Category Archives: Viva!

Are Jair Messias Bolsonaro and Donald John Trump a Menace to the Planet?

Credit: Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

We live in different worlds. The ones of friends, family and work colleagues. Worlds which are overshadowed by other, much bigger ones. Global spheres of international finance, politics, climate change, etc., contexts that might threaten our smaller circle of relationships; our family, our income, our general wellbeing, in short – our entire existence. However, even at those levels there exist small circles of acquaintances and associates able to make decisions that affect the entire humankind. Let me take one example – the regimes of U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, which are menacing our global natural habitat.

Ten years ago, I flew across the Amazon Jungle, amazed by its immensity though also alarmed by scares where thick greenery had been cleared away and substituted by dismal remains of dead trees, or dry cattle pastures and soy plantations. Logging and mining are the greatest dangers to Amazonia since its exposed soil is generally old, weathered, acidic, infertile, and subject to compaction from intense solar radiation.

Within the framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thousands of scientists and other experts write and review reports informing the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an endevour involving the governments of more than 120 countries. The IPCC, which in 2007 was rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was established in 1988. The U.S. Government was the main force for making the IPCC an autonomous intergovernmental body supporting a consensus between the participating nations.

At regular intervals, the IPCC presents comprehensive assessments on climate change and its impact on ecology, human society, and food production. In 2013, one of its reports declared that:

  1. Climate change is occurring, it is caused largely by human activities and poses significant risks for – and in many cases is already affecting – a broad range of human and natural systems. […] Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Human influence on the climate system is clear.

1

Nevertheless, several influential world leaders and their sycophants refuse to accept unequivocal findings and warnings issued by the IPCC, among them the U.S. president, who continues to make badly informed, even mind-numbing statements, like:

  1. My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years, Dr. John Trump, and I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject [climate change], but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture. […] Everything I want and everything I have is clean. Clean is very important — water, air. I want absolutely crystal clear water and I want the cleanest air on the planet and our air now is cleaner than it’s ever been. Very important to me. What I’m not willing to do is sacrifice the economic well-being of our country for something that nobody really knows.

2

While speaking about any scientific issue he does not know much about it is common that President Trump refers to ”Uncle John”, to whom he quite obviously did not speak about climate change, since Dr. Trump was a professor of engineering at a time when the phenomenon was hardly spoken of outside limited expert groups. 3 Donald Trump likes to refer to John Trump, who died in 1985, arguing that ”Dr John Trump at MIT, good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart”. The current U.S. president assumes he has superior genes as well:

  1. I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff. […] I’m a gene believer. Do you believe in the gene thing? I mean I do. I have great genes and all that stuff, which I’m a believer in.

4

On 8 August this year, the IPCC launched a 1,200-page Special Report of Climate Change and Land, highlighting that human activities directly affect more than 70 percent of earth´s ice-free land. A quarter of this land is already severely degraded. Five hundred million people are currently living in areas experiencing desertification, while agriculture continous to use 70 percent of the earth´s freshwater. Our planet´s vegetation currently absorbs 30 percent of CO2 emissions, which contribute to global warming, but the ongoing clearing of forests increases average world temperature at an alarming speed, while access to freshwater is constantly decreasing. During the last decades, the average temperature has increased by 1,53 oC. 5 This critical situation could probably be reversed if agricultural and forestry methods are drastically changed from a present state of overexploitation, characterized by excessive use of pesticides, nitrogenous fertilizers, mechanization, wasteful irrigation and other harmful practicies favoured by large-scale agricultural producers.

Let me return to Jair Messias Bolsonaro and his acolytes. The world’s largest tropical rainforest is currently under a lethal threat from President Bolsonaro, a powerful supporter of large-scale agribusiness he is complaining about foreign pressure to safeguard Amazonia. Bolsonaro is following in Trump´s footsteps, for example by threatening to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. His Minister of Foreign Affairs has called global warming a plot by “cultural Marxists”, while Bolsonaro declares that ”Amazonas is ours and ours alone”, accusing ”foreign NGOs” of intending to steal natural resources of its rainforest from Brazil and hand it over to European exploiters. Furthermore, he accuses indigenous groups of keeping Amazonia away from the Brazilian people, trying to maintain it ”at a prehistoric level”. Accordingly, Bolsonaro has withdrawn governmental support to FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation, which up until now has carried out policies related to indigenous people. He has also eliminated the Climate Change Division of the Ministry of Environment, as well as two departments that dealt with climate change mitigation and deforestation.

On 6 August this year, the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reported that 4,700 km2 of the jungle had been cleared since Bolsonaro´s inauguration on January 1st and in June alone, deforestation had been 278 percent more than for the same month in 2018. Bolsonaro immediately fired INPE´s director, Ricardo Galvao, accusing him of being in the service of ”some NGO´s” and that he himself would not fall victim to any ”environmental psychosis”. 6

Bolsonaro appears to belong to the same breed as President Trump. He behaves like a narcissist obsessed by his own worth and righteousness. Bolsonaro´s regime is already after half a year threatening not only Brazil with a moral and ecological meltdown, but the entire world as well. On March 28th The Economist described Bolsanero´s government as being in a state of monumental confusion. Apart from the economic team, it is a warring assortment of retired generals, mid-ranking politicians, evangelical Protestants and far right ideologues. “Nobody knows where he´s going, what´s the course he´s setting,” says Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former president, of Mr Bolsanaro. “He goes forward then back, all the time.” 7

Despots like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong have proved that a single man and his acolytes can bring death, hardship, and devastation to millions of people. Remembering men like those and learning about the views, aspirations, and actions of people like Trump and Bolsonaro make it imperative for all of us to become aware of the craziness of these two leaders and the fatal consequences of their actions. All humanity must now join forces to support national and global efforts to save our planet.

1https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
2https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/17read-transcript-of-aps-interview-with-president-trump.html
3 Davidson Sorkin, Amy (2016) ”Donald Trump´s Nuclear Uncle”, The New Yorker, April 8.
4 Collins, Eliza (2016) “Trump: I consult myself on foreign policy”, Politico, March 16, and Mortimer, Caroline (2016) “Donald Trump believes he has superior genes, biographer claims.” The Independent, September 30.
5https://www.ipcc.ch/2019/08/08/land-is-a-critical-resource_srccl/
6 Gatinois, Claire (2019) ”Déforestation record au Brésil, le jeu dangereux de Jair Bolsonaro”, Le Monde, August 9.
7 Bello, Andrés (2019) ”Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil´s apprentice president”, The Economist, March 28.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

The post Are Jair Messias Bolsonaro and Donald John Trump a Menace to the Planet? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Of course the US supports a no deal – it makes a minnow out of Britain | Gaby Hinsliff

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After Trump security adviser John Bolton’s visit it’s clear the price of US backing will be paid both in trade and foreign policy

If you thought it was bad enough when Donald Trump held a reluctant Theresa May’s hand, then look away now. For things are about to get sweatier.

The president’s clammy embrace of the British right continued this week with the arrival of his national security adviser John Bolton in London, to declare the most isolationist US regime in living memory would “enthusiastically” support a no-deal Brexit.

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Athlete Eilish McColgan hits out at body-shamers who call her ‘skinny’

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• ‘Go body shame elsewhere’ says 5000m silver medallist
• Not first time the 28-year-old has been outspoken

Scottish middle-distance runner Eilish McColgan has hit out at people who describe her as “skinny”, telling them to “go body shame elsewhere”.

McColgan, who won silver for Great Britain in the 5000m at last year’s European Championships in Berlin, made the comment on Twitter. She wrote: “Nothing pisses me off more than someone making a comment that I’m ‘too skinny’. I’m naturally small-always have been. Some people are just slim! I doubt they would comment on someone slightly larger than ‘average’. I’m a healthy athlete and human. Go body shame elsewhere!”

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Thousands of Jews protest ICE raids across U.S., 44 arrested in NYC

A growing movement of American Jews is mobilizing against U.S. immigration policy across the country. ‘We’re fighting for the soul of our country, for our very humanity.’

Hundreds of American Jews protest against ICE raids at an Amazon store in New York City, August 11, 2019. (Gili Getz)

Hundreds of American Jews protest against ICE raids at an Amazon store in New York City, August 11, 2019. (Gili Getz)

NEW YORK CITY — Hundreds of American Jewish demonstrators staged a sit-in at one of Amazon’s flagship stores in New York on Sunday, to protest the company’s ties to the big-data firm Palantir, which contracts directly with Immigration and Custom Enforcement forces. The action resulted in the arrest of 44 people, including a New York City councilman, several rabbis, and high-profile public figures like Eli Valley and Molly Crabapple.

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The protest, organized by a coalition of Jewish groups including T’ruah, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), and Never Again Action, as well a number of synagogues, was organized in solidarity with immigrants threatened with deportation by ICE and who are vulnerable to attacks by white nationalist terrorists. It was one of many protests involving thousands of American Jews in cities across the United States planned to coincide with Tisha B’Av, a traditional Jewish day of mourning.

After a silent march through midtown Manhattan, the protesters, dressed in black, occupied the Amazon store and conducted a Tisha B’Av service that combined the traditional liturgy with readings of testimonies from immigrants detained by ICE. Speakers drew direct parallels between the treatment of Jewish immigrants during World War II and that of Latinx immigrants today, and the crowd periodically chanted the refrains “close the camps” and “never again is now.”

“The cries of the Jewish people, of our people, against the forms of oppression visited upon us through our migrations across Jewish history, require us to speak out about what’s being done now,” said Brad Lander, a Jewish city councilman from Brooklyn who was among those arrested during the sit-in inside the Amazon store. Lander pointed to the similarities between the historical experiences of Jews and those of Latinx immigrants today, a parallel that the Never Again Action protests have insisted on drawing.

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“Amazon has chosen to make itself a corporate partner to ICE,” he added. “And if they’re either so addicted to profit or so callous to suffering that they are willing to continue to be a corporate in ICE’s bloody work, then I think it is very appropriate for us to target them in today’s action.”

“Part of the idea of civil disobedience is to prevent something from becoming normal — but the times aren’t normal,” Lander explained.

Protest organizers connected what they described as the Jewish ethical imperative to fight injustice with the somber message of Tisha B’Av, the day the Jewish people commemorate the destruction of the Jewish Temple, asserting that Jewish suffering in the past obligates them to advocate for those suffering in the present. The impression left by the New York protest was that of a movement gaining strength despite – or perhaps because of – the seemingly constant outrages and tragedies of the past several weeks.

It has been a particularly deadly and devastating month for immigrant communities in the United States. A white supremacist gunman walked into a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in early August and killed 22 people, most of them Latinx. In a manifesto the shooter released online, he wrote that his attack was a “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” echoing the xenophobic rhetoric employed by President Trump and many Republicans. Just four days later, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials raided multiple food-processing plants with predominantly Latinx workforces in Mississippi, arresting 680 people.

Hundreds of American Jews protest against ICE raids at an Amazon store in New York City, August 11, 2019. (Gili Getz)

Hundreds of American Jews protest against ICE raids at an Amazon store in New York City, August 11, 2019. (Gili Getz)

While Lander had attended one of the first Never Again Action demonstrations outside an ICE detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in July, for Rabbi Stephanie Kolin, who leads the historic Union Temple of Brooklyn, Sunday’s Amazon sit-in was her first with the immigrants’ rights movement. “As a rabbi, as a Jew, as a mom, I feel like I have to be here today,” she said.

Kolin, who was also among those arrested, credited the earlier Never Again Action demonstrations with moving her so much that she felt she had to join. “It is inspiring to see that these young Jews have so integrated our responsibility to the other, to the vulnerable, to all people who are created in the image of God, that they’re willing to put their bodies on the line,” she said.

Like many of the other protesters, Kolin expressed the feeling that present U.S. policies toward immigrants are extraordinary in their cruelty and, therefore, demand an extraordinary kind of response. “I feel like we can’t just go about and live our lives, business as usual,” she added. “It can’t be that the bottom line takes precedence over people’s lives.”

“We’re fighting for the soul of our country, for our very humanity,” Kolin concluded tearfully.

Indeed, the timing of the New York protest made for an especially emotionally charged event. Protesters cried as they recited the Mourner’s Kaddish, a Jewish prayer traditionally recited after the death of a loved one, for the 25 people who died in ICE custody. Even experienced organizers found it hard not to be moved by the show of spirit and force. So many protesters committed to risking arrest that the police had to commandeer a New York City bus to transport all of them to be processed.

Audrey Sasson, executive director of JFREJ, called it “one of the most powerful actions I’ve been a part of, and I’ve been organizing for about twenty years.”

Hundreds of American Jews protest against ICE raids at an Amazon store in New York City, August 11, 2019. (Gili Getz)

Hundreds of American Jews protest against ICE raids at an Amazon store in New York City, August 11, 2019. (Gili Getz)

The protests came just over a month after Never Again Action, a Jewish-led immigrant rights movement, launched a string of protests and civil disobedience actions outside ICE detention centers. Since then, several hundred American Jews have been arrested for protesting ICE and thousands more have taken part in the protests.

This time, Never Again Action were also joined by establishment American Jewish groups such as the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center and the liberal, pro-Israel lobby J Street. Participants included not only experienced left-wing Jewish activists but also mainstream Jewish community leaders and politicians — a sign that the segment of the American Jewish community that feels compelled to protest the U.S. immigration regime is continuing to widen. The protesters also appeared to span divides of denomination — Reform, Conservative, Orthodox — as well as generation.

The undeniable emotional power of the Never Again Action protests – the resonances between the darkest moments of Jewish history and the darkness of the present moment – appear to be driving the movement’s growing appeal. What is already one of the most significant American Jewish protest movements in over a decade could very much become a longer and more intense struggle by American Jews against the U.S. government’s immigration policies.

Sasson added that she felt the movement’s momentum was picking up, and that the protests would continue into the future. “We have an opportunity and an obligation as the Jewish community to respond with bold direct action and we’re ready to take part in a more escalated way.”

Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect that 44 protesters had been arrested and not 36, as was mistakenly stated.

 

The post Thousands of Jews protest ICE raids across U.S., 44 arrested in NYC appeared first on +972 Magazine.

Scaramucci says he no longer supports Trump: ‘He sounds more nonsensical’

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  • Former PR chief tells Republicans to consider 2020 change
  • Suggests Trump will ‘turn’ on those he claims to be fighting for

Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, has lashed out at Donald Trump, suggesting the president will one day “turn” on those he claims to be fighting for and that he may need to be replaced at the top of the Republican ticket in 2020.

Related: Jeffrey Epstein: officials await more information before releasing cause of death – live

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Nigel Farage attacking Prince Harry is like the angry man ranting on a bus | Zoe Williams

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The Brexit party leader seeks attention by spouting ever greater nonsense. We should not be drawn in by his attempt to polarise

The sociologist Will Davies, describing the lesser-remarked conundrum of the Boris Johnson prime ministership (would the hardliners who anointed him ever be satisfied with any Brexit?), borrowed a phrase from American politics: asymmetric polarisation. It is an elegant, economical way of saying “the other side has gone bananas”, which is funny because it’s true.

Let’s park the litany of examples for a second to concentrate on Nigel Farage. He appeared at a rightwing gathering in Australia on Saturday night – you could tell it was “alternative” because journalists were barred – and laid into Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in a way that was somewhat astonishing, but mainly completely bats.

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Chlamydia vaccine moves a step closer

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Pioneering clinical trial raises hopes of cure for ‘hidden’ sexually transmitted infection

A vaccine to protect against chlamydia has moved closer to becoming reality after a pioneering clinical trial found the treatment to be safe.

The vaccine successfully provoked an immune response, boosting levels of antibodies against the chlamydia bacterium in the blood and vaginal fluids.

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Nigel Farage attacks Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, jokes about ‘overweight’ Queen Mother

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Exclusive: Brexit party leader labels Duke of Sussex ‘terrifying’ while disparaging Queen Mother in Sydney CPAC speech

Nigel Farage has derided the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for their “irrelevant” social justice and environmental campaigns while abusing Prince Charles and describing the late Queen Mother as an “overweight, chain-smoking gin drinker”, in an incendiary speech to an Australian rightwing political conference.

Farage’s speech to Sydney’s Conservative Political Action Conference – from which media were barred – ranged across his views on Brexit, media bias and the United Nations, but he reserved his fiercest condemnation for members of the royal family, including princes Charles and Harry, and the Queen Mother.

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