This unstable individual is a threat to the US-Australia alliance, a serious security risk, as well as danger to world peace and international trade - an erratic politician Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull insists on publicly supporting as an "American patriot", who he is prepared to follow into a war of Trump's own making and, who he will be hosting on a proposed visit to Australia.
Showing posts with label international affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label international affairs. Show all posts
Friday 27 July 2018
Turnbull invites Trump to Australia - expected to arrive in November 2018
This unstable individual is a threat to the US-Australia alliance, a serious security risk, as well as danger to world peace and international trade - an erratic politician Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull insists on publicly supporting as an "American patriot", who he is prepared to follow into a war of Trump's own making and, who he will be hosting on a proposed visit to Australia.
The
New York Times,
18 July 2018:
WASHINGTON — Two weeks
before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified
intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had
personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included
texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a
top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the
Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded
grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence
briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings
that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have
unanimously endorsed.
The shifting narrative
underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses
intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear
than this week.
On Monday, standing next
to the Russian president in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump said he accepted Mr.
Putin’s denial of Russian election intrusions. By Tuesday, faced with a
bipartisan political outcry, Mr. Trump sought to walk back his words and sided
with his intelligence agencies.
On Wednesday, when a
reporter asked, “Is Russia still targeting the U.S.?” Mr. Trump shot back, “No”
— directly contradicting statements made only days earlier by his director of
national intelligence, Dan Coats, who was sitting a few chairs away in the
Cabinet Room. (The White House later said he was responding to a different
question.)
Hours later, in a CBS
News interview, Mr. Trump seemed to reverse course again. He blamed Mr. Putin
personally, but only indirectly, for the election interference by Russia,
“because he’s in charge of the country.”
In the run-up to this
week’s ducking and weaving, Mr. Trump has done all he can to suggest other
possible explanations for the hacks into the American political system. His
fear, according to one of his closest aides who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, is that any admission of even an unsuccessful Russian attempt to
influence the 2016 vote raises questions about the legitimacy of his
presidency.
The Jan. 6, 2017,
meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a prime example. He was briefed that day by
John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of
national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National
Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command.
The F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey, was also there; after the formal briefing, he privately told
Mr. Trump about the “Steele dossier.” That report, by a former British
intelligence officer, included uncorroborated salacious stories of Mr. Trump’s
activities during a visit to Moscow, which he denied.
According to nearly a
dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were
later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the
streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin’s role in the election
interference.
They included stolen
emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian
military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence
services. Officers of the Russian intelligence agency formerly known as the G.R.U. had
plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email stash.
And ultimately, several
human sources had confirmed Mr. Putin’s own role.
That included one
particularly valuable source, who was considered so sensitive that Mr. Brennan
had declined to refer to it in any way in the Presidential Daily Brief during
the final months of the Obama administration, as the Russia investigation
intensified.
Instead, to keep the
information from being shared widely, Mr. Brennan sent reports from the source
to Mr. Obama and a small group of top national security aides in a separate,
white envelope to assure its security.
Mr. Trump and his aides
were also given other reasons during the briefing to believe that Russia was
behind the D.N.C. hacks.
The same Russian groups
had been involved in cyberattacks on the State Department and White House
unclassified email systems in 2014 and 2015, and in an attack on the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. They had aggressively fought the N.S.A. against being ejected
from the White House system, engaging in what the deputy director of the agency
later called “hand-to-hand combat” to dig in…..
Read the full
article here.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
The White House on Monday threatened to strike back at critics of President
Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia by revoking the security clearances of six
former U.S. officials, drawing accusations that he was abusing his power and
aiming to stifle dissent.
Donald Trump is
doing anything he can to hold on to his base ― even employing propaganda tricks
straight out of 1984.
On Tuesday, the
President spoke at a Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering in Kansas City and
told his followers to forget about anything else other than what he tells them.
“Just remember, what you
are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” he said.
…ThinkProgress chillingly notes that Trump’s demand
directly correlates to the “final, most essential command” of the ruling
totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984: “to
reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”
Trump decided to jump
headfirst into that belief by telling the crowd, “We don’t apologize for
America anymore. We stand up for America. We stand up for the patriots who
defend America.”
Jake Tapper noted on
Twitter that those comments came eight days after he blamed the U.S. for poor relations with Russia.
Wednesday 18 July 2018
An American pute politique went to Helsinki in July 2018......
Putin's putain is the one on the left in this picture, 16 July 2018 |
US National Public Radio, Transcript: Trump And Putin's Joint Press Conference, 16 July 2018, excerpts from President Trump’s remarks:
“During today's meeting,
I addressed directly with President Putin the issue of Russian interference in
our elections.
I felt this was a
message best delivered in person. I spent a great deal of time talking about it
and President Putin may very well want to address it and very strongly, because
he feels very strongly about it and he has an interesting idea…..
And that was a well
fought, that was a well fought battle. We did a great job. And frankly, I'm
going to let the president speak to the second part of your question. But just
to say it one time again and I say it all the time, there was no collusion. I
didn't know the president.
There was nobody to
collude with. There was no collusion with the campaign and every time you hear
all of these you know 12 and 14 - stuff that has nothing to do and frankly they
admit - these are not people involved in the campaign.
But to the average
reader out there, they're saying well maybe that does. It doesn't. And even the
people involved, some perhaps told mis-stories or in one case the FBI said
there was no lie. There was no lie. Somebody else said there was. We ran a
brilliant campaign and that's why I'm president….
I do feel that we have
both made some mistakes. I think that the probe is a disaster for our country.
I think it’s kept us apart. It’s kept us separated. There was no collusion at
all. Everybody knows it. People are being brought out to the fore. So far that
I know, virtually, none of it related to the campaign. They will have to try
really hard to find something that did relate to the campaign. That was a clean
campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily and, frankly, we beat her. And I’m not
even saying from the standpoint — we won that race. It’s a shame there could be
a cloud over it. People know that. People understand it. The main thing — and
we discussed this also — is zero collusion. It has had a negative impact upon
the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world. We have 90
percent of nuclear power between the two countries. It’s ridiculous. It’s
ridiculous what’s going on with the probe….
My people came to me,
Dan Coats came to me and some others and said they think it’s Russia. I have
President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any
reason why it would be….
I will tell you
that president Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” [my yellow highlighting]
CNN, 17 July 2018:
The conservative
editorial page of The Wall Street Journal declared the news conference "a personal and
national embarrassment" for the President, asserting he'd "projected
weakness." Newt Gingrich, ordinarily a reliable voice of support, wrote on
Twitter the remarks were "the most serious mistake of his presidency."
Immediately after his
news conference, Trump's mood was buoyant, people familiar with the matter
said. He walked off stage in Helsinki with little inkling his remarks would
cause the firestorm they did, and was instead enthusiastic about what he felt
was a successful summit.
By the time he'd
returned to the White House just before 10 p.m. ET on Monday, however, his mood
had soured. Predictably, the President was upset when he saw negative coverage
of the summit airing on television aboard Air Force One. It was clear he was
getting little support, even from the usual places.
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 17 July 2018:
Republican Speaker in the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan, Statement, 17 July 2018:
"There is no
question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to
undermine democracy here and around the world. That is not just the finding of
the American intelligence community but also the House Committee on
Intelligence. The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally. There
is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains
hostile to our most basic values and ideals. The United States must be focused
on holding Russia accountable and putting an end to its vile attacks on democracy."
The
Guardian, 18
July 2018:
Newspapers around the
world have reacted to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performances
at the Helsinki summit, and are united in their assessment of which world
leader came out on top.
In the US, several
papers went in hard on Trump. The New York Daily News accused the president of
treason. Its front page featured an illustration of Trump holding hands with a
bare-chested Putin and shooting Uncle Sam in the head with a gun in the other hand.
The Washington Post’s
headline is: “Trump touts Putin’s ‘powerful’ denial”. The paper says Trump
handed the Russian president “an unalloyed diplomatic triumph” during
their summit as he refused to support the “collective conclusion” of the US
intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
The New York Post ran
with the headline: “See no evil”.
White House, Remarks
by President Trump in Meeting with Members of Congress, 17 July
2018:
It should have been
obvious — I thought it would be obvious — but I would like to clarify, just in
case it wasn’t. In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word “would”
instead of “wouldn’t.” The sentence should have been: I don’t see any reason
why I wouldn’t — or why it wouldn’t be Russia. So just to repeat it, I
said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t.” And the sentence should have
been — and I thought it would be maybe a little bit unclear on the transcript
or unclear on the actual video — the sentence should have been: I don’t see any
reason why it wouldn’t be Russia. Sort of a double negative.
So you can put that in,
and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.
I have, on numerous
occasions, noted our intelligence findings that Russians attempted to interfere
in our elections. Unlike previous administrations, my administration has
and will continue to move aggressively to repeal any efforts — and repel — we
will stop it, we will repel it — any efforts to interfere in our
elections.
We’re doing everything in our power to prevent Russian
interference in 2018." [my yellow highlighting]
Tuesday 30 January 2018
Scientists issue a final warning to humanity
THEN……
1992 World Scientists'
Warning to Humanity
Scientist Statement: World
Scientists' Warning to Humanity (1992) (PDF document)
Some 1,700 of the
world's leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the
sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The World Scientists' Warning to
Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of
UCS's board of directors.
Introduction
Human beings and the
natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and
often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not
checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish
for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the
living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present
course will bring about.
NOW……
World
Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice (PDF Document)
WILLIAM
J. RIPPLE, CHRISTOPHER WOLF, THOMAS M. NEWSOME, MAURO GALETTI, MOHAMMED
ALAMGIR, EILEEN CRIST, MAHMOUD I. MAHMOUD, WILLIAM F. LAURANCE, and 15,364
scientist signatories from 184 countries
Twenty-five years ago,
the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists,
including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the
1992 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” (see supplemental file S1).
These concerned
professionals called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and
cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on
it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” In their manifesto,
they showed that humans were on a collision course with the natural world. They
expressed concern about current, impending, or potential damage on planet Earth
involving ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion,
ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and
continued human population growth. They proclaimed that fundamental changes
were urgently needed to avoid the consequences our present course would bring.
The authors of the 1992
declaration feared that humanity was pushing Earth’s ecosystems beyond their
capacities to support the web of life. They described how we are fast
approaching many of the limits of what the biosphere can tolerate without
substantial and irreversible harm. The scientists pleaded that we stabilize the
human population, describing how our large numbers—swelled by another 2 billion
people since 1992, a 35 percent increase—exert stresses on Earth that can
overwhelm other efforts to realize a sustainable future (Crist et al. 2017).
They implored that we cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and phase out fossil
fuels, reduce deforestation, and reverse the trend of collapsing biodiversity.
On the twenty-fifth
anniversary of their call, we look back at their warning and evaluate the human
response by exploring available time-series data. Since 1992, with the
exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to
make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental
challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse (figure 1, file
S1). Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic
climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels (Hansen et al.
2013), deforestation (Keenan et al. 2015), and agricultural production—
particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption (Ripple et al. 2014).
Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540
million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least
committed to extinction by the end of this century.
Humanity is now being
given a second notice, as illustrated by these alarming trends (figure 1). We
are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically
and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued
rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even
societal threats (Crist et al. 2017). By failing to adequately limit population
growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse
gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb
pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is
not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere.
As most political
leaders respond to pressure, scientists, media influencers, and lay citizens
must insist that their governments take immediate action as a moral imperative
to current and future generations of human and other life. With a groundswell
of organized grassroots efforts, dogged opposition can be overcome and
political leaders compelled to do the right thing. It is also time to
re-examine and change our individual behaviors, including limiting our own
reproduction (ideally to replacement level at most) and drastically diminishing
our per capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat, and other resources.
Read the full
Second Notice here.
ALL THE WHILE THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING.......
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January 2018:
ALL THE WHILE THE DOOMSDAY CLOCK IS TICKING.......
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January 2018:
It
is now two minutes to midnight
Editor’s
note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped
develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using
the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear
explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The
decision to move (or to leave in place) the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock
is made every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in
consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 15 Nobel laureates. The
Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s
vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and new
technologies emerging in other domains. A printable PDF of this statement,
complete with the President and CEO’s statement and Science and Security Board
biographies, is available here.
To:
Leaders and citizens of the world
Re:
Two minutes to midnight
Date:
January 25, 2018
In 2017, world leaders failed to respond
effectively to the looming threats of nuclear war and climate change, making
the world security situation more dangerous than it was a year ago—and as
dangerous as it has been since World War II.
The greatest risks last year arose in
the nuclear realm. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program made remarkable
progress in 2017, increasing risks to North Korea itself, other countries in
the region, and the United States. Hyperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions
by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or
miscalculation.
But the dangers brewing on the Korean
Peninsula were not the only nuclear risks evident in 2017: The United States
and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of
NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading
their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.
In the Asia-Pacific region, tensions
over the South China Sea have increased, with relations between the United
States and China insufficient to re-establish a stable security situation.
In South Asia, Pakistan and India have
continued to build ever-larger arsenals of nuclear weapons.
And in the Middle East, uncertainty
about continued US support for the landmark Iranian nuclear deal adds to a
bleak overall picture.
To call the world nuclear situation
dire is to understate the danger—and its immediacy.
On the climate change front, the danger
may seem less immediate, but avoiding catastrophic temperature increases in the
long run requires urgent attention now. Global carbon dioxide emissions have
not yet shown the beginnings of the sustained decline towards zero that must
occur if ever-greater warming is to be avoided. The nations of the world will
have to significantly decrease their greenhouse gas emissions to keep climate
risks manageable, and so far, the global response has fallen far short of
meeting this challenge.
Beyond the nuclear and climate
domains, technological change is disrupting democracies around the world as
states seek and exploit opportunities to use information technologies as
weapons, among them internet-based deception campaigns aimed at undermining
elections and popular confidence in institutions essential to free thought and
global security.
The Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists Science and Security Board believes the perilous world security
situation just described would, in itself, justify moving the minute hand of
the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
But there has also been a breakdown in
the international order that has been dangerously exacerbated by recent US
actions. In 2017, the United States backed away from its long-standing
leadership role in the world, reducing its commitment to seek common ground and
undermining the overall effort toward solving pressing global governance
challenges. Neither allies nor adversaries have been able to reliably predict
US actions—or understand when US pronouncements are real, and when they are
mere rhetoric. International diplomacy has been reduced to name-calling, giving
it a surreal sense of unreality that makes the world security situation
ever more threatening.
Because of the extraordinary danger of
the current moment, the Science and Security Board today moves the minute hand
of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes
to midnight—the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it
was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.
The Science and Security Board hopes
this resetting of the Clock will be interpreted exactly as it is meant—as an
urgent warning of global danger. The time for world leaders to address looming
nuclear danger and the continuing march of climate change is long past. The
time for the citizens of the world to demand such action is now:
#rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
The untenable nuclear
threat. The risk that nuclear weapons
may be used—intentionally or because of miscalculation—grew last year around
the globe.
North Korea has long defied UN
Security Council resolutions to cease its nuclear and ballistic missile tests,
but the acceleration of its tests in 2017 reflects new resolve to acquire
sophisticated nuclear weapons. North Korea has or soon will have capabilities
to match its verbal threats—specifically, a thermonuclear warhead and a
ballistic missile that can carry it to the US mainland. In September, North
Korea tested what experts assess to be a true two-stage thermonuclear device,
and in November, it tested the Hwasong-15 missile, which experts believe has a
range of over 8,000 kilometers. The United States and its allies, Japan and
South Korea, responded with more frequent and larger military exercises, while
China and Russia proposed a freeze by North Korea of nuclear and missile tests
in exchange for a freeze in US exercises.
The failure to secure a temporary
freeze in 2017 was unsurprising to observers of the downward spiral of nuclear
rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The failure to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program will reverberate not just
in the Asia-Pacific, as neighboring countries review their security options,
but more widely, as all countries consider the costs and benefits of the
international framework of nonproliferation treaties and agreements.
Nuclear risks have been compounded by
US-Russia relations that now feature more conflict than cooperation.
Coordination on nuclear risk reduction is all but dead, and no solution to
disputes over the INF Treaty—a landmark agreement to rid Europe of medium-range
nuclear missiles—is readily apparent. Both sides allege violations, but
Russia’s deployment of a new ground-launched cruise missile, if not
addressed, could trigger a collapse of the treaty. Such a collapse would
make what should have been a relatively easy five-year extension of the New
START arms control pact much harder to achieve and could terminate an arms
control process that dates back to the early 1970s.
For the first time in many years, in
fact, no US-Russian nuclear arms control negotiations are under way. New
strategic stability talks begun in April are potentially useful, but so far
they lack the energy and political commitment required for them to bear fruit.
More important, Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea and semi-covert support
of separatists in eastern Ukraine have sparked concerns that Russia will
support similar “hybrid” conflicts in new NATO members that it borders—actions
that could provoke a crisis at almost any time. Additional clash points could
emerge if Russia attempts to exploit friction between the United States and its
NATO partners, whether arising from disputes on burden-sharing, European Union
membership, and trade—or relating to policies on Israel, Iran, and terrorism in
the Middle East.
In the past year, US allies have
needed reassurance about American intentions more than ever. Instead, they have
been forced to negotiate a thicket of conflicting policy statements from a US
administration weakened in its cadre of foreign policy professionals, suffering
from turnover in senior leadership, led by an undisciplined and disruptive
president, and unable to develop, coordinate, and clearly communicate a
coherent nuclear policy. This inconsistency constitutes a major challenge for
deterrence, alliance management, and global stability. It has made the existing
nuclear risks greater than necessary and added to their complexity.
Especially in the case of the Iran
nuclear deal, allies are perplexed. While President Trump has steadfastly
opposed the agreement that his predecessor and US allies negotiated to keep
Iran from developing nuclear weapons, he has never successfully articulated
practical alternatives. His instruction to Congress in 2017 to legislate a
different approach resulted in a stalemate. The future of the Iran deal, at
this writing, remains uncertain.
In the United States, Russia, and
elsewhere around the world, plans for nuclear force modernization and
development continue apace. The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review
appears likely to increase the types and roles of nuclear weapons in US defense
plans and lower the threshold to nuclear use. In South Asia, emphasis on
nuclear and missile capabilities grows. Conventional force imbalances and
destabilizing plans for nuclear weapons use early in any conflict continue to
plague the subcontinent.
Reflecting long decades of frustration
with slow progress toward nuclear disarmament, states signed a Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the ban treaty, at the United
Nations this past September. The treaty—championed by the International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which has been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for its work—is a symbolic victory for those seeking a world without
nuclear weapons and a strong expression of the frustration with global
disarmament efforts to date. Predictably, countries with nuclear weapons
boycotted the negotiations, and none has signed the ban treaty. Their increased
reliance on nuclear weapons, threats, and doctrines that could make the use of
those weapons more likely stands in stark contrast to the expectations of the
rest of the world.
An insufficient response
to climate change. Last year, the US government
pursued unwise and ineffectual policies on climate change, following through on
a promise to derail past US climate policies. The Trump administration, which
includes avowed climate denialists in top positions at the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other key agencies, has
announced its plan to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. In its rush to
dismantle rational climate and energy policy, the administration has ignored
scientific fact and well-founded economic analyses.
These US government climate decisions
transpired against a backdrop of worsening climate change and high-impact
weather-related disasters. This year past, the Caribbean region and other parts
of North America suffered a season of historic damage from exceedingly powerful
hurricanes. Extreme heat waves occurred in Australia, South America, Asia,
Europe, and California, with mounting evidence that heat-related illness and
death are correspondingly increasing. The Arctic ice cap achieved its
smallest-ever winter maximum in 2017, the third year in a row that this record
has been broken. The United States has witnessed devastating wildfires, likely
exacerbated by extreme drought and subsequent heavy rains that spurred
underbrush growth. When the data are assessed, 2017 is almost certain to continue the trend of exceptional global
warmth: All the warmest years in the instrumental record, which extends
back to the 1800s, have—excepting one year in the late 1990s—occurred in the
21st century.
Despite the sophisticated disinformation
campaign run by climate denialists, the unfolding consequences of an altered
climate are a harrowing testament to an undeniable reality: The science linking
climate change to human activity—mainly the burning of fossil fuels that
produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases—is sound. The world continues
to warm as costly impacts mount, and there is evidence that overall rates of
sea level rise are accelerating—regardless of protestations to the contrary.
Especially against these trends, it is
heartening that the US government’s defection from the Paris Agreement did not
prompt its unravelling or diminish its support within the United States at
large. The “We Are Still In” movement signals a strong commitment within the
United States—by some 1,700 businesses, 250 cities, 200 communities of faith,
and nine states, representing more than 40 percent of the US population—to its
international climate commitments and to the validity of scientific facts.
This reaffirmation is reassuring,
and other countries have maintained their steadfast support for climate action,
reconfirmed their commitments to global climate cooperation, and clearly
acknowledged that more needs to be done. French President Emmanuel Macron’s
sober message to global leaders assembled at December’s global climate summit
in Paris was a reality check after the heady climate negotiations his country
hosted two years earlier: “We’re losing the battle. We’re not moving quickly
enough. We all need to act.” And indeed, after plateauing for a few years,
greenhouse gas emissions resumed their stubborn rise in 2017.
As we have noted before, the true
measure of the Paris Agreement is whether nations actually fulfill their
pledges to cut emissions, strengthen those pledges, and see to it that global greenhouse
gas emissions start declining in short order and head toward zero. As we drift
yet farther from this goal, the urgency of shifting course becomes greater, and
the existential threat posed by climate change looms larger.
Emerging technologies
and global risk. The Science and Security Board
is deeply concerned about the loss of public trust in political institutions,
in the media, in science, and in facts themselves—a loss that the abuse of
information technology has fostered. Attempts to intervene in elections through
sophisticated hacking operations and the spread of disinformation have
threatened democracy, which relies on an informed electorate to reach
reasonable decisions on public policy—including policy relating to nuclear
weapons, climate change, and other global threats. Meanwhile, corporate leaders
in the information domain, including established media outlets and internet
companies such as Facebook and Google, have been slow to adopt protocols to
prevent misuse of their services and protect citizens from manipulation.
The international community should establish new measures that discourage
and penalize all cross-border subversions of democracy.
Last year, the Science and Security
Board warned that “[t]echnological innovation is occurring at a speed that
challenges society’s ability to keep pace. While limited at the current time,
potentially existential threats posed by a host of emerging technologies need
to be monitored, and to the extent possible anticipated, as the 21st century
unfolds.”
If anything, the velocity of
technological change has only increased in the past year, and so our warning
holds for 2018. But beyond monitoring advances in emerging technology, the board
believes that world leaders also need to seek better collective methods of
managing those advances, so the positive aspects of new technologies are
encouraged and malign uses discovered and countered. The sophisticated hacking
of the “Internet of Things,” including computer systems that control major
financial and power infrastructure and have access to more than 20 billion
personal devices; the development of autonomous weaponry that makes “kill”
decisions without human supervision; and the possible misuse of advances in
synthetic biology, including the revolutionary Crispr gene-editing tool,
already pose potential global security risks. Those risks could expand without
strong public institutions and new management regimes. The increasing pace of
technological change requires faster development of those tools.
How to turn back the
Clock. In 1953, former Manhattan
Project scientist and Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch set the
hands of the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight, writing, “The achievement
of a thermonuclear explosion by the Soviet Union, following on the heels of the
development of ‘thermonuclear devices’ in America, means that the time, dreaded
by scientists since 1945, when each major nation will hold the power
of destroying, at will, the urban civilization of any other nation, is close at
hand.”
The Science and Security Board now
again moves the hands of the Clock to two minutes before midnight. But the
current, extremely dangerous state of world affairs need not be permanent. The
means for managing dangerous technology and reducing global-scale risk exist;
indeed, many of them are well-known and within society’s reach, if leaders pay
reasonable attention to preserving the long-term prospects of humanity, and if
citizens demand that they do so.
This is a dangerous time, but the
danger is of our own making. Humankind has invented the implements of
apocalypse; so can it invent the methods of controlling and eventually
eliminating them. This year, leaders and citizens of the world can move the
Doomsday Clock and the world away from the metaphorical midnight of global
catastrophe by taking these common-sense actions:
• US President Donald Trump should
refrain from provocative rhetoric regarding North Korea, recognizing the
impossibility of predicting North Korean reactions.
• The US and North Korean governments
should open multiple channels of communication. At a minimum,
military-to-military communications can help reduce the likelihood of
inadvertent war on the Korean Peninsula. Keeping diplomatic channels open for
talks without preconditions is another common-sense way to reduce tensions. As
leading security expert Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University recently wrote: “Such talks should not be seen as a reward or
concession to Pyongyang, nor construed as signaling acceptance of a
nuclear-armed North Korea. They could, however, deliver the message that while
Washington fully intends to defend itself and its allies from any attack with a
devastating retaliatory response, it does not otherwise intend to attack North
Korea or pursue regime change."
• The world community should
pursue, as a short-term goal, the cessation of North Korea’s nuclear weapon and
ballistic missile tests. North Korea is the only country to violate the norm
against nuclear testing in 20 years. Over time, the United States should seek
North Korea’s signature on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—and then,
along with China, at long last also ratify the treaty.
• The Trump administration should
abide by the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran’s nuclear
program unless credible evidence emerges that Iran is not complying with the
agreement or Iran agrees to an alternative approach that meets US national
security needs.
• The United States and Russia should
discuss and adopt measures to prevent peacetime military incidents along the
borders of NATO. Provocative military exercises and maneuvers hold the
potential for crisis escalation. Both militaries must exercise restraint and
professionalism, adhering to all norms developed to avoid conflict and accidental
encounters.
• US and Russian leaders should return
to the negotiating table to resolve differences over the INF treaty; to seek
further reductions in nuclear arms; to discuss a lowering of the alert status
of the nuclear arsenals of both countries; to limit nuclear modernization
programs that threaten to create a new nuclear arms race; and to ensure that
new tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons are not built and that existing
tactical weapons are never used on the battlefield.
• US citizens should demand, in all
legal ways, climate action from their government. Climate change is a real and
serious threat to humanity. Citizens should insist that their governments
acknowledge it and act accordingly.
• Governments around the world should
redouble their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so they go well
beyond the initial, inadequate pledges under the Paris Agreement. The
temperature goal under that agreement—to keep warming well below 2 degrees
Celsius above preindustrial levels—is consistent with consensus views on
climate science, is eminently achievable, and is economically viable, provided
that poorer countries are given the support they need to make the post-carbon
transition. But the time window for achieving this goal is rapidly closing.
• The international community should
establish new protocols to discourage and penalize the misuse of information
technology to undermine public trust in political institutions, in the media,
in science, and in the existence of objective reality itself. Strong and
accountable institutions are necessary to prevent deception campaigns that are
a real threat to effective democracies, reducing their ability to enact
policies to address nuclear weapons, climate change, and other global dangers.
• The countries of the world should
collaborate on creating institutions specifically assigned to explore and
address potentially malign or catastrophic misuses of new technologies,
particularly as regards autonomous weaponry that makes “kill” decisions without
human supervision and advances in synthetic biology that could, if misused,
pose a global threat.
The failure of world leaders to
address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable—but that failure
can be reversed. It is two minutes to midnight, but the Doomsday Clock has
ticked away from midnight in the past, and during the next year, the world can
again move it further from apocalypse. The warning the Science and Security
Board now sends is clear, the danger obvious and imminent. The
opportunity to reduce the danger is equally clear.
The world has seen the threat posed by
the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of
democracies to disinformation. But there is a flip side to the abuse of social
media. Leaders react when citizens insist they do so, and citizens around the
world can use the power of the internet to improve the long-term prospects of
their children and grandchildren. They can insist on facts, and discount
nonsense. They can demand action to reduce the existential threat of nuclear
war and unchecked climate change. They can seize the opportunity to make a
safer and saner world.
They can #rewindtheDoomsdayClock.
Sunday 7 January 2018
Trump starts the New Year with the United Nation's thumbing its nose at his threats
Despite US President Donald Trump’s threats to pull foreign aid from countries which didn’t vote as he directed, seventy-four per cent of national representatives participating in the UN General Assembly Emergency Session ‘Status of Jerusalem’ vote cast their ballots against the Trump Regime’s declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel.
United Nations News Centre, 21 December 2017:
General Assembly demands all States comply with UN resolutions regarding status of Jerusalem
21 December 2017 – By an overwhelming majority, Member States in the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday “demanded” that all countries comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the status of Jerusalem, following an earlier decision by the United States to recognize the Holy City as the capital of Israel.
Through a resolution adopted by a recorded vote of 128 in favour to nine against (Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo, United States), with 35 abstentions, the 193-member Assembly expressed “deep regret” over recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem and stressed that the Holy City “is a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations in line with relevant UN resolutions.”
Action in the Assembly today follows a failed attempt by the Security Council on Monday adopt a similar text reflecting regret among the body’s members about “recent decisions regarding the status of Jerusalem,” with a veto from the United States, a permanent member of the Council.
Ahead of that failed resolution, Nickolay Mladenov, Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the Security Council that the security situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory had become more tense in the wake of US President Donald Trump's decision on 6 December to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Subsequently, Yemen and Turkey, in their respective capacities as Chair of the Arab Group and the Chair of the Summit of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, requested the President of the General Assembly to “urgently resume’ the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly in accordance with the so-named ‘Uniting for peace’ procedure.
This procedure, under Assembly resolution 377 (1950), is a pathway around a Security Council veto. By it, the Assembly can call an emergency special session to consider a matter “with a view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures,” if the Security Council fails to act or if there is lack of unanimity among the Council’s permanent members, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Since the tenth such meeting, the Assembly has temporarily adjourned the emergency special session and authorized “the President of the General Assembly […] to resume its meeting upon request from Member States,” allowing for speedy consideration by the body of urgent issues.
The most recent resumed emergency session was in 2009 when the Assembly called a meeting on East Jerusalem and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Resolutions in the Assembly are non-binding and do not carry the force of international law as do measures agreed in the Security Council.
Find out more about the Assembly’s emergency special sessions and resolution 377 (1950) here
Today’s resolution demanded that “all States comply with Security Council resolutions regarding the Holy City of Jerusalem, and not recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.”
The General Assembly further affirmed that “any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council.”
In that regard the Assembly also called upon all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem, pursuant to Security Council resolution 478 adopted in 1980.
Reiterating its call for the reversal of the negative trends that endanger the two-State solution, the Assembly urged greater international and regional efforts and support aimed at achieving, without delay, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.
The text of the ‘Status of Jerusalem’ resolution include the undertaking; to ask nations not to establish diplomatic missions in the historic city of Jerusalem, as delegates warned that the recent decision by the United States to do so risked igniting a religious war across the already turbulent Middle East and even beyond.
Labels:
Donald Trump,
international affairs,
United Nations,
USA
Saturday 9 September 2017
Quotes of the Week
“Seven months into his presidency, Donald Trump is deeply unpopular. In Gallup’s latest poll of presidential job approval, he’s down to 34 percent, a level unseen by most presidents outside of an economic disaster or foreign policy blunder. In FiveThirtyEight’s adjusted average of all approval polling, he stands at 37 percent. And yet, few Republican lawmakers of consequence are willing to buck him or his agenda, in large part because their voters still support the president by huge margins. What we have clearer evidence of now is why. From polling and the behavior of individual politicians, it’s become harder to deny that people support the president not just for being president, but for his core message of white resentment and grievance—the only area where he has been consistent and unyielding.” [Journalist Jamelle Bouie writing in Slate, 1 September 2017]
“You heard Caleb, North Korea? The twerp wants you to take personal aim at his bedroom.” [Asher Wolf tweeting about young Australian warmonger Caleb Bond, 3 September 2017]
Labels:
Donald Trump,
international affairs
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