The Baltic Dry Index, which measures the price of shipping dry goods globally, has dropped to its lowest known point in the past few days at 402. Other indicators too are pointing to a rapid downturn in export shipping volumes.
On its own, the BDI low index may reflect nothing more than an oversupply of shipping , but taken with other data measures, indications are that international trade is slowing at a rapid rate globally.
If this is the case, then we are likely to see a further deterioration in commodity prices, particularly oil prices, as demand slumps, an increase in unemployment in the industrial sectors globally and an increasing shrinkage in consumer spending.
And naturally, that decrease i trade globally is simply because people are buying less! Here’s a neat little Bloomberg graph which shows the trend for retail sales in the United States.. People simply seem to be buying less ‘stuff’
Because the human world’s current survival culture is predicated on continuous growth in production of things, such a reversal will have significant implications for poverty, hopelessness and hunger in the short to medium term. It will require no less than a massive restructuring of what it means to be human on this planet, for us all to get to a state of sustainable equilibrium, and to finally recognise our equality with the other species we co-habit the world with.
On the bright side, the elimination of ‘growth’ or even a reversal in growth, will be a significant bonus to the world’s environment. The diminishing need to use more coal and gas, to mine more minerals, to build more cities, dwellings and transport networks and consume more generally, will mean less of what is left of our natural environment will become despoiled.
As the ‘Geography of Transport Systems ‘ notes succinctly, there are many factors which influence the BDI price; lowering oil prices for ships ( bunker oil), too many ships in the market and lastly and likely most significantly, lowering demand for bulk goods. OIl process are approximately 40% of the price and there certainly has been a glut in bulk tankers, but we also know bulk commodity prices ( iron ore, copper etc etc) have dropped precipitously due to much reduced demand from primarily China. But a drop of this magnitude foretells something much bigger in the wind…
Postscript
And here’s the BDI at 29th January …
And even Bloomberg might be coming to a similar consensus as of 29th January…
Over and over again, for the past 100 years or more, we have been taught that homo sapiens are superior to all other species on this planet based on ‘scientific’ analysis. A recent piece of research by Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, Ph.D.,Associate professor and a researcher at Bio-Clim-Land Centre of Excellence in Tomsk, Russia, once again scientifically refutes this self-fulfilling assumption; by refusing to accept the completely scientifically invalid, but highly respected method of using ones own definitions to prove what we believe to be the truth.
In Dr Gatti’s research, he substituted visual self- recognition of a dog in a mirror, with various dog scents . Humans’ visual senses are one of our prime methods of relating to the world; and in very specific ways and using particular light frequencies and environments. Dogs’ prime sense mode however, is scent, and (surprise, surprise) in Dr Gatti’s research, they appear exceedingly good at self-recognition when that sense mode is used. Homo sapiens deem self-recognition to be one of the key signs of ‘intelligence’.
By both defining what we as humans mean as ‘intelligent’ and by using self-fulfilling processes, (tautological arguments and methods), we conveniently maintain the fiction that we are superior beings. Our strength as a species is also our (and this planet’s) potential downfall. Our capacity to communicate and learn new skills from other members of our primate species has allowed us to effectively manipulate our environment (with no recognition of the long-term damage to other species or the planet’s wellbeing). That capacity to learn from fellow species members effectively means; as Himmler well knew, that sufficient repetition is enough for each of us to believe any situation is in fact the ‘right’ situation. Hence exploitation of the planet, killing of our own and other species, paving over our world with large blocks of concrete and tar are all ‘normal’ things to do. How could they be not? – we do them and everyone acquiesces, so they must be right.
The reality of our self-willed blindness is ironically plain to see. Just yesterday in Paris, we were confronted with the supposed leaders of humanity coming up with yet one more real solution to climate change: a commitment to not allow our planet to raise its temperature by more than 2 degrees. Every leader spoke with a straight face and apparently believed what they were saying.
In reality, such a commitment is impossible;- we are inexorably heading towards climate change temperatures far in excess of 2 degrees, even if we stop using any more carbon right now – today. In addition, every speaker talked about reducing climate change through ‘sustainable progress’ – in reality, humankind’s definition of ‘progress’ is the production of more things for more humans to consume using lots of energy to do so; -‘sustainable progress’ is an oxymoron- it’s ‘logic’ makes no sense – we cannot keep ‘progressing’ and live in a sustainable world. The only solution to climate change is a steady state civilization- and that means no more consuming, except that which can be used over and over again.
But no politician in their right mind would ever mention such a proposition. They would never be voted in again or receive any more donations from the ‘progressive’ corporations that fund their political campaigns. We are therefore as humans, locked into a process that inevitably leads to ecological disaster. Just maybe we will have a sufficiently large warning shock before the final collapse, to start turning this oil tanker around- just maybe…
But, I am not relying on homo sapiens’ ‘intelligence’ to save this planet. Our ‘intelligence’ continues to blind us that we are in fact equal partners on this planet with all the other species that inhabit it. Without them, we die.
The recent election by the British Labour Party members of a new person to head the party, may foreshadow a new groundswell of public opinion to negate the years of right-wing propaganda that has enveloped many Western party structures in the past few decades. The Labour Parties and Social Democrats of Europe had become bought enterprises- vehicles for corporate business to make shady deals, rather than political parties representing those who have been disadvantaged, and the factory working class.
While the gap between rich and poor across the Western world has widened significantly (none more so in my own country of New Zealand), as a result of these neo-con or “New Labour” business policies, we have also seen a marked decline in the industrial bases of all of those countries ( save Germany), with industrial output outsourced, or simply acquired by businesses predominantly in China. That decline in western industrial production has resulted in a marked decline in the numbers of the “working class” (ie factory workers). Instead, the service industries (primarily tourism, the hospitality industry, and the provision of support to the disadvantaged) have blossomed, but the collective power of their respective trade unions, has not. Thus the collective capacity to negotiate or confront the widening economic gap, has dwindled as the need has become greater.
Along with increasing disparity; perhaps even because of it, we have seen the power of media manipulators who represent the rich, consolidated. The media empires controlled by people like Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg ,Ted Turner, and more recently the Qatari ruling dictatorship via Al Jazeera, now have the capacity to bombard the public day and night using multiple media. That barrage of media is unremittingly designed to favour the perspectives of the rich. While western democracies still retain some capacity to deliver independent and non-partisan news; that capacity is a minute proportion compared to the deluge of “news” delivered by the media moguls. Thus the mogul’s news is seen by the general public as “mainstream”, “orthodox” and not “radical”, and somehow because of that, the real legitimate news.
So, returning to Jeremy Corbyn: will he be able to withstand the certain onslaught of “mainstream” media condemning him as a ‘radical’, ‘communist’, ‘anti-semitic’, ‘terrorist’, ’crazy’, ‘neolithic’, ‘out-of-touch –with –reality’, ‘has-been’ politician. That war has already begun in the U.K. media. See the Daily Mail’s most recent diatribe here . Or the U.K. Conservative Party’s somewhat bizarre atempt at scaremongering below.
And will Mr Corbyn stick to his promises should be come to power in Britain? Or will he, like the Syriza Party in Greece, fold under the intense pressures of other more “business-friendly” governments? If he can indeed keep to his political promises, and be elected as Prime Minster of England in the UKs general election of Thursday 7 May 2020, and not be pulled to pieces by the mainstream media dogs in the interim, he will have done our international democratic landscape a great service; and potentially as service to our environment and an end to senseless wars (senseless other than to line the pockets of politicians, war manufacturers and international re-development agencies) . May he be one of the first markers of a return to true democratic pluralism rather than oligarchy, along with the demoralised Syrizas of Greece, the Podemos of Spain and the other radical truly left-wing groups re-forming all over Europe.
I note with pleasure Mr Corbyn’s first political gesture on his election:- the singing of “The International” (completely tunelessly), in a London pub before his foray out to greet his fellow celebrants of his victory outside Parliament.
The International (The Red Flag) (first chorus)
The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its every fold.
So raise the scarlet standard high,
Beneath its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.
However, this return to representation of the disadvantaged, the marginalised and the impoverished must be matched by a new understanding of the urgent need of our species to co-exist with all the others on this planet. The old fight over the means of production (capitalism versus socialism/communism) must be replaced by one which questions at every turn, our need to produce and “grow” countries’ economies. A sustainable world for all the remaining species on this planet , along with an end to all wars, is an incredibly urgent goal for humanity at this late, late hour.
The swirl of humanity across the globe has been a constant since ancient times.
In my little corner of the world, the traversings and re-travsersings of the Polynesians across the wide Pacific, travelling thousands of miles in their double hulled canoes , was a constant over hundreds of years , settling both inhabited and uninhabited islands .
In Eurasia and across Africa, the flow of humanity has ocurred for millennia. Our species has been wanderers from our first arrival on this planet as a specific primate species, as the International Organisation for Migration website attests.
Having said that, we know that wars and natural disasters create the necessity for families to flee to safer ground, and safer countries. In addition the gross discrepancies in living standards between various populations across the globe creates a drive for those who consider themselves disadvantaged to travel to more prosperous environments.
None of this would be unremarkable -indeed it is an obvious response for any human to move to a better place- we are indeed nomads on this planet. What makes it remarkable at this moment are the obvious drivers behind the disasters and impoverished societies of those immigrants; and the fact that most of those drivers are created by the very countries the immigrants want to migrate to!
The devastation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria – to name just a few of the countries bombarded by Western countries; predominantly the U.S., U.K., France , Italy, and to some degree Germany, with a few tag-alongs from other Western European and non-European western governments elsewhere, is the most significant cause for the huge influx of refugees and migrants from the Middle East into Europe. The decision by the West to support the anti-government groups in Syria prolonged what would likely have been a short but brutal war by the Syrian dictatorship against a few western oriented groups and many more salafist sunni extremist groups. The decision by the U.S., the U.K. France and its proxies in Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey (not to mention Israel) to actively fund arm and train these terrorist groups, has created a life of hell for much of the Syrian population. unfortunately for the population of Yemen, the sea and land blockades by Saudi forces and their “allies” means those desperate Yemen peoples have no chance of escape from the war hell imposed by the Gulf dictatorships.
It is likely that, just as in Iraq and Libya the creation of totally destabilized middle east territories with no central governing structure and ripe for total exploitation, was exactly the intent of these Western governments. Now the chickens have come home to roost. While we know Western “intelligence” agencies are in fact far from being “intelligent”, we can anticipate that, even they, after first seeing the catastrophe that Iraq has become as a result of Western sanctions and military intervention, would understand the implications of repeating that exact same process in Libya and Syria. It is a supremely beautiful but vicious irony that those impoverished and desperate people from those brutalized countries are now “invading” the West . Well, that is what mainstream media would have us believe. Recent reports query for instance why suddenly, previously safe refugees in Turkey are now fleeing that country to Europe.
What would seem a just response therefore, would be for those countries involved in the defilement of Middle Eastern countries through war and economic rapacity, to take a commensurate number of refugees into their countries based on their military input into the ravagement of those destroyed environments. The United States will of course have to take many millions of refugees, as will the U.K; followed next by France, the Gulf dictatorships and Israel and some of the other western counties like Canada , Australia and New Zealand.
The BBC link here, gives a more detailed graphical analysis of the source, the routes and European destinations of refugees.
In addition, those western corporations and their complicit governments that have despoiled the vulnerable economies and environments of Africa ad other developing countries around the globe , will make corresponding redress to those countries in the tangible form of infrastructure development, re-development of sustainable agriculture and the return of environments to their former natural states as directed by the populations of those developing countries.
Michael Hudson, economist and historian, records the decision of those who gathered at Delphi in Greece on 22nd June 2015. The Declaration makes it very clear which way Greeks need to vote in their referendum in a weeks time: to remain with austerity and the Euro, or to depart; to decide whether to continue down the dead-end street of community’s lives being ruled by bankers and economists, or to choose community collaboration, democracy and consensus politics…
As Steve Keen makes it very clear, the Troika’s ambition is nothing less than the overthrow of an elected (Greek ) government by imposing impossible conditions that have resulted , and will continue to result, in the total impoverishment of all Greeks (barring the very wealthy) . Leaked IMF documents show clearly that even the IMF acknowledges that its proposed austerity measures will leave Greece with unsustainable debt by 2030.
And David Stockman argues, Prime Minister Tsipras’ stand against the Troika may signal a long overdue restructuring of the financial markets globally.
Finally; it may be useful to read William Polk’s very short outline of the modern Greek nation, to put things into some perspective along with Michael Hudson and William Black’s extremely damning analysis from the University of Missouri of the financial situation in Greece leading up to the Greek referendum on Sunday July 5th 2015.
Postscript
With more than 60% of the Greek voting populatoin rejecting further EU imposed austerity, more economists and political advisors appear to be coming out of the woodwork to reject the insanity of further sausterity on a country already on its knees.
And, subsequent to the Greek Government’s further round of capitulation to the EU, we have Peter Tenebrarum’s likely accurate assessment of where the sudden EU push for Greek Debt Relief is coming from…
And, subsequent to the draconian and childishly vindictive response by the German austerity kings and queens on 14th July , we have Larry Elliott’s analysis of why this new round of debt relief is doomed to fail. And here is a precis of the Greek ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis’ take on proceedings in Brussels.
In addition, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph notes 15/7/15 , the IMF ( and almost every significant ecomomist) is again noting the complete implausability and craziness of the ongoing austerity process imposed on Greece. The complete incompetence of the Eurozone leadership is revealed to all. What may benefit Germany in the short-term, will inevitably lead to its downfall in the long-term. The German government is now 70 years later, once more a pariah state. Total childish foolish arrogance and spitefulness once again dominates the German political landscape.
As Chris Hedges at Truthdig makes it clear in the following powerful paragraph; the Greeks are not the only ones whose needs are subsumed to the madness of neoliberalism and the ultimate destruction of this planet as it becomes a commodity.
The Greeks and the U.S. working poor endure the same deprivations because they are being assaulted by the same system—corporate capitalism. There are no internal constraints on corporate capitalism. And the few external constraints that existed have been removed. Corporate capitalism, manipulating the world’s most powerful financial institutions, including the Eurogroup, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve, does what it is designed to do: It turns everything, including human beings and the natural world, into commodities to be exploited until exhaustion or collapse. In the extraction process, labor unions are broken, regulatory agencies are gutted, laws are written by corporate lobbyists to legalize fraud and empower global monopolies, and public utilities are privatized. Secret trade agreements—which even elected officials who view the documents are not allowed to speak about—empower corporate oligarchs to amass even greater power and accrue even greater profits at the expense of workers. To swell its profits, corporate capitalism plunders, represses and drives into bankruptcy individuals, cities, states and governments. It ultimately demolishes the structures and markets that make capitalism possible. But this is of little consolation for those who endure its evil. By the time it slays itself it will have left untold human misery in its wake.
The latest Wikileaks release outlines the secret deals being conducted by Western state on behalf of international companies under the Trans Pacific Partnership deal, to ensure those companies can engage in whatever malpractice and destruction of the environment they choose to . If those companies object to anything a local state is doing to restrict their trade or profits, that state entity can be sued in a highly partial court of law without any jurisprudence standing (ie i totally biased without safety measures against conflict of interest of the legal agents involved.
If the consequences of the TPP were not so incredibly damaging for the environment and the future of this planet-this piece of negotiation would be seen as pure farce and another mighty demonstration of the woeful lack of intelligence of the political parties and individuals involved.
Common Dreams describes the bill as a “Fast track to Hell”; which in many respects, the deal is.
A Hell of climate hothouse change and unfettered environmental and species destruction; let alone a hell for human “consumers” of unregulated and unsafe products and significantly reduced capacity to respond to public health issues like rates of tobacco consumption . But more particularly it is a madhouse.
A truly insane drive to destroy the planet with unregulated commodification before any of us get the smallest opportunity to save our species and the other remaining species on this planet that are “useful” to us, from the wholesale destruction of this planet through the insanity of “market forces” .
That supposedly sane negotiators from all those Pacific countries could seriously consider this Partnership deal as some thing worthwhile to even consider for a moment is deeply disturbing, and is a spectacularly horrifying litmus test of how irrevocably the human species has departed from any sense of connection with the planet it depends upon to survive.
The signing of the TPP will surely show that the human species really doesn’t deserve this planet.
Postscript
Common Dreams identifies a further draft international treaty, the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), which will further strengthen the power of the international corporates.
All of this would make perfect sense if the only thing that mattered on this planet was making money (for the rich)….
And if any of us need a reminder, a Stanford University study, released June 19th 2015 notes what should be blindingly obvious to any one who looks around beyond their smartphone; that we have entered a massive species loss period which is likely to result in the extinction of our own species . Sawing off the limb we are sitting on, is the comment made by Paul Ehrlich , the lead researcher for the study…
A new piece of analysis of the likelihood of severe drought in the United States in the later half of the 21st century has made some dire predictions.. Entitled Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains, the article posits that the American Southwest ( The broad definition of the South-West includes nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah) and the Central Plains of the U.S. (includes Nebraska, Kansas, southern South Dakota and Minnesota, western Iowa and Missouri, and northern Oklahoma), will as a result of global warming and natural climate changes, endure increasingly longer periods of severe drought.- the worst in a thousand years.
The research argues that rainfall measurement and soil moisture levels over the past 100 years do not accurately indicate the drought potential in the United States.
The “mega-droughts” of the 12th and 13th centuries in North America will pale into insignificance compared to the impending droughts beginning to occur somewhere between 2030 and 2050. This drought will be compounded by the then very severe impacts of global warming, and the massive loss of groundwater and river depletion caused by unsustainable agricultural practices, fracking, and the large influx of human populations to the west over the preceding 100 years.
Benjamin Cook, a lead researcher for the study from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies , notes that the models also revealed that the “drying in the Southwest would result from a combination of less rain and greater soil evaporation due to higher temperatures. They were not as conclusive about less rain in the central Great Plains but all showed more evaporation there. “Even where rain may not change much, greater evaporation will dry out the soils,” Cook says.”
If this research is in fact correct, then perhaps, you might argue , this is payback time for the 200 years of devastation to the planet and horrific suffering inflicted on so many human beings by that experiment in global destruction – the United States.
But we must not forget that “innocent” human beings will undoubtedly die , and countless millions of unique species may well disappear from the face of the planet as a result of this calamity. Or perhaps, as many of the Plains tribes ave predicted, this is their opportunity to re-claim their destiny.
The rich of the West and mid-West will have no problem relocating to their houses in the eastern states or overseas. It is the poor of the US who will once again suffer as they did in the dust-bowl era. Will this extreme dislocation lead then to a resurgence in workers’ rights, of equality for all, and true non-oligarchic democracy? Or will it instead lead to a desperate grab for other, more fortunate, countries’ resources by what is still likely to be the largest military machine in the world? It is however indisputable that, over time, this environmental catastrophe will dramatically accelerate the United States’ transition to relatively minor international player .
Will those who assume the mantle of ‘international leadership” be less voracious and barbarous in their responses to international issues?-we will have to hope so.
A research paper published by Oxfam, published to coincide with the World Economic Forum at Davos in late January 2015, shows that the richest 1 percent have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014, and at this rate will be more than 50 percent by 2016. Members of this global elite had an average wealth of $2.7 million per adult in 2014.
In my view, the issue is less that the disparity between the rich “elite”‘ is widening, and more to do with how that rich “elite” use their power and influence. Provided people have enough to eat, good sanitation, clean water, safe housing and peaceful living environments, the issue of disparate incomes becomes less an issue of need , and more of perception and unfairness. Why should I be poor when you are rich, and you clearly have no more r right to those riches than I do, and certainly don’t use those riches in a way that benefits anyone other than yourself and your immediate clique?
The concern about the majority of the wealth and power and control resting with a minority of the word’s population is therefore not so much an issue of how the world’s “wealth” is shared, but the quality of the decisions that are now being made about our future world as a result of the disenfranchisement of decision-making from those who are connected to their local environment. That wealthy elite make their decisions on the property they own based almost exclusively on how much profit can be accrued through its exploitation.
The history of absentee landlords in Scotland and Ireland in the late 18th and 19th centuries is unequivocally clear on this, and a lesson for today , where more than 50% of the world will soon be owned owned by absentee owners.. The welfare of Scottish and Irish rentees on the land was of absolutely no concern to the landlord in most instances. Neither was the environmental destruction of the land of any concern, unless it impacted on profit or pleasure.
Those who remain connected to the land, particularly inter-generationally, have a much greater driver to ensure it remains sustainable for the long-term. Bad short-term decisions can undoubtedly still be made that destroy natural habitats and species, by those connected to the land, but an algorithm of exploitation based purely on short-term monetary gain, does not make sense to those who will inherit that land in the future.
As just one of so many examples, in New Zealand, the rise of dairy absentee millionaires and conglomerates who buy up large tracts of pasture land (which was once dense bush with a myriad of species within it) and then proceed to destroy the land through unsustainable exploitation of the water resources available to them and the long-term contamination of the water table with dairy foecal and nitrate pollutants. Once the profits have gone from the “business” and the land destroyed, those absentee landlords will take their money and move on to another more profitable exploitation option.
The rapid erosion of local ownership to land and property therefore is not simply and issue of equity or even poverty; but more importantly, just one more ingredient in that lethal recipe for environmental global disaster.
As Robert Parry wrote in Consortium News “If you wonder how the world could stumble into world war three – much as it did into world war one a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness that has enveloped virtually the entire US political/media structure over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats versus black hats took hold early and has proved impervious to facts or reason.”
But this impervious narrative is an essential component of the drive to crush the Russian economy with sanctions and lowered oil prices, along with the attempts to encircle China via the East Asian Pivot.
Much like the sanctions imposed on Iran for decades because of their fictional nuclear weapons development, every political player West and East knows that the fictional Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine (aside from the Crimea) are a wonderful excuse to attempt to economically destroy the country. It is virtually impossible for the sanctioned country to prove the absence of something that did not exist in the first place. But as Cuba has so ably proved in the past 50 years, alternative strategies are possible and even beneficial.
The impact of crashing oil prices -however temporary- on all the major oil producers- including Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar as well as Iran, Venezuela, Russia and the shale oil industries of the U.S. and Canada , are unknown and unpredictable. Did the powers-that-be in Washington and London consider what the impacts of plunging oil prices would have on their jihadists in Syria and Iraq and their consequent capacity to buy more men and equipment? or even consider that weakening oil prices will strengthen China’s economic position in the world?- we may never know…
In response to these threats , Russia and China have launched a whole swathe of economic agreements between themselves and with other neighbouring countries . As Pepe Escobar describes it, the development of the new silk road via high speed rail links between China and the rest of Asia and Europe has begun at a startling rapid pace and will result in a completely changed political/economic dynamic in the world within a very short space of time that will also be out of the reach of U.S. and U.K . interests.
There is therefore urgent need for the UK and US war economies to move fast to eliminate these new threats as Western economies start to crumble and their capacity to control markets and other state and non-entities is progressively reduced.
Perhaps that haste is the reason for the level of incompetency shown by the State Department in putting “their man” Natalie Jaresko as Ukraine’s new Finance Minister. The contempt shown to Eastern Europeans by the US government in the appointment of this corrupt US citizen and State Department official as Ukraine’s Finance Minister is staggering, but yet remarkable for the lack of a response from the (for now) subjugated Western Ukrainians. Or the even more absurd Obama reaction to some hacker group infiltrating Sony and threatening the company for its film which encourages the assassination of a living head of state – something for which the company could in fact be indicted for in an international court of law; (were there such a neutral international player)
The recent reports from the U.S on the types and extent of torture US officials are prepared to disclose, is a tiny drop in the ocean of the countless examples of the extent to which US and UK governments have long been prepared to enslave, murder, torture and destroy indiscriminately if it serves their interests. While the British Empire’s brutality against those of other skin colour should need no further explanation, it is often useful to point out that the United States’ history of state terrorism and genocide is also a very long one; beginning with the terror and genocide against the Plains Indians in the late 18th century, to the US’s brutal colonizations of the Philippines and Caribbean in the 19th century and the genocide committed in the name of “democracy and freedom” in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq ( to name just a few). The 21st century is no exception to this long litany of terror, torture and murder by these two so-called “civilised” countries. The scale of devastation and horror inflicted by these two countries against other (‘foreign’) populations, has no equal.
That is not to say that those state entities the United States and the UK wish to destroy are themselves necessarily humanitarian and democratic; but it can be argued that -as in the case of post 1917 Russia, Weimar Germany, North Korea and Cambodia; where civic institutions are crushed by an overwhelmingly powerful outside force, then despotism can freely reign.
The United States , the United Kingdom and a few other ex-colonial powers, have no such excuse. It is interesting to note, that up until the development of the “Terrorist” threat post 9/11, the actions of those two states against their own citizens had been relatively benign; their emphasis has traditionally been on harming external states for commercial benefit; that locus appears to be changing into a more wide-ranging capacity to harm or destroy any individuals or entity within or without their state borders that impinge on the powerful “elite”s capacity to extract more money for itself. In all probability, this shift in focus is directly attributable to the dawning understanding that the days of Western hegemony over the world’s resources are numbered.
What is blindingly obvious in this analysis is the totally banale and infantile drivers for these constant wars, let alone their leaders’ complete lack of understanding and compassion for the suffering of others. And we should not forget the massive contribution to environmental destruction this 300 year old process has delivered. This is certainly not an intelligent process, although the processes of domination and extraction of plunder are often complex.
We can only watch in amazement at the psychopathic behaviours of key US officials delighting in the violent deaths of others -eg Dick Cheney, or Hilary Clinton (below)
or Obama joking about killer drones, knowing full well the impacts in families and communities of the thousands of innocent lives killed by these random killing machines.
In fact recent evidence on Hillary Clinton’s motivation’s for the war in Libya, reveal little else than the fact that she didn’t like Muammar Ghaddafi. Certainly there was absolutely no evidence of the genocide of Libyan civilians by Ghaddafi’s forces as was alleged and provided as rationale to U.S. supporting the jihadist forces there. Clinton’s maniacal delight in Ghaddafi’s brutal death is a warning to us all.
and the UK’s Blair and Jack Straw who simply refuse to acknowledge that their orders resulted in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans based simply on their whim ( ‘I kill because I can’). It may be salutory to read Ahmad Baqawi’s damning analysis of the NATO intervention in Libya and the resultant total and deliberate destruction of Libya as a nation-state, or perhaps Peter Lee’s account of the brutal murder and destruction carried out by the West proxy’s in Syria in the name of “democracy and freedom”
In another more equitable world , those politicians would have long ago been convicted and sent to high security forensic mental health wards; or perhaps, as the highly respected American columnist William Pfaff notes -simply tried Nuremburg style and, if convicted on the evidence, hanged.
The Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change earlier this year noted if action is not taken “soon’ the resultant 2C increase in global temperatures will have ‘severe’, and ‘irreversible” impacts on human habitation and economic activity.
Governments, in their desperation to feed the “god of growth” are increasingly making more and bigger foolish decisions that undermine our sustainability as a species on this planet. Take for instance, the ever-increasing taxpayer dollars pouring into oil and gas explorations, or the actions of corporate-resourced governments such as the UK or New Zealand, with their intent to emasculate regulations that protect the environment against corporate interests . Or the potential horrendous environmental impacts of international agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). The “god of growth” must be fed, regardless of the consequences to our planet and the species who inhabit it.
While climate change gets all the press these days in the media; it should be noted that climate change is just one of a multitude of impacts of homo sapiens’ drive for “progress’ and ‘growth’ over the past 200 years. For those species (including humans) at the sharp end of climate change- those in tropical countries or drier hotter climates, the impacts are likely to be truly horrendous over the next 100 years -and for the next few thousand or perhaps million years beyond that. However what underpins this destruction of our planet is our incurable arrogance that we are somehow “superior” beings who are overlords of the other species on this planet.
It is absolutely undeniable that unless we can co-habitate with the other remaining species that we have not killed off as yet-we too are doomed as a species. We are entirely reliant on other species for our short , medium and long-term survival. No amount of concrete or tar or metal or money can hide this fact. The journey to bio-extinction in the pursuit of profit in New Zealand is just one of countless stories of man’s folly.
What is required is a fundamental shift by all humans on this planet to understand that every other species shares an equal right to life on our little blue ball. Killing off a species or a few million individual sentient beings to make way for a shopping mall, is just nonsensical.
While we may pretend, we have not behaved in any way as caretakers of this planet; we have not behaved rationally and with fore-thought, we have not allowed the blinkers to fall from our eyes to let ourselves see the folly of our shallow understanding that because we are homo sapiens, then anything that does not exist or think like a homosapien is inferior, and not worthy of life, unless it is for our use: for us to kill and eat, or for human tourists to gawp at while they destroy the surrounding environment. A supposed scientific principal which argues that other species are inferior to one particular species whose “superiority” is based on the core attributes of that one species and no other, is a rather dubious piece of scientific endeavour! This superficial belief, called anthropocentrism, must be eliminated from human consciousness, if we are all to continue to thrive or even survive on this planet.
To put it bluntly, those rationales exhibit primitive thinking and zero compassion for other species; let alone a rather dubious understanding of the laws of cause and effect.
As Prof. Will Steffen of the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre notes; “Some people say we can adapt due to technology, but that’s a belief system, it’s not based on fact. There is no convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans can’t and that’s a problem.”
In all the reports about climate change or even loss of bio-diversity it is very rare to see an analysis of the impacts of homo sapiens’ folly on other species. In almost every case you will instead see a superlatively superficial analysis of the impacts of climate change in dollars and cents, or the cost of a species lost we can no longer exploit. Those analyses are proof in themselves that we have lost our way as a species in a spectacularly ignorant way.
The diminishing need to use more coal and gas, to mine more minerals, to build more cities, dwellings and transport networks and consume more generally, will mean less of what is left of our natural environment will become despoiled.
New Antarctica 