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The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high Monday, a reading from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that elicited fresh calls from climate activists and scientists for the international community to end planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation. According to NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory, an atmospheric baseline station in Hawaii, the daily average of CO2 levels on Feb. 10 was 416.08 parts per million. In recent years, soaring rates of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have signaled that the world is not ambitiously addressing the climate crisis.
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Concentration of CO2 Hits Record High of 416 ppm
by Jessica Corbett
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high Monday, a reading from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that elicited fresh calls from climate activists and scientists for the international community to end planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation. According to NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory, an atmospheric baseline station in Hawaii, the daily average of CO2 levels on Feb. 10 was 416.08 parts per million. In recent years, soaring rates of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have signaled that the world is not ambitiously addressing the climate crisis.
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EXCERPT, ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON LINK:
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record high Monday, a reading from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that elicited fresh calls from climate activists and scientists for the international community to end planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation.
According to NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory, an atmospheric baseline station in Hawaii, the daily average of CO2 levels on Feb. 10 was 416.08 parts per million. In recent years, soaring rates of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have signaled that the world is not ambitiously addressing the climate crisis.
Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, who founded the global youth-led climate action movement Fridays for Future, tweeted Tuesday of NOAA’s new finding that “the saddest thing is that this won’t be breaking news.”
“And basically no one understands the full meaning of this. Because we’re in a crisis that’s never been treated as a crisis,” added the 17-year-old Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
Thunberg was not alone in using social media to draw attention to the figure. Belgian climate scientist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, who has been involved with multiple reports from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, wrote on Twitter Tuesday that the record was not something “to be proud of.”
Instead, van Ypersele said, it is a reminder that “emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation need to be reduced to ZERO to stop this trend!”
A German-based Parents for Future group—made up of adults who support the movement Thunberg founded—shared the new number alongside a video of children calling for bold climate action.
The video features several children mouthing along to a speech that Thunberg delivered in December 2018 at the U.N. COP24 climate talks in Poland. Calling for systemic change on a global scale to the tackle the climate emergency, Thunberg warned in her address that “we cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.”
The United Kingdom’s national weather service, the Met Office, warned in January that “a forecast of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide shows that 2020 will witness one of the largest annual rises in concentration since measurements began at Mauna Loa, in Hawaii, 1958.”
The Met Office said that “the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is expected to peak above 417 parts per million in May,” noting that the anticipated increase is due in part to emissions from the bushfires that have devastated large swaths of Australia since late last year.
“Although the series of annual levels of CO2 have always seen a year-on-year increase since 1958, driven by fossil fuel burning and deforestation, the rate of rise isn’t perfectly even because there are fluctuations in the response of ecosystem carbon sinks, especially tropical forests,” explained professor Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Center and University of Exeter.
“The success of our previous forecasts has shown that the year-to-year variability in the rate of rise of CO2 in the atmosphere is affected more by the strength of ecosystem carbon sinks and sources than year-to-year changes in human-induced emissions,” he added. “Nevertheless, the anthropogenic emissions are still the overall driver of the long-term rise in concentrations.”
Originally published by CommonDreams.org
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The Philippines scrap security agreement with U.S.
by Countercurrents Collective
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has terminated the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the U.S. The Philippines announced its decision Tuesday – a move the U.S. embassy in the Philippines called a “serious step” – touching off a six-month countdown to the end of the deal.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has terminated the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the U.S.
The Philippines announced its decision Tuesday – a move the U.S. embassy in the Philippines called a “serious step” – touching off a six-month countdown to the end of the deal.
Duterte’s disdain for the Philippines’ close ties with the U.S. is well-known, He sees the ties as subservience to an abusive and hypocritical former colonial ruler. Duterte is determined to build a strong relationship with China.
Duterte’s spokesperson Salvador Panelo said U.S. disagreement with the president’s move was motivated by its own strategic interests, and that it was time for the Philippines to be militarily independent.
“Reliance on another country for our own defenses against the enemies of the state will ultimately weaken and stagnate our defense mechanisms,” Panelo said in a statement. “We must stand on our own and put a stop to being a parasite to another country in protecting our independence and sovereignty.”
The VFA was signed in 1998. It is the legal framework allowing thousands of rotating U.S. troops, ships, and aircraft to visit the Philippines and train soldiers, conduct 300 joint exercises a year. It specifies which country will have jurisdiction over the U.S. soldiers who may be accused of crimes while in the Philippines, a sensitive issue in the former U.S. colony.
Some Philippines lawmakers hope it can be saved in the 180 days before the termination takes effect.
They worry that without it, two other U.S. military agreements will be irrelevant.
Duterte has threatened since his 2016 election to put an end to the Filipino-U.S. alliance. He specifically mentioned a desire to do away with the VFA again in January, after the US cancelled the travel visa of senator and former national police chief Ronald Dela Rosa. “I’m warning you … if you won’t do the correction on this, I will terminate” the agreement,” he said, adding, “I’ll end that son of a b—-.”
The VFA is divisive in the Philippines, with leftist and nationalist critics arguing it guarantees preferential treatment for U.S. service members accused of crimes.
Its rightist defenders say ending the agreement would compromise the country’s ability to defend itself and undermine the U.S. goal of containing China.
After the U.S. embassy in Manila received notice of the Philippines’ desire to end the VFA —one of three defense agreements, among which are also the Mutual Defense Treaty and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, that collectively serve as a cornerstone for the alliance — it called the move a “serious step with significant implications for the U.S.-Philippines alliance.”
A separate defense pact subsequently signed in 2014, the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, allows the extended stay of U.S. forces and authorizes them to build and maintain barracks and warehouses and store defense equipment and weapons inside five designated Philippine military camps.
A Filipino senator and former national police chief, Panfilo Lacson, said terminating the treaty would reduce the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty “to a mere paper treaty as far as the U.S. is concerned.”
Military backs the scrap
The Philippine military on Wednesday stood by the president’s decision to scrap the security agreement with the U.S., saying the country could now develop its own defense capabilities and alliances, and would do fine without it.
The military chief backed President Rodrigo Duterte’s termination of the 1998 VFA and said doing so would allow the Philippines to expand its modernization program and its engagement with Australia and Japan – both U.S. allies.
Armed forces commander, General Felimon Santos, said planes and ships were being procured from countries other than the U.S., such as South Korea, while Filipinos were now “doing the leg work” on intelligence gathering on Islamist extremists.
“You know these sentiments of soldiers, we are all high morale,” he told reporters. “It will make us more eager to build up our own capabilities.”
“Wrong direction”
U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is a little concerned about the Philippines’ decision.
Esper on Tuesday said the decision was a move in the wrong direction at a time when Washington and its Asian allies were trying to press China.
Esper said the decision was “unfortunate,” while admitting he was still processing the news.
“I do think it would be a move in the wrong direction as we both, bilaterally with the Philippines and collectively with a number of other partners and allies in the region, are trying to say to the Chinese, ‘You must obey the international rules of order. You must obey, you know, abide by international norms,” he said, according to USNI News.
“As we try and bolster our presence and compete with [China] in this era of great power competition, I think it’s a move in the wrong direction for the longstanding relationship we’ve had with the Philippines for their strategic location, the ties between our peoples, our countries.”
“Right direction”
Duterte’s spokesperson Panelo rejected that, calling it “a move in the right direction that should have been done a long time ago.”
Trump shrugs off
Mark Esper’s boss, U.S. President Donald Trump thinks the Philippines moves is no big deal.
When asked about the decision Wednesday, Trump said he really doesn’t mind, not least of all because it will likely save the U.S. money down the road.
The U.S. president acknowledged his view likely differs from other officials.
Trump dismissed concerns about the Philippines decision canceling a major military accord.
Trump has also put pressure on other East Asian alliances, namely those with Japan and South Korea, through repeated requests for allies to pay more for U.S. security assurances.
U.S. admiral’s hope
The move by the Philippines potentially “challenged” future U.S. operations with Filipino forces, a U.S. admiral said on Thursday.
Adm. Philip S. Davidson, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told a foreign policy think-tank in Sydney that he hoped the U.S. State Department would be able to negotiate a solution that would keep the VFA in place.
“It’s a 180-day notice, so we have some time for diplomatic efforts to be pursued here,” Davidson said. “I hope we can get to a successful outcome.”
Davidson said the U.S. did not have such agreements with every country in the region.
Davidson said countries in the Indo-Pacific region are beginning to take a stand against Chinese attempts to manipulate them through debt-trap diplomacy, coercion and bullying.
All nations in the region were involved in a strategic competition “between a Beijing-centric order and a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he said.
“Through excessive territorial claims, debt-trap diplomacy, violations of international agreements, theft of intellectual property, military intimidation and outright corruption, the Communist Party of China seeks to control the flow of trade, finance, communications, politics and a way of life throughout the Indo-Pacific,” Davison said.
The U.S. admiral did not mention the World Bank-IMF debt trap.
China has scoffed at what it calls U.S. interference in the Asia-Pacific region and has denied linking aid to politics.
U.S. troops clash with villagers in Syria, teenager killed
by Countercurrents Collective
Media reports said: A Syrian was killed and another was wounded when villagers attacked U.S. troops and tried to block their way as their convoy drove through an army checkpoint in northeastern Syria. The incident prompted a rare clash.
Even with Corbyn gone, antisemitism threats will keep destroying the UK Labour party
by Jonathan Cook
If there is one issue that denotes the terminal decline of Labour as a force for change – desperately needed social, economic and environmental change – it is not Brexit. It is the constant furore over an “antisemitism crisis” supposedly plaguing the party for the past five years.
Western Anti-Chinese Propaganda Exaggerates Coronavirus Danger, Creates Panic
by Andre Vltchek
Now it is becoming obvious who China’s friends are, and who her enemies are. In the West, many nations and individuals are celebrating the short-term difficulties that the Chinese nation is facing, pouring salt into the wound, while giving birth to anti-Chinese sentiments.
America United: The Politics of the Coronavirus
by Dr Nath Aldalala’a
The current complications of American politics towards China are sad, they make America united coupledwith hope for the return of jobs (Wilbur Ross) during a national distress and a pandemic outbreak in China. It is perhaps wise on the part of the Chinese not to respond and/or not to say much with regard to this issue. Let’s though remember the Marshall Plan, not in its financial scope, but in its historical gesture— a proper and true American spirit.
Book Review: The Age of Illusions – How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
by Jim Miles
Another in his series of remarkable books, Andrew J.Bacevich has written an interesting, coherent, and timely work, The Age of Illusion. In a clear fashion it describes how Donald J. Trump is not the cause of current U.S. problems both
foreign and domestic, but is the cumulative result of the decline of the U.S. Trump is “a mere bit player” in the overall scheme of schisms in the U.S. domestic scene.
Are Adivasis Hindus? Forthcoming Census and RSS campaign
by Ram Puniyani
Currently massive protests are going on against NPR, NCR and CAA. At the same time we are going to begin the process of decadal census in 2021. Already RSS is active in promoting NPR, NCR and CAA. At the same time RSS wants that Adivasis should register themselves as Hindus rather than ticking the column of ‘Others’.
Are OBCs Not Eligible To Be On Sri Ram Temple Trust?
by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
After the Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Ram temple trust the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh,
who over saw the Babri Msjid destruction, Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharati, who actively participated in that act, said that the Other Backward Classes (Shudra/ OBCs) are as much Ram Bhakts as Dalits are and demanded for inclusion of an OBC member on the trust
The Art of Protests and Foot-marking the Politics of Silence
by Shibu Shanmughom
While the art of protest is curating its own shows in the streets across the country, an art show titled ‘Rustic Footmarks’, recently held in Kochi has raised a question-mark over uncritically endorsing the generic term ‘Indianness’ and the autonomy of art
Challenges in maintaining the quality of milk
by Amit Kumar Singh
Milk may be considered as a complete food by the virtue of its nutritional properties. But, it’s hard to believe that most of the raw
milk and various milk products are not up to quality parameters as per many reports. Furthermore, recently World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that in India adulteration is prevailing in milk and milk products and they have prophesized that if the same is prolonged and no prompt action is taken then 87% citizens may be on the verge of suffering from serious diseases by 2025 which may be as severe as cancer
Free thinking and free thinkers
by Samana Zafar
An attack on library is an attack to the minds striving to be free from prejudices.
Palestine: Still Chasing The Mirage
by Jafar M Ramini
The conclusion I have reached is nobody is coming to our aid. Nobody is coming to our rescue and most of the Arab leaders are more interested in preserving their shaky thrones than protecting Jerusalem, Hebron, Palestine or even us, the
Palestinians.
In all my years on this earth I have never had any doubt that we Palestinians will one day get our rights recognised and our land liberated and that we will, at last, have the right to return home. When I say, ‘we the Palestinians’ I do not refer to officialdom. I do not refer to The Palestinian Authority, to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine or any other faction. My faith is not in any of these. My faith is solely in my brethren in Palestine and the diaspora. It is incumbent upon us all to work diligently and relentlessly to achieve our goals of liberation and freedom by all means available to us. We are Palestine.
This faith, no this conviction, has been tested, shaken to its core, but never lost. Not even when Fatah and Hamas decided to war amongst themselves and not against our enemy and occupier, Israel. Not even when Trump came to power and started his demolition plan of all our hopes and aspirations did I lose faith.
We Palestinians need a world order that does not only recognise might but gives morality, the rule of law and humanity a chance. We need a level playing field.
This scenario has been tested over and over and over again since Mr Trump came to power. He first gifted the Israelis Jerusalem as their eternal and ‘undivided’ capital against all international norms and conventions. Israel demanded more and he obliged by moving his embassy to Jerusalem. Against all international norms and conventions. Then he went a step further by closing the offices of the PLO in Washington and deporting the Palestinian representative there and stopping all aid to The Palestinian Authority. That was not enough. He went one step further. He decided to starve UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which takes care of the welfare of 5 million Palestinian refugees, from any further American funds, putting the lives and the livelihoods of 5 million Palestinians in jeopardy. His team, mostly composed of Jewish Zionists, advised him to remove the words ‘Palestinian Refugees’ from the vocabulary of American Foreign Policy. All of this was a concerted effort to pressurise the Palestinian Authority to accept his so-called peace plan. Then, to top it all he gifted Israel the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
And then came the coup de gråce, when on the 28th January 2020, at a gathering in The White House with his bosom pal, Benjamin Netanyahu at his side and a room full of sycophants, Jewish and Christian Zionists he announced what I can only call ‘The Steal Of The Century’.
We all know what’s in it. We all know it’s violently one-sided and biased to a farcical degree and we know how utterly unfair to the Palestinians it is. They were not even there. As such, the Palestinian Authority objected to it, so did the Arab League, so did The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation as did most of Europe, Russia and China. The exception was the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and his Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab who gave it a luke-warm welcome and regurgitated the same banal rhetoric about the two state solution.
All the above made not a jot of difference. Not to Israel, not to their main benefactor, the United States of America. They decided it’s a good deal and is an opener for dialogue. What dialogue I wonder? Hasn’t the Palestinian Authority been having a dialogue with Israel for a quarter of a century? No matter.
Yesterday, the 11th February 2020 was the 30th anniversary of the release from prison in South Africa of the great Nelson Mandela, who famously said, “ We know full well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”. Yesterday, the 11th of February also saw our President, Mr Abbas trotting off to the Security Council to put his case – yet again – and literally to beg the international community to give peace, not Apartheid in Palestine, a chance.
I sat through two and a half hours of speeches by the fifteen member states, all of whom repeated the usual mantra of how committed they are to the two-state solution based on the June 4th, 1967 borders and equally committed to all the UN resolutions, of which there are many, and all respect international law and conventions. With the exception of United States of America and Israel who both insisted that all agreements of the past and resolutions were irrelevant and that their ‘deal’ was the only way forward.
Strangely, at the end of it all there was no vote.
What is the point of stating the obvious and not taking a stand? Even knowing full well that America would have vetoed it?
The Israeli ambassador, Danny Danone, openly called for the removal of Mr Abbas from office and described him as ‘not being ‘sincere’ in his search for peace. Why, asked Mr Danone, is he here at the Security Council and not in Jerusalem talking to Mr Netanyahu?
Hasn’t Mr. Abbas been talking to Mr Netanyahu for over twenty five years? What has he achieved? Apartheid.
Mr Abbas would have done much better if he had gone to Gaza, repaired the damage that has been done over the last thirteen years, gathered all the factions around him and started formulating a plan to confront and quell the Steal Of The Century. Sadly, he chose otherwise. As usual.
If the definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over and over again while each time expecting a different result is true then all our leaders must be institutionalised. When you know that if you go to any of the capitals of the western world to air your legitimate grievances against Israel that the answer will always be, ‘Israel has a right to exist and Israel has a right to defend itself” why bother?
And when you know that every time you scurry like cockroaches to the UN and, in particular, the UN Security Council to lodge another legitimate complaint against the myriad of crimes Israel commits against Palestine you are faced with the solid wall that is the American veto, why do it?
The conclusion I have reached is nobody is coming to our aid. Nobody is coming to our rescue and most of the Arab leaders are more interested in preserving their shaky thrones than protecting Jerusalem, Hebron, Palestine or even us, the Palestinians.
All that I can live with because we,Palestinians, given half a chance, are capable of doing what is needed to protect our holy sites and liberate our land. What I can’t live with is the continuous to-ing and fro-ing of Mr. Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues to the UN to justify their existence, knowing full well that nothing good or useful will come out of these visits.
Insanity indeed.
Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst, based in London, presently in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Jenin in 1943 and was five years old when he and his family had to flee the terror of the Urgun and Stern gangs. Justice for the people of Palestine is a life-long commitment.
Tribalism
by Sally Dugman
Tribalism is rampant on both the micro and macro scale. Whether in contentious actions by individuals or entire nations, it kicks into play as a survival mechanism by biological evolutionary roots.
Tribalism is rampant on both the micro and macro scale. Whether in contentious actions by individuals or entire nations, it kicks into play as a survival mechanism by biological evolutionary roots.
This because through it, people ensure that their own group gets the power, territory and goods. So of course there is going to be racism, casteism, hatred of people of other cultures and religions, etc.
While helpful in cave days to keep one’s own clan alive vs another one doing so if in competition for food and rights, it has supposed value still today and in other time periods post cave days. So think of peasant revolutions throughout history such as in France, people on streets with knives and guns killing the perceived “other”, people being burned or gunned down in places of worship and wars where the theme is my group vs yours so as to gain resources and geopolitical (territorial) control.
Then there are the pariahs kicked out of the tribe like the peaceful pacifist Quaker killed by hanging during the USA Civil War for nonconformance to expectations by his side in the war or the family member abandoned for the same deviance related to not fitting into the group (I.e., a gay child or someone who just doesn’t act right according to norms in place). These people exist everywhere across the globe.
I don’t have much tribalism in me as I welcome all sorts of people Into my life. However, don’t start me on psychopaths as I definitely don’t want them in the tribe.
The othering and tribalism took place in Nazi Germany. Today we do it with all of the creatures and plants that we consume, as well as other resources that we destroy. It is a necessity to stay alive.
And who would not think that terrorists have a sense of othering and tribalism? Certainly it is not I.
Then how do we rid ourselves of this orientation? Predictably It seems to be only through our getting rid of contenders and prey notions. Likewise it is about our getting to deeply understand the one initially perceived as the other in my view. Moreover it is someone or something viewed as not like one’s own kind and worthy of shunning or destruction that must me mastered as a concept and feeling.
Sally Dugman lives in MA, USA
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