RSN: 2015 in Pollution: A Toxic Roundup, Slouching Toward Global Disaster, Privilege, Pathology and Power, Former ISIS Hostage: Welcoming Refugees Is the Best Strategy Against ISIS

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Paul Krugman | Privilege, Pathology and Power

Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "Wealth can be bad for your soul. That's not just a hoary piece of folk wisdom; it's a conclusion from serious social science, confirmed by statistical analysis and experiment."
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Prior to San Bernardino Attack, Many Were Trained to Spot Terrorists; None Did
Jana Winter, The Intercept
Winter writes: "Part of California's Inland Empire has become home to a cottage industry of counterterrorism training in recent years aimed at teaching people how to spot would-be terrorists before they attack. By all accounts, those trainings failed to help anyone spot the married couple who shot and killed 14 people and injured 22 others in San Bernardino on December 2."
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Bernie Sanders Seeks to Boost Standing Among Voters in His Own Age Bracket
John Wagner, The Washington Post
Wagner writes: "Sanders, 74, said in an interview Thursday that he plans to step up outreach to senior citizens in the month remaining before the Iowa caucuses, acknowledging that he is doing 'poorly' against Hillary Clinton among older voters."
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Richard Falk | Slouching Toward Global Disaster
Richard Falk, CounterPunch
Falk writes: "There are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III."
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Former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk. (photo: EPA)

here are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several NATO countries and the promotion of governing regimes hostile to Russia in such countries as Ukraine and Georgia seems to exhibit Cold War nostalgia, and is certainly not the way to preserve peace.

Add to this the increasingly belligerent approach recently taken by the United States naval officers and defense officials to China with respect to island disputes and navigational rights in the South China Seas. Such posturing has all the ingredients needed for intensifying international conflict, giving a militarist signature to Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia.’

These developments are happening during the supposedly conflict averse Obama presidency. Looking ahead to new leadership, even the most optimistic scenario that brings Hillary Clinton to the White House is sure to make these pre-war drum beats even louder.

From a more detached perspective it is fair to observe that Obama seems rather peace-oriented only because American political leaders and the Beltway/media mainstream have become so accustomed to relying on military solutions whether successful or not, whether dangerous and wasteful or not, that is, only by comparison with more hawkish alternatives.

The current paranoid political atmosphere in the United States is a further relevant concern, calling for police state governmental authority at home, increased weapons budgets, and the continuing militarization of policing and law enforcement.

Such moves encourage an even more militaristic approach to foreign challenges that seem aimed at American and Israeli interests by ISIS, Iran, and China. Where this kind of war-mongering will lead is unknowable, but what is frighteningly clear is that this dangerous geopolitical bravado is likely to become even more strident as the 2016 campaign unfolds to choose the next American president.

Already Donald Trump, the clear Republican frontrunner, has seemed to commit the United States to a struggle against all of Islam by his foolish effort to insist that every Muslim is a terrorist suspect Islam as a potential terrorist who should be so treated. Even Samuel Huntington were he still alive might not welcome such an advocate of ‘the clash of civilizations’!

Historical Deep Roots

It has taken almost a century for the breakup of the Ottoman Empire to reap the colonialist harvest that was sown in the peace diplomacy that followed World War I. In the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement diplomats of England and France in 1916 secretly negotiated arrangements that would divide up the Middle East into a series of artificially delimited territorial states to be administered as colonies by the respective European governments.

Among other wrongs, this devious undertaking representing a betrayal of promises made to Arab leaders that Britain, in particular, would support true independence in exchange for joining the anti-Ottoman and anti-German alliance formed to fight World War I. Such a division of the Ottoman spoils not only betrayed wartime promises of political independence to Arab leaders, but also undermined the efforts of Woodrow Wilson to apply the principle of ethnic self-determination to the Ottoman aftermath.

As a result of diplomatic maneuvers the compromise reached at Versailles in 1919 was to accept the Sykes-Picot borders that were drawn to satisfy colonial ambitions for trade routes and spheres of influence, but to disguise slightly its colonialist character, by creating an international system of mandates for the Middle East in which London and Paris would administer the territories, accepting a vague commitment to lead the various societies to eventual political independence at some unspecified future time. These Sykes-Picot ‘states’ were artificial political communities that never overcame the indigenous primacy of ethnic, tribal, and religious affinities, and could be maintained as coherent political realities only by creating oppressive state structures. If World War II had not sapped European colonial will and capabilities, it is easy to imagine that the societies of the Middle East would remain subjugated under mandate banners.

After World War II

Is it any wonder, then, that the region has been extremely beset by various forms of authoritarian rule ever since the countries of the Middle East gained their independence after the end of the Second World War?

Whether in the form of dynastic monarchies or secular governments, the stability that was achieved in the region depended on the denial of human rights, including rights of democratic participation, as well as the buildup of small privileged and exploitative elites that linked national markets and resources to the global economic order. And as oil became the prime strategic resource, the dominance of the region became for the West led by the United States as absolutely vital.

From these perspectives the stable authoritarianism of the region was quite congenial with the Cold War standoff between the United States and Soviet Union that was interested in securing strategic and economic partnerships reflecting the ideological rivalries, while being indifferent to whether or not the people were being victimized by abusive and brutal governments.

The American commitment to this status quo in the Middle East was most vividly expressed in 1980 after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution of the prior year by the enunciation of the Carter Doctrine.

President Carter in his State of the Union Address was warning the Soviet Union by a strong diplomatic signal that the United States was ready to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf by force, which because of supposed Soviet superiority in ground warfare was understood at the time as making an implied threat to use nuclear weapons if necessary.

After the Cold War

When the Cold War ended, the United States unthinkingly promoted the spread of capitalist style constitutional democracy wherever it could, including the Middle East. The Clinton presidency (1992-2000) talked about the ‘enlargement’ of the community of democratic states, implying that any other political option lacked legitimacy (unless of course it was a friendly oil producer or strategic ally).

The neocon presidency of George W. Bush (2000-2008) with its interventionist bent invoked ‘democracy promotion’ as its goal, and became clear in its official formulation of security doctrine in 2002 that only capitalist democracies were legitimate Westphalian states whose sovereign rights were entitled to respect.

This kind of strident militarism reached a new climax after 9/11.

The White House apparently hoped to embark on a series regime-changing interventions in the Middle East and Asia with the expectation of producing at minimal cost shining examples of liberation and democratization, as well as secure the Gulf oil reserves and establish military bases to undergird its regional ambitions.

The attacks on Afghanistan, and especially Iraq, were the most notorious applications of this misguided approach. Instead of ‘democracy’ (Washington’s code word for integration into its version of neoliberal globalization), what emerged was strife and chaos, and the collapse of stable internal governance. The strong state that preceded the intervention gave way to localized militias and resurgent tribal, clan, and religious rivalries leading domestic populations to wish for a return to the relative stability of the preceding authoritarian arrangements, despite their brutality and corruption.

And even in Washington one encounters whispered admissions that Iraq was better off, after all, under Saddam Hussein than under the kind of sectarian and divisive leaders that governed the country since the American occupation began in 2003, and now threaten Iraq with an implosion that will produce at least two states replacing the shattered one.

The Arab Spring

Then came the Arab Spring in 2011 creating an awkward tension between the professed wish in Washington for democracy in the Arab world and the overriding commitment to upholding strategic interests throughout the Middle East. At first, the West reacted ambivalently to the Arab uprisings, not knowing whether to welcome, and then try to tame, these anti-authoritarian movements of the Arab masses or to lament the risks of new elites that were likely to turn away from neoliberal capitalism and strategic partnerships, and worst of all, might be more inclined to challenge Israel.

What happened in the years that followed removed the ambiguity, confirming that material and ideological interests took precedence over visionary endorsements of Arab democracy.

The reality that emerged indicated that neither the domestic setting nor the international context was compatible with the existence of democratic forms of governance. What unsurprisingly followed was a series of further military interventions and strategic confrontations either via NATO as in Libya or by way of its regional partners, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates as in Iran, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen.

With few tears shed in Washington, the authentic and promising democratic beginnings in Egypt that excited the world in the aftermath of the 2011 Tahrir Square were crushed two years later by a populist military coup that restored Mubarak Era authoritarianism, accentuating its worst features.

What amounted to the revenge of the urban secular elites in Cairo included a genuine bonding between a new majority of the Egyptian people and its armed forces in a bloody struggle to challenge and destroy the Muslim Brotherhood that had taken control of the government by winning a series of elections.

Despite its supposed liberalism the Obama leadership played along with these developments. It obliged the new Sisi-led leadership by avoiding the term ‘coup’ although the military takeover was followed by a bloody crackdown on the elected leadership and civil society leadership.

This Orwellian trope of refusing to call a coup by its real name enabled the United States to continue military assistance to Egypt without requiring a new Congressional authorization.

The folk wisdom of the Arab world gives insight into the counterrevolutionary backlash that has crushed the populist hopes of 2011: “People prefer 100 years of tyranny to a single year of chaos.”

And this kind of priority is shared by most of those who make and manage American foreign policy. Just as clearly as the Arab masses, the Pentagon planners prefer the stability of authoritarianism to the anarchistic uncertainties of ethnic and tribal strife, militia forms of governance that so often come in the wake of the collapse of both dictatorial rule and democratic governance.

And the masters of business and finance, aside from the lure of post-conflict markets for the reconstruction of what has been destroyed militarily, prefer to work with dependable and familiar national elites that welcome foreign capital on lucrative terms that benefit insiders and outsiders alike, while keeping the masses in conditions of impoverished thralldom.

In many respects, Syria and Iraq illustrate the terrible human tragedies that have been visited on the peoples of these two countries. In Syria a popular uprising in 2011 was unforgivably crushed by the Basher el-Assad regime in Damascus, leading to a series of disastrous interventions on both sides of the internal war that erupted, with Saudi Arabia and Iran engaged in a proxy war on Syrian soil while Israel uses its diplomatic leverage to ensure that the unresolved war would last as long as possible as Tel Aviv wanted neither the regime nor its opponents to win a clear victory.

During this strife, Russia, Turkey, and the United States were intervening with a bewildering blend of common and contradictory goals ranging from pro-government stabilization to a variety of regime changing scenarios. These external actors held conflicting views of the Kurdish fighters as either coveted allies or dangerous adversaries.

In the process several hundred thousand Syrians have lost their lives, almost half the population have become refugees and internally displaced persons, much of the country and its ancient heritage sites devastated, and no real end of the violence and devastation is in sight.

The Iraq experience is only marginally better.

After a dozen years of punitive sanctions following the 1991 ceasefire that exacted a heavy toll on the civilian population, the ‘shock and awe’ of US/UK attacks of 2003, an occupation began that rid the country of its cruel and oppressive leader, Saddam Hussein, and his entourage.

What followed politically became over time deeply disillusioning, and actually worse than the overthrown regime, which had been hardly imaginable when the American-led occupation began. The Iraqi state was being reconstructed along sectarian lines, purging the Sunni minority elites from the Baghdad bureaucracy and armed forces, thereby generating a widespread internal violent opposition against foreign occupation and a resistance movement against the Iraqi leadership that had gained power with the help of the American presence.

This combination of insurgency and resistance also gave rise to widespread feelings of humiliation and alienation, which proved to be conducive to the rise of jihadi extremism, first in the form of al-Qaeda in Iraq and later as ISIS.

Toxic Geopolitics

It is impossible to understand and explain such a disastrous failure of military interventionism without considering the effects of two toxic ‘special relationships’ formed by the United States, with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The basic feature of such special relationships is an unconditional partnership in which the Israelis and Saudis can do whatever they wish, including pursuing policies antagonistic to U.S. interests without encountering any meaningful opposition from either Washington or Europe.

This zone of discretion has allowed Israel to keep Palestinians from achieving self-determination while pursuing its own territorial ambitions via constantly expanding settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, fueling grassroots anti-Western sentiment throughout the Arab world because of this persisting reliance on a cruel settler colonialist approach to block for seven decades the Palestinian struggle for fundamental and minimal national rights.

The special relationship with Saudi Arabia is even more astonishing until one considers the primacy of economic strategic priorities, especially the importance of oil supplied at affordable prices. Having by far the worst human rights record in the region, replete with judicially decreed beheadings and executions by stoning, the Riyadh leadership continues to be warmly courted in Western capitals as allies and friends. At the same time, equally theocratic Iran is hypocritically bashed and internationally punished in retaliation for its far less oppressive governing abuses.

Of course, looking the other way, is what is to be expected in the cynical conduct of opportunistic geopolitics, but to indulge the Saudi role in the worldwide promotion of jihadism while spending trillion on counter-terrorism is much more difficult to fathom until one shifts attention from the cover story of counter-terrorism to the more illuminating narrative of petropolitics. Despite fracking and natural gas discoveries lessening Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil, old capitalist habits persist long after their economic justifications have lapsed and this seems true even when such policies have become damaging in lives and financial burdens.

Finding Hope is Difficult

In such circumstances, it is difficult to find much hope in the current cosmodrama of world politics.

It is possible, although unlikely, that geopolitical sanity will prevail to the extent of finding a diplomatic formula to end the violence in Syria and Yemen, as well as to normalize relations with Iran, restore order in Iraq and Libya, although such sensible outcomes face many obstacles, and may be years away.

The alternatives for the Middle East in the near future, barring the political miracle of a much more revolutionary and emancipatory second Arab Spring, seems to be authoritarian stability or anarchic strife and chaos, which seems far preferable if the alternative is the deep trauma associated with enduring further American military interventions.

If you happen to hear the Republican candidates give their prescriptions for fixing the Middle East it comes down to ‘toughness,’ including the scary recommendations of ‘carpet bombing’ and a greatly heightened American military presence.

Even the more thoughtful Democrats limit their proposals to enhanced militarism, hoping to induce the Arab countries to put ‘the boots on the ground’ with nary a worry about either igniting a regional war or the imaginative collapse that can only contemplate war as the recipe for peace, again recalling the degree to which Orwellian satiric irony is relied upon to shape foreign policy prescriptions by ambitious politicians.

Imaginative diplomacy, talking and listening to the enemy, and engaging in self-scrutiny remains outside the cast iron cage of the military mentality that has long dominated most of the political space in American foreign policy debates with the conspicuous help of the passive aggressive mainstream media.

In this respect, American democracy is a broken reality, and conscientious citizens must look elsewhere as a prison break of the political imagination is long overdue.

 http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34377-slouching-toward-global-disaster

Former ISIS Hostage: Welcoming Refugees Is the Best Strategy Against ISIS
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Goodman writes: "French journalist and author Nicolas Henin spent 10 months as an ISIS hostage in Syria, where he was held by Mohammed Emwazi. We spoke with him about the growing move among Western countries to close their doors to refugees."
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22 Years Ago Today, an Uprising Occurred That Changed the World
Hilary Klein, teleSUR
Klein writes: "On January 1, 1994, the EZLN captured the world's imagination when it rose up to demand justice and democracy for the indigenous peasants of southern Mexico. Since then, the Zapatista movement has won significant changes in its own territory and has inspired other social movements in Mexico and around the world, offering a number of key lessons that are still relevant today."
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2015 in Pollution: A Toxic Roundup
Zoe Schlanger, Newsweek
Schlanger writes: "There's no subtle way to say this: 2015 was a garbage year for our air and water."
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A woman at Tiananmen Square wears a protective mask amid heavy smog after the city
issued its first ever 'red alert' for air pollution, in Beijing, December 9. 
(photo: Damir Sagolj/Reuters)


here’s no subtle way to say this: 2015 was a garbage year for our air and water. A river in Colorado turned a bright mac-and-cheese orange with mining waste. Photos of the streets of Beijing, thick with air pollution, looked downright apocalyptic. Parents in Flint, Michigan can look forward to a 2016 living in fear for their children’s brain development after learning their water is full of too much lead. One of the biggest automakers in the world admitted to rigging its vehicles to pass emissions tests, even when they were spewing out as much as 40 times the legal limit of the harmful pollutant NOx. It’s a mess out there, fam.

But amid the muck was a few bright spots: Obama’s Clean Power Plan made it through several Republican challenges mostly unscathed , and the federal government rolled out its first-ever rule limiting ozone emissions this year, putting a cap on the amount of the harmful pollutant (which is linked to asthma, heart disease, premature death, and an array of pregnancy complications) that states are allowed to emit. But—sorry, there’s a “but”—the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set the cap at the upper limit of what experts recommended , which many health advocates say amounts to a weak rule that still leaves plenty of room for ozone to damage human health. According to The New York Times , the EPA had sought public comment on a more restrictive cap, but industry lobbyists then “waged an all-fronts campaign” to urge the agency to publish as weak a standard as possible.

Meanwhile, a report found that the U.S.’s regulations on fine particulate matter (linked to asthma risk and a range of other health problems) isn’t nearly adequate, and still leaves Americans at risk for early death. So even if you live in a place that complies with the EPA’s fine particulate matter rules (many places—where about 44 percent of Americans live—do not) the air you breathe could still lead you to die sooner than you should.

Also, sadly, this article is not going to get any cheerier.

And now! Here’s a roundup of the most spectacularly awful pollution stories from 2015. This list is by no means exhaustive. It could go on forever. Sorry! But it’s true. Happy New Year.

Children of Flint, Michigan Might Be Permanently Damaged by Lead in the Water

The lead-tainted water supply in Flint, Michigan has spiked the levels of lead in children’s blood at such a scale that Mayor Karen Weaver announced she was preparing the city to need more special education programs in the near future to deal with the “irreversible” effects on children’s brain development. Weaver declared a state of emergency, the head of Michigan’s environmental regulation agency resigned, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder apologized for the disaster this week.

Lead exposure “affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs,” according to the World Health Organization. “The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”

Volkswagen Emissions Cheating Scandal May Have an Actual Death Toll

This year, we learned that automaker Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests on a massive scale, rigging 11 million of its cars worldwide with “defeat devices” to pass emissions tests, while in reality they were pumping far more toxic pollution than was legal. Scientists have established that, statistically, exposure to air pollution correlates with earlier-than-normal death. MIT and Harvard researchers applied those statistical models to the Volkswagen scandal, and concluded in a recent study that the roughly 500,000 rigged cars sold in the U.S. alone would emit enough excess NOx by the end of 2016 to cause roughly 60 people to die 10 to 20 years prematurely .

All that excess pollution will also “contribute directly” to 31 cases of chronic bronchitis, 34 hospital admissions for heart and respiratory conditions, 120,000 “minor restricted activity days” (like missing work or school) and roughly 210,000 days of lower-respiratory symptoms, such as coughing. They calculated that all those sick people, from 2008 through the end of 2015, will cost the country $450 million. That’s in the United States alone—another 10.5 million rigged cars, or more than 20 times the amount sold in the US, were sold abroad.

Beijing’s Air Pollution Problem Turned the City Post-Apocalyptic

In December, Beijing twice issued an air pollution “red alert,” the highest level warning, which triggers the shutdown of schools and factories, and restricts traffic. The smog was expected to rise above 500 micrograms per cubic meter. For perspective, levels above 25 are considered unsafe by the World Health Organization.

One resident described the pollution during that time as so thick she could “taste the bad air” through her facemask.

Beijing’s dire problem, linked to China’s dependence on burning coal, has produced headlines that read like post-apocalyptic speculative fiction. People in Beijing are rapidly buying up cans of clean air from Canadafor $14 a pop, before shipping. A Beijing restaurant started charging extra for clean air .

LA’s Methane Leak May be the Biggest Environmental Disaster Since the BP Spill

For about two months straight, a vast amount of methane gas has been spewing out of a natural gas facility 25 miles north of Los Angeles, and no end is in sight. The company responsible, Southern California Gas Co., has said that it might take several months to plug the leak.

The latest estimates, from the Environmental Defense Fund, show that 74,500 metric tons of methane gas have been released so far. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas: It absorbs heat so effectively that it can be as much as 80 times more potent in terms of global warming than carbon dioxide is in its first two decades in the atmosphere. Gizmodo reports that, in terms of overall emissions, that’s the equivalent of putting seven million more cars on the road.

EPA Turned a River Bright Orange. Oops

Earlier this year, the EPA managed to cause an environmental disaster. The agency says it was using heavy machinery to investigate pollutants at an abandoned gold mine in Colorado when it accidentally released an estimated 1 million gallons of built-up mining waste into the nearby Animas River—turning it a spectacularly unnatural orange hue. In short, the agency poked a hole in the wrong place.

The waste contained lead, arsenic, cadmium and aluminum. To be fair, the mine, like many mines left abandoned and unremediated by companies across the West, had been slowly releasing such contaminants for years—the EPA was there to try to stop the leak.

“This is a huge tragedy. It’s hard being on the other side of this. We typically respond to emergencies, we don’t cause them,” David Ostrander, EPA’s director of emergency preparedness for the region, said at the time. “But this is just an unanticipated situation that didn’t quite come out as planned.”

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/34374-2015-in-pollution-a-toxic-roundup