[Majorityrights News] KP interview with James Gilmore, former diplomat and insider from first Trump administration Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 05 January 2025 00:35.
[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 02 November 2017 06:00.
“The Collapse of the Soviet Union Was the Greatest Geo-Political Catastrophe of the Century” - Vladimir Putin
Last Day of The Soviet Union. Now subtitled by RT, “Stabbing The Empire”, it provides further background - telling the story of the Bialowieza Accords that dissolved The Soviet Union.
On December 8th, 1991, the three leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the document which marked the end of the Soviet empire. The fate of the great conglomerate country was decided in less than 24 hours. It happened in secret in a remote residence in the Belavezha forest. Soon the agreement entered the history as the Belavezha Accords. Visit the place where it happened and reveal the mysterious details of the document with the eyewitnesses to the historic event only on RT.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 01 November 2017 06:47.
Peter Ling in Trafalgar Sq.
Bill Baillie, regarding democracy, European Outlook, #47:
“Serendipity” - The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
An old copy of Colin Jordan’s magazine Gothic Ripples caught my eye. It was from February 1988 and posted by www.jrbooksonline.com
“Peter Ling, a life-long National Socialist, member of the British NSM, died 16/10/87.”
I knew Peter Ling in the old days. He is pictured selling Combat at a meeting of the old BNP in Trafalgar Square. He was an accomplished writer, speaker and street fighter. I guessed that he was dead but I never knew the details. His powerful essay, Authoritarianism v Democracy, originally published in Combat in 1959, was reprinted in European Outlook # 5, May 2014. Here is an extract:
“But the most telling and final indictment of democracy is that in time of great human stress and endeavour it rejects and abandons its philosophical basis. In time of war when the ruling interests are really threatened, democratic values go overboard and the erstwhile democracy gears itself immediately to an authoritarian form of government. Even in time of peace democracy does not attempt to organize its armed forces “democratically” or to sail its great ships across the oceans of the world without the strong hand of authority and responsibility at the helm.
What an indictment of democracy that it can only weld its subjects into a single great united whole for the purpose of destruction! That its fundamental wealth and assets, which only too often represent the ill-rewarded toil of generation of its loyal citizens can be squandered overnight in order to procure fantastic financial sums for expenditure upon war and death, but when it comes to building something great for its own people – as a whole that is – in time of peace, the will and the credit dry up, and “Freedom” reigns once more; freedom for the poor to get out of the slums if they can and freedom for the financier to squat in his banking house and receive the lickspittle homage of parliamentarians of all parties.”
With regard to capitalism, Bill Baillie writes in the same edition, European Outlook, #47:
Capitalism relies on unmoored physical movement, tenuous interpersonal connections, and sensual whim for its sustenance and has thus both facilitated the historical march of irony and provided a system of nostalgia to act as an opiate by which to provide temporary relief from the agony of meaninglessness. By disseminating palliative symbols and profiting on access to them, this system thrives and immobilizes white populations by reducing their understanding of history to false inevitabilities, superficialities, platitudes, and decontextualized assertions. Our histories, both personal and collective, become a collection of sounds, images, and texts to be bought, sold, and traded based on the emotional appeal of any particular example. There is no need for order, no need for context, and no need for contemplation. All that is required is a desire for temporary escape from the conditions maintained by capitalism.
Inherent in the practice of nostalgia is a search for meaning coupled with the unavoidable psychological tendency to mark the passage of time. These are neither unhealthy nor unnatural impulses on their own but under capitalism, as connections to “blood and soil” weaken, they take on a greater significance and work in concert to manufacture a toxic individual and collective mental state. Rather than producing minds that are energetically oriented towards the future, they produce minds mired in the past, emotionally dependent on the avoidance of reality, trapped by delusions of resurrection and romance. Whole populations of people are reduced to immobility and blind acceptance of whichever way the sociopolitical winds are blowing by dwelling on what are, somewhat paradoxically, calming images of defeat. The system of nostalgia preys on these vulnerabilities. Parasites will always take advantage of easily manipulated biological drives and psychological urges.
It is important, however, to make the distinction between historical memory and nostalgia. Historical memory — so crucial to all nationalisms — is an understanding of history as a part of a living, vital, forward-moving process. It is the integration of the essence of past collective experience into the present. It is the use of history to more deeply understand those forces which act upon groups in the present and which propel history forward. That is to say, it is a sense of history that enables the creation of history. Nostalgia, on the other hand, is a pathological obsession with turning back the clock, of venerating lost eras, of dreaming of racial or civilizational regeneration minus action. It is an inherently reactionary and therefore counterproductive orientation.
In a healthy society, the weakness of nostalgists is marginalized by the vitality of the society itself. After all, it is hard to utterly devote oneself to a romanticized past if that past is no more vital than the present. But under the capitalist order, in which the temporary has more value than the eternal, the trivial is prioritized over the meaningful, and every day brings some new example of social degradation, nostalgists — through little fault of their own, it must be said — blossom and are able to infect the masses with their weakness and indeed are rewarded for doing so. What would have been relatively simple and harmless reminiscences in a healthy society become a state of being in an unhealthy society. This leads ultimately to pessimism and political paralysis. If one’s worldview is based on a return to a romanticized past, one will be doomed to failure and misery. Time moves in only one direction.
Instead of an adventurous life, nostalgia begets a safe life. Instead of engagement, nostalgia rewards retreat. Instead of optimism, nostalgia promotes pessimism. Each of us has witnessed the many years of media corporations and socially acceptable public figures reminding whites that we will become minorities in our own lands and that we should warmly embrace this fate. This message is, of course, fairly direct. But working alongside this message is this highly profitable system of nostalgia which temporarily soothes any discomfort. “You, white man,” we are told, “are going to be a minority but please just watch this television show rerun, listen to this classic rock band, enjoy this old film and forget about it.” Not only does nostalgia offer an escape from reality but upon return — after the high has worn off — one’s sense of loss will be heightened. The chasm between the idealized past and unsatisfactory present seems to become increasingly insurmountable. We are conditioned on all sides to accept our demise, directly and indirectly. And we pay good money for this conditioning.
There is little under capitalism that cannot be bought and sold. The natural impulses of the human mind to memorialize its own existence and seek spiritual value provide the capitalist with opportunities to feed on our meaninglessness, on our discomfort in this world, on our desire for a better place, on our loss of hope and energy. Helpless, hopeless, and drugged by the omnipresent symbols of our planned fate, the capitalist is able to work freely with little resistance. The real engines of history become buried under layer upon layer of textual sludge. The system of nostalgia offers for sale an impossible dream which destines the buyer to political impotence and spiritual impoverishment.
Posted by DanielS on Tuesday, 31 October 2017 06:07.
CNBC, “Mueller Is Now ‘Untouchable’ After The Manafort Indictment: Former US Attorney”, 30 Oct 2017:
John Lauro, former U.S. Attorney on the scope of the indictment:
“It’s very aggressive.” While it doesn’t have anything to do with the campaign yet, it is a historical indictment that includes money laundering, failure to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy against the United States.
“And they threw in something at the end there which was very significant - at the very end an item about his son-in-law. They are going to press him to no end. They are going to pressure Paul Manafort to flip or cooperate [like the prisoner’s dilemma?]. Absolutely”
“The significance of this indictment is that it gives Mueller cover going forward, nobody’s going to touch him because Paul Manafort is under indictment. And this gives him opportunity to press Manefort for information.”
[When you say nobody’s going to touch him, what do you mean?]
“He can’t be fired by the president of the United States, there’s no way, this indictment is significant because going forward nobody is going to even suggest that the investigation should stop or that Meuller should be relieved of his duties.”
“Because Paul Manafort is under indictment now, the investigation is moving forward, Trump would be impeached the next day [for obstruction of justice] if he tried to remove Mueller.”
“Mueller is now untouchable as a result of this indictment. That’s the significance of it.”
[You’ve actually got two guys under indictment, Manafort and Gates, setting up another prisoner’s dilemma as they could turn on one another]
“Right, right.”
“And here’s how the conversation goes: Mr. Manefort, you’re facing a long time in jail. Your son-in-law could be implicated, we’re ready to indict your son-in-law as well, what are you going to give us in return? What are you going to talk about? Whether its the Trump administration, other business deals or the campaign itself?”
[and they’re saying the same thing to Rick Gates as well?]
“Absolutely, that’s going on right now.”
“It’s very specific: they call it a ‘speaking indictment’, and prosecutors do that in order to signal to the defense that we have a powerful case against you.”
“This is actually a long standing case against Manafort that Meuller picked up because it allows him to squeeze Manafort and Gates.”
“The government acts slowly, but when they do, they’ve made sure to button-down every hatch.”
“The indictment sends a message to everybody that ‘we’re serious.’ There’s going to be a lot of pressure on Manafort. I suspect that there’s going to be other indictments as well; anybody who is the subject of a federal investigation, with dozens of FBI agents and sixteen of the most skilled prosecutors, good luck to you.”
Posted by DanielS on Monday, 30 October 2017 06:00.
Poland is correct to denounce Richard Spencer in his neo-Molotov-Ribbentrop larp.
While the Polish government is not perfectly articulate of its reasons to denounce Richard Spencer for his advocacy of a counter productive world view, they are not far off the mark and not wrong to reject him either.
Typical of American right wingers, Spencer is nursing a neo-Germanophilic world view, overly sympathetic to the German imperialism of the world wars (and antagonistic to Great Britain’s ‘interference’), with a new twist that would larp and valence a re-empowered German / Russian axis - i.e., a newly got up Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement for an “imperium”, i.e., imperialism that would run rough shod over the interests of many necessary allies - Hungary rejected him for the same reason Poland rejects him for the same reason Britain rejected him for the same reason Japan would reject him (for the same reason all of Asia would reject him for the same reason Zionism embraces him, for the quid pro quo reasoning that comprador wielding right wing enterprises embrace him) etc. - while his larped empire (Lisbon to Vladivastok) would be governed by whom? Apparently he would depend heavily on working with Jewish interests to facilitate (maneuver) his Russo-Germanic grand civic Euro larp, in Duginesque delusion of grandeur - a delusion coddled by ((())).
News Week, “Richard Spencer Is Too Racist for Poland’s Right-Wing Government”, 27 Oct 2017:
Poland’s right-wing government doesn’t want white supremacist Richard Spencer to visit the Eastern European country, calling him a “threat” to democracy.
Spencer was scheduled to speak at a conference organized by Poland’s far right to celebrate Polish Independence Day on November 11, but the country’s Foreign Ministry condemned the alt-right leader, whose condemnation of diversity has found support among neo-Nazis, whose ideological predecessors invaded Poland and killed millions during World War II.
“As a country which was one of the biggest victims of Nazism, we believe that the ideas promoted by Mr. Spencer and his followers could pose a threat to all those who hold dear the values of human rights and democracy,” the Polish Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that Spencer’s views are in conflict with Poland’s legal order.
Poland is not beyond criticism in its brand and particular expressions of nationalism, but Richard Spencer is highly dubious in his imperial larp; and the Poles are correct to denounce Spencer and like apologists for the imperialist aspirations of Nazi Germany and the casualties it left in the wake of its aspired imperialism, relevantly in this case, the Poland that came back not as “a gift of Woodrow Wilson”, but through the endurance and perseverance of Polish nationalism through 123 years in exile during the tri-partition; and then again through 50 years in exile during the Nazi and Soviet regimes.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 28 October 2017 12:28.
It is significant that Trump has declared his campaign against the opioid issue a worldwide problem.
It is a reflection of dishonesty and supremacism as opposed to a move toward ethnonational coordination.
A preliminary matter of suspicion has to do with resources being devoted to criminal enforcement rather than public health.
In particular, resources as such are not necessarily being devoted even for the public health management of the poor White communities impacted. But rather toward a covert means to deal with blacks and browns though criminalization; while resources will be devoted to foreign browns and yellows to a lesser extent through criminalization, but to a greater extent through politicization - their being seen as engaging in a covert war of drug trafficking - a depiction which could then mutate into broader, more explicit wars, markedly in Asia.
This comes back to dishonesty and supremacism as opposed to White Nationalism, which is supposed to represent ethnonationalism for European peoples.
As ethnonationals, we should be working on rule structures which lead to our separatism and sovereignty for ourselves, blacks, browns and yellows. We do not want to be a part of the same governance; and in fact, we need to be of a separate governance.
It is supremacist to detain migrants, drug users and petty dealers for any significant length of time in prisons - private jails in particular have been cited as being used for the literal supramacist purpose of slave labor.
Ethno-nationals would either repatriate them or work on the means of separatism, physically and legally; i.e., they would honestly admit that in seeing themselves as significantly different from these people, that they want to be separate; and need to separate, as opposed to generating an atmosphere of exploitation and revenge; or the liberal supremacism of integrationist genocide. That only separatism, not heirarchical control within the same governance will allow us to manage our peoples in good faith coordination with others.
As for the trafficking of opioids, cocaine and other drugs - again, rather than a government engaging in a dishonest, covert means of warfare against a people that Jews and right wingers see as a threat (Hispanics and Asians), White governance needs to acknowledge that drugs have long been, though clandestinely, a huge part of Western economies; and what needs to happen instead is an open and honest acknowledgement of the part these drugs play in the medical and recreational economy and as a public health issue - in the need for mental adventure and a certain amount of pleasure on the one hand; and in the need for escape into being, the need to deal with pain, anxiety, depression, boredom and despair on the other hand - particularly regarding the addictive aspects and the anti-social ramifications of abuse that can ensue. Thus, not only dealing with the punishable aspects of drug abuse, but in the social compassion of looking into and dealing with what might be lacking in these peoples lives that has them not seeing better recourse to drug abuse or illegal trafficking.
This would allow for a better management of our own peoples. In addition, this would allow for a fair, non-Jewish, non-right wing negotiation with Asian and South American peoples, as opposed to more brutal exploitation and catastrophic wars in the dishonest interests of Jews and right wingers.
Some 2,800 of the documents have been released tonight by the US National Archive under a 25-year secrecy law from 1992. But some files will be held back after intelligence and security agencies raised concerns.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 26 October 2017 11:25.
Environment
NPR, “Climate Change Journalist Warns: ‘Mother Nature Is Playing By Different Rules Now”, 24 Oct 2017:
Fresh Air
Author Jeff Goodell says that American cities are under threat from extreme weather, rising sea levels and lax enforcement of environmental regulations. His new book is The Water Will Come.
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria have shown how extreme weather can destroy towns, cities and islands. My guest Jeff Goodell is the author of a new book about what cities around the world face in a future of rising seas and increasingly intense storms. It’s called “The Water Will Come.” Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and has covered climate change for 15 years. He’s also written about fossil fuels, including the coal industry and their impact on the environment.
Jeff Goodell, welcome back to FRESH AIR. So Hurricanes Irma, Harvey, Maria - all the climate people say no one event can be attributed with certainty to climate change. But what about the confluence of these three consequential hurricanes?
JEFF GOODELL: Well, I mean, I think that we’re seeing what’s happening as we’re warming up the earth’s climate here. I mean, it’s a very well-established fact that as the ocean temperatures heat up, that is going to increase the intensity of these storms. One of the complicated things about what’s happening in our - as CO2 levels rise in our climate is that no one can predict exactly how these sort of new impacts are going to play out and what kind of consequences we’re going to see.
So you know, these hurricanes, these storms that we’ve seen this season are an indicator that, you know, we’re moving into this sort of new age when the sort of old rules of how our climate works are off the table. And Mother Nature is playing by different rules now.
GROSS: So just to sum up, do you think that these three hurricanes are the result of climate change?
GOODELL: The hurricanes themselves are not the result of climate change. But certainly the additional intensity, the fact that we’ve had a number of Category 5 hurricanes is likely the result of warmer ocean temperatures and higher CO2 levels.
GROSS: So your book opens with a very upsetting description of what Miami might look like by the end of the 21st century. So give it a go for us. Describe what, like - your dystopian fantasy of what Miami will look like as a result of climate change.
GOODELL: Well, I mean, one of the problems with Miami is that it’s very - you know, it’s a very low-lying place. There’s no high ground to run to. And so you know, with only, you know, 5 or 6 feet of sea level rise, which we could certainly see by the end of the century, you know, you’re going to see major parts of the city inundated.
You’re going to see more and more flooding in residential areas. You’re going to see more and more kind of pollution coming out of those flooded areas like we’re seeing in Houston with Harvey - major infrastructure like the airport underwater or not functional, massive losses in real estate investment along the coast, fleeing from low-lying areas inland, which are also going to be flooded out, places like Hialeah and Sweetwater. I think the real thing that you’re going to see that people don’t really think about is just this sort of economic collapse and economic problems that are going to be caused by a plummet in real estate values, which are really important to the Florida economy.
GROSS: What actually is happening in Miami now? You spent some time in Miami Beach, and you saw flooding just caused by high tides. Describe what you saw.
GOODELL: Well, I started this book, you know, shortly after Hurricane Sandy hit New York. And you know, there was nine feet of storm surge that came into New York. And I was talking to some scientists after that, and they said, you know, think about this as a sort of, you know, experiment of what sea level rise will look like. Imagine if you had nine feet that came in and didn’t go away the way it did with Sandy. So then I started thinking about that, and other scientists said, well, if you’re going to really think seriously about this, you need to go to Miami.
So I did. And I happened to be there on king tides, which is the time of - in the fall when the high tides are particularly high. And I started wandering around through Miami Beach on the western side of it in this sort of very wealthy neighborhood, and there was water up to my knees. I mean, there were people kayaking through the streets of Miami Beach on king tide. And it didn’t take a whole lot of thinking to figure out that if you had 2 or 3 feet of sea level rise, much less 6 or 8 feet of sea level rise, this place was in big trouble. And thinking about that and thinking about what the kind of trouble it would be in and the kind of trouble that other coastal cities would be in was really the genesis of the book.
GROSS: What do the people who live there do about those waters that you can kayak in?
GOODELL: Well, since then - this was four years ago, and since then, they’ve, you know, invested $500 million in building - improving the storm drainage, improving - putting in a bunch of pumps. And so some of these areas are - you know, in short term, you know, the flooding has been better. But that’s just a sort of short-term fix. And so what people are doing now is they are, you know, kind of living in a kind of denial.
They are hoping that - you know, a lot of people who live in Miami Beach aren’t there for - they’re not thinking about being there for the next 50 years. They’re thinking about being there for the next five years and how much fun they can have and, you know, how they can enjoy their retirement or their parties on the beach. And there’s not a lot of long-term thinking going on in a place like Miami Beach. And so basically people’s time horizon is the next five years. And will I be OK for the next five years - you know, probably. And so that’s where it’s at. People who think more broadly about it - and there are a number that I know - are selling and moving.
GROSS: What makes Miami Beach so vulnerable?
GOODELL: Well, it’s interesting. Miami Beach is a barrier island not unlike the Outer Banks or Galveston, Texas, or - you know, there’s many barrier islands around on the East Coast and on the Gulf Coast. So that’s one thing. It’s low-lying. Its elevation is 4, 5, 6 feet at max. But the real problem with Miami that makes it different than a lot of other places is that it’s built on this sort of porous limestone. The particular kind of limestone it’s on is full of holes. And so what that means is that you can’t build sea walls in the traditional sense around Miami Beach. In New York and in Boston and of course in the Netherlands, there’s lots of sea walls, and they can be an effective, if problematic, way of keeping water back for a while.
But in Miami, that’s not really possible because of this porous limestone, which means the seawater can just go right underneath a wall and just pop up on the other side. And this has complications not just for kind of protection of the place but also because as that seawater rises and begins to seep underneath, it gets into the freshwater drinking aquifer, which is very shallow in Miami. And so there’s going to be impact. There’s already problems with the salinization of drinking water. So there’s going to be a problem with drinking water in the very near term also.
GROSS: What’s Governor Rick Scott’s position - the Florida governor - on climate change?
GOODELL: Rick Scott is, you know, a pioneering climate denier. Rick Scott has, you know, unofficially kind of prohibited government employees from using the phrase climate change in any kind of government communication. I mean, he’s this sort of prototype for what we’re seeing in the Trump administration with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and others who are basically just trying to deny that this is a problem.
And it’s a particular disservice in Florida because Florida is, you know, so obviously at risk. It’s not like he’s the governor of Oklahoma or something where, you know, sea level rise is not going to be a problem. In Florida, it’s a direct risk not only to people’s lives with flooding but also just to the economic future of the state.
GROSS: So let’s talk about the ice sheets. Many of them are melting, and that’s affecting sea levels, causing them to rise. And that’s affecting climate change and ocean levels. So let’s start with the ice sheets. You say that there’s much more melting in the Arctic than in Antarctica. Why is that?
GOODELL: Well, a lot of the heat from the warming of the Earth is sort of concentrating itself up in the north in the Arctic right now, and that’s the, you know, fastest melting place on the planet right now. And when we think about sea level rise, you know, there’s a number of factors - the thermal expansion of the ocean, the melting of glaciers on land, you know, land-based glaciers around the world - but it’s really - when it comes down to it, it’s really all about Greenland and Antarctica. Those are the only two sort of big ice cubes on the planet that if they - when they go, that’s big trouble. So what we’ve seen mostly right now is a lot of surface melting up in Greenland, and that’s been a big cause for concern.
We’ve seen - in 2012 there was a record ice melt up there. And, you know, we’re seeing acceleration of the glaciers in Greenland. But ice physics is very complex and, you know, scientists up until recently sort of had this idea that they could calculate how fast a big ice sheet like Greenland can melt and have a good idea of what sea level rise rates might be like in the future. But recently, a lot of attention is being focused in West Antarctica, especially this couple of glaciers there called Thwaites and Pine Island Glacier where the real problem is that you have a warming ocean - the ocean absorbs a lot of the heat of - as the atmosphere warms. And that warming ocean is getting underneath the ice sheets there, and that can cause big problems because you have melting from below.
And one of the things that scientists are figuring out is that you can calculate to a pretty good degree how fast an ice sheet will melt, but calculating how fast it can collapse is a whole a different thing. And some of the ice sheets in West Antarctica are a mile or two high. And if the water gets underneath them and they start to collapse, that could mean very rapid sea level rise.
GROSS: Yeah, why is a collapse so catastrophic?
GOODELL: Well, because you have an ice sheet that’s, you know, a mile or two high. Imagine, you know, everyone - a lot of people have seen pictures of El Capitan. Imagine something like that or twice as high as that of sheer ice melting from below. And the physics of ice structure tells us that a cliff like that of ice can’t stand on its own. So it will collapse, and as it collapses, it falls into the sea, and as it falls into the sea, sea levels rise. And so the risks of this are a really new idea that are only in the last three or four or five years are scientists really beginning to understand. And that’s why when you talk to the best ice scientists in the world you hear a rising alarm in their voice about what we might potentially be facing.
GROSS: You’ve been to Greenland, and you say you actually stood on land that you might have been among the first people to stand on because it wasn’t - it was ice before.
GOODELL: Yeah, it was a very surreal experience. I was there with a scientist named Jason Box, and we were flying a helicopter over the Jakobshavn Glacier, which is the fastest-moving glacier in the world. And he spotted this bare spot of ice, and he said, we have to land there, we have to land there. So we brought the helicopter down, and we jumped out and, you know, he shouted out new climate land. You know, this is - this patch of Earth has never been - you know, no human has stood here before and it hasn’t been seen - you know, it hasn’t been uncovered in tens of thousands of years. It was very profound because standing there and being on that bare patch of ground and seeing these enormous glaciers all around me, I had just been in Miami Beach, I mean, a few weeks before.
And you really connected, you know, I really connected in a visceral way, you know, what was happening in this faraway, distant place on this bare piece of ground that was being uncovered where I could actually see the ice going away fast with the rising waters in Miami Beach that I had seen and been wading through, you know, a few weeks earlier. And so this sort of connectedness of these places, which is so hard for most of us, including myself, to really grasp, I really felt in a very powerful way at that moment.
GROSS: I’ve seen film images of some of the ice and snow - I guess it’s mostly ice - in the Arctic darkened by soot. Like, why is there soot there?
GOODELL: That’s an interesting question. That’s one of the things that I was up there to look at with the scientist who I traveled up there with, Jason Box, is, you know, we talked about wildfires earlier. As the wildfires in California and other - in Russia and in China and other places burn, that soot gets picked up and carried up into the circulatory patterns in the atmosphere and gets dropped places. And one of the places a lot of it gets dropped is in Greenland and in the Arctic. And it’s really remarkable that even a small amount of darkening of snow has a big impact on how fast it will melt. It’s the same reason why you wear a light-colored shirt on a hot day and you feel a lot hotter if you’re wearing a black shirt. It absorbs the heat.
And in Greenland, where you have these vast ice sheets, if you get even a modest amount of soot on those ice sheets, both from wildfires or from industrial pollution like coal plants, it can really speed up the melting. And one of the things that’s happening as scientists think harder and harder about what’s happening on the ice sheets is they’re understanding that there’s a lot of new factors that they didn’t consider before. Like, you know, 10 years ago, not very many scientists were really thinking about the impact that darker soot would have on the melt rate of the ice sheets in Greenland. But now they know that it’s a significant factor.
And there’s a lot of other factors that they think they have not considered very well that - including the friction on the bottom of the glaciers and the friction on the sides of the canyons as the glaciers move through them, the warming of the ocean on the bottom of the glaciers. There’s just - it’s a - you would think it’s a very sort of simple idea of trying to calculate melt rate of ice, but it’s in fact incredibly complex.
GROSS: Let’s look at Alaska. Alaska’s in a kind of interesting situation in that it’s very dependent on fossil fuel. It raises a lot of money from fossil fuel. And at the same time, temperatures are rising in Alaska because of the whole phenomenon that we’ve been talking about - about how, you know, the Arctic is warming and ice is melting. So what are political leaders in Alaska saying about climate change and the impact it’s having on the state and the connection of that to fossil fuels?
GOODELL: Well, they’re not saying much. I’m actually just back from Alaska. I was just there for a few days. I just got back yesterday. So I’ve - and I talked to a number of politicians there, and, you know, the basic problem in Alaska is that, you know, their economy is dependent upon fossil fuels. Eighty percent or so of the revenues of the state come from oil and gas.
And so there’s no real way that the state can continue to function by, you know, reducing the drilling and pumping of oil and gas. It’s - they’re just completely dependent upon it. So there is no conversation, basically, about, you know, reducing that. And in fact, they’re talking about expanding it, looking into offshore drilling.
Right now, Congress is, you know, moving towards opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and nobody there that I talked to in the sort of political establishment is anything but, you know, sort of embracing that. What is beginning to happen, though, is they are beginning to realize that, you know, no matter what they do, they’re going to be feeling impacts. They are feeling impacts.
When I was there with President Obama in 2015, we visited the villages on the - in the Arctic Circle that are already in trouble because of erosion from sea level rise. They’re just going to have to relocate many coastal villages because of - they’re just at risk now because the seas are higher and the storm surges are bigger.
So they’re facing hundreds of millions of dollars in helping people adapt there. So they’re beginning to have this, like, OK-so-how-are-we-going-to-adapt conversation. What are we going to do about this? And they’re beginning to think more about the future in diversifying their economy and trying to encourage kind of what they call this, you know, sort of transition from an oil economy to a salmon economy. That’s a big issue. But basically, it - they’re in a really tough spot because they are really, you know, dependent upon the very fossil fuels that’re doing them in. And it’s a very vicious circle to be caught in.
GROSS: Do you think political leaders are acknowledging, OK, we’re dependent on fossil fuels, but we acknowledge, at the same time, that fossil fuels are helping to lead to climate change, which is having an altering effect on the geography, the landscape, the life of Alaska?
GOODELL: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think that they’re - the political leaders that I’ve talked to up there - it’s very hard to be a denier there in the sort of classic way of say, you know, Florida Governor Rick Scott or EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt because it’s just all around. And the permafrost is melting. It’s just, you know, obvious there.
But the question is, what can you do about it? And it’s a really - for - if you’re, you know, the governor or a senator from Alaska - and I’m not giving them a get-out-of-jail-free card, but, you know, for any politician, you know, keeping the economy going is the No. 1 job. And in Alaska, keeping the economy going for the moment means, you know, oil and gas drilling. And that’s just the fact, and that’s the way it’s going to be in the near term.
The question is, how quickly can they diversify away from that? How quickly can they begin to build another, a new kind of economy based on clean energy? I mean, there’s a lot of engineering ability in Alaska. I mean, look at the pipelines they’ve built. I mean, this is the headquarters of sort of big, you know, brilliant engineering.
And the idea of beginning to, you know, apply some of that to adaptation, to diversifying, to building new kinds of clean energy, you know, is really appealing. And I was, you know, trying to make the pitch to them up there that they can be a real leader in showing how to adapt to these massive changes that’re coming and how to change from a fossil-fuel-dependent economy to something else. I mean, West Virginia’s a classic example of a state that never did make that turn and has been sort of beholden to coal for, you know, 150 years, and it’s just been, you know, devastating for the economy of that state.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 25 October 2017 12:21.
McClatchyDC.com, “Steve Bannon’s already murky Middle East ties deepen”, 23 Oct 2017:
Former presidential aide Steve Bannon appears to be fostering ties to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, countries that have cut off ties with Qatar and have been encouraging the United States to act against the nation as well - though it is home to largest American base in the Middle East. Brynn Anderson AP
White House
WASHINGTON
Shortly after Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon left the White House, a company with close ties to him was hired by the United Arab Emirates to launch a social media campaign against its Arab neighbor, Qatar.
It was part of a multimillion-dollar effort by several Middle Eastern nations to isolate Qatar that received a boost when Trump criticized the country that for years had been a critical regional ally.
The UAE is paying $330,000 to a firm with the same parent company as Cambridge Analytica, the business Trump employed to reach voters with hyper-targeted online messaging during the campaign, to blast Qatar on Facebook and Twitter, among other sites, according to federal records.
Bannon, who remains one of Trump’s closest advisers, has long had an interest in the region. He has huddled with UAE officials behind closed doors, visited the country as recently as last month and pushed for a group of Middle Eastern nations, including the UAE, in their bitter dispute with Qatar.
On Monday, Bannon is scheduled to speak at a day-long conference in Washington organized by the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank and paid for by multiple donors, entitled “Countering Violent Extremism: Qatar, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The speech follows Bannon’s September meeting in the UAE with its crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The two weren’t strangers: Bannon, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn met with the crown prince at Trump Tower during the presidential transition in December. That meeting triggered controversy, as the UAE hadn’t notified the outgoing Obama administration about the visit as is customary.
The UAE also helped broker a meeting in January between a Bannon friend, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin to try to establish a back-channel line of communication to Moscow for Trump just days before Trump’s inauguration, according to the Washington Post; Prince met with the Russian in the Seychelle islands off East Africa.
Prince lives in the UAE and had a multimillion dollar contract with that government to assemble a mercenary security force there. His firm also does security work in Africa, much of it for Chinese interests. But Bannon has encouraged Prince to move back to the U.S. and run for office, and in recent weeks, Prince has begun to publicly consider a primary challenge to Wyoming GOP Sen. John Barrasso.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt cut off all ties with Qatar in June, supposedly in response to its alleged support of terrorism and ties to Iran, and mounted a blockade against the nation. Trump abruptly began accusing Qatar of funding terrorism despite its importance as host to al Udeid, the largest American military base in the Middle East, home to nearly 10,000 troops.
The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level, and in the wake of that conference, nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior.
- President Donald Trump
Peter Ling in Trafalgar Sq.
Among the 
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