On security, Israeli leaders’ words speak louder than their actions

Neri Zilber

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Thu, February 9, 2023 

Late last month, after a Palestinian gunman opened fire on worshippers leaving Friday night prayers in a Jerusalem synagogue, Israel’s new national security minister hurriedly left his Sabbath dinner table and rushed to the site.

The security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key far-right figure in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s month-old coalition government, was for years a regular visitor to scenes of grisly terror attacks. Inevitably he would slam the Israeli authorities for being weak, demand harsher measures be taken, and generally fan the flames of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yet this time was different. Mr. Ben-Gvir, head of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party, was now the authority.

“This happened on your watch! Let’s see you now! Jewish blood isn’t cheap!” the crowd yelled angrily at the politician who has built his political career on promises of forcefully putting down Palestinian terror.

“I hear you. You’re right, you’re right,” Mr. Ben-Gvir responded to the crowd. “The burden of proof is on us, and we need to act now and respond, because it can’t go on like this.”

The Jan. 27 attack in northern East Jerusalem, which killed seven people, was the country’s deadliest since 2011. It came a day after a particularly lethal raid by the Israeli military in the West Bank city of Jenin that claimed the lives of 10 Palestinians, including an older woman. Israeli authorities say most of those killed were armed militants.

In the past year more than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank – around 40 since the start of 2023 – in what has been a marked escalation on both sides that began with a wave of Palestinian attacks last spring that claimed the lives of more than 30 Israelis.

It was all supposed to be different under this new government, widely considered the most right-wing in Israeli history. Mr. Netanyahu and his ultranationalist allies, especially Mr. Ben-Gvir and the pro-settler Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, prevailed in the November election by slamming the previous government for purportedly failing to protect the citizenry and being beholden to left-wing and Arab-Israeli parties. They promised they could do much better.

“When terrorism meets weakness, it raises its head,” Mr. Netanyahu said last May, demanding that the government resign. “Hamas [the Palestinian militant group] sees a weak government that depends on supporters of terrorism and is unable to fight terrorism, strike Hamas officials, and restore peace and security to the citizens of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu complained.

An unyielding reality

Yet the attacks have continued even on Mr. Netanyahu’s watch. And despite the heightened rhetoric and bold campaign pledges, analysts and former officials point out that the current government’s policies have not – as of yet – deviated greatly from what has been tried in the past.

In recent weeks, not least due to pressure from the Biden administration, Mr. Netanyahu has also managed to keep at bay his more radical senior ministers.

“This may be a ‘fully fully’ right-wing government, but reality [of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] doesn’t change,” says Col. Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli military adviser on Palestinian affairs and a current lecturer at both Tel Aviv and Reichman universities. “The government on the whole doesn’t want a complete explosion – although perhaps Ben-Gvir and Smotrich may want it – and they also don’t want to get into a clash with the U.S.”

In the wake of the Jerusalem attack and two shooting attacks the following day, which wounded two more Israelis, the Israeli Cabinet announced a series of steps, some predictable and others (so far) merely words:

Security forces nationally were put on the highest alert, and military patrols were increased in both Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The family homes of two Palestinian perpetrators in East Jerusalem were quickly sealed ahead of expected demolition – a controversial and long-standing Israeli practice meant to deter future attacks. The international legal community considers such demolitions a form of illegal collective punishment; Israeli security officials are split on whether they are a deterrent, or simply perpetuate a cycle of enmity and violence.

In the West Bank, a major Israeli military operation continued, as it has since last year, with near daily arrest raids into Palestinian towns and refugee camps. One such operation over the weekend, near Jericho, claimed the lives of five Hamas militants who Israel alleges were behind a recent shooting attack.

Mr. Ben-Gvir, in his role overseeing both the police and prisons, proudly announced that he had removed fresh pita bread baking privileges from Palestinian security prisoners, among other smaller steps meant to harden conditions for those jailed on terrorism charges.

The moves, according to Israeli intelligence officials, partly explained renewed rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel. Like its predecessor, the Netanyahu government responded narrowly, by bombing a few Hamas military installations. No casualties were reported on either side.

“They’re doing a lot of what we were doing, just attaching to it destructive extremist rhetoric,” says one senior Israeli official from the previous government. “In other words, they’re paying all the cost of their rhetoric, especially internationally and among Palestinians, but with zero security benefits or even a significant change in policy.”

Practical constraints

The heightened rhetoric in recent weeks has included vows to loosen gun permit laws for Israeli civilians, a move that so far has been stymied by government bureaucracy (to say nothing of security establishment fears about flooding the country with weapons).

Promises to deny residency status or social security benefits to families of Palestinian attackers in East Jerusalem have so far not moved ahead and are in any event legally dubious.

Plans to demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank that Israeli authorities claim were built without legal permits – nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain – have been postponed due to international pressure and fears that it would only escalate tensions.

And most tellingly, government promises of increased settlement construction in the West Bank – cast as an “appropriate Zionist response” to the recent attacks – have yet to move ahead. Last month Mr. Netanyahu sided with the military against his hard-line ministers and approved the removal of a wildcat settlement outpost hastily erected by far-right settlers.

Part of the Israeli restraint, or at least hesitation, according to analysts, was due to the presence in the region last week of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who urged both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to “take urgent steps to restore calm, to de-escalate.” Mr. Blinken made clear that the Biden administration opposed settlement expansion, the legalization of illegal outposts, and demolitions and evictions.

Yet the mere existence of this far-right Israeli government, combined with its hard-line words, is itself a major obstacle to any real easing of tensions, according to Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Horizon Center, a Ramallah-based Palestinian think tank.

“For the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are an impediment. The Palestinian public believes this Israeli government needs to be confronted and so [the PA leadership] can’t be seen to do their bidding,” Mr. Dalalsha says, alluding to a proposed Palestinian security crackdown on West Bank militants. “Under the current circumstances, it would be political suicide.”

Netanyahu’s balancing act

A question remains as to whether Mr. Netanyahu’s reluctance to incur U.S. opprobrium will continue to outweigh the right-wing political pressure he is under.

Already, coalition backbenchers and local officials are grumbling about the gap between the Netanyahu ministers’ rhetoric while in opposition and their actions now in government. Mr. Ben-Gvir himself has felt the need to say publicly that if he saw he wasn’t having any influence on policy he would resign. Mr. Smotrich, for his part, is adamant that settlements will soon be expanded.

According to Colonel Milshtein there are two conflicting agendas on the Palestinian issue within the new Israeli government: one led by religious ultranationalists like Messrs. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and the other led by the more pragmatic Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud party.

“Netanyahu’s primary goal is to keep things as they were, to not bring about the collapse of the PA, to get to Ramadan and Passover [in late March, a period traditionally marked by escalated violence] with things on the ground calmer – and also not to destabilize the government from within,” says Colonel Milshtein. “It’s not easy. The first group’s agenda could still lead to a conflagration.”

Much will likely depend on events beyond the control of Mr. Netanyahu, his ministers, the PA, or even the Biden administration. According to Mr. Dalalsha, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has its own uniquely tragic and often bloody logic.

“With or without U.S. intervention, violence goes up and down. It’s a matter of luck and almost irrelevant,” Mr. Dalalsha says. “These are deep-rooted problems.”

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Palestinians see fewer paths to safety amid violence with Israel

New poll shows WHITE Americans at odds over Black history

Andrew Romano
·West Coast Correspondent
Fri, February 10, 2023 

FATHER OF AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY; WEB DUBOIS

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that white Americans are just as likely to favor (40%) as to oppose (41%) a ban on teaching Advanced Placement courses in African American studies in public schools — the same sort of ban that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently threatened to implement in Florida, unleashing a storm of national controversy.

In contrast, Black Americans (65% oppose, 20% favor) and Democrats (70% oppose, 19% favor) are far more resistant to a DeSantis-style ban. Yet because white Americans outnumber Americans of color — and because a full 58% of DeSantis’s fellow Republicans support a ban — the overall number of Americans who are against banning AP African American studies (46%) does not even clear the 50% mark.

The rest of the country either favors a ban (34%) or isn’t sure (20%).

The survey of 1,585 U.S. adults, conducted during the first week of Black History Month, offers a striking reminder that America is increasingly at odds over what Black history even means — and who should learn what, when.

The issue has become predictably polarized in the wake of DeSantis’s recent efforts to block an AP draft framework that he repeatedly likened to “indoctrination.”

“This course on Black history, what’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory,” DeSantis said last month. “Now who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda".

Books for students taking AP African American studies at Overland High School in Aurora, Colo. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

In response, critics have explained that the concepts (Black queer studies, intersectionality, Black Lives Matter) and scholars (bell hooks, Angela Davis, Ta-Nehisi Coates) that DeSantis slammed as “divisive” are in fact, as an article in Vox put it, “core to modern Black studies and essential to include in any college-level survey class” (which AP courses are meant to emulate).

“[These are] complicated works of sociology and philosophy. They’re highly contested polemics,” Joshua Zeitz wrote in Politico. “We read them to sharpen our capacity for analysis and argument. Contra Gov. DeSantis, being assigned a text is not an exercise in indoctrination.”

Regardless, the College Board announced last week that it had removed the contested material from the finalized curriculum.

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests that Republicans will be happy with that decision and Democrats will not. A full 65% of 2020 Donald Trump voters favored the initial Florida ban; even more Joe Biden voters (75%) opposed it. But when asked about the revised curriculum — which no longer includes “contemporary topics such as Black Lives Matter, incarceration, queer life and the debate over reparations” — the numbers flipped, with most Trump voters now saying they favor offering the AP course (53%) and a plurality of Biden voters saying they oppose it (44%).

These gaps reflect a deeper divide between Republicans and Democrats — and, to a degree, between white and black Americans — over the role of race in America today. The right largely believes that racism is now personal, the product of one individual discriminating against another. The rest of the country mostly agrees that racism is still systemic, a force that continues to harm people of color, regardless of how isolated individuals treat them.

An AP African American studies class at Baton Rouge Magnet High School in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Stephen Smith)

Asked if there is “a problem with systemic racism in America,” nearly every demographic group says yes more often than not: Democrats (by a 63-point margin), Black Americans (by a 61-point margin), adults under 30 (by a 28-point margin), independents (by a 26-point margin) and even white Americans (by a 13-point margin). Overall, far more Americans say yes, the U.S. has a problem with systemic racism (54%) than say no, it does not (30%).

The only groups that say no more often than not are on the right: Republicans (by a 15-point margin) and Trump voters (by a 33-point margin).

As a result, the right — a group that is also disproportionately white — seems to be suspicious of any teachings that suggest systemic racism is a present-day problem and not just a thing of the past.

For instance, the new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows majority approval of “U.S. public schools including lessons on African-American history within the regular U.S. history curriculum” among all Americans (67%), white Americans (65%), Black Americans (79%), Democrats (82%) and Republicans (58%).

Yet Republicans (40%) and white Americans (41%) are far less likely than Democrats (54%) and Black Americans (52%) to say the lessons that “U.S. public school students are currently taught about African-American history” are “appropriate.”

The reason for this wariness becomes clear when respondents are shown a list of specific topics drawn from the AP African American studies draft framework — and then asked to say “which U.S. public high school students you think they are appropriate for: No students, only students enrolled in an Advanced Placement (AP) African-American studies course, or all students.”

While large majorities of Americans say it is appropriate for all students to study subjects drawn from prior centuries — the civil rights movement (74%), the role of slavery in the Civil War (71%), the history of the slave trade (71%), the experience of African Americans during Reconstruction and Jim Crow (59%) — the numbers are much lower for elements of the curriculum that address contemporary debates. And that’s in large part because they are lower among Republicans and white Americans.

Here are some selected topics, along with the numbers of those who say they are not appropriate for any public high school students — even those who choose to take AP African American studies.

● The experience of queer Black Americans (31% of all Americans, 39% of white Americans, 54% of Republicans, 66% of Trump voters)

● Black activism to abolish prisons (29% of all Americans, 38% of white Americans, 50% of Republicans, 61% of Trump voters)

● The Black Lives Matter movement (28% of all Americans, 35% of white Americans, 53% of Republicans, 65% of Trump voters)

● Black feminism (22% of all Americans, 28% of white Americans, 40% of Republicans, 47% of Trump voters)

● The debate over slavery reparations (22% of all Americans, 28% of white Americans, 39% of Republicans, 47% of Trump voters)

Notably, the right’s aversion to “politicized” subjects in African American studies does not extend to one that the College Board just added to its official curriculum as a possible final-project topic: Black conservatism. Just 18% of Republicans and 19% of Trump voters say Black conservatism is not appropriate for any public high school students. About twice as many — 37% and 40%, respectively — say it's appropriate for all high schoolers.

Even with that subject, however, more Democrats and Biden voters — 50% in both cases — say it’s appropriate across the board.

__________

The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,585 U.S. adults interviewed online from Feb. 2 to 6, 2023. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to March 15, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (32% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.8%.

The EV revolution brings environmental uncertainty at every turn



Tim Lydon
Fri, February 10, 2023 

This article was originally published by The Revelator.

Manufacturers, governments and consumers are lining up behind electric vehicles — with sales rising 60% in 2022, and at least 17 states considering a California-style ban on gas cars in the years ahead. Scientists say the trend is a key part of driving down the transportation sector’s carbon emissions, which could fall by as much as 80% by 2050 under aggressive policies. But while EVs are cleaner than gas cars in the long run, they still carry environmental and human-rights baggage, especially associated with mining.

“If you want a lot of EVs, you need to get minerals out of the ground,” says Ian Lange, director of the Energy and Economics Program at the Colorado School of Mines.

That’s because manufacturing EVs requires about six times more minerals than traditional cars. That requirement — coupled with growth in consumer electronics and renewable energy infrastructure — will double global mineral demand over the next two decades, according to the International Energy Agency.

And that’s only under current trends. The IEA says meeting the Paris Climate Accord goals for decarbonization will require even more — far more — minerals: as much as four to six times present amounts.

That will mean a lot of mining, with much of it for EV batteries. And at least some of it will happen in the United States, as the Biden administration and many Republicans want more EV materials sourced at home, both to act on climate change and to wrest some control of supply chains from China.

Lange, who served as an economic advisor in the Trump administration, says it will be a big change for the country, which “got out of the minerals game” in recent decades. And it will bring challenges — including obtaining permits for minerals development, developing the needed workforce, and building processing capacity. The Biden administration hopes that funding from the landmark Inflation Reduction Act and other sources will help overcome these obstacles.

But the rush for renewables will also bring another big hurdle: environmental impacts. Already, as the search for EV materials ramps up, Tribes, landowners and communities find themselves wrestling with the not-so-green side of green energy.

Environmental considerations

For a sense of things, consider cobalt. About 30 pounds of it go into each EV battery to boost performance and energy storage, which are key to luring consumers from dirtier gas cars. But today 70% of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an estimated 40,000 children as young as 6 work in dangerous mines. The mines also bring deforestation, habitat fragmentation and high carbon emissions from mining and refinery processes that rely heavily on fossil fuels to produce electricity and drive heavy machinery. Some sources say cobalt mining’s CO2 emissions could double by 2030.

EV boosters are eager to put mileage between their products and human rights abuses, which fuel Republican and oil industry criticisms of battery power. Although efforts are under way to improve overseas practices, another way to tackle the issue would be to mine cobalt in the United States, which would also increase domestic sources of EV materials. But today the country has only one cobalt mine, and building others would likely raise environmental concerns.

Lange says that’s certainly the case in Alaska, where copper and cobalt rest beneath rolling tundra in the Ambler district south of the Brooks Range. Accessing it would require a 200-mile road through traditional Alaska Native lands, caribou habitat and Gates of the Arctic National Park, with gravel quarries dug every 10 miles. It’s something state leaders support but state and national environmental groups and several Indigenous communities oppose. Permitting for the road began during the Obama administration and was approved under Trump, but it’s now under reconsideration by Biden.

According to Lange, such regulatory sagas breed uncertainty within the minerals industry that slows investment in the minerals needed for EV batteries. He offers up the Twin Metals Mine near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Wilderness as another example. Here the target is nickel, another important EV metal mined in only one U.S. location. In a political tug-of-war, the mine’s long-held leases were denied renewal by Obama, reinstated under Trump and then canceled under Biden.

In both cases, concerns over compliance with the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act led to lawsuits and claims of rushed environmental analysis. Lange says these bedrock environmental laws have improved air quality and human health conditions in the United States, but at the same time they may also contribute to the lag in sustainable production of EV materials.

“When we restrict access to natural resources, these international companies can choose to go elsewhere,” he says — often to countries with lax environmental and human rights laws.

The tension between environmental protection and renewables development is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Adam Bronstein of Western Watersheds Project sees it in northern Nevada, where his group has joined a lawsuit against a proposed open-pit lithium mine in Thacker Pass, an area of remote desert that’s home to sage grouse, antelope, Lahontan cutthroat trout and other sensitive species, including some only found locally. It also holds hundreds of Native American heritage sites that remain important to Tribes today.

“It’s a very remote and undeveloped landscape, where the stars are still bright and the air is quiet,” he says.

Bronstein says the West is quickly losing such landscapes to development, including large-scale solar projects and renewable energy mining. At Thacker Pass, for instance, the lithium mine would entail a 2-mile-long open pit with waste ore, acid dumps and massive water usage. Like opponents of Alaska’s Ambler Road, some also worry it would open access to additional claims, spreading impacts to further wildlands.

Mine proponents say Thacker Pass lithium could support more than a million EVs annually and would add jobs and tax revenue.

Bronstein questions the notion that ecologically valuable areas must be sacrificed for climate goals. Others agree, including a rising chorus who say solar and wind development in Nevada and California are eliminating vast areas of wildlife habitat, contributing to biodiversity loss worldwide.

As a judge considers the Thacker Pass lawsuit, nearly 2,000 miles away, residents of Coosa County, Alabama, express similar concerns over plans to mine graphite, an EV mineral not currently produced in the United States.

“It’s going to be a mess,” says Chris DiGiorgio, a lifelong resident of the area and a board member of Coosa Riverkeeper, which protects, promotes and restores the Coosa River.

DiGiorgio says graphite mining will level forest, disrupt hydrology, and leave chemical pollution that could last generations. Yet he also acknowledges the need for minerals to support renewable energy.

“We all want to stop climate change,” he says.

Still, DiGiorgio feels that state officials unjustifiably fast-tracked the mine’s permits, and he questions whether graphite demand will still be high by the time mining starts in 2028. But whereas Western Watersheds Project is fighting the Thacker Pass mine, Coosa Waterkeeper appears settled into guarded acceptance and a commitment to playing a watchdog role over the mine.
Navigating the transition

Josh Johnson with the Idaho Conservation League has taken yet another approach. As Australia-based Jervois Mining prepared to open the United States’ only cobalt mine in Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, he helped secure $150,000 in annual funding from the company for local conservation work — money that can also be leveraged to help secure matching funds from state and federal grants. Two years in, the funding has helped restore overgrazed streambanks and supported acquisition of vital fish habitat. Each year, the organization determines where the funding goes, with input from Tribes, agencies and others.

Johnson says the cobalt mine connects to the league’s conservation goals, which include promoting renewable energy and adopting EVs. And while he recommends that environmental groups take a nuanced look at such mines, he stresses that his partnership doesn’t compromise Idaho Conservation League’s watchdog role as mining gets underway.

But it’s also important to consider what happens after Idaho’s cobalt meets daylight. With no processing plants in the United States, it will be shipped to Brazil, then to China for manufacturing, and eventually back to the United States tucked inside a new EV battery.

Generous incentives for EVs in the Inflation Reduction Act aim to tighten that supply chain — and ease reliance on strategic adversaries like China to reach U.S. climate goals. They join funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the Defense Production Act and other sources in a strategy that aligns with IEA recommendations for diversifying global mineral sources. And while this all-in approach on industrialization raises biodiversity and other concerns, it could move the United States closer to reaching Paris Climate Accord goals and the Biden administration’s target to cut economy-wide carbon emission by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Lange agrees the funding will boost research, development and processing capacity, but he questions whether it moves the needle on EV mineral production in the United States.

Inevitably, technology should resolve some of the issues surrounding EVs. Scientists worldwide are tinkering with EV batteries to improve efficiency and replace problematic metals like cobalt, nickel and perhaps even lithium. Other research highlights better ways to mine, including by salvaging EV materials currently discarded as waste at existing mines. This is happening at a Rio Tinto mine in California’s Mojave Desert, which has long produced minerals for soaps and cosmetics but is now also pulling lithium out of its old tailings.

Lange says advances in recycling may also help. The IEA anticipates a surge in recyclable minerals as first-generation EVs reach the end of their lifespan, perhaps meeting 10% of demand by 2040. It could help ease shortages, stabilize prices, diversify sources, and chip away at harmful mining, including deep-sea mining in sensitive ocean ecosystems. Yet as with everything else related to EVs, Lange says the United States lags behind China and other countries in recycling research, development and capacity.

To Bronstein and others, placing solar at already developed areas like canals and parking lots and developing smarter cities that disincentivize driving will also remain important strategies for adopting clean energy in ways that minimize impacts on undisturbed wildlands.

Cities and the federal government can also shape strategic adoption of EVs by working to replace fleet and transit vehicles first. This recently happened in Antelope Valley, California, where the local transit authority became the first in the country to replace its fleet of diesel buses. Since its 87 new electric buses, vans and coaches are cheaper to operate and maintain than dirtier diesel buses, the city is now using the savings to expand public transit and build a solar field to power the fleet. Similarly, in December the U.S. Postal Service committed to buying at least 45,000 electric delivery trucks and to explore how to electrify its entire fleet.

The approaches replace the vehicles that log the most miles first, rather than relying on individual drivers to adopt EVs.

Whatever path it takes, says Bronstein, “the renewable energy future is coming.”

Scientists, activists and other experts have spent decades advocating for this change, even as the dangers of burning fossil fuels have increased. The future has finally started to arrive. But as Bronstein reminds us, making the transition to cleaner fuels still requires careful planning and restraint to protect our already beleaguered biodiversity and other natural resources.

Tim Lydon writes from Alaska on public-lands and conservation issues. He has worked on public lands for much of the past three decades, both as a guide and for land-management agencies, and is a founding member of the Prince William Sound Stewardship Foundation. His writing has most recently appeared in The Revelator, Yes Magazine, Hakai Magazine, The Hill, High Country News, and elsewhere.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Electric vehicle boom rises amidst environmental concerns

Turkey earthquake drone footage shows fissures slicing through land


Aftermath of the deadly earthquake in Tepehan

VIDEO Drone footage reveals fissures of Turkey quake (yahoo.com)


Fri, February 10, 2023 

TEVEKKELI/TEPEHAN, Turkey (Reuters) -Drone footage in southern Turkey showed fissures slicing and cracking across fields, roads, streams and hillsides, caused by a massive earthquake that struck the region at the start of the week.

One jagged scar of bare and cracked earth, opened up by Monday's quake, cut deep into embankments and ran along expanses of open land up to the horizon near the town of Tevekkeli, in Turkey's southern province of Kahramanmaras.

When it hit a highway, it smashed the tarmac and metal barriers. Huge boulders had tumbled down the hills on the side of the road.

Drivers had to wait in turn to navigate the fractured route.

Near the village of Tepehan, huge gorges cut through groves close to a house, leaving islands of grey-brown land and trees perched on the edge of new precipices. Other trees lay uprooted on their sides.

Mehmet Temizkan said the tremors woke him in the early hours of Monday morning.

"With the initial panic, nobody knew whether we could leave home or whether we could survive. We lost hope. In the morning, when we saw what happened here, we said this must be the epicentre," he told Reuters

The combined death toll from the deadliest quake in the region in two decades that struck southern Turkey and Syria stood at more than 22,000 on Friday.

Rescue crews saved a 10-day-old baby and his mother on Friday after they were trapped in the ruins of a building in Turkey and dug several people from other sites as President Tayyip Erdogan said the authorities should have acted faster.

(Reporting by Issam Abdallah and Antonio Denti; Writing by Ben Dangerfield and Andrew Heavens; Editing by Edmund Blair)

A New (Alleged) Liar in Congress Just Dropped

Susan Rinkunas
Fri, February 10, 2023

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) 

By now, many people know about serial liar Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) who made up almost his entire resume and claimed to be Jewish on the campaign trail. He’s facing various investigations and stepped down from his committee assignments but is still somehow in Congress. And now, the House GOP appears to have another fabulist on their hands!

According to a damning story in the Washington Post, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is an Air Force veteran and former Obama supporter who used to go by Anna Paulina Mayerhofer before she switched parties to run for Congress. She’s now a member of the House Freedom Caucus and has argued that House members should be able to carry firearms to committee meetings.

Luna claimed on the campaign trail that while she is a Christian, her father, George Mayerhofer, raised her as a Messianic Jew and that she’s part Ashkenazi Jewish. (Messianic Jews identify as Jewish but believe Jesus is the Messiah.) She said these things during an interview with Jewish Insider in which she stood by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who had made antisemitic comments. “MTG did endorse me, and I was raised as a Messianic Jew by my father,” Luna said. “I am also a small fraction Ashkenazi. If she were antisemitic, why did she endorse me?”

Well, Luna’s relatives dispute that fact and say that not only was George a Catholic who never practiced any form of Judaism, but that his father, Heinrich Mayerhofer, served in the Nazi army in the 1940s. Luna’s estranged uncle even provided the Post with a photo of Heinrich in uniform, which an independent expert said “was consistent with that of a member of the Wehrmacht, which was the armed forces of Nazi Germany.” Luna’s aunt told the Post that Heinrich had no choice but to serve in the German army. It’s worth noting that the reason Luna is estranged from this uncle, Edward Mayerhofer, is that he used social media to draw attention to “inconsistencies” in Luna’s biography during her first Congressional bid.

People also accused Luna of only embracing her Hispanic heritage for political gain. She is the first Mexican-American woman to elected to Congress from Florida, though in a 2015 voter registration form, she identified herself as “White, not of Hispanic origin.” (She identified as Hispanic when she updated her registration in 2019.)

Luna had a difficult childhood in California with her father addicted to drugs and repeatedly incarcerated and has said repeatedly that her mother Monica raised her single-handedly with “no family to rely on.” Relatives disputed this claim, saying they gave Monica logistical and financial help. The Post was not able to find records of her father serving time in California.

Luna has also claimed that when she was stationed in Missouri, someone broke into her apartment at 4 a.m. while she was home. Her roommate at the time told the Post that a break-in did happen, but it was during the day when Luna wasn’t home. She has used this story to talk about the importance of gun rights, telling reporters on election night: “When I was stationed in Missouri, I had someone that broke into my house. I didn’t have a firearm. It wasn’t until I got stationed in Florida that I got my concealed carry. So I have lived in circumstances and in states where gun control was pushed.” Her former roommate disputes this, saying they both had guns in the Missouri apartment.

Luna responded to the story on Twitter, calling it “comical” and saying she’d be going on Jesse Watters’ Fox News show tonight “with the facts,” adding, “The left hates conservative minorities.”

A spokesperson in Luna’s office said in a statement: “The Washington Post has clearly showcased the threat conservative minorities like Rep. Luna pose to their leftist control. Unfortunately for them, the receipts Rep. Luna is revealing tonight on primetime television will completely blow their story out of the water.”

Buckle in folks, we’re embarking on another congressional liar news cycle.

 Jezebel

Adani's links to foreign firms


Daniel Hoffman and Katia Dolmadjian
Thu, February 9, 2023 


The troubled business empire of Indian tycoon Gautam Adani has links to foreign firms in a broad range of sectors including banking, energy and food.

Adani's conglomerate has taken a massive hit in the stock market since short-seller US investment group Hindenburg Research accused it of accounting fraud, which the company denies.

Asset management analysts Bernstein said Monday it expects "more volatility in India" this year in the wake of Adani's market turbulence rather than foreign contagion, but that could change if foreign partners feel they need to cut ties, even at a steep loss.

- Financial partners -

The Adani empire is made up of several listed firms, the main one being Adani Enterprises Limited.

The top shareholder is the Adani family with 64 percent of the shares. Only some 20 percent of shares are regularly traded.

Top Wall Street names such as Vanguard, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, directly or via subsidiaries, could be found among the top 20 Adani Enterprises shareholders until recently.

They have not indicated if they still hold their shares or have unloaded them.

Norway's $1.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, said Thursday it has completely divested its assets in the Indian conglomerate.

The fund, which is set up to put the country's oil and gas revenues to work, held some $200 million worth of shares in the group at the end of 2022.

- Commercial partners -

Singaporean agribusiness giant Wilmar International, owned by the family of billionaire Robert Kuok, holds an equal stake in the joint venture Adani Wilmar Limited (AWL), a listed company that specialises in kitchen staples.

"We will continue to support our Indian associate, Adani Wilmar Limited (AWL)," a Wilmar spokesman told AFP.

US retailing giant Walmart said it did not have any particular information to convey concerning its Indian subsidiary Flipkart, an online retailer which in 2021 concluded a commercial partnership with Adani Logistics.

Data centre operator EdgeConneX created the AdaniConnex joint venture with Adani Entreprises in 2021.

"The Hindenburg accusations have had no effect on AdaniConneX, our joint venture with Adani," an EdgeConnex spokesman told to AFP. "We continue to focus on investing, building, and operating data centres."

- Industrial partners -

Earlier this month French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies described its $3.1-billion exposure to Adani as "limited".

It owns half of the joint venture Adani Total Private Limited, which provides for oil and gas exploration, as well as half of AGEL23, a joint venture with Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) for the operation of three gigawatts of solar projects.

But TotalEnergies said this week it was suspending a green hydrogen project with Adani. Last year it announced plans to acquire a 25-percent stake in Adani New Industries Limited for the production and commercialisation of green hydrogen in India.

French shipping giant CMA CGM said its activities were "continuing normally".

The world's number three shipper signed in 2017 a 15-year contract to operate a new container terminal in the port of Mundra, India's largest.

In January, a consortium led by Adani won the tender for the privatisation of Israel's port of Haifa via a local joint venture with logistics firm Gadot Group.

bur-dho-kd/rl/lth

Invited by Russia, Roger Waters tells UN: Ukraine invasion illegal


Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters is seen speaking on a video screen during a U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine at the United Nations headquarters in New York City

Wed, February 8, 2023 
By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters on Wednesday addressed the U.N. Security Council at Russia's invitation, condemning Moscow's invasion of its neighbor as illegal - though adding he believed it was provoked - and calling for a ceasefire.

"He is lucky to be in New York, in a free country, speak his mind, say whatever he likes, including about the Russian aggression and how wrong that is. If he had been in Russia, with what he said, he might have been in custody by now," Albania's U.N. Ambassador Ferit Hoxha told the 15-member Security Council.

Soon after Moscow's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Russia introduced tough new laws on spreading "misinformation" about the war or discrediting the Russian army. Russia's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy rejected Hoxha's remarks on Wednesday, saying his country respects freedom of speech.

Moscow calls its actions in Ukraine a "special military operation" designed to demilitarize and "denazify" the country. Ukraine and its Western allies say the invasion was an unprovoked act of aggression aimed at seizing territory.

Russia called the Security Council meeting on Wednesday to discuss the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and asked Waters to brief. Waters argued against the Western supply of weapons to Kyiv in a letter that he published on his website in September.

The deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Mills, acknowledged Waters' "impressive credentials as a recording artist," but said his qualifications to speak on arms control or European security issues were "less evident."

While Waters condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine as illegal, he also said it "was not unprovoked" and he also condemned "the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms." He did not give specifics.

"The only sensible course of action today is to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine," Waters said

Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya invoked Pink Floyd's hit song "Another Brick in the Wall," telling the Security Council: "How sad for his former fans to see him accepting the role of just a brick in the wall - the wall of Russian disinformation and propaganda."

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

House Republicans Don't Want Companies to Report Financial Risks From Climate Change

A GOP Working Group is taking aim at the SEC's climate protection proposals as a 'prime example' of government overreach.

ROB LENIHAN
FEB 7, 2023 2:06 PM EST

The climate isn't the only thing that's heating up.

A proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission addressing climate protections is in the crosshairs of the Republican majority in the House, who have raised concerns about government overreach.

Under the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rule, companies must provide an accounting of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the environmental risks they face, and the measures they’re taking in response.

"Today, investors representing literally tens of trillions of dollars support climate-related disclosures because they recognize that climate risks can pose significant financial risks to companies, and investors need reliable information about climate risks to make informed investment decisions," SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on March 21.

The proposed rules would require disclosures on Form 10-K about a company’s governance, risk management, and strategy with respect to climate-related risks.

Moreover, Gensler said, the proposal would require disclosure of any targets or commitments made by a company, as well as its plan to achieve those targets and its transition plan, if it has them.

Republicans, who receive the vast majority of oil industry campaign contributions based on data compiled by Open Secrets, are not fans of the SEC proposals.

On Feb. 3, North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, announced the formation of a Republican Working Group “to combat the threat to our capital markets posed by those on the far-left pushing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) proposals.”

Republicans Warn of 'Far Left Ideology'

Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, who will lead the group, cited last year’s Supreme Court ruling which found that congress must provide clear direction to the Environmental Protection Agency for the EPA regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

“The SEC’s climate disclosure rule is a prime example of this overreach- that would have a wide-ranging impact on hard working Americans across all walks of life," Huizenga said in a statement.

McHenry claimed that “progressives are trying to do with American businesses what they already did to our public education system—using our institutions to force their far-left ideology on the American people.”

“This group will develop a comprehensive approach to ESG that protects the financial interests of everyday investors and ensures our capital markets remain the envy of the world,” he said.

Amid the controversy, Gensler is considering scaling back the climate-risk disclosure rule, Politico reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. A primary concern is the wave of lawsuits that are expected to challenge the rule once it’s finalized.

One of the most contentious mandates would require certain large public companies report data about carbon emissions from their extensive supply chain networks and customers.

The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Investors deserve information that can help them assess the financial risks from #climatechange," Rob Schuwerk, North America Director of Carbon Tracker tweeted. "Now is not the time for @SECGov to weaken climate risk disclosure requirements."

Why taxing cow burps isn’t the best climate solution


Kevin Trenberth, Affiliated Faculty in Climate Science, University of Auckland

The Conversation, 
Thu, February 9, 2023 

Cows generate methane as they digest their food. It's a potent greenhouse gas. Westend61 via Getty Images

New Zealand, where agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change, is proposing a tax on cow burps. The reason seems simple enough: Cows release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and New Zealand has a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by midcentury. Right now, the country’s effects on climate change come roughly equally from carbon dioxide and methane.

Worldwide, 150 governments have committed to cut methane emissions, both from agriculture and by cracking down on the largest source – fugitive leaks from natural gas pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure.

But is methane from cows really as bad for the climate as methane from fossil fuels? And given its shorter lifetime in the atmosphere, is methane as bad as carbon dioxide?

The answers involve renewable resources and the so-called circular economy. Understanding the effectiveness of different strategies is important as countries plan their routes to net-zero emissions, which is necessary for the world to stop further climate change.

Moreover, emissions must not just reach net-zero, they must stay there.

Targeting methane

I am a climate scientist who has spent decades studying global warming. Evidence has clearly established that human activities are causing climate change. Humans have released so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since beginning to burn fossil fuels in the 1800s that the accumulated gases are now trapping significantly more heat than is released to space. The result is global warming.

Some carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. But methane, the second-most important greenhouse gas, lingers in the atmosphere for only about a decade before being oxidized to form carbon dioxide.

Although methane doesn’t last as long, it is many times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the climate. That’s why it’s a target for policymakers.

However, its effects can be misjudged. A rough equivalence of the heating from methane to that of carbon dioxide is often used to estimate its effects on the climate, but the number varies by the time frame.

The global warming potential typically used for methane is 28 times that of carbon dioxide for a 100-year period. But a spike in methane has no effect after about 30 years because the methane is well gone by then. So, methane’s effects on temperature are greatly overstated over centuries, while considerably understated over the first 20 years. Indeed, scientists have argued that short-lived climate pollutants such as methane should be split out from long-lived ones such as carbon dioxide when making policy.

Moreover, biogenic sources of carbon, such as from trees or cattle, are renewable, while fossil fuel sources are not.

Biogenic or fossil?

Biogenic methane comes from all sorts of livestock – cattle, sheep, goats, deer and even buffalo – and it has a circular life.

It originates as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is taken up by grass and other plants during photosynthesis. Those plants are eaten by animals and then methane is burped out during digestion, or released as flatulence or through decaying manure. Once released, methane stays in the atmosphere for about a decade before it becomes carbon dioxide and is taken up by plants again.

Some carbon is temporarily stored as meat, leather or wool, but it too is eventually recycled. The amount of methane from livestock would be stable were it not for rising demand for animal protein by the ever-increasing global population, leading to increasing livestock on farms.

Fossil fuels, on the other hand, have been in the Earth for millions of years. Fossil methane is a waste product of coal mines, and also is extracted from shale and other underground deposits as natural gas. So-called fugitive emissions leak from pipelines and abandoned wells, and methane is often flared or vented directly into the atmosphere. There are also often major outbursts from accidents that can now be tracked from satellite. The Nord Stream gas leak in September 2022, likely caused by sabotage, reportedly leaked 500,000 tons of methane.

Methane leaks were evident in 2019 satellite data from the Permian Basin, a large oil and gas field in Texas and New Mexico. Global Airborne Observatory/Carbon Mapper, University of Arizona/Arizona State University/NASA/JPL-Caltech

While biogenic methane ultimately recycles the carbon dioxide that was its source a short time ago, fossil-sourced methane adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Studies have estimated that livestock is responsible for about one-third of global anthropogenic methane emissions, while oil and gas operations represent about 63%.

That doesn’t mean countries shouldn’t reduce biogenic methane, too. But the circular life of biogenic methane means that it should be considered separately from fossil methane when determining how to manage emissions to reach net zero by 2050.
Implications for climate policies

Many of the actions that governments take today under the guise of net-zero emissions risk passing the harms of climate change down to future generations rather than fundamentally solving the problem. Strategies that aim to reduce carbon from any source, as opposed to focusing on reducing the use of fossil fuels, are an example.

Right now, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is generally treated interchangeably with carbon emissions from clearing forests or from methane emissions. Simple conversion factors, while convenient, mask complicated value judgments. For example, reducing methane may buy a decade of lower temperatures. Reducing fossil carbon, on the other hand, buys thousands of years.

There’s a similar argument to be made about carbon offsets involving trees. Trees take up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and use the carbon to create wood, bark, leaves and roots. When the trees die or are used, the carbon is recycled as carbon dioxide. But while planting a new stand of trees may lock up some carbon, most only live for decades, and trees can get diseased or burn in forest fires, meaning they’re temporary. Recent research suggests that the value of trees as carbon offsets is greatly overestimated. Further, planting monoculture tree plantations has drawbacks, especially with regard to biodiversity.

Emissions from burning coal, oil or natural gas can only be credibly offset by removing carbon dioxide and storing it in a form that will be stable for many thousands of years.

Steadying or reducing livestock numbers and perhaps changing their feed can stabilize their methane emissions. But to address the climate change crisis long term, I believe it is essential to recognize that the real solution for climate change is to cut emissions of fossil fuels.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Kevin Trenberth, University of Auckland.

Read more:

How not to solve the climate change problem

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Sen. Rick Scott Is Mad That Biden Attacked His Plan To Put Social Security At Risk

The Florida Republican wants federal laws to end in five years unless extended. But he says suggesting he wants to cut Social Security or Medicare is a lie.

David Moye
Feb 8, 2023, 

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) apparently isn’t happy that Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address Tuesday, accurately quoted his proposal to let Social Security and Medicare expire.

During the speech, Biden mentioned that “some Republicans” have a plan to “sunset” all federal laws every five years so that Congress would have to repeatedly reauthorize funding for everything ― including Social Security and Medicare.

Biden didn’t mention Scott by name, but on Wednesday the Florida Republican griped on Twitter that Biden “rambled for a while, but it seems he forgot to share the facts.”

He then jumped into a lengthy thread in which he minimized what he actually proposed, mainly because it isn’t even popular with his fellow Republicans.

Scott claims his plan is to simply make all federal legislation sunset, or face extinction if not reapproved, in five years and added, disingenuously, “If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.”

The senator said the plan is “aimed at dealing with ALL the crazy new laws our Congress has been passing of late” and claims ”to suggest that this means I want to cut Social Security or Medicare is a lie, & is a dishonest move…from a very confused President.”

Despite his tweeted denials, Scott has advocated cutting Social Security and Medicare in the past, as this exchange from May with Fox News anchor John Roberts demonstrates.

Scott did get some praise for his Twitter thread, but it was from people who appreciated his saying the quiet part out loud about Republican plans to destroy the safety net.