International Labour Organisation) can hope for a retirement pension of 600 euros a month. This has been accepted by the political system. We even have a study from Spain according to which, in the present housing market, nearly 87 percent of people need 90 percent of their salary just to rent a house.

A Salary Means Survival

Today, for many, a salary means survival, not a dignified life. The new economy has developed the so-called gig economy: you work to distribute food, but you are a co-entrepreneur without any of the rights of an employee, for an amount that will never allow you to marry. Children have grown accustomed to look at phenomena such as poverty or war as natural. And now politics are not based on ideas but on how you can successfully exploit the guts of the people, waving banners against immigrants (when we are witnessing a rapid fall in the birth rate) and splintering countries between ”We” who represent the people and “You” enemy of the country. The United States is the best example, where Republicans consider Democrats enemies of the United States. And this brings us to a central question: have Trump, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and company not been elected democratically? And they are the symptom or the cause of the “populocracy” which is replacing democracy?

It is not possible to offer a sociological or historical study here. Let us just use a bite: we have gone from the Gutenberg era into a new era – the Zuckerberg era.

Those who greeted the arrival of the Internet with enthusiasm also did so because it would democratize communication and therefore bring about greater participation. The hope was to see a world where horizontal communication would replace the vertical system of information which Gutenberg made possible. Information was, in fact, a support for states and business that used it to reach citizens, who had no recourse to feedback. With the Internet, people could now speak directly throughout the world and the propaganda that accompanied its arrival was not considered relevant: it is not important to know, it is important to know where to find It. Well, we have all the statistics on how the Internet has affected the general level of culture and dialogue.

Ad for a company offering “freelance services on demand.” (Billie Grace Ward/Flickr)

Smaller Attention Span

The attention span of people has declined dramatically. The majority of Internet users do not stay on an item more than 15 seconds. In the last five years, book volumes have been shortened by 29 pages. Today, articles longer than 650 words are not accepted by columnists’ services. The last meeting of editors of international news agencies decided to aim lower, at a 17-year-old instead of a 22-year-old. In Europe, the percentage of people who buy at least one book a year now stands at 22 percent (in the United States it is now 10.5 percent). According to a recent study in Italy, only 40 percent of the population is able to read and understand a book. In the same country, 13 percent of libraries have closed in the last 10 years. A popular TV news program in Spain several years ago, “59 seconds” brought a number of people to debate around a table; at the 59th seconds their microphones would disappear. Today, the dream of a TV interviewer is that the person interviewed will give a shorter answer than the question. Newspapers are for people over 40. And there is a unanimous complaint about the level of students entering the university: not all are free from mistakes of orthography and syntax. And the list could continue practically ad infinitum.

The problem of barbarisation has major relevance for political participation. The Gutenberg generations were accustomed to dialogue and discussion. Today, 83 percent of Internet users (80 percent under the age of 21), do so only in the virtual world they carved out for themselves. People of Group A gather only with people of Group A. If they come across somebody from Group B, they insult each other. Politicians have been able to adjust rapidly to the system. The best example is Trump. All U.S. newspapers together have a circulation of 60 million copies (10 million those of quality, both conservative and progressive). Trump has 60 million followers who take his tweets as information. The do not buy newspapers, and if they watch TV it is Fox, which is Trump’s amplifier. No wonder that over 80 percent of Trump’s voters would vote for him again. And the media, which have lost the ability to offer analysis and cover processes, not just events, take the easy path. Let us follow famous people and make the famous more famous. Analytical journalism is disappearing. In the United States it exists thanks to grants … in every European country, there are few quality papers left, but the largest circulation goes to tabloids which spare their readers the effort of thinking. The Daily Mirror in Britain and Bild in Germany are the best examples.

Symbolic representation of Internet addiction. (Sam Wolff, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The Internet has made everybody a communicator. This is a fantastic achievement. But in this increasing barbarisation, people also use the Internet for transmitting false information, stories based on fantasy, without any of the quality controls that the media world used to have. And artificial intelligence has been taking over, creating many false accounts, which now interfere in the electoral process, as was proven in the last U.S. elections. We have to add to this that the algorithms used by the owners of the Internet aim to trap the attention of users in order to keep them as much as possible. This month, El Pais published a long study entitled “The toxic effects of YouTube,” where it shows how its algorithms push the viewer to items that are of fantasy, pseudoscientific and of great attraction.

Citizens into Consumers

This is due to the fact that the owners have become fabulously rich by transforming citizens into consumers. They find out our identity, and they sell it to companies for their marketing, and also for elections. Those owners have unprecedented wealth, never achieved in the real world: not only in that of production but even in the world of finance, which has become a casino with no control. The entire world of production of services and goods, man-made, is now close to a trillion dollars a day; that same day, financial flows reach $40 trillion. Jeff Bezos gave his ex-wife $38 billion in the divorce. That is equal to the annual average income of $20,000 of 19 million people. No wonder that 80 individuals now possess the same wealth as 2.3 billion people (in 2008, they were 1,200 individuals).

Protesting the Wall Street bailouts at Chicago Federal Reserve / Board of trade, Sept. 21, 2008.
(freemarketsmyass/Flickr)

According to historians, greed and fear are great engines of change in history. That was also true in the Gutenberg era. But now, they have triggered a combination of both in a short period of time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the doctrine of liberal globalisation arrived with such strength that Margaret Thatcher (who with Ronald Reagan ushered in the new vision of individual profits and elimination of social goods) famously talked of TINA: There Is No Alternative.

The entire political system, including Social Democrats, went along with a system of values based on greed and unfettered competition at the individual, state and international level. It took 20 years to understand that the poor have become poorer, and the rich richer, and that states have lost much of their sovereignty to multinational corporations and the world of finance. It is worth noting that, in 2009, in order to save a corrupt and inefficient financial system, the world spent $12 trillion (the United States alone spent $4 trillion). Since that rescue, banks have paid the impressive amount of $800 billion in penalties for illicit activities.

The financial crisis of 2009 has triggered a wave of fear. Let us not forget that until 2009, there were no sovereignist, populist, xenophobic parties anywhere, except for Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. Soon old traps such as “in name of the nation” and “the defense of religion” were resurrected by politicians able to ride fear. A new scapegoat – immigrants – was found and populocrats are now undermining democracy everywhere.

The Populocracy 

Populocracy is the new wave. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ushered in a new language, and that language has now been updated by Salvini, Trump and so on. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the new medium and now the medium is the message. The old elite had not found a new language.

The Zuckerberg era is an era of greed and fear. Zuckerberg is now attempting to create a global currency, the Libra, to be used by his 2.3 billion users. Until now, states were the only entities able to emit money, a symbol of the nation. Zuckerberg’s currency is based entirely on the Internet and will have no control or regulations. In case of a default, we will have a world crisis without precedent. In the Gutenberg era, this was not possible.

But who enabled Jeff Bezos to give $38 billion to a former wife? Who elected Trump and Salvini and company, who speak on behalf of the nation and the people, and turn those who do not agree into enemies of the nation and the people, creating an unprecedented polarization, accompanied by an orgy of revolt against science and knowledge, which have supported the elite, and must now be put aside for the good of people.

This process of barbarisation should not obscure an old proverb: every country has the government it deserves. It is called democracy. However, the traditional elite has no code of communication with the new era. The answer will come from citizen mobilization.

A young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, has done more with her stubbornness to raise awareness about impending climate change than the entire political system. Even Trump (albeit for electoral reasons) has now declared that climate change is important.

Greta Thunberg

✔@GretaThunberg

“It’s almost like you don’t even know these numbers exist. As if you haven’t even read the latest IPCC report, on which much of the future of our civilisation is depending.”

A part from my speech yesterday at the French Parliament.

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1:12 AM – Jul 24, 2019

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Today, there many “rays of light” appearing in the world. The elections in Istanbul are a good example, as are the mobilization in Hong Kong, Sudan and Nicaragua, among many others. Let us hope we will reach a point where people will take the reins of the process and awake the world from the precipitous course of barbarisation. Even Thomas Hobbes concluded that humankind will always, soon or later, find the right path, and give itself good governance. He thought that an elite would always be able to lead the masses.

Well, elites are now the Greta Thunbergs of the world.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of global governance. Adviser to INPS-IDN and to the Global Cooperation Council. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service news agency and its president emeritus.

French MPs call for boycott of address by environmentalist ‘apocalyptic guru’ Greta Thunberg

Source

http://www.rt.com

22 Jul, 2019

FILE PHOTO: Greta Thunberg speaking at a climate protest in Berlin © Reuters / Fabrizio Bensch

With 16-year old Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg set to address the French parliament, a group of MPs have vowed to boycott the doomsday speech by the person they called an “apocalyptic guru” and “prophetess in shorts.”

Invited to the session by an environmental caucus called Accellerons – formed to fight what its members call “the climate emergency” – Thunberg will speak before French lawmakers on Tuesday.

However, some MPs from the conservative Republicans and National Rally parties are unimpressed.

“We don’t need apocalyptic gurus to fight climate change intelligently, we need scientific progress and political courage,” Republican Guillaume Larrivé tweeted, calling on his colleagues to give the session a miss.

 Guillaume Larrivé

✔@GLarrive

J’appelle mes collègues députés à boycotter @GretaThunberg à l’Assemblée nationale. Pour lutter intelligemment contre le réchauffement climatique, nous n’avons pas besoin de gourous apocalyptiques, mais de progrès scientifique & de courage politique.https://twitter.com/LCP/status/1152590233000714247?s=20 …

LCP

✔@LCP

[ÉVÈNEMENT] La jeune militante pour le #climat @GretaThunberg sera à l’Assemblée nationale, le mardi 23 juillet.

Suivez son allocution sur les comptes Twitter et Facebook de LCP. #DirectAN Cc @amisdelaterre @PrFeuillage @EncoreTemps_ @Alternatiba_ @RACFrance @Reporterre

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Calling Thunberg the “winner of the Nobel fear prize,” Republican Julien Aubert announced that he wouldn’t show up to “applaud a prophetess in shorts.”

ALSO ON RT.COM‘F**k you Greta’ bumper stickers appear on German roads, taking aim at youth climate activist

Thunberg has been referred to in similar terms before. Rising to fame for organizing school strikes against climate change last year, Thunberg has since switched her rhetoric from demanding action to welcoming the apocalypse with religious fervor.

“We probably don’t even have a future anymore,” she told British lawmakers in April, in a likely preview of her upcoming address in France.

“I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,” she told the power-brokers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, several months earlier.

Against the dying of the earth, Thunberg offers only one solution: the immediate lowering of carbon emissions to net zero, a move that would see modern civilization – including car and plane travel, electricity, and affordable food for the masses – essentially wiped out.

ALSO ON RT.COMTeen climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg to take year off school for US trip

While European politicians have yet to put any of her radical proposals into policy, they have still applauded her speeches and lined up for photo opportunities with her.

“If I say that I do not want to prostrate myself before Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old child invited to the Assembly in front of the national representation, am I (still?) Politically correct?” asked National Rally MP Sébastien Chenu.

Criticism came from the political center too. Echoing criticism of Thunberg’s messianic worldview, Lawmaker Benedicte Peyrol of President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! Party asked why France couldn’t “honor its own scientists who’ve been active for years in trying to save the planet,” albeit with less theatrical flair.

Europe faces ‘looming syphilis epidemic’ thanks to dating apps and reduced fear of HIV

Source

http://www.rt.com

21 Jul, 2019

©  REUTERS/Steve Parsons/Pool

Syphilis stopped being “a disease of the past” after its worrying resurgence in Europe, health experts told RT. Less fear of contracting HIV and the rise of dating apps are among the factors behind the problem.

The spread of syphilis in Europe is intensifying due to worrying trends in human behavior, the head of the HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections and viral hepatitis program at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Andrew Amato-Gauci, told RT.

Various factors play into the outbreak, such as “people having sex without condoms, multiple sexual partners and a reduced fear of acquiring HIV from condomless sex,” he said.

A new report by the ECDC shows that between 2010 and 2017, the number of confirmed cases of syphilis across the EU soared by 70 percent.

ALSO ON RT.COMIceland needs condoms in SCHOOLS: Doctor raises alarm on syphilis & chlamydia outbreak

Certain countries have seen a surge of the sexually-transmitted disease, with Iceland ultimately becoming the ‘leader’, as the number of cases has grown by 876 percent there. Ireland follows with 224 percent growth, while Britain and Germany have both seen their syphilis rates more than double.

According to the ECDC, “men having sex with men” (MSM) made up around two-thirds of the cases reported between 2007 and 2017, where sexual orientation was known. Heterosexual men constitute 23 percent of the cases, and women, 15 percent.

Amato-Gauci said that the growing disregard for the use of condoms is not the only factor fueling the surge.

These include: more testing for syphilis in some groups, such as men who have sex with men, lack of or insufficient sex education, poor access to condoms for teenagers and young adults, sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs, including the use of psychoactive ‘party drugs.’

There are reports that dating apps like Tinder and Grindr also contribute to the spread of the disease. Amato-Gauci pointed out that these services “may facilitate more sexual encounters, and with that transmission of STI [sexually-transmitted infections] like syphilis.” At the same time, different apps can be used for promoting disease prevention among users, he noted.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Skyrocketing’ US STDs: Cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea & syphilis reach record levels

To reverse the spread of syphilis, the countries need to encourage people to use condoms “consistently,” as well as developing better screening and education programs, Amato-Gauci said.

Lorenzo Giacani, associate professor in the Departments of Medicine and Global Health at the University of Washington, told RT that the resurgence of syphilis in developed countries requires a robust response.

It is definitely safe and necessary to speak of a looming epidemic of syphilis in Europe, disproportionally affecting men that have sex with men (MSM), but not only.

“The ECDC data clearly shows that syphilis is not a disease of the past but very present among us,”Giacani said.

Among the most troubling trends in developed nations, he noted a “significant rise” in congenital syphilis rates, which means a greater number of cases in which the disease is transmitted to the fetus during gestation.

ALSO ON RT.COMBlame Tinder? Health officials pin 20% STD increase on dating apps

There is currently no vaccine for syphilis, but several research groups are working on developing one, including Giacani’s. He believes that “more could be done” by various European countries to develop it and study the problem.

“For example, the MSM population, which is more heavily affected by this disease, should team up with scientists to amplify their collective voices and request more government-sponsored efforts to promote research on a syphilis vaccine,” he said.

“Government involvement at this stage is mandatory, as [the medical] industry might not see such effort as a cost-effective one.”

What type of fascism is driving the far right today?

Source

http://www.aljazeera.com

by Santiago Zabala

July 21, 2019

Fascism today aims to transform democratic systems from within, rendering it more dangerous than its past incarnations.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini smiles with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a joint news conference in Budapest, Hungary on May 2, 2019 [File: Bernadett Szabo/Reuters]

If anyone needed further proof that fascism is still alive and well in Italy, the footage of Carola Rackete, the 31-year-old captain of the migrant-rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, getting arrested in Lampedusa for trying to save 42 asylum seekers, provides a graphic illustration.

The late Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, would have been proud of Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini for creating a country in which a young woman may face up to 10 years in prison for the unforgivable crime of saving human lives.

Salvini currently heads Italy’s largest political force and also recently launched the new Identity and Democracy populist group in the European Parliament, which includes other far-right parties such as France’s National Front (FN) and Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Beyond Europe, efforts to unify right-wing populists have spanned the globe. Former White House aide Steve Bannon, for example, dreams of creating a united cross-border front – from Brazil, through the United States and Europe, all the way to India and the Philippines – against refugees, cosmopolitanism, and anyone who supports these, including Pope Francis.

The world has not seen a resurgence in the radical right since fascism was defeated in the first half of the 20th century. But these new proponents of this global right-wing upsurge markedly differ from the fascist leaders of the past century; they seem to espouse a new type of fascist ideology.

Almost a century ago, classical fascism abandoned democratic liberties in order to pursue internal cleansing and external expansion without ethical or legal restraints. Although Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco pursued these internal and external goals in different ways, they all set themselves in opposition to a series of “others” that were not only ideological (liberals and communists) but also ethnic (Jews, Roma and other minorities).

Although US President Donald Trump, as well as the European parties, gathered under the Identity and Democracy umbrella, evince these traits in their rhetoric and, when they can, in their actions, their use of fascist techniques to stimulate their base and erode liberal democratic institutions are similar but not identical to those used by fascist dictators of the 1920s and 30s.

The contemporary sociopolitical context is quite different from that of the first half of the 20th century, so labeling these politicians as fascists in the classical sense of the world is not quite accurate.

The main difference between the classical and contemporary incarnations of fascism is that the version we observe today is operating within democratic systems rather than outside them. Proponents of 20th-century fascism wanted to change everything from above; Mussolini defined it as “revolution against revolution”. But fascism today aims to transform democratic systems from within.

Thus over the past decade, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic laws have resurfaced within democratic regimes through democratic procedures across the globe. These recrudescences are potentially more dangerous than surviving pockets of classical fascism’s anti-democratic ideology because mainstream conservative forces tend to ignore and even support them.

This is particularly evident in the US where the Republican Party continues to endorse Trump’s racism and hostility towards refugees and minorities as well as international and human rights agreements.

Another major difference between the two is that unlike classical fascism, its contemporary version does not concern itself with social welfare. Alongside its disastrous obsession with ethnic superiority, classical fascism took on the utopic duty of crafting an order which would better address the social and psychological needs of citizens who had been suffering the ravages of capitalism. But what has replaced this dimension in contemporary fascism? 

Having emerged in an age of neoliberalism and competitive individualism, today’s far-right parties no longer feel the need to mobilise the masses by making grand promises of an alternative society or civilisation that would better their lives. Instead, they channel the anger and frustrations of isolated individuals who do not necessarily belong to the right or the left towards the “perpetual other” whose removal or ostracisation will supposedly solve all socioeconomic problems. 

This is why Trump, for example, instead of supporting the Republican Party’s economic policies or its version of traditional national values, preaches a reactionary and xenophobic version of American individualism – as his recent attack against four congresswomen of colour has demonstrated. 

This new nationalism is no longer defined in traditional ideological terms but rather as a resistance against the “threat” of globalisation and migration.

Jews, as historian Enzo Traverso has pointed out, were the particular enemy of classical fascism; Trump has altered and lengthened the list so that it now includes blacks, Latinos, Muslims, and non-white immigrants. This list has taken an additional patriarchal turn in a number of countries where feminists and queer activists are also portrayed as enemies of the nations’ traditional Christian values.

While there are indeed substantial differences between the fascism of the past and what we see today, the general historical trajectory will inevitably remain the same. That is, just as the fascism of the early 20th century grew out of control and ended in genocide, today, the ideology that Salvini, Bannon, etc subscribe has the potential to become even more violent if it remains unchecked.

While Rackete’s defiance is truly remarkable and should be commended, individual acts of courage will not stop the new fascist wave threatening to sweep through Europe and the rest of the world. We need collective action.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Santiago Zabala

Santiago Zabala is ICREA research professor of philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.