The Times They Aren’t a-Changing: More Carbon, More Heat, More Hot Air Expected in 2024

BY JOHN K. WHITE

 JANUARY 3, 2024
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Mill, West Linn, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

A rising global temperature is no joking matter, but one has to wonder when the president of the annual UN conference on climate change is also the head of an oil company. My father liked to joke in his typical impish style, “I’ve seen a lot of changes in my time … and I was against them all.” There are also hundreds of apt lightbulb-changing jokes, such as “How many Irish mothers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? … Ah sure you go out and have a good time, I’ll just stay here in the dark.” Indeed, change is never easy, whether denial about the need, overriding the status quo of a multi-trillion-dollar, carbon-spewing industry that underpins the entire global economy, or challenging the ongoing inanity of oil and gas companies pretending to “transition away” from fossil fuels.

Established by the UN in 1988 to assess the science, impacts, and risk of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has now written 6 reports, which make for increasingly alarming reading. The latest iteration, the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment (AR6), states at the outset that “Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, between and within countries, and among individuals.”[1] And yet, there are those who still pretend not to believe in a human contribution, purposely undermine change, or just don’t give a damn.

The French mathematician Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), Anglo-Irish physicist John Tyndall (1820-1893), and Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) all helped to establish the now well-known, heat-trapping properties of water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO₂), and methane (CH₄). Fourier noted that the temperature change between night and day (and winter and summer) was minimal because of an insulating atmospheric blanket of “greenhouse gases” (GHGs), a term he coined. If not for our GHG-filled atmosphere, our “pale blue dot” of a planet would be uninhabitably cold. Tyndall noted that varying amounts of GHGs could be responsible for past ice ages – evidence of which was only recently discovered in his time in the scarred glacial landscapes of northern Europe – after setting up his own “artificial sky in a tube” in the basement of London’s Royal Institution. Arrhenius established the first direct link between GHGs and temperature, for which he is mostly remembered today. Thanks in part to Arrhenius’s analysis, it was known by the early 1900s that burning coal would produce enough atmospheric carbon dioxide to raise global temperatures beyond safe limits.

As noted in a 1912 Popular Mechanics article, the atmosphere at the time contained 1.5 trillion tons of CO₂, which would double in two centuries at the then industrial emission rates, “unless it is removed by some means in enormous quantities.”[2] Alas, Popular Mechanics couldn’t have anticipated the extraordinary growth of the fossil-fuel industry in the twentieth century as emissions doubled faster (40 years at 1.5 trillion tons/37 billion tons per year). Currently the amount is over 422 parts per million and increasing by about 2 ppm per year[3] (2 ppm is also annually absorbed in the oceans and biomass). In a 1975 Science article “Climactic change: Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?” Columbia University geophysicist Wallace Broecker introduced the term “global warming,” noting that man-made carbon dioxide (and now methane) would soon contribute to an exponential rise in global temperatures as indeed is occurring.

Many of those who support the continued status quo of an unchecked global petroleum industry claim the increase in temperature is due to natural changes in the earth-sun distance (eccentricity, tilt, and precession), regularly rising and falling. Indeed, the sun’s irradiance on earth is cyclical, giving us intermittent ice ages and interglacial periods (more pronounced in the larger land-mass northern hemisphere), albeit over millennial-long timeframes. Today’s increased heating, however, is coming faster and more furiously because of industrial carbon-burning, too much for earth’s ecosystems to handle. If we don’t change soon, more heating, more melting, and more flooding will put us all in uncharted (and rising) waters. Space is not the final frontier for earth-bound humans, change is.

Bill McKibben, co-founder of the “350.org” group (the name derived from NASA’s projected safe threshold for CO₂ levels), has estimated that 80% of fossil fuels must remain in the ground to avoid the worst. Although McKibben believes that changing to LED light bulbs and putting a price on carbon are both excellent ideas (among others), more than $20 trillion worth of stored “carbon bombs” around the world will wreck the planet if they are dug up and burnt (e.g., Arctic and Caspian Sea oil, Eastern European fracked gas, Canadian and Venezuelan oil sands, and Western Australian, Indonesian, Chinese, and Powder River Basin coal[4]), sending the atmosphere spiralling well beyond the 400-ppm mark.

The 350.org group cites major achievements in its goal to “keep it in the ground” — such as stopping the Keystone XL pipeline (only 3% of Alberta oil sands extracted), shutting down development in the world’s largest coal mine (in Queensland, Australia’s Galilee Valley), and a growing fossil-fuel divestment campaign started in 2012 at Unity College in Maine, which first sold off fossil-fuel stocks in its own $13-million portfolio, and now includes universities around the world, significantly impacting the bottom lines of companies with fossil-fuel investments.

And still some wonder about the causes and effects. Initially skeptical about anthropomorphic global warming (AGW), Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller showed how climate and weather can easily be misconstrued. His research team extended the temperature record back to 1753, using station data and “proxies” such as tree rings and choral growth. His Berkeley results corroborated IPCC data, but importantly tied the increase in the average global temperature to an unmistakable increase in atmospheric CO₂. As Muller stated in Energy for Future Presidents: The science behind the headlines, “The exquisite agreement between the warming and CO₂ suggests that most – maybe all – of the warming of the past 250 years was caused by humans.”[5] Furthermore, the Berkeley analysis showed no correlation to sunspot activity, and predicted a further increase of 1.6 °C every 40 years if we continue to burn carbon-based fuels as we have been doing.

Interestingly, Muller noted from the data collected around the world that temperatures had only increased at two-thirds of the study’s 36,866 recording stations, but had decreased at the other third, underlining how local temperatures cannot be used to extrapolate to an average global temperature. Indeed, climate cannot be confused with weather. It isn’t bad weather, it’s bad climate that is causing today’s troubles with 2023 the hottest year since records were kept, hotter on average than 2022 (alas not as hot as 2024 if nothing changes). The sobering state of our warming planet is regularly reported on here in CounterPunch, including an annual summary of the everyday devastation.[6]

As for the annual COP talking shop, the oil industry has taken over. Last year’s COP28 was hosted by the United Arab Emirates with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) president Ahmed Al Jaber as band leader Harold Hill. “Abated” versus “unabated,” “phase out” versus “phase down,” and how many angels can dance on the head of a pin were debated by over 70,000 delegates, not all of whom came and went by plane. “Abated” is the new industry buzzword as in “captured” carbon emissions during or after combustion to keep us burning more fossil fuels. A record number of almost 2,500 oil, gas, and coal industry lobbyists ensured the proceedings stayed on message.

Unsurprisingly, the ADNOC boss conducted regular oil company business during the conference and stated there was “no science” behind the phase-out of fossil fuels. Nonetheless, almost 200 parties signed up to the declaration to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”[7] The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Convoluted language of change or business as usual?

The next meeting slash “global trade show”[6] is planned for Baku, Azerbaijan, where the Nobel brothers cut their business teeth ferrying kerosene to the Russian market in the 1870s. Azer means “fire” and the name of a god the locals worshiped for millennia. Expect more discussions on carbon capture, “green” hydrogen, and pipeline routes out of the oil-rich Caspian Sea. Alas, emissions will continue to rise as in every year since the first COP in Berlin in 1995. As the former German politician and early renewables champion Herman Scheer noted years ago, “While the delegates have been debating over the past decade, emissions have been rising by an unprecedented 30 per cent.” Sadly, Scheer surmised that “The effect of the climate change negotiations has thus been to preserve the status quo.”[8]

Scheer was responsible for the 2000 German Renewable Energy Act, which spurred on an avant-garde approach to energy technology via consumer subsidies and grid buybacks, transforming Germany into a world leader in solar power, all in a country with a mean latitude of 51.5° and a daily average of 4.1 hours of sunshine. Thanks to Germany’s Green party, California’s sunny innovation factories, and China’s increased investment in photovoltaics, solar panels are now one hundred times cheaper than two decades ago. Solar-powered electricity is now cheaper than traditional power production, having already reached “grid parity” with nuclear and coal in 2013 and natural gas in 2015.[9]

Alas, 2024 will still see temperatures rise, sea levels rise, and Arctic ice shrink to its smallest extent as more fossil fuels are burned. Although not adding to sea-level rise since Arctic ice already floats, dark waters absorb more, while ice and snow reflects more (easily tested by putting a black and a white sheet of paper in the sun). GHGs will also grow from the increased burning of fossil fuels and stored methane loosed from the melting tundra. More coal will be burnt this year than last, increasingly so in the developing world.

Like it or not change has to come. We simply can’t keep burning away our future. In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, philosopher and science historian Thomas Kuhn stated “Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute.”[10] Prior to the internal combustion engine (ICE), horse manure bunged up the works in the congested streets of the late nineteenth century causing an acute health issue (3 million pounds/day alone in the 1870s in New York City), which is now “shifting” again because of another acute need to stop greenhouse gases and particulate-matter pollution bunging up the air even more.

Others have noted similar routes to change as if in a 12-step self-help program (AA’s first step is to admit “that our lives had become unmanageable”). Social historian R. A. Buchanan cites three conditions for change: (1) “key groups of people who are prepared to consider innovations seriously and sympathetically,” (2) “technological innovation is being encouraged to match social needs,” and (3) social resources such as “capital, materials and skilled personnel.”[11] To turn the revolutionary into the mundane, however, takes more work. Sustainability expert Chris Goodall lists four phases for universal adoption of new technologies: too expensive, waning enthusiasm over the slow progress, gradual acceptance by skeptics, and finally a dawning sense that we can do without what came before, in this case fossil fuels.[12]

The first step is always the hardest and scariest. Early adopters are often considered heretics, only recognized years or centuries later. The devout Polish cleric and parttime astronomy hobbyist Nicolaus Copernicus – from whom we get the word “revolution” via his 1543 publication of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres – was published only after his death for fear of pushback from religious authorities. Considered the last of the old rather than the first of the new, it took more than a century for the revolutionary to become the mundane, thanks to the work of others who followed such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.

The new always come mixed with the old. Kepler did astrology tables to make ends meet, Newton believed in alchemy. In the modern era, the first Philips light-bulb factory in Eindhoven was initially lit by gas because electricity was not yet available, while the electric bulb was considered by some to be too dim for comfortable reading.

Of course, China and other emerging economies continue to grow and increase their carbon emissions at record rates. The International Energy Agency predicted that emissions will almost double in the next 20 years, three-quarters coming from China, India, and the Middle East. China now emits twice as much CO₂ from coal as does all of Europe. To simplify the numbers based on population alone, “an increase in use of only 5% in Brazil, Russia, India, and China is equivalent to a 50% increase in the United States.”[13]

So what changes are essential? According to You Xiaoying, the “new three” are solar panels, chemical batteries, and EVs, a.k.a. “xin san yang,” which are increasingly replacing the “old three” (clothing, home appliances, and furniture) that helped to remake China’s failed economy on the backs of cheap imports to the West. Today, China produces more than 80% of the world’s solar panels, 50% of the lithium-ion batteries, and 20% of its EVs.[14] More EVs, more batteries, and more wind, water, and sun (WWS) means less inner-city pollution (9 million deaths a year[15]), fewer wars over petroleum supply chains, and reduced warming. No more bigger-is-best, super-sized, centralized answers that trucks in or wires in resources from afar yet conveniently forgets about the impact of our actions.

Many countries are planning to ban ICE car sales by 2035 and even sooner in some places, yet still lack sufficient charging infrastructure. In an early example or “range anxiety,” steamships originally couldn’t hold enough coal to cross the Atlantic. Range anxiety is in fact charger anxiety or fuel anxiety, just as in the time of Bertha Benz who had to stop along the way at local pharmacies in the first ever long-distance ICE drive from Mannheim to Pforzheim to refill her 50-km-capacity Ligroin fuel tank. The first coast-to-coast American gas-filled journey took two months, at times managing less than 6 miles per hour on roads rated as “average to non-existent.”[16]

Of course, change always takes time, money, and effort, while a new set of challenges will arise. EVs have to be cheaper to increase adoption. Change, transition, (r)evolution can’t happen without middle-class prices. Battery materials must also be responsibly mined, ecologically and socially. Build it and they will come, whether an Iowa baseball field, a better mousetrap, or affordable EVs and battery supply chains.

That is if there is no European-style “e-fuel” exception to keep Germany’s ICEs on the road. Biofuels are the new abated nonsense. E-scooters (displacing 4 times as much oil as 4-wheeled ICE vehicles[6]), vehicle sharing, and dynamic pricing are also on the rise. Some changes are to be welcomed, but we must also mind whose coffers are enriched. The annual Oxfam rich list table shows the usual increase in wealth to fewer people as technology grips along with the emissions of the rich and infamous. Alarmingly, Oxfam reported that a single billionaire emits one million times as much GHGs as the average consumer (2.76 tons).[16] Messing around in yachts is a disaster for the environment.

One must also beware the deniers and delayers. Fox News doesn’t like wind power under a supposed pretext of saving whales from offshore wind turbine foundations. Denmark figured out how to tame the wind long ago, safely grid-tying its first wind turbine over a century ago and now enjoys regular 100% wind-powered days via its numerous onshore and offshore wind farms. Spain just passed 50% renewables. China’s Wind Base program expects to reach 400 GW by 2030 and 1 TW by 2050, two-thirds of its existing grid. In the United States, change often comes harder, but increased investment is helping, including the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that earmarked $369 billion over 10 years for greener investment, the first long step to the next generation of energy infrastructure, albeit with the usual side deals, privatization schemes, and O&G “abatements.”

Personally, many of us try the usual resolutions each new year: more exercise, more restraint, more effort on what we can change. Less red meat, less alcohol, less worry about what we can’t change. Standard leaf-turning stuff that might not make it to February. My ten simple ways to cut down won’t change the world but can help change old thinking: 1) Walk, use the stairs, take public transport, 2) Use a bedtime hot-water bottle, 3) Recycle as much as possible, 4) Convert old bulbs to LED, 5) Dry clothes in the sun, 6) Collect rainwater, 7) No single-use plastic, 8) No palm oil (or saturated fats), 9) No junk fast-food or processed food, 10) Think twice/thrice before buying anything. You will have your own green-saving ideas that help slow the machine. As ever, I will try to stay the course and increase my contribution to use less. Sure, the big boys have to change, but we can all do our bit to help.

As we think about change this new year, the old saying rings true, “Each journey starts with a single step.” Or perhaps another lightbulb joke is apt: “How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None, but it has to want to change.” Sad that simple truths should be so hard.

Notes.

[1] “Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment,” UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 58th Session, Interlaken, Switzerland, March 13-19, 2023. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf

[2] Molena, F., “Remarkable weather of 1911,” Popular Mechanics, pp. 339–342, March 1912

[3] “CO2.Earth,” Pro Oxygen, Victoria,  British Columbia. https://www.co2.earth/

[4] McKibben, B., “Why we need to keep 80 percent of fossil fuels in the ground,” YES! Magazine, February 15, 2016. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/life-after-oil/why-we-need-to-keep-80-percent-of-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground-20160215

[5] Muller, R. A., Energy for future presidents: The science behind the headlines, p. 48, W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 2012

[6] St. Clair, J., “Sleep Now in the Fire: the Year in Climate,” CounterPunch, December 28, 2023. https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/28/sleep-now-in-the-fire-the-year-in-climate/

[7] “OP28 Agreement Signals ‘Beginning of the End’ of the Fossil Fuel Era,” UNFCCC, December 13, 2023. https://unfccc.int/news/cop28-agreement-signals-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-fossil-fuel-era

[8] Scheer, H., The Solar Economy: Renewable energy for a sustainable global future, p. XI, Earthscan, London, 2002

[9] “Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis 2021,” Lazard, Version 16.0, April 2023. https://www.lazard.com/media/typdgxmm/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf

[10] Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., p. 23, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1970.

[11] Gimpel, J., The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages, pp. 229–230, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, NY, 1976.

[12] Goodall, C., Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, p. 5, GreenProfile, London, 2008.

[13] White, J. K., Do The Math! On Growth, Greed and Strategic Thinking, p. 9, Sage, 2013

[14] Xiaoying, Y., “China is still playing the long game with its ‘new three’: solar cells, lithium batteries, EVs,” Energy Post, December 12, 2023. https://energypost.eu/china-is-still-playing-the-long-game-with-its-new-three-solar-cells-lithium-batteries-evs/

[15] Lelieveld, J., Klingmüller, K., Pozzer, A., et al., “Cardiovascular disease burden from ambient air pollution in Europe reassessed using novel hazard ratio functions,” European Heart Journal, 40(20):1590–6, March 12, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehz135

[16] Yergin, D., The Prize: The epic quest for oil, money, & power, p. 207, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 1991.

[17] Oxfam, “A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person,” November 7, 2022. https://westafrica.oxfam.org/en/latest/pressrelease/billionaire-emits-million-times-more-greenhouse-gases-average-person

 

John K. White, a former lecturer in physics and education at University College Dublin and the University of Oviedo. He is the editor of the energy news service E21NS and author of The Truth About Energy: Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction and the Transition to Renewables (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Do The Math!: On Growth, Greed, and Strategic Thinking (Sage, 2013). He can be reached at: johnkingstonwhite@gmail.com

Unmitigated Horror: Guernica, the Warsaw Ghetto, and Now Gaza

BY MELVIN GOODMAN

“Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized.”

– Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2023.

“The painful commonality between the tragedies of Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto is the utter disregard for human lives in a war setting by the citizens of even the most enlightened countries.  Such disregard is so much more painful when it is committed by ‘our own people,’ whether it be American soldiers in Vietnam and Iraq or the Israeli soldiers in Gaza.”

– Alex Hershaft, A Survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, The Washington Post, December 22, 2023

“Yes, how many deaths will it take ’til he knows that too many people have died?”

– Bob Dylan, “Blowing in the Wind,” 1962

The Nazi bombing of Guernica, a Basque town in northern Spain, took place in 1937 during the Spanish civil war.  The Germans were testing their new air force, and their bombs killed or wounded one-third of Guernica’s five thousand residents. Guernica’s agony was captured in a painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso; it is considered the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history.  The painting shows the suffering caused by modern war and brought the atrocities of the Spanish civil war to an international audience.

For Gaza, a Picasso would presumably use Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals to depict the terror and horror of Israel’s use of heavy ordnance.  Just as the Nazi bombing of Guernica had a casual aspect, Israel’s use of its air force is casual in its destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, indeed Gaza itself.  The use of U.S.-supplied one thousand and two thousand pound bombs puts the lie to Israel’s claim that the primary objective of the war is to destroy Hamas. The primary objective of Israel’s war is to destroy Gaza itself; it is the latest step in Israeli efforts over 75 years to displace Palestinian populations from the river to the sea.  Israel’s right-wing war cabinet and Israeli Defense Forces are not taking aim at the West Bank, where the death count is climbing.

The Warsaw Ghetto housed 350,000 Jews who—like Gazans—were surviving hunger and disease, when the Nazi’s began their campaign of liquidation.  In the wake of the roundup of Jews, the Nazis deployed tanks and heavy artillery to destroy the remaining 50,000 survivors and level every building, until the Warsaw Ghetto was no more.  The Israeli destruction of Gaza is designed to ensure that Palestinians will have no place to live.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have put the lie to Israel’s claim that Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital was directly involved in Hamas activities and that the buildings of the al-Shifa complex sat atop underground tunnels that were used to direct rocket attacks and command fighters.  The Post analysis demonstrated that “the rooms connected to the tunnel network…showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas;” “none of the five hospital

buildings…appeared to be connected to the tunnel network;” and that there was “no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards.”  The Israels lied, and the Central Intelligence Agency corroborated the lies.

Overall, the mainstream media continues to assist Israeli propagandists in making their case to an international audience.  U.S. media consistently refer to last month’s killing of three Israeli hostages by Israeli defense forces as “accidental.”  There was nothing “accidental” about the killing; it was intentional with the hostages being shirtless, carrying a white flag of surrender, raising their hands, speaking Hebrew, and posting SOS notices as well as scrawling “Help! 3 hostages” in Hebrew on nearby walls.  The shooting may have been “mistaken,” but it was not “accidental.”  The Israeli soldiers intended to kill the three men; they just didn’t know they were Israelis. The father of one of the victims poignantly asked why the IDF didn’t just shoot his son in the leg.

The killing points to an ethical failure in the IDF, according to Ron Ben-Yishal, senior national security columnist for the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, who has reported on all of Israel’s wars since the Six-Day War in 1967.  These failures are predictable in view of Israeli racism toward Palestinans.  Former Prime Minister Golda Meir’s dismissed Palestinians as “roaches” prior to the October 1973 war.  Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has described Palestinians as “human animals,” and “we are acting accordingly.”  In this way, Gallant justifies the Israeli war crime of cutting off food and water to the residents of Gaza.

U.S. media have supported Israel’s line that the shooting of the hostages was due to the “fear and confusion” caused by Hamas’s “war of traps and trickery,” which meant that Israeli “troops were spooked and too fast to fire.” (The Washington Post, December 24, 2023, p. 1)  At least, the Israelis are investigating the killing, and will have the assistance of an IDF combat dog with a GoPro camera that recorded the voices of the three victims.  Of course, if the victims had been Palestinian, there would have been no publicity, let alone an investigation.  We will never know how many innocent Palestinian men have been murdered in similar fashion.

The United States itself provides support for Israel by vetoing or abstaining from every UN Security Council resolution that is critical of Israel.  Since the October War of 1973, the United States has vetoed more than 50 measures.  When the Obama administration abstained from a 2017 resolution that declared Israeli settlements on the West Bank illegal, there was considerable congressional criticism.  The United States last month even abstained from a UN resolution that merely supported additional humanitarian aid for Gaza.

Meanwhile, the United States has offered no criticism of Israel’s killing of more than 70 journalists and media workers, mostly Palestinian, marking the deadliest conflict for journalists ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists.  The Israelis have also killed more than a dozen Palestinian writers and poets.  More than a hundred international aid workers have also been killed—some of the along side their extended families.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, one of Israel’s leading apologists, has merely stated that “we want to make sure that that’s investigated, and that we understand what’s happened and there’s accountability.”  The killing of journalists is an Israeli attempt to ensure that the rough draft of Israel’s war is not recorded accurately.  Even the Post referred to Blinken’s remarks as a “nothing burger of a response.”

Netanyahu’s legacy is secure.  When Guernica, the Warsaw Ghetto, and Gaza are discussed and analyzed in the future, the Nazis and Benjamin Netanyahu will be similarly condemned.

Meanwhile, there is much for all Americans to learn.  President Biden should think about Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s loss to Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential election because of his belated opposition to the Vietnam War.  And for a better understanding of Israeli apartheid and the miserable life of Palestinians on the West Bank, read Nathan Thrall’s “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Autonomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.”

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

Trump's 'horror-movie' argument would let him use the military to imprison Biden: expert
Matthew Chapman
January 2, 2024 

President Donald J. Trump poses with Maj. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, commander of the 10th Mountain Division, and Soldiers following an air assault and gun raid demonstration at Fort Drum, New York, on August 13. Image via U.S. Army photo/Sgt. Thomas Scaggs.

Former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity argument against special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution for January 6 is not just meritless, argued former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti on MSNBC Tuesday — it's also dangerous.

By the logic Trump has laid out, Mariotti told anchor Ari Melber, if Trump was elected to a second term, he could order the military to lock up Joe Biden, and then fabricate a way to excuse himself from any criminal investigation of his actions.

"When it comes to post-presidential immunity, it doesn't exist, period," said Melber, himself an attorney, as he reviewed Smith's newest filings against Trump's claims. "The Constitution specifically imagines a criminal president, and it does say you have to impeach him in office. It's complicated. If the DOJ was trying to try their own boss, that's complex for a four- or eight-year problem. I'm reading from [Smith's filing]: 'The Constitution explicitly provides for an impeached and convicted president's criminal prosecution for the same conduct.'"

In other words, Melber added, Smith is pointing out that "you could be a strict textualist and you would still land on saying the Constitution literally writes out post-presidential prosecution."

"Absolutely," agreed Mariotti. "And you can see how measured Smith is being."

"Look at the alternative," Mariotti continued. "What Trump is trying to argue for is a get out of jail card as his right. It would essentially allow a president, as long as you could have some plausible connection to your official duties to say, hey, I'm going to order the military to go imprison my opponent."

"It's the sort of thing that you'd see in a horror movie, not the sort of thing you would actually want the President of the United States to do," Mariotti added.

Watch the video below or at the link.

The link between climate change and a spate of rare disease outbreaks in 2023

Zoya Teirstein, Grist
December 31, 2023 

Transmission electron microscope photo of vibrio bacteria / Creative Endeavors / Shutterstock

This story was originally published by Grist. 

A 16-month-old boy was playing in a splash pad at a country club in Little Rock, Arkansas, this summer when water containing a very rare and deadly brain-eating amoeba went up his nose. He died a few days later in the hospital. The toddler wasn’t the first person in the United States to contract the freshwater amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, this year. In February, a man in Florida died after rinsing his sinuses with unboiled water — the first Naegleria fowleri-linked death to occur in winter in the U.S.

2023 was also an active year for Vibrio vulnificus, a type of flesh-eating bacteria. There were 11 deaths connected to the bacteria in Florida, three deaths in North Carolina, and another three deaths in New York and Connecticut. Then there was the first-ever locally transmitted case of mosquito-borne dengue fever in Southern California in October, followed by another case a couple of weeks later.

Scientists have warned that climate change would alter the prevalence and spread of disease in the U.S., particularly those caused by pathogens that are sensitive to temperature. This year’s spate of rare illnesses may have come as a surprise to the uninitiated, but researchers who have been following the way climate change influences disease say 2023 represents the continuation of a trend they expect will become more pronounced over time: The geographic distribution of pathogens and the timing of their emergence are undergoing a shift.

“These are broadly the patterns that we would expect,” said Rachel Baker, assistant professor of epidemiology, environment, and society at Brown University. “Things start moving northward, expand outside the tropics.” The number of outbreaks Americans see each year, said Colin Carlson, a global change biologist studying the relationship between global climate change, biodiversity loss, and emerging infectious diseases at Georgetown University, “is going to continue to increase.”

That’s because climate change can have a profound effect on the factors that drive disease, such as temperature, extreme weather, and even human behavior. A 2021 study found water temperature was among the top environmental factors affecting the distribution and abundance of Naegleria fowleri, which thrives in water temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit but can also survive frigid winters by forming cysts in lake or pond sediment. The amoeba infects people when it enters the nasal canal and, from there, the brain. “As surface water temperatures increase with climate change, it is likely that this amoeba will pose a greater threat to human health,” the study said.

Vibrio bacteria, which has been called the “microbial barometer of climate change,” is affected in a similar way. The ocean has absorbed the vast majority of human-caused warming over the past century and a half, and sea surface temperatures, especially along the nation’s coasts, are beginning to rise precipitously as a result. Studies that have mapped Vibrio vulnificus growth show the bacteria stretching northward along the eastern coastline of the U.S. in lockstep with rising temperatures. Hotter summers also lead to more people seeking bodies of water to cool off in, which may influence the number of human exposures to the bacteria, a study said. People get infected by consuming contaminated shellfish or exposing an open wound — no matter how small — to Vibrio-contaminated water.

Mosquitoes breed in warm, moist conditions and can spread diseases like dengue when they bite people. Studies show the species of mosquito that carries dengue, which is endemic in many parts of the Global South, is moving north into new territory as temperatures climb and flooding becomes more frequent and extreme. A study from 2019 warned that much of the southeastern U.S. is likely to become hospitable to dengue by 2050.

Other warmth-loving pathogens and carriers of pathogens are on the move, too — some of them affecting thousands of people a year. Valley fever, a fungal disease that can progress into a disfiguring and deadly illness, is spreading through a West that is drier and hotter than it used to be. The lone star tick, an aggressive hunter that often leaves the humans it bites with a life-long allergy to red meat, is expanding northward as winter temperatures grow milder and longer breeding seasons allow for a larger and more distributed tick population.

The effect that rising temperatures have on these diseases doesn’t necessarily signal that every death linked to a brain-eating amoeba or Vibrio that occurred this year wouldn’t have happened in the absence of climate change — rare pathogens were claiming lives long before anthropogenic warming began altering the planet’s dynamics.

Future analyses may look at the outbreaks that took place in 2023 individually to determine whether rising temperatures or some other climate change-related factor played a role. What is clear is that climate change is creating more opportunities for rare infectious diseases to crop up. Daniel R. Brooks, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto and author of a book on climate change and emerging diseases, calls this “pathogen pollution,” or “the accumulation of a lot of little emergences.”

State and local health departments have few tools at their disposal for predicting anomalous disease outbreaks, and doctors often aren’t familiar with diseases that aren’t endemic to their region.

But health institutions can take steps to limit the spread of rare climate-driven pathogens. Medical schools could incorporate climate-sensitive diseases into their curricula so their students know how to recognize these burgeoning threats no matter where in the U.S. they eventually land.

A rapid test for Naegleria fowleri in water samples already exists and could be used by health departments to test pools and other summer-time hot spots for the amoeba. States could conduct real-time monitoring of beaches for Vibrio bacteria via satellite. Cities can monitor the larvae of the mosquito species that spreads dengue and other diseases and spray pesticides to reduce the numbers of adult mosquitoes.

“If we were looking proactively for pathogens before they caused disease, we could better anticipate local outbreaks,” Brooks said. In other words, he said, we should be “finding them before they find us.”

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Own a restaurant and can't find a waiter? Use a service robot

2024/01/01

Kids love him. Even senior citizens have a soft spot for him: The robot "Peanut" has to show what he can do as a waiter-on-wheels.His temporary boss is so far impressed by the new addition to her staff. 

Michael Bauer/dpa

"Here's your food," whispers the robot at the airfield restaurant in Gelnhausen, some 45 kilometres east of Frankfurt.

"Please take the food from tray one."

The guest complies, reaching for the plate full of steaming meat, gravy and mashed potatoes.

"Press the screen to confirm," says a voice from the serving trolley. The robot concludes by wishing the patron a hearty appetite. Then the monitor's face with big googly eyes and a red kissy mouth smiles.

"I'm a hard-working waiter. I'm happy to serve you," says the robot.

The rolling waiter clearly has self-confidence and the right attitude for this job. With this table served, robot "Peanut" rolls back to its regular spot, playing a classical melody. It waits at the counter to see if restaurant owner Veronika Döll has any new orders for it, such as delivering coffee cups or collecting used utensils and plates from another table.

"Robi is a valuable help when I'm alone at the counter or in service," praises Döll. "The general shortage of staff in the catering industry is also a big issue for us."

At the end of October, Döll was given her robotic helper free of charge for a total of four weeks. The project is organized by the Spessart Tourism marketing agency in south-western Germany with the support of the Main-Kinzig district and the Hanau Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

"We're in touch a lot with the hotel and catering industry in the region, where the shortage of skilled workers is a major issue," says Bernhard Mosbacher, managing director of Spessart Tourism. That's why they came up with the idea of trialing the use of service robots, to see whether that would help catering businesses, which would ultimately also strengthen tourism.

The project is scheduled to run for a total of two years. The restaurant on the edge of the airfield is the second station - and ideally suited because it is at ground level, has no steps and has a wooden floor allowing Peanut to roll easily. The project is being scientifically supported by Heilbronn University.

Mosbacher says that there is great interest in the project. Seven companies have already signed up. "After the deployment in Gelnhausen, it will continue seamlessly. We also want to test the robots in different areas," he says.

"The first test was in a hotel, now here in the airport restaurant, then a snack bar and a rehabilitation hospital. And that's where I see huge potential."

Peanut is being provided by the company BZB Bürozentrum in Gelnhausen. "We deliberately tried to make the robot cute," says Managing Director Marc Ihl. This should help it to be appealing to guests and reduce any scepticism. In addition to Peanut, the programme also includes Schorsch and another, as yet unnamed robot.

Schorsch, the little nephew of Peanut so to speak and built by a different manufacturer, was used in a hotel during the first test. You can type a text into Schorsch and it will then read it out, says Ihl.

It can even speak in the local Hessian dialect, he says. Peanut doesn't have such linguistic capabilities, but has fixed phrases programmed in.

Service robot Schorsch is able to read out text that you type into it.

 Boris Roessler/dpa

Ihl reports that Schorsch was a hit when he was used at a children's birthday party in the hotel. "He sang a birthday song that went down really well."

The children also loved Peanut, the robot working at the airport restaurant, says the owner. "They like to run after him because he always dodges and they find it really funny. They really want to sit on it."

However, she was also amazed that her guests over 70 reacted very positively to the robot. Of course, there were also sceptics who thought that the service robot would take away the personal touch.

"But I'm always with the guests in person and take their orders," says Döll. The robot can't do that, just like it can't pour beer.

According to Ihl, Schorsch, Peanut and their nameless companion cost €12,000 to €14,000 ($13,150 to $15,300) if you want to buy them. "But we also offer them for rent at rates of between €450 and €520 per month," says the managing director.

The hotel and catering industry in the German state of Hesse is "very open" to automated applications in order to counter the shortage of staff and skilled workers, the industry association Dehoga says.

In service, the use of such robots could shorten walking distances or transfer heavy loads to the technical volunteer. "Basically, it makes sense to use them where they work well," says Steffen Ackermann, vice president of the Hotel and Catering Association Dehoga Hesse.

However, robots cannot replace personal contact with guests, an "essential part of the catering experience."

As far as he knows, the response from guests has been consistently positive, says Ackermann. "The first time you come into contact with a volunteer like this is an interesting experience."

© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
DPA

Overseas figures reject prosecution accusations in Hong Kong trial of Jimmy Lai

2024/01/03


By Jessie Pang and Edward Cho

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Several overseas activists, right campaigners and politicians named in Hong Kong's national security trial of democrat Jimmy Lai have rejected claims by a government prosecutor that they colluded with the newspaper publisher.

Lai, 76, founder of now-shuttered pro-democracy paper Apple Daily and a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party, faces two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces - including calling for sanctions against Hong Kong and Chinese officials - under a national security law China imposed in 2020.

He is also charged with conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

"Hang in there," a supporter shouted to Lai before Wednesday's proceedings began, as he sat in a glass-enclosed dock surrounded by prison guards.

Earlier, prosecutor Anthony Chau accused Lai of conspiring with activist Andy Li, a paralegal, Chan Tsz-wah, exiled activist Finn Lau, Britain-based rights campaigner Luke de Pulford, Japanese politician Shiori Yamao, U.S. financier Bill Browder and others to lobby foreign countries for sanctions.

Some of these individuals rejected the accusations.

"Jimmy had nothing whatsoever to do with any of my work on Hong Kong at all," Luke de Pulford, the head of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), said on social network X.

"But Jimmy's case isn't about truth. It's about delivering Beijing's narrative."

IPAC, a group of more than 300 lawmakers in 33 countries, condemned attempts to implicate several of its members in the "sham" trial, saying in a statement these were an "unacceptable infringement of the rights of foreign citizens".

Self-exiled Hong Kong activist Finn Lau, now based in Britain, also said on X that Lai was not involved in any of his advocacy work for human rights and democracy, while calling for the immediate release of Lai and others.

At least seven others have been accused of being Lai's agents or intermediaries in requesting sanctions.

These include former U.S. Army General Jack Keane, former U.S. deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former U.S. consul general to Hong Kong James Blair Cunningham and the founder of Hong Kong Watch, Benedict Rogers.

"The idea that it is a crime for him (Lai) to speak to politicians, business leaders, international media and activists, as well as myself as a former diplomat, is ludicrous in the extreme," Cunningham said in a statement.

Rogers said on X that Lai's alleged criminal interactions with various foreigners "ought to be regarded as entirely normal legitimate activity" for a newspaper publisher.

The trial demonstrated "just how dramatically and extensively Hong Kong's basic freedoms and the rule of law have been dismantled," he added.

At Wednesday's hearing, Chau showed the court videos, scanned Apple Daily articles and Whatsapp messages from Lai's personal phone.

He said they showed Lai directed one of his executives on how to mobilise more protesters and contacted former British governor Chris Patten.

Chau said Lai directed an assistant to liaise with Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn to invite Patten to make a video appealing to people to subscribe to Apple Daily in May 2020.

Chau also accused Lai of launching an English-language news website that month, in a push to get foreign countries to "impose sanctions" against China and Hong Kong.

Chau added that Lai directed one of his executives to launch a "One Hongkonger, One Letter to Save Hong Kong" campaign.

Such letters were meant to be sent to Donald Trump, then president of the United States, to ask him to confront China over the June 2020 national security law that outlawed crimes like collusion with foreign forces, setting jail terms of life.

In a statement on Wednesday, the commissioner's office of China's foreign ministry in Hong Kong described Lai as an "agent and pawn of foreign anti-China forces, who has blatantly colluded with external forces to endanger national security."

It also criticised some foreigners named in the trial for "rebelling against China", slandering its policies in the city and "interfering with Hong Kong's judicial justice".

Both the United States and Britain have called for Lai's immediate release, saying his trial is politically motivated.

Hong Kong authorities dispute claims that Lai will not receive a fair trial, saying all are equal before the law and the national security law has brought stability to the city after mass protests in 2019.

(Additional reporting by Dorothy Kam; Editing by Stephen Coates and Clarence Fernandez)

© Reuters

As death toll in Gaza rises, Israeli officials fear possible genocide charges at ICJ

Julia Conley,

 Common Dreams
January 2, 2024 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (AFP Photo/Dan Balilty)

Top officials in the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli government have reportedly been warned by a top legal expert that the International Court of Justice could issue an injunction requiring the country to halt its bombardment of Gaza, following a motion filed by South Africa last week.

Haaretz reported that the Israeli "security establishment and the state attorney's office are concerned" that the court could soon take action to force a cease-fire to protect civilian lives.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi is among those who have been warned that South Africa's petition could be successful, the outlet reported, and a hearing on how the government should deal with the matter was held Monday at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

As Common Dreamsreported last week, South Africa said in its complaint to the ICJ that it is "gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants," and called on the ICJ to take action to force Israel to "immediately cease" its attacks on Gaza's 2.3 million residents.

At least 21,978 Palestinians have been killed and 57,697 have been injured in Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza since the IDF began its bombardment in retaliation for Hamas' assault on southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,139 people.

Top officials in Israel have made numerous statements suggesting their overarching goal is to clear Gaza and the West Bank of all Palestinian residents, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir saying Monday that the fighting presents an "opportunity" for Gaza residents to leave and for Israel to expand its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Previously, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the so-called "voluntary migration" of Palestinians is the goal, while President Isaac Herzog said all civilians in Gaza are "responsible" for Hamas' attack and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the military would collectively punish Palestinians in Gaza, whom he called "human animals," for the October 7 attack.

Professor Eliav Lieblich, an expert on international law at Tel Aviv University, told Haaretz that such statements could be viewed by the ICJ as evidence of intent to harm civilians in Gaza.

"Genocide is a violation, the proof of which in court requires two elements," Lieblich told the outlet. "First, you have to show intention of annihilation, and second—certain actions in the field that promote this intention. According to South Africa, the intention is proven by statements of senior Israeli figures and a public atmosphere of erasing or flattening Gaza, and the widespread harm to civilians and the hunger in Gaza show the factual element of the deed."

"In general, it's hard to prove an intention of genocide because no public statements to that effect are made during the fighting," Lieblich added. "But these irresponsible statements about erasing Gaza will require Israel to explain why they don't reflect such an intention."

Author and activist Naomi Klein pointed out that while Israel does not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which investigates accusations of war crimes and prosecutes individuals, it is a party to the Genocide Convention, which allows the ICJ to deal with judicial disputes between countries, including when they are accused of genocide.

A determination by the ICJ that Israel has failed to stop a genocide by its military forces or has committed genocidal acts against Palestinian civilians wouldn't necessarily mean that an injunction "would be immediately enforced," Lieblich told Haaretz. "But if it determines in a ruling or even a temporary injunction that a suspicion exists that Israel is committing genocide, you have to think about what this would say for the historical narrative. For this reason, too, the proceeding must be taken seriously."

The ICJ is also considering a complaint made by Ukraine regarding Russia's invasion and a complaint against Myanmar about its persecution of the Rohingya minority group.

"South Africa's complaint is intended to add Israel to this very disreputable group, and thereby also embarrass the U.S. as its ally," Lieblich told Haaretz.

Despite the fact that a majority of Americans support the call for a cease-fire in Gaza, the U.S. government has continued providing Israel with military support and defending its actions.

Independent journalist Sam Husseini wrote Monday that a volunteer has compiled a list of international officials who cease-fire advocates can get in touch with directly to pressure other governments to back South Africa's petition.

World Beyond War and RootsAction have also launched actions to pressure other countries to support South Africa at the ICJ.

"If a majority of the world's nations call for a cease-fire, yet fail to press for prosecution of Israel—what is to stop Israel from ethnically cleansing all Palestinians?" reads World Beyond War's letter, which it urged supporters to send to governments that have been critical of Israel. "For that matter, what is to stop other nations from repeating a horror of this magnitude?"

Why Trump is rising in the polls — and why American capitalism is so rotten

Robert Reich
December 31, 2023

Donald Trump, Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago (Photo via AFP)

As we barrel toward the fateful year of 2024, many of you have asked why Trump is rising in the polls despite his increasingly explicit neofascism, and why Biden is falling despite a good economy. Fearing the worst, you ask what can be done to preserve American democracy.

These are hugely important questions, and they fit so directly into our series on reconciling the common good with American capitalism that I thought today would be an occasion to tackle them.

Trump’s increasing neofascism

Trump’s angry words have escalated beyond his previous two campaigns.

On Christmas Eve, Trump let go with a mixture of anger and self-pity while making multiple false or questionable claims. He posted: “THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, LIED TO CONGRESS, CHEATED ON FISA, RIGGED A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ALLOWED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, TO INVADE OUR COUNTRY, SCREWED UP IN AFGHANISTAN, & JOE BIDEN’S MISFITS & THUGS, LIKE DERANGED JACK SMITH, ARE COMING AFTER ME, AT LEVELS OF PERSECUTION NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR COUNTRY???”

On Christmas Day, when Joe Biden and most other world leaders were wishing peace, Trump sent wishes to “world Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country.” Referring to Biden and Special Counsel Jack Smith, he said: “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

He has referred to the upcoming election as “the final battle.” “Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.” “Our country is going to hell.”

He claims that “the blood-soaked streets of our once great cities are cesspools of violent crimes.”

His rhetoric of cataclysm and apocalypse bears increasing similarity to that of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. He says undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and describes their movement across our borders as “an invasion. This is like a military invasion. Drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country at record levels. We’ve never seen anything like it. They’re taking over our cities.”

He promises to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”

He claims that this is “the most dangerous time in the history of our country.”

Meanwhile, Trump is threatening to destroy the core institutions of American democracy and to rule as authoritarians in other countries do — authoritarians whom he praises.

He is signaling that, unlike in his first term in the White House, he will appoint aides and Cabinet officials who will not restrain him. He says he will turn the Justice Department into a vehicle of retribution against his political enemies, replace civil servants with loyalists, and become a “dictator on day one.”

“He’s told us what he will do,” Liz Cheney (a Republican member of Congress until her criticism of Trump led to her defeat in a Republican primary) warns:

“People who say, ‘Well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances’ don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted.”

Why then do so many Americans support Trump?

Given this, why does poll after poll show Trump leading Biden?

Granted that polls this long before an election are not predictive of the outcome and that most Americans have not yet focused on the election, it’s still remarkable that seven separate polls show Trump in the lead; not one shows Biden leading.

True, many Americans are unhappy with the economy under Biden, starting with the high prices of housing, food, and other necessities. High mortgage costs mixed with low housing inventory and elevated prices have put housing out of reach for a sizable number of families.


It’s possible that much of this will correct itself over 2024 as the Fed lowers short-term interest rates.

But I believe something deeper is going on — something that has been worsening for decades. It doesn’t justify anyone supporting Trump, but it may help explain his support.

In short, the “American dream” has been vanishing.

In 1931, historian James Truslow Adams wrote in his book The Epic of America that the American dream is “of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement,” and “regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Adams was writing at the height of the Great Depression. His American dream became reality after World War II as America’s middle class grew, almost everyone’s income rose, and their children did even better than they did.

Americans born in the early 1940s had a 92% chance of obtaining a higher household income than their parents, once they became adults. They would live out the American dream.

But Americans born in the 1980s have only a 50-50 shot at doing better than their parents.

Over the past 40 years, the earnings of the typical American have barely budged (adjusted for inflation), while the compensation for CEOs of large corporations has skyrocketed to more than 300 times the pay of their typical worker — from 20 times in the 1950s and ’60s.

There has not been such a long period of wealth stagnation since the Great Depression. Where did the wealth go? The wealthiest 1% of Americans now bring home more than 40% of the country’s total income, up from 10% in the 1950s and ’60s. And they control 31% of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 50% has only 2.5%.

Perhaps the clearest sign of our problems is the stagnation and decline of life expectancy. In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country. Now it ranks lower than its peers and lower even than many poorer countries. The life spans of working-class men without college degrees have actually shrunk.

Anger and frustration

The formula for a better life used to be simple: Play by the rules and work hard.


No longer. To me, this fact more than any other explains the public’s sour mood. It also explains why Trump’s angry rants against the “deep state” establishment, immigrants, “coastal elites,” and “socialists” hit a responsive chord in 2016, and may do so again in 2024.

Most Americans don’t pay a great deal of attention to national economic indicators showing how fast the economy is growing, how many new jobs are being created, and the declining rate of inflation.

Instead, they look at their own efforts to create a better life for themselves and their children. And those efforts no longer seem to pay off.

An October 19-24 Wall Street Journal/NORC poll found that only 36% of voters said the American dream — “that if you work hard you’ll get ahead” — still holds true.

This was down from 53% and 48% in similar polls in 2012 and 2016, respectively.

An NBC News poll conducted November 10-14 found that a record-low 19% of voters said they feel confident life for their children’s generation will be better than for their own generation, while 75% were not confident their children will be better off.

As the American dream fades — and as inequalities of income and wealth soar — many Americans feel increasingly angry and frustrated. Take a look at these charts:



THE CONVENTIONAL explanation for the decline of the American dream posits that globalization and technological change have made most Americans less competitive.

But another — perhaps larger — cause is the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite.

Meanwhile, centers of countervailing power that between the 1930s and 1980s enabled America’s middle and lower-middle classes to offset the power of large corporations and Wall Street have withered. These included labor unions, small businesses, family farms, the civil rights movement, grassroots political movements, and political parties anchored at the local and state levels.

As I’ve discussed in the previous weeks of our Friday series, this imbalance of power has allowed America’s corporate and financial elite to reorganize the market for their own benefit.

Americans correctly perceive that our economic and political system is now rigged.

When most people stop believing they and their children have a fair chance at the American dream, public trust in the major institutions of society declines — as has happened over the past decade and a half in America.

For the same reason, many become vulnerable to the rants of a demagogue who promises radical change by taking a wrecking ball to democracy.

Let me emphasize again that an explanation is not a justification. There is no moral justification for supporting Donald Trump. But I think it important to understand why many Americans do.

The real choice ahead

I want to end this letter on an optimistic note. American history provides some direction as well as some reason for comfort.

In three periods, America successfully readapted the rules of the political economy to constrain the political power of wealthy minorities at the top: the Jacksonian 1830s, the turn-of-the-20th-century reform era, and the New Deal 1930s.

We can do so again.

I believe there’s political will to do so — but only if Americans understand the stakes and the true choice we face: between making the system truly fair and democratic by reducing the power over it of large corporations, Wall Street, and the ultra-wealthy or losing our democracy to a neofascist dictatorship.

The question is whether Joe Biden is capable of clarifying this choice for America and committing himself to an agenda to revive democracy — including getting big money out of politics, reforming the Electoral College, and reviving voting rights.

Can he be sufficiently bold and convincing? Or do Democrats need someone else as their candidate who can be?

What do you think?

Next week, we’ll look at the real center of power in America: America’s oligarchy.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

'An unbreakable plurality of the GOP explicitly wants fascism': defense analyst

Brad Reed

RAW STORY
January 3, 2024 

Thousands of Trump supporters gather at the Supreme Court to show their support for President Trump after the election. (Shutterstock.com)


Defense analyst Brynn Tannehill has taken a look at recent polling of Republican primary voters and has come to the sobering conclusion that many of them want former President Donald Trump to be a dictator.

Writing in the New Republic, Tannehill notes that a recent poll of GOP voters showed that Trump's Nazi-esque rhetoric about migrants "poisoning the blood" of the nation made 42 percent of respondents more likely to support him, while only 28 percent said it made them less likely to support him.

"About half of Republicans hear Trump’s rhetoric and think, 'Yes, this exactly what I want,'" he writes. "Which is to say, an unbreakable plurality of the GOP explicitly wants fascism."

While the fascist bloc of the GOP may not constitute a majority of voters in the country, Tannehill points to historical precedent showing they don't need to be in order to impose a potential dictatorship on the country.

"When Milton Mayer visited Germany in the early 1950s to interview former low-level members of the Nazi party, he concluded that perhaps only a million out of 70 million Germans were 'Fanatiker' (fanatics or true believers)—the rest were just along for the perks or to simply avoid unwanted scrutiny for lack of ideological purity," Tannehill explains. "In my own experience as an analyst in U.S. Central Command who studied insurgency, I estimated that you only needed 10 to 15 percent of the population to be supportive of the insurgents to get a situation like what I saw in Iraq in 2005–2006."

In other words, says Tannehill, "you don’t need all that many people dedicated to dictatorship, theocracy, or any other awful possibility to absolutely collapse a country into barbarism."


Read the full analysis here.

 

'There will be camps' if Trump wins: Academic issues stern warning about fascism's return

Kathleen Culliton

RAW STORY
January 2, 2024 

Donald Trump (AFP)

Donald Trump’s return to the White House would instate an authoritarian rule comparable to fascist leaders of 1930s Europe, an Ivy League academic and Forbes columnist argued Tuesday.

“There will be camps,” wrote Columbia University lecturer Tom Watson. “We will be Spain under Franco. Or worse.”

Watson, in Tuesday’s edition of his newsletter The Liberal, describes a bleak future for the U.S. under a Trump administration he fears would dismantle checks and balances to the detriment of those who do not identify as white and male.

“Ethnic and religious minorities will suffer. Millions will be targeted because of sexual orientation. Immigrants will suffer,” Watson writes.

“Criminal gangs will run the Federal government and even deep blue states will be hard-pressed to resist the pull of authoritarian rule.”

But the silver lining of Watson’s looming storm cloud is a mix of optimism and odds: “I think we will win.”

Watson argues that President Joe Biden’s position is much stronger than conservatives, critics, and the media would have Americans believe.

“Biden’s strengths are the kind that win elections,” Watson writes. “And you know who agrees? State parties in swing and blue states.”

Watson challenges the “Dems in disarray” critique — arguing the liberal party is well-funded, well-organized and activated — and urges readers to remember Democrats' strong swing-state showing in the 2022 midterm elections.


“Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states,” Watson writes.

“That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.”

But Watson warns of real challenges in the months to follow, including voter suppression, bigotry, the “clickiness” of Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the slow pace of the criminal court system.


“The thunderstorm is coming,” Watson concludes. “Consider these hard truths without turning away."

Read "The Gathering Storm" in entirety here.

‘Full Hitler’: Trump’s push for dictatorship to be focus of Biden campaign

David Edwards

RAW STORY
January 2, 2024 

Joe Biden, Donald Trump (Photo by Brendan Smialakowski for AFP)

President Joe Biden's campaign is preparing to run against Donald Trump as if the Republican candidate were Adolf Hitler.

CNN reported that Biden's campaign operatives are being careful to slowly increase the campaign rhetoric so voters do not get numb to the arguments that Trump is behaving like a dictator.

"[A]s some of the younger aides on Biden's reelection campaign have been grimly joking, it's about when to go 'full Hitler' – when the leading Republican candidate's speeches and actions go so far that the Biden team goes all the way to a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump 'parroted' him," the CNN report said.

Trump has joked that he would behave as a dictator on day one of his next presidency. And the candidate recently hinted on social media that his goals were "corruption," "revenge," and "dictatorship."

ALSO READ: More questions arise about college’s ‘pink slime,’ conservative PAC-backed publisher hire

"You have this moment in the first quarter where he is continuing to go full MAGA extremist now in order to shore up support in his own base," a senior campaign aide explained to CNN. "While he may be successful in that effort, if we do our job, we'll point out that everything he's saying is extreme and unpopular."

The campaign aide suggested Biden's strategy would not change much even if Trump is not the Republican nominee

"There's zero distance between these [GOP candidates] on the insane and dangerous worldview for which they're advocating," the senior campaign aide said. "Our ability to develop a contrast does not change based on who has the nomination at this point."