It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, December 04, 2022
Mazda unveils $11 bln EV spending plan, considers investing in battery production
Publishing date: Nov 22, 2022 •
TOKYO — Japan’s Mazda Motor Corp on Tuesday unveiled a $10.6 billion spending plan to electrify its vehicles and said it was also considering investing in battery production.
The company also raised its sales target for electric vehicles (EVs) to up to 40% of its total global sales by 2030, as automakers worldwide spend billions of dollars to ramp up battery and EV production in the face of tougher environmental regulations.
The investment plan by Mazda follows similar announcements this year by domestic rivals such as Toyota and Honda, which have been criticized by environmentalists and green activist investors for being slow in electrification.
“We will promote the full-fledged launch of battery EVs and consider investing in battery production. We estimate Mazda’s EV ratio in global sales to rise to a range between 25% and 40% as of 2030,” Mazda said in a statement.
Its previous EV sales target was 25% by 2030.
The new forecast was in line with a broader industry trend, with consulting firm Deloitte expecting EV sales to make up about 32% of total new car sales globally by 2030.
As part of a three-phase plan, Mazda said it would introduce battery-EV models in the “latter half of phase 2” which it identified as the period between 2025 and 2027. It planned a full-scale launch of fully electric vehicles between 2028 and 2030, the company said.
Senior managing executive officer Akira Koga told reporters the 1.5 trillion yen ($10.6 billion) investment would be made along with its partners and would be used for research and development. The news was first reported by the Nikkei business daily.
Koga declined to give a detailed investment timeline, adding it would depend on how fast EVs became popular.
Still, Mazda CEO Akira Marumoto said the company will seek to introduce a new hybrid system and improve efficiency on internal combustion engine.
“We believe that a multi-solution approach will be effective,” he said.
The automaker said it had agreed to work with seven companies, including electric-component maker Rohm Co, to jointly develop and produce electric drive units.
Company executives also said Mazda had reached a supply agreement with battery maker Envision AESC for a limited period between 2025 and 2027.
“Beyond that, we would like to develop a strategy on procurement and securing (batteries) step by step,” said Koga.
Envision AESC chief executive Shoichi Matsumoto told Reuters last month his company was in talks with automakers in Japan, Europe, the United States and China for new supply deals.
Mazda is aiming for about 4.5 trillion yen in net sales for the business year ending March 2026, a jump of about 45% from the financial year ending March 2022, the company said. Deloitte expects total EV sales to reach 31.1 million by 2030, up from an expected 11.2 million in 2025 and 2.5 million in 2020.
($1 = 141.7500 yen) (Reporting by Tokyo Newsroom; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa and Bradley Perrett)
World-class act: Japanese fans clean up World Cup stadium even though it wasn't a Japan match
Omar Farooq spotted some Japanese fans cleaning up rubbish at the stadium after the World Cup opening match.
Instagram/Omar Farooq
The Japanese are widely known for their impeccable manners and prosocial behaviour, and it seems they've brought this over with them to Qatar for the World Cup.
In a recent social media post, some Japanese football fans were spotted staying back at the Al Bayt Stadium stadium on Monday (Nov 21) to clear the rubbish left in the stands.
The best part? Their national team wasn't even playing that night. The opening match was between Qatar and Ecuador, where the latter won 2-0.
Their actions were caught on video by Bahraini influencer Omar Farooq, who uploaded the clip on his Instagram account.
"Something you haven't seen from the World Cup opening!" he wrote in the caption.
In the video, several Japanese football fans wearing what looks like their national team jerseys were seen picking up empty bottles and food wrappers from between the rows of seats, placing them into plastic bags.
"Japanese never leave rubbish behind," a woman told Omar in the video. "We respect the place."
"Not for the cameras," another man said.
Inspired by their graciousness, Omar joined in as well.
Omar's video also garnered praise from netizens, one of whom even remarked: "I wish everyone would learn from Japan".
PHOTO: Screengrab/Instagram
This isn't the first time that the Japanese have shown their best side to the rest of the world.
During the last World Cup in 2018, the Japanese football team were commended for cleaning up their locker room after their match against Belgium — which they lost.
They even left a thank-you note written in Russian for their hosts.
"Japan is not just the players, it is everything, the fans too. We need to play our part to represent the country well."
Russia's war on Ukraine: Amid risk of nuclear conflict, truth must not be allowed to become a casualty – Stewart McDonald
“Putin Bombs Nato” was the headline one paper went with. The others offered a range of less brazen headlines – from “Russian missiles hit Poland” to the more cautious “Russians blamed for fatal strike on Poland”, while online reactions were about as measured as could be expected.
Columnists By Stewart McDonald 22nd Nov 2022, An aerial view of the site where a missile strike killed two men in the
eastern Poland village of Przewodow, near the border with Ukraine
(Picture: Wojtek Radwanski and Damien Simonart/AFP via Getty Images)
“Article 5” – the part of Nato’s charter which recognises that an attack on one Allied state is an attack on all – was trending on Twitter while talking heads and anonymous accounts alike speculated about the possibility of nuclear war. Less than 24 hours after the news of the incident broke, it became clear that these reactions had little grounding in reality.
Even the speculation about Article 5 was half-baked. Its provisions are the cornerstone of the North Atlantic Treaty and one of the most famous international agreements in the world. It states that “an armed attack against one or more [Allied states] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them” – a clause commonly understood to mean that an armed attack against one Nato state would lead to the whole alliance going to war.
However Article 5 concludes by stating that the alliance must take “such action as it deems necessary” in reaction to the armed attack. This could be as little as a strongly worded letter – if that was what the alliance thought was appropriate.
But those journalists and social media watchers were not alone in being blinded by the fog of war: even among Nato allies there was no consensus about the attack at the time of writing, with Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating explicitly that a “Russian-made” missile had landed in their territory just as the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was saying that there was a “general impression that this missile is not Russian made”. The public statement of these wildly differing opinions following a crisis is an act which damaged the credibility and stability of the alliance – and it is a mistake that Nato members must be careful not to repeat.
It doesn’t just look bad when allies go freelance – it plays directly into the hands of the Kremlin. Following the incident, and the diverging reactions across the West, Dmitry Peskov – Putin’s spokesperson – put out a statement condemning Poland for its “hysterical and frenzied Russophobic reaction” and praising the United States and President Joe Biden for the “restrained and professional reaction”. Meanwhile, the head of state-controlled RT Margarita Simonyan, issued a statement saying that “a Nato country is so badly protected that anyone can accidentally hit it with anything and all of NATO will not even know who hit it, with what and why.”
Make no mistake: the Kremlin has no interest in an honest evaluation of policy in Poland or the United States. The Russian government – as has long been known – seeks out any opportunity to sow division and discord within and between democratic states. We should be careful not to give them the chance.
This incident might not be the last in what is likely to be a protracted war of attrition against a paranoid, isolated and unpredictable Vladmir Putin. And, on balance, Nato reacted well: Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was explicit about the need to remain composed and prevent unnecessary escalation while most heads of state also made the case for calm until more information could be found. Unlike the sensationalist headline writers and online pundits, Article 5 was never on their lips.
That confusion in the public sphere, however, should give us all pause for thought. There are multiple nuclear powers directly and indirectly involved in the war in Ukraine, leaving little room for mistakes and miscalculations. And while Poland did back away from invoking Article 4, which would have recognised that its “territorial integrity, political independence or security” had been threatened, those brief moments of ambiguity show just how easy it would be for one small spark to ignite a full-scale war.
Among the ambiguities and unknowns, however, there is one eternal truth in this war: that these people would not have died if the Russian government was not intent on waging a war of colonial conquest against a sovereign state. None of them would. Instead, Vladmir Putin chose to conduct a terrorist campaign against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine – and that was a decision entirely of his making and for which he must one day face trial.
Until then, when incidents like these take place, all of us, whether we write tweets or newspaper front pages, should remember that this is a war where truth is a battlefield of its own. Sensational half-truths help no-one – they distort the information environment and cause unnecessary panic and alarm.
On one hand, it barely bears repeating; on the other, it cannot be said often enough. But nuclear war is a possibility which must be avoided at every single step – and every person watching this conflict has a responsibility to play in that. As former US President John F Kennedy reflected after the Cuban Missile Crisis, borders, nations and wars mean nothing to nuclear particles. “We all inhabit this small planet”, he said. “We all breathe the same air. And we are all mortal."
Stewart McDonald is the SNP MP for Glasgow South, his party’s spokesperson for defence, and a member of the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee
SPACE RACE 2.0 Japan's space agency fails to land probe on Moon due to communication issues
Xinhua 2022-11-22
Japan's space agency on Tuesday said it has given up on a plan to land its Omotenashi space probe on the Moon's surface.
The news comes following the ultra-small, unmanned lander failing to maintain stable communications with controllers on Earth, and as a result, it was unable to correct its trajectory after its launch last week, sources close to the matters said.
They explained that the problem became known after the probe, regarded as being one of if not the world's smallest lunar lander, lifted off atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida last week.
The unstable communication between the probe and its controllers affected the probe's trajectory, as its solar panels were kept facing away from the sun, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) explained.
JAXA officials attempted to correct the craft's trajectory prior to its passing by the Moon and reduce its speed in a failed bid to land the 12.6-kilogram, box-shaped lander on the Moon's surface at around 11:55 pm local time on Monday, the agency said.
Plans for Japan to land its first probe on the Moon's surface were subsequently scrapped at around 2 am local time on Tuesday, JAXA officials said, with the decision based on there being no improvement in communications with Omotenashi.
Were the lunar landing to have gone ahead as planned, Japan would have been the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the Moon's surface, after the former Soviet Union, the United States and China.
According to JAXA, Omotenashi will still be used in the future for other missions already in the pipeline, including measuring levels of radiation exposure in space, among others, but only if the probe's communication problems can be corrected. Source: Xinhua Editor: Wang Qingchu
Bacterial infections ‘second leading cause of death worldwide’
3D illustration with bacteria and microorganisms. (Stock photo)
AFP, Paris Published: 22 November ,2022
Bacterial infections are the second leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for one in eight of all deaths in 2019, the first global estimate of their lethality revealed on Tuesday.
The massive new study, published in the Lancet journal, looked at deaths from 33 common bacterial pathogens and 11 types of infection across 204 countries and territories.
The pathogens were associated with 7.7 million deaths -- 13.6 percent of the global total -- in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic took off.
That made them the second-leading cause of death after ischaemic heart disease, which includes heart attacks, the study said.
Just five of the 33 bacteria were responsible for half of those deaths: Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
S. aureus is a bacterium common in human skin and nostrils but behind a range of illnesses, while E. coli commonly causes food poisoning.
The study was conducted under the framework of the Global Burden of Disease, a vast research program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation involving thousands of researchers across the world.
“These new data for the first time reveal the full extent of the global public health challenge posed by bacterial infections,” said study co-author Christopher Murray, the director of US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
“It is of utmost importance to put these results on the radar of global health initiatives so that a deeper dive into these deadly pathogens can be conducted and proper investments are made to slash the number of deaths and infections.”
The research points to stark differences between poor and wealthy regions.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, there were 230 deaths per 100,000 population from the bacterial infections.
That number fell to 52 per 100,000 in what the study called the “high-income super-region” which included countries in Western Europe, North America and Australasia.
The authors called for increased funding, including for new vaccines, to lessen the number of deaths, also warning against “unwarranted antibiotic use.”
Hand washing is among the measures advised to prevent infection.
Atrocities Mount Amid the Return to War in Western Myanmar
Once mostly immune from the country’s post-coup turmoils, Rakhine State is beset by an increasingly devastating conflict.
By Kyaw Hsan Hlaing November 22, 2022 The aftermath of an attack on a village by junta forces in Ponnagyun township, Rakhine State, on November 11, 2022.
Credit: Photo Supplied
About four months after fighting resumed between Myanmar’s military junta and the Arakan Army (AA) in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State, junta forces are increasingly resorting to airstrikes and artillery barrages against civilian populations, amid reported losses on the ground. One of Myanmar’s most powerful and well-organized ethnic revolutionary groups, the AA, which was formed by 26 Rakhine youths in 2009 under the guidance of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to fight for greater autonomy for the people of Rakhine State, now claims to have 30,000 troops under arms.
The recent fighting shattered an informal ceasefire agreement that the AA signed with the Myanmar military in November 2020, just before that month’s general election. This ended two years of intense fighting in northern Rakhine and southern Chin State. Soon after the military seized power in a coup in February last year, the junta offered several favors to the AA and Rakhine people to maintain the ceasefire, releasing from its custody several people including Rakhine nationalist politician Dr. Aye Maung and the family members of AA leaders. It also ended the two-year internet restriction in northern Rakhine and removed the AA from its list of “terrorist” organizations.
During the lull in fighting, the AA’s political wing, the United League of Arakan (ULA), focused on developing its administrative and judicial institutions across Rakhine State. As the ULA administration grew, the junta started making attempts to contain this administrative expansion and reinforced its troops in the area. Then, in early June, the AA refused an invitation to join junta-hosted peace talks in the capital Naypyidaw, soon after which junta forces began arresting dozens of people affiliated with the AA in northern Rakhine townships and blocked the gates of these towns. The AA responded by arresting at least 20 junta personnel in the areas of Rakhine State under its control.
On July 4, the tension between both exploded after the junta launched an airstrike against an AA base in a territory controlled by the Karen National Union in eastern Myanmar, killing at least six soldiers and injuring many others. A week later, the AA launched a retaliatory attack against junta forces in northern Rakhine, killing at least four, injuring many others, and capturing at least 14 alive.
In early August, a series of armed clashes between the AA and junta forces erupted in three locations in northern Rakhine, and another one in the southern part of neighboring Chin State.
The Rakhine War at a Glance
As of November 17, based on local news and statements from the AA, the author has identified around 100 battles that have broken out between the junta forces and the Arakan Army since July, while more than 15 clashes could be classified as fierce battles based on the intensity of clashes.
The four townships in which these clashes occurred are Maungdaw, Buthedaung, and Rethedaung townships in northern Rakhine and Paletwa township in Chin State. Other less frequent, small-scale armed clashes and mine explosions also happened in central and southern townships such as Kyauktaw, Mrauk U, Minbya, Maybone, Taunggok, and Ann. The most frequent clashes took place in Patetwa and Maungdaw, both of which possess international borders and thus have greater geostrategic significance.
During these clashes, more than 150 Myanmar junta soldiers are believed to have been killed, although the exact number is hard to determine. The exact number of casualties from the AA side is also hard to identify due to a lack of news reports, but at least 10 are reported to have died or been injured.
During the three months from August to October, at least 204 civilians were arbitrarily arrested by the junta, at least 62 of which remain in detention. The AA has responded by arresting at least 8 junta personnel in the areas of Rakhine State under its control.
Of those detained by the junta, at least 29 were members of its administrative apparatus, including school teachers, doctors, and people from the General Administration Department, who were accused of paying taxes or donating money to the ULA. They also include social workers accused of otherwise aiding AA members and civilians displaced by the conflict.
Apart from this, since the junta blocked the United Nations and international NGOs from accessing the six townships of northern Rakhine State on September 16, the residents, especially thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs), have faced shortages in food, shelter, and other relief items. Last month, the United Nations noted that the situation in Rakhine was “of particular concern” and that more than 17,400 people, including Rohingya, had been displaced.
Since fighting resumed after a brief pause in early August, junta forces have also blocked highways and roads linking the state capital Sittwe to both the commercial center Yangon and Rathedaung to Maungdaw in northern Rakhine. Mounting Mass Atrocities
As the junta forces have lost ground to the AA and other ethnic resistance groups across Myanmar, it has reportedly come to rely more heavily on airstrikes on its opponents, in particular through targeting populations of unarmed civilians believed to support them.
The Irrawaddy reported that from October 1 to 28, the junta launched a total of 28 aerial attacks in five regions including Rakhine, leaving 111 dead and injuring at least 126. In particular, the recent brutal junta airstrike on a concert in Kachin State in the north of the country, killing more than 60 people and injuring many more. As of October 31 in Rakhine, at least seven aerial attacks have taken place since July, killing at least 18 civilians, including seven children, and injuring at least 31.
In addition to airstrikes, the junta ramped up its artillery offensives in Rakhine State in the first two weeks of November. In the six days between November 10 to 16, artillery shells killed at least 17 civilians and injured at least 50 in northern Rakhine.
November 16 was a particularly deadly day. According to local media reports, at least 11 civilians including three children were killed and at least 27 others were wounded after four mortar shells were launched into Jeitchaung village in northern Maungdaw township. On the same day, in Kyauktaw township, at least four residents were killed and three people, including a grade 9 student, were wounded in an artillery strike on Chaungtu Village.
Ten days earlier, junta soldiers from the military’s Ponnagyun-based Light Infantry Battalion No. 550 also shot and killed at least nine civilians, mainly elderly people including a 92-year-old woman, and burned at least 10 houses in Hsininngyi village, Ponnagyun township.
To sum up, in just the first 16 days of November, the numbers of junta atrocities in Rakhine State were greater than in the previous three months. From August to October, around 20 civilians were killed and 30 were injured due to artillery shells and airstrikes. Within 16 days of November, at least 36 including children and elders were killed, and at least 72 were injured. There were at least 12 civilian deaths and at least 39 injuries in Kyauktaw alone.
As the armed conflict between the junta forces and the AA escalates, and inevitably spreads to southern Rakhine – the latter issued a statement on November 11, vowing to retaliate against junta forces – the Myanmar military will undoubtedly launch airstrikes and artillery attacks on these areas as well. Despite nearly two years of relative peace in Rakhine, civilian casualties are once again on the rise and the humanitarian situation across the state is steadily worsening.
GUEST AUTHOR Kyaw Hsan Hlaing Kyaw Hsan Hlaing is an independent journalist and researcher, writing on human rights, political transitions, and issues related to the civil war and the military coup in Myanmar. Follow him on Twitter @kyawhsanhlaing1
ANZ set to pull out of pariah state Myanmar after facing 'increasing operational complexity'
By foreign affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic Posted Mon 21 Nov 2022
ANZ's decision to pull out of Myanmar is likely to be welcomed by activists.
(AAP Image: Sergio Dionisio)
ANZ has announced it will pull out of Myanmar, dealing a blow to the country's military junta and potentially ramping up pressure on other overseas banks to turn their backs on the regime. Key points:
The bank is set to finish up operations in Myanmar by early next year
Activists revealed last month it had facilitated payments into a Myanmar military-controlled bank
ANZ said it had been facing "increasing operational complexity" in the country in recent months
In a brief statement issued on Tuesday afternoon, the major Australian bank said it would cease its Myanmar operations by early next year "subject to local regulatory approval".
ANZ said it had been facing "increasing operational complexity" in Myanmar over the past several months, and was "working with its institutional customers to transition to alternative banking arrangements".
"The decision follows careful consideration of the local operating conditions," said ANZ's international managing director, Simon Ireland.
"We thank the team for working tirelessly to support our customers during this time.
"Our international network and supporting the trade and capital flows of our customers around the region is a critical part of our strategy, and will continue to be for the long term." Australia under pressure to sanction Myanmar junta
Australia is an outlier among like-minded countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union, all of which have imposed tough sanctions on Myanmar's military rulers since the coup on February 1 last year.
ANZ doesn't have a huge presence in Myanmar, with a small team of around two dozen local staff in the country.
Still, it's one of the first major overseas financial institution to leave Myanmar, and the decision means by early next year no substantial Western banks will remain in the country.
Multinational companies who bank with ANZ and operate in the country will now have to find an alternative at a time when the junta is grappling with US-led sanctions.
Civil society groups will also hope that the announcement will help ramp up pressure on other banks – including institutions based in Singapore and Japan – to announce they will also withdraw from the country.
A host of other multinationals – including Telenor and energy giant Woodside — have already announced they're leaving Myanmar in the wake of the military coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's government in February last year.
Myanmar has also been increasingly turning towards Russian banks for finance as it grows more isolated from Western financial institutions.
Aung San Suu Kyi is in prison after her government was overthrown last year in a military coup. (AP: Aung Shine, file)
ANZ facilitated deposits into military-owned bank
The announcement comes after it was revealed that ANZ facilitated deposits for international companies into accounts they hold with Innwa Bank – which is owned by a military conglomerate, the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC).
The United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union have all imposed sanctions on the MEC as part of a broader attempt to financially isolate the military junta, but Australia has yet to do the same.
The transactions totalled around $5,000 and were paid on behalf of a Malaysian telco infrastructure provider edotco, and a Hong Kong based insurer AIA.
The bank said at the time the transactions were made in Myanmar's local currency rather than US dollars, and it said it would be "misleading and deceptive" to suggest it breached sanctions.
But activists said dealing with the Innwa Bank – which plays a crucial role in helping the junta access the international financial system and fund military controlled businesses – was still morally inexcusable.
Myanmar's military has business interests across all sector's of the country's economy. (AP)
Justice For Myanmar spokesperson Yadanar Maung said the group "cautiously welcomed" ANZ's decision and called on the company to "responsibly exit" the country.
The government says it will send $135 million in aid and prioritise onshore protection visas for people from the South-East Asian nation.
"ANZ is the first international bank to leave Myanmar and their planned exit is another sign of the destruction the junta is causing to Myanmar's economy through their coup attempt, war of terror and proliferation of illicit business activities under control of, or profiting the military, and its associates."
Ms Maung also said ANZ's past record highlighted the need for Australia to hit the junta with fresh sanctions.
"Since the military's illegal attempted coup, ANZ has transacted with the US, UK and EU sanctioned Innwa Bank and facilitated customer payments to the military junta, enabled by the refusal of the Australian government to sanction the junta and its businesses," she said.
"The Australian government's appalling inaction in response to the crisis in Myanmar undermines its democratic values and international obligations."
Human Rights Watch Asia director Elaine Pearson said ANZ's announcement was "welcome" but also "underscores why targeted sanctions by the Australian government are more than just 'virtue signalling'."
"The lack of targeted sanctions by the Australian government has reportedly enabled Australian companies to continue to do business with junta-controlled entities that have been sanctioned by other governments," she said.
"Sean Turnell is out now, so the Australian government should stop dragging its feet and act in the interests of the people of Myanmar.
"The Myanmar junta will not end its brutality unless there is a strong coordinated effort to impose financial pressure on junta-controlled entities."
SYDNEY, Nov 22 ― An Australian economist released last week after nearly two years in a Myanmar jail today told of interrogations in leg irons, squalor and the sounds of screams from tortured cellmates.
Sean Turnell, who returned home to Sydney on Friday after being released as part of an amnesty of almost 6,000 prisoners, gave the first public details of his incarceration in an interview with The Australian newspaper.
The former adviser to deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi was detained by the military in February 2021 shortly after its forces seized control of the country.
Turnell told the paper he was initially kept at Yangon's Insein prison in a six metre by 2.5 metre concrete cell in which an iron chair with leg irons had been bolted to the floor.
He then endured two months of interrogations, the paper said, sometimes being taken from his bed to be locked in the irons.
Officials accused him of working for British intelligence and gun-running, and quizzed him about his work for Suu Kyi, the economist was quoted as saying.
He told the paper he was infected with Covid-19 five times and kept in solitary confinement for months.
In the early days of his confinement, Turnell said he could hear the sounds of people outside banging pots and pans at night in protest against the military coup.
“Then came the explosions and gunfire and people being tortured in rooms nearby. I thought, they're not going to do that to me surely? Then after a while, I started thinking, maybe they will. I think they wanted me to hear it.” 'Ate out of a bucket'
Turnell said he had expected to be treated “with kid gloves”.
“They didn't stick electrodes to me, but I was thrown into filthy cells. The food they used to deliver to me (came) in a bucket. For 650 days, I ate out of a bucket.”
In the Naypyidaw detention centre, to which he was later transferred, “it wasn't even a new bucket, they were paint buckets”, he said.
“They didn't beat me, but they did push and shove me.”
In Naypyidaw, prisoners were locked away for 20 hours a day, Turnell said.
“In the monsoon, the roof would leak and we would sit there all night sometimes with water just pouring down through the roof, clutching your clothes and blanket to try to keep them dry,” he said.
Turnell said his wife, Ha Vu, an economist at Australia's Macquarie University, helped him survive with phone chats and by regularly sending books, cookies and cake through the Australian embassy.
The economist was sentenced in September to three years' imprisonment for breaching Myanmar's Official Secrets Act ― charges he denied ― before being released in last week's amnesty along with former British ambassador Vicky Bowman and Japanese journalist Toru Kubita. ― AFP
CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Crypto scam spoofing former Singapore-based exchange cheats 5 US investors of $13.8m
Crypto scams had increased by 335 per cent in the first half of 2022 from the same period in 2021
SINGAPORE - Five victims in the United States have lost more than US$10 million (S$13.8 million) in a cryptocurrency scam that involved spoofed domains of the former Singapore International Monetary Exchange (Simex).
On Monday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said that between May and August, scammers lured the victims into participating in a cryptocurrency scam where they invested in fraudulent platforms, only for their funds to be siphoned away into private wallets.
To convince the victims that they were investing in a legitimate cryptocurrency opportunity, the scammers created seven fake domains of the former Simex, which was merged with two other companies in 1999 to form the Singapore Exchange (SGX).
In response to queries from The Straits Times, an SGX spokesman said that since the merger, Simex has not operated under its name.
The spokesman added: “SGX Group does not operate any investment platform, including a platform for individuals to trade crypto-products or any other investment product.
“Investors can access SGX-listed products only via a licensed broker which will have its own investment platform. As such, SGX also does not directly accept monies for the purpose of investment and so will not ask for such funds.”
A court in the US state of Virginia has authorised the seizure of these domains, the DOJ said.
Fraudsters or hackers use these domains to create websites that appear to belong to a trusted company when they in fact link the user to a fake website controlled by cyber criminals.
The DOJ said the victims would first encounter the scammers on dating applications or social media websites. Sometimes, the scammers would introduce themselves after sending a text message that they claimed to have sent to the wrong number.
“Scammers initiate relationships and slowly gain their trust, eventually introducing the idea of making a business investment using cryptocurrency,” the DOJ added.
“Victims are then... persuaded to invest money. Once the money is sent to the fake investment app, the scammer vanishes, taking all the money... often resulting in significant losses for the victim.”
To conceal the sources of the funds they have received, the scammers transfer them at once through multiple private wallets.
During the Global Anti Scam Summit earlier in November, Mr Camill Cebulla, the European sales director of Singapore-based cyber-security company Group-IB, said crypto scams had increased by 335 per cent worldwide in the first half of 2022 from the same period in 2021. In 2021, about US$55.3 billion was lost to all scams worldwide, according to a study by non-profit organisation Global Anti-Scam Alliance and data service provider ScamAdviser.
The DOJ advised victims of such scams to file a report with the US Secret Service.
Europe ministers tackle sharp increase in space funding
PARIS (Reuters) -European ministers haggled on Tuesday over a proposed 25% boost in space funding over the next three years designed to maintain Europe's lead in Earth observation, expand navigation services and remain a partner in exploration with the United States.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is asking its 22 nations to back a budget of some 18.5 billion euros for 2023-25, up from 14.5 billion at its last summit in 2019, in a triennial funding ritual held against a backdrop of pressure on public finances.
Speaking to politicians a stone's throw from the Eiffel Tower, agency director general Josef Aschbacher appealed for support as ESA passed the hat for scientific, observation and exploration projects a few yards from the site of the world's first hydrogen balloon flight in 1783.
"We are witnessing the biggest geopolitical crisis in Europe since World War Two, an energy crisis and high inflation. On top, we have the climate crisis," Aschbacher told ministers.
"This package is aiming for a Europe whose space agenda mirrors its political and economic strength."
In a joint declaration at the start of the ESA talks, Europe's big three space launch nations - France, Germany and Italy - opened the door to a new generation of microlaunchers and a review of funding rules amid U.S. and Chinese ambitions.
Delegates said the statement balanced the interests of ESA's biggest backer Germany, home to several microlauncher startups, with France, which wants stable funding for Europe's delayed Ariane 6, and Italy, which wants more autonomy for its Vega-C.
It called for closer alignment between funding and the commercial risks take by each partner, rather than the current "fair return" rule under which each country gets work in proportion to the amount it puts in to projects like Ariane.
France has long complained the system leaves its large space industry dependent on overpriced parts from less experienced nations, but delegates said the longstanding workshare rule underpinning ESA is unlikely to be drastically changed soon.
SMALL LAUNCHERS
Microlaunchers are designed to carry payloads up to 350 kg including tiny commercial or experimental satellites, according to ESA.
Encouraged by France, which runs Europe's Ariane rocket, the agency has traditionally controlled its own vehicles but faces growing political support for the NewSpace trend at a time when Ariane 6 delays have focused attention on access to space.
Ariane is running about a year late and has generated cost overruns mainly picked up by the leading trio of nations.
But 200 million euros more is still needed to be found at talks among ESA nations ending on Wednesday, delegates said.
Other projects include a future logistics lander that will tie in to the NASA-led Artemis moonshot programme.
ESA also aims to extend Europe's global navigation system into low Earth orbit and kickstart new climate research.
Nations are also discussing a "zero-debris" approach to space at a time when Russia's war against Ukraine has highlighted the rapid expansion of constellations such as SpaceX's Starlink.
Aschbacher, in an interview with Reuters last month, urged global action to tackle congestion in low Earth orbit including a ban on tests of anti-satellite weapons.
Although rare, such tests have fuelled concerns about the militarization of space, which sits uncomfortably alongside commercial and other peaceful uses for space, without which, Aschbacher told Reuters, "society would crumble".
Even without such threats, the sheer number of satellites and fragments of debris in low Earth orbit is a challenge.
"There will be accidents; this is to be expected ... The question is how much energy is put into avoiding accidents," Aschbacher said.
"It's a problem for everyone; I think first and foremost for those who operate large constellations ... This is an issue that needs to be tackled at a global level with everyone involved."
(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Bradley Perrett and Grant McCool)
The non-limits of Artificial Intelligence and moral and survival issues
The man-made artificial brain is autonomous because it is capable of emotional expressiveness and self-consciousness. Efforts to develop a strong Artificial Intelligence have also made considerable progress in the field of neural engineering, as well as in our understanding of the human brain. But while some focus on the still distant dream of a thinking computer, some believe that the journey is more important than the destination. The priority is to use scientists’ opportunities and discoveries to develop new methods for the early detection of cancer and in the hope of finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease: in short, to save lives.
If mankind is to survive and advance to higher levels, a new kind of thinking is essential: Albert Einstein said as much over seventy years ago and the idea could not be more relevant and topical today. Controlled intelligent machines will soon enable us to overcome our toughest challenges, not only to cure diseases, but to eradicate poverty and hunger, to heal the planet and to build a better future for all of us: for that future to become a reality for our children. We have always wanted to change the world, but for the time being we should be content to understand it first.
For as many as 130,000 years, our ability for reasoning has remained unchanged. All the intelligence of neuroscientists, mathematical engineers and hackers pales in comparison to the most basic artificial intelligence. Once activated, a sentient machine would soon surpass the limits of biology, and in a short time its analytical power would exceed the collective intelligence of all human beings in the history of the world.
Just imagine such an entity with a full range of human emotions, including self-consciousness. Some scientists call it singularity, others supernaturality. This means that the path to building such a super-intelligence requires us to unlock the most fundamental secrets of the universe. What is the nature of consciousness? Will a machine soul with artificial intelligence exist? And if so, where will it reside? Some might ask whether we want to create a god through artificial intelligence: the question is fundamental, since wanting to create a god or replace it – as in the case of cloning – is what man has always done.
Many scientists, however, do not understand the way in which the problem struggles in the tension between the potential of technology and its dangers. They only tend to the goal of doing something never achieved, of surpassing their colleagues, of being better: this is what used to be called “championism” aimed solely at individual selfishness detached from the true needs of the group, of the community, of mankind.
In recent years, the United States of America, Germany, the United Kingdom, the European Union, the G20, the OECD, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Google, Microsoft, the Partnership on AI (a non-profit coalition committed to the responsible use of Artificial Intelligence), and other institutions, governments, and companies have proposed ethical standards, principles, and framework constraints in various dimensions, as well as the establishment of a corresponding ethics or advisory committee on Artificial Intelligence. The development of Artificial Intelligence is inseparable from the consideration and supervision of ethics and moral considerations.
It is not yet known what kind of capabilities the development of Artificial Intelligence will achieve in the future and in what form it will coexist with humans. After all, the current Artificial Intelligence is still in the early stage of development, but the general direction is clear, i.e. “reliable Artificial Intelligence”, “technology for the good of people”, etc. – in short, to induce Artificial Intelligence to build a better life for human beings.
It should be said, however, that, at this stage, Artificial Intelligence is mainly limited to military objectives, such as the Maven project contract between the US Department of Defence (DoD) and Google. The background is to use Artificial Intelligence to interpret video images so as to enable drones to attack specific targets more accurately. After all, Google plans not to renew the DoD-Maven project under citizens’ pressure. The medium- and long-term constraints, instead, must be to steer the development of human-guided machines so that they use Artificial Intelligence technology to serve humans and not military purposes of mutual destruction.
The body structure of humans and that of machines are both the union of atoms and molecules, but the quantity and combination are very different. The transmission of biological information is mainly in the form of chemical and electrical synapses, i.e. the interchange of electrical and chemical signals, which can also be achieved in the future in machines by technical means. Nevertheless, including all the matter and material structures around us, machines can be guided and constructed by special invisible and intangible frequencies. Our bodies and external matter itself are only the gaols to be guided and manifested. As mentioned above, only human consciousness is so far impossible to recreate as the source is generated, or is guided and controlled by a hidden form, which could also be the quantum entanglement. In this regard, gravitational waves from a black hole are thought to alter people’s consciousness. Hawking radiation is a real phenomenon. It is the radiation that is released outside the event horizon of a black hole due to relativistic quantum effects: it has been observed and measured. If consciousness is related to quantum entanglement, then those same electrons could be related to those in the nucleus of our brain cells. Gravitational waves can project consciousness into another space-time. This is a further reason why for sidereal travels in the vicinity of black holes, it is not recommended to send human crews, but rather machines that do not suffer the loss of a consciousness that it is good they should not actually have.
Consciousness has completely different definitions in philosophy, psychology and biology. It is generally believed to be people’s ability to recognise the environment and themselves. At the current level of technology, we can only surmise what controls consciousness. Some studies have shown that the claustrum is the switch of brain consciousness, but this is currently only at the stage of experimental speculation. The claustrum is a thin layer of grey matter, a bilateral collection of neurons and supporting glial cells that connects to cortical regions (e.g. the pre-frontal cortex), or to subcortical regions (e.g. the thalamus) of the brain. It is located between the insula medially and the putamen laterally, separated by the extreme and external capsules, respectively.
Consciousness is assumed to be the effect of the magnetic field of the human mind. In quantum mechanics, scientists believe that pure magnetic fields (and pure electric fields) are the effects caused by virtual photons that, however, are photons the reality of which cannot be directly observed.
The conclusions of a study conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, show that human DNA is a channel for the reception of energy, which enables human beings to proceed normally. Energy reception mainly refers to the acquisition and transfer of photons, which make the water molecules around the DNA full of energy and strengthen the helical structure. The human body is composed of organs and organs are made up of hundreds of millions of cells.
Each cell is thought to have a certain magnetic field and human organs composed of cells also have an additional magnetic field. The magnetic field of the mind interferes with the magnetic field of each cell, thus affecting and conditioning the development of bodily functions and the behaviour of the human being.
Today, it is more reliable to say that consciousness is the connection of neuronal synapses formed after synaptic growth in childhood. It gradually begins to form and has the ability of immediate memory, which is activated by the bodily functions themselves. Since birth, each of us is destined to evolve, and hence see the “real world” that we perceive as limited by the functional characteristics of our body, which makes us accept the reality in front of us as a summation of habits (established experience) and unforeseen events to be resolved (intelligence). From childhood to adulthood, from birth to death, human thoughts, choices, basic senses and personality are all limited by the inherited structures and ways of thinking existing in the brain. All this is directed by the so-called consciousness. All decisions are the result of “self-awareness”, a further synonym for consciousness.
Everything around us is a function of a huge cosmic Brownian motion, which appears to be regular but is actually irregular. Brownian motion is a natural phenomenon whose mathematical representation describes the time course of a very broad class of random phenomena that have a rationally determined outcome, what we mistakenly call “coincidence”. When analysed, it is actually just a progressive series of daily interactions that lead to a certain climax. Let me give a tragic example.
A lady leaves her house in Paris, stops to feed her cat: it takes her 20 seconds. She gets into her car, crosses the city, stops at a crossroads. The car following her skids and swerves, the headlights blind the view of the driver coming in the other direction, and… bang… Princess Diana crashes into a tunnel and Elton John sells a lot of records for millions of pounds and other related profitable activities. The simplest things make a huge difference, and coincidences do not exist except in the limited view of our mental perception accustomed to “rational” habit.
Bats use ultrasonic waves to identify the world; snakes use infrared beams to find their prey, and humpback whales can communicate hundreds of kilometres away. The world in their eyes is completely different from that of humans. What we see, hear and smell is only what we think, as what our senses perceive is only a fraction of what is happening around us. This means that we cannot prove that the world seen by some animals may not be the real world.
If humans have the ability to control the formation and development of consciousness and inject such a structure of consciousness into a humanoid machine driven by the same neuronal function, there could be a situation in which neither the machine nor the humans can distinguish whether or not the other is a machine or a human: this is ontology.
In terms of composition of the elements: biological and physiological characteristics; methods for transmitting information; ideology and other characteristics. There is no absolutely correct difference – hence how can there be an ethics for humans as seen by a machine that has consciousness?
It is just that – no matter how hard humans try – they may not be able to discover or control the generation of consciousness in a machine, including hidden existences such as dark matter (a hypothetical component of matter that, unlike known matter, would not emit electromagnetic radiation and would currently be detectable only indirectly through its gravitational effects) and dark energy (a form of energy that cannot be directly detected and is homogeneously spread throughout the space), which cannot be identified.
Apart from the unique sense of freedom that human beings regard as such, what component has not the characteristics that correspond to the periodic table of elements? Our consciousness can also be the result of the seemingly natural but irregular movements of various hormones, cells and synapses in the body guided by hidden substances. In turn, the wisdom and skill of Artificial Intelligence may one day surpass the limits of human beings, but even so, it is unlikely that among human beings the fittest will survive on the basis of a Darwinistic approach. For example, in ancient times, the savage phase was prone to cannibalism due to problems of survival and, above all, of intelligence related to brain development.
In modern society, after solving the problem of food and clothing, humans have started to pay attention to the earth, the environment, ecology and respect for animals. Animals instinctively understand that in order to satisfy their needs, they need to live in harmony with their whole and the environment. If human beings really are the basis of the wisdom of the entire planet, will highly intelligent machines also take care of us as small animals and pets, on par with our dog or the aforementioned cat in Paris?
It is therefore our duty to be ethically concerned about issues arising from Artificial Intelligence: it is the justified fear of being overwhelmed by those we now think we control.
Not fit for purpose: Cop27 made a down-payment on disaster
In the course of 27 climate summits, there has never been a formal agreement to reduce the world’s fossil fuel use
The sunsets behind the Cop27 logo outside the venue of the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Picture: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
MON, 21 NOV, 2022 - PROF BILL MCGUIRE
In the end, Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh at least ended up making modest progress on loss and damage — high-emissions nations agreeing to pay those countries bearing the brunt of climate mayhem that they had little to do with bringing about.
But, yet again, there was no commitment to cutting the emissions accelerating this crisis, without which this agreement is nothing more — as one delegate commented — than a “down-payment on disaster”.
No seasoned observers are of the opinion that the world is any nearer to tackling the climate emergency.
Indeed, the real legacy of Cop27 could well be exposing the climate summit for what it has become, a bloated travelling circus that sets up once a year, and from which little but words ever emerge.
A demonstrator makes a point.
Picture: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
It really does beggar belief, that in the course of 27 Cops, there has never been a formal agreement to reduce the world’s fossil fuel use.
Not only has the elephant been in the room all this time, but over the last quarter of a century it has taken on gargantuan proportions — and still its presence goes unheeded.
It is no surprise, then, that from Cop1 in Berlin in 1995, to Egypt this year, emissions have continued to head remorselessly upwards.
Expectations were never especially high since Glasgow’s Cop26. Even so, Cop27 has to be a new low — held in a country cowed by a malicious dictatorship, the world’s biggest plastic polluter on board as a sponsor and hosting more than 600 fossil fuel representatives and many others who are there to prevent, rather than promote progress and action.
Some old hands have labelled it the worst Cop ever, and I doubt many would argue.
I would never question the sincerity of those working within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), established way back in 1992, nor those embedded in the Cop climate apparatus, who I know are desperate to find a solution to our predicament.
I do, however, seriously wonder whether an annual extravaganza in the full glare of the world’s media is the way to do this.
Just a photo op?
In all honesty, it is becoming increasingly difficult to view these events as anything other than photo opportunities for presidents and prime ministers.
And there is another huge and growing problem too. The all-encompassing nature of the annual Cop climate conference provides one enormous open goal for fossil fuel representatives; an unprecedented opportunity to kettle ministers and heads of state from every corner of the planet, but particularly the majority world, to browbeat them into handing over their untouched fossil fuel reserves for exploitation.
At Cop27, the sharks were circling around African nations, desperate to persuade them of the urgent need for a “dash for gas” and looking for a very large piece of the action.
In retrospect, it does seem that the whole idea of annual climate carnivals was probably not the best means of promoting serious action on global heating, but their hijacking by the fossil fuel sector, and failure, year on year, to do the job they were set up to do, surely means that Cop is no longer fit for purpose.
I don’t claim to be an expert in negotiation policy and procedure. I can, however, spot when something clearly isn’t working and needs a serious reboot.
What's the alternative?
But if the annual Cop climate conferences go then what would replace them? What is needed is an apparatus less cumbersome and more manageable — something leaner and meaner that zeros in on the most critical aspects of the climate crisis, that does its work largely hidden from the glare of the media, and which presents a less obvious honey pot to the busy bees of the fossil fuel sector.
One way forward, then, could be to establish a number of smaller bodies, each addressing one of the key issues — notably energy, agriculture, deforestation, transport, loss and damage, and perhaps others.
President Joe Biden speaks at the Cop27 UN Climate Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. But it has to be more than a talking shop.
Picture: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
Such bodies would operate full-time, liaising with one another and perhaps coming together a few times a year.
Ideally, they would be made up of representatives from both developed and majority-world countries. In direct contact with representatives of national governments, part of their remit would be to negotiate agreements that are workable, legally binding, and which actually do the job — whether reversing deforestation, cutting methane emissions, or drawing down coal usage.
As and when all terms and conditions are agreed, these could be validated and signed off by world leaders as a matter of course and without the need for the ballyhoo of a global conference.
Back in the 1970s the economist and early environmentalist, EF Schumacher, wrote that in respect of economics, small is beautiful. It is a phrase that today could equally well apply to our international negotiating efforts to bring global heating to heel. After the abject failure of Cop27 it’s worth a try, surely. Bill McGuire is Prof Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London
COP27 summit does nothing to address climate change
This year’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) has ended, and the world’s major capitalist powers, banks and corporations that gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt have again pledged to do essentially nothing to stop and reverse the ongoing climate crisis.
The agreement drafted by the delegates has many similarities to the one made in Glasgow, Scotland last year. The most pressing need—to end the use of fossil fuels and stop the emission of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere—was relegated to a call for a limited reduction of coal power plants and to “phase-out … inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” a phrase which can be interpreted in many ways and is thus virtually meaningless.
Even those who have previously played major roles in crafting nonbinding agreements were forced to comment negatively on what was produced at COP27. Laurence Tubiana, who was one of the main architects of the lauded but ultimately toothless 2015 Paris Accords noted, “The influence of the fossil fuel industry was found across the board.” He continued, “The Egyptian presidency has produced a text that clearly protects oil and gas petro-states and the fossil fuel industry.”
From the left, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz applaud on the sidelines of the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Monday, Nov. 7, 2022. [AP Photo/Ludovic Marin]
One can only imagine what next year’s COP28 will yield, being held in the United Arab Emirates, which has an estimated 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, 20 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves and where oil exports make up 30 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Even the call to limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels was almost abandoned. The limit is widely regarded by climate scientists as the “point of no return” in regards to the impact of climate change, beyond which the damage caused by extreme weather, rising oceans, the destruction of habitats and the myriad of other dangers becomes qualitatively harder to reverse.
The call was kept only as a result of what CNN was forced to admit was a “carefully choreographed news conference” by officials from the European Union that threatened to walk out. The press conference was led by EU Climate Chief Frans Timmermans, who claimed, “We do not want 1.5 Celsius to die here and today. That to us is completely unacceptable.”
In reality, the European powers have nothing to offer the working class. The conference was wholly overshadowed by the war in Ukraine between the US and NATO on one side and Russia on the other. The United States has been pushing for Europe, particularly Germany, to shift away from its reliance on Russian natural gas in recent years, most openly in 2018 when then-President Donald Trump sanctioned Germany for not shutting down the Russia-Germany natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2.
This pressure was amplified by the bombing of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September. The criminal destruction of tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure has forced Europe to become more reliant on US natural gas imports. Documents from the Department of Energy and US natural gas lobbyists show that the US government and corporations were already fast-tracking the infrastructure needed to increase liquefied natural gas exports to the EU and had been since at least the start of the Ukraine war in February.
Germany, for its part, has turned to revitalizing its coal industry. In April, for example, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Green Party authorized the destruction of the town of Lützerath and the relocation of its inhabitants to allow the company RWE to mine 280 million tons of coal. Habeck justified this by claiming, “Putin’s war of aggression is forcing us to temporarily make greater use of lignite so that we save gas in electricity generation. This is painful but necessary.”
The supposed highlight of COP27 was that a “loss and damage” fund was setup to channel funds primarily from the United States and European Union to poorer countries that have been most impacted already by climate change. It was hailed by Molwyn Joseph, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, as “a win for our entire world,” and a show of “respect” to small nations.
The new fund is a token gesture at best. It is limited only to rebuilding after disasters strike and has been carefully crafted to not imply fault against those nations which output the most greenhouse gases, the US being among highest producers of emissions. There is also no clear understanding of how money will be distributed or whether it will even reach those in need.
Put another way, among the 35,000 attendees at the conference, there were reportedly more than 600 lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry present, up 25 percent from last year and more than all the delegates from Pacific Island nations combined. Whatever measures that have been taken have no doubt been carefully vetted by capitalist interests and made to ensure that profits from burning and poisoning Earth continue to climb.
Moreover, even if the “loss and damage” fund was given adequate resources and correct management to provide for those impacted by climate change, it does not actually address the crisis itself. It promotes the delusion, no doubt held by many of the world leaders at COP27, that climate change can be resolved simply by throwing some change at those who have lost their livelihoods and loved ones as a result of climate-induced devastation.
It at the same time pretends that increasingly catastrophic events can be dealt with in the same way. The logic is that, even when the worst effects of global warming emerge and drown the world’s coastlines, destroy habitats and ultimately kill billions of people, more money is the solution.
The overarching danger of climate change is that at some point, perhaps when global temperatures have risen past 1.5 degrees Celsius, perhaps after, or perhaps before, Earth’s climate will become decoupled from human industrial activity and evolve into a runaway process that cannot be contained by current technology and could possibly end human civilization. But what does that matter when there is coal, oil and natural gas money to be made?
The real lesson from COP27 is that the capitalist class, divided into rival nation-states, has no solution to global warming. Climate scientists have warned governments and corporations for decades that continued carbon emissions into the atmosphere will eventually, and likely more rapidly than expected, produce cataclysmic convulsions that pose an existential threat to humans.
In that time, these warnings have been ignored and the working class in every country has suffered as climate change causes worse hurricanes, monsoons, wildfires, polar vortexes, crop destruction and numerous other disasters around the world every year. The only solution is a fight by the working class, an inherently international class, to abolish capitalism and establish production on a scientific, global and socialist basis.
