California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Should we Have a Second Pentagon ... Devoted to Peace?

by John Lawrence

So we have a Pentagon of War. We should have an equally funded Pentagon of Peace, a huge 5-sided building where all they do is plan and seek to implement various peace scenarios. Unimaginable? That's because the human race has so little imagination, and the result is ... continuous warfare since the dawn of civilization and before including the wiping out of another species, the Neanderthals, by our species, homo sapiens. The history of the human race is one of war with some technological progress in the interstices. Let's face it. Human beings especially of the masculine variety get off on war. Most warmongers are completely bored by peace. They can't wait to get back into action and cover themselves in glory on the battlefield, to prove their mettle, to prove their masculinity. Right now the US spends close to a trillion dollars a year on war, the weapons of war and planning for war. We spend a pittance on peace, the implementation of peace and planning for peace. As a result the human race has been heading for some time to Mutually Assured Destruction. We will probably get there whether or not it happens by means of a nuclear holocaust or whether it happens by neglect of the things that need to be done to forestall climate change.

The war in Ukraine and the looming Cold (and maybe even Hot) War between the two sides that are lining up represents at least a dithering while the planet heats up and eventually burns becoming a Venus like uninhabitable hellscape. So we have the US and Europe on one side and Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea on the other. Of the not quite aligned nations, most of Africa is siding with the Chinese. Why? Because the Chinese have put great energy into developing African infrastructure with their Belt and Road initiative. The US on the other hand has put great energy into building military bases all around the world. "There are roughly 750 US foreign military bases; they are spread across 80 nations! After the U.S is the UK, but they only have 145 bases. Russia has about 3 dozen bases, and China just five. This implies that the U.S has three times as many bases as all other countries combined." So this goes to show the relative priorities of the various countries. The priorities of peace vs the priorities of war. Helping improve the economies of other people directly is something that the Pentagon of Peace should be about. Sad to say China did that first, but there's always hope. As my Dad used to say, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Sure China's goal was to make friends and influence people with its Belt and Road initiative. What's the US doing in the meantime ... building military bases.

The Peace Pentagon should have a budget equal to the War Pentagon's budget - roughly a trillion dollars. I'm not saying do away with the Department of War and become defenseless. No, keep a robust defense but counterbalance it with a robust Department of Peace. So if possible peace initiatives will carry the day, but, if worse comes to worse, well there's always the fantastic array of weapons of war that the US already possesses. The war capabilities are enormous. The peace capabilities are meager. There's a difference between pursuing our interests by becoming friends with other people and pursuing our interests by guarding ourselves from other people. One of the ways to avoid war is to recognize the legitimate interests of other countries as stated by them. The war in Ukraine could have been avoided if NATO and the US had acknowledged Russia's stated security interest in Ukraine's not becoming a member of NATO. But that interest was totally discarded by the West - not even put on the table, not even some sort of compromise which would have recognized that stated interest. I'm not saying if that interest was legitimate or not - only that that was the stated interest on the Russian side that was completely ignored and never even negotiated. The result of that non-negotiation and non-compromise was the mess in Ukraine right now - a grinding war of attrition in which only Ukraine civilian lives and only Ukraine real estate are being destroyed. Ukraine would like nothing better than to have advanced weapons such as F-16 fighter jets which would allow them to spread the war into Russian territory, and then you have World War III. That seems to be where we are heading.

Off the Top of My Head

Why We Need to Help China Build Renewable Energy Systems in Africa

by John Lawrence, February 8, 2020

China is helping underdeveloped African countries to develop. They are building railroads, ports, infrastructure in general. They are loaning these countries the money and putting Chinese workers to work. It's called the Belt and Road initiative. For the most part this effort is laudable. It represents peaceful development as opposed to military control, monetary sanctions or corporate exploitation which is what most African countries had been used to in the past. However, there is at least one negative consequence of these developments. China is building hundreds of coal-fired power plants in these countries? This is at a time when the world must be reducing its use of fossil fuels to forestall global warming.

Recently, President Xi Jinping hosted the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, promoting his signature foreign policy of building massive infrastructure and trade links across several continents. China, as the world's biggest polluter, has also been taking dramatic steps to clean up and fight climate change in China. The forum, attended by leaders and delegates of nearly 40 countries, came amid growing criticism of China's projects, including their effect on the environment. The UN estimates the world needs to reduce its coal-fired electricity by two-thirds in the next decade to meet our climate goals. So what's wrong with this picture and what can be done about it?

First, instead of treating China as an adversary and a rival, the US could partner with China in building power generating plants, but, instead of coal powered ones, plants that generate electricity from renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal. This would be a win-win-win for Africa, China and the US. Some of the Democratic candidates have pledged to do just that. According to Bernie Sanders we should "Commit to reducing emissions throughout the world, including providing $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund, rejoining the Paris Agreement, and reasserting the United States’ leadership in the global fight against climate change." That's right. Instead of using our high polluting military to fight everywhere in the world, we should establish a Belt and Road initiative of our own not in rivalry with China, but instead in cooperation with China. Combined the efforts of these two great nations could make a huge difference both in the development of underdeveloped parts of the world but also in terms of reducing the effects of climate change by making sure that that development is not based on energy derived from fossil fuels like coal and oil.

At present China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines. I'm sure these countries welcome these investments, but these power plants need to be built so that they generate power from renewable sources and not coal. "China has done a very good job of emphasizing the target of greening the Belt and Road," said Courtney Weatherby, a Southeast Asia analyst at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. "But it's not clear when you look at the actual projects that China is funding that they are truly green."

The NPR article went on:

In neighboring Vietnam — a country highly dependent on coal — China is a major investor in the energy sector. China is involved in 15 coal power plants in operation, six under construction and at least two in the planning stages, according to Nguyen Thi Hang with Hanoi-based environmental group Green Innovation and Development Centre. "China's investments in Vietnam is both good and bad but it is also coupled with negative impacts on people's health and livelihoods," Nguyen said.

There is still a question of how to supply energy sustainably. If China falls short, Chinese officials at least know they can expect scant criticism on coal investments from the U.S. government. President Trump's administration has also been promoting coal.

The US needs to partner with China in green development projects that can benefit the entire world while promoting the growth of renewable energy projects and eliminating fossil fuel projects. This would do a lot to bring peaceful cooperation to the world as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving the planet from global warming. This means a Green New Deal as part and parcel of our foreign policy instead of a foreign policy based on militarism and weaponizing the dollar by the use of sanctions. There is a great potential for bringing genuine peace to the world by cooperating with other countries in a world wide Green New Deal. This would save the planet not only from climate change but from militaristic rivalry and destruction not to mention the waste of resources. There is the potential for peace among all the earth's nations and peoples if all are working together on a worldwide Green New Deal.

Climate-Crisis Fueled Locust Swarms Pose 'Unprecedented Threat to Food Security and Livelihoods' in East Africa

Published on Tuesday, January 28, 2020

by Common Dreams

The region's worst outbreak in decades has brought hundreds of millions of crop-devouring bugs to Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

 

4 Comments

An invasion of locusts in the Somali region of Ethiopia in December 2019. (Photo: Petterik Wiggers/FAO)

A massive invasion of desert locusts—partly fueled by the climate crisis—seriously threatens food security in already-vulnerable communities across East Africa and has increasingly alarmed United Nations experts in recent weeks.

"The situation remains extremely serious in the Horn of Africa, where it threatens pastures and crops in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia," says a report (pdf) released last week by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "The current swarms represent an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa."

A swarm contains up to 150 million locusts per square kilometers (0.39 square miles) and can devour enough crops in a day to feed 35,000 people, according to FAO, a U.N. agency. Although "ground and aerial control operations continue in Ethiopia and aerial operations started in Kenya in January," the report notes that "insecurity and a lack of national capacity have hampered control operations in Somalia."

"A potentially threatening situation is developing along both sides of the Red Sea, where ongoing breeding is causing locust numbers to increase on the coasts of Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen," FAO warns. "There is a risk that some swarms could appear in northeast Uganda, southeast South Sudan, and southwest Ethiopia."

Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are being invaded by enormous swarms of desert locusts - the worst infestations in decades.

In just one day, a 1km² swarm can consume enough food to feed 35,000 people.https://t.co/QBE3unwapT pic.twitter.com/906jh8NpSI

— UN Humanitarian (@UNOCHA) January 25, 2020

FAO has called for a "massive, border-spanning campaign" to combat the hundreds of millions of locusts and stop them from spreading to other countries, noting that impacted regions in Ethiopia and Somalia haven't seen swarms of this scale in 25 years and that Kenya hasn't faced a threat on this level in 70 years.

"This devastating locust outbreak is starting to destroy vegetation across East Africa with alarming speed and ferocity."
—Mark Lowcock, U.N. humanitarian chief

The primary method of battling locust swarms is the aerial spraying of pesticides. FAO's "Locust Watch" service explains that "although giant nets, flamethrowers, lasers, and huge vacuums have been proposed in the past, these are not in use for locust control. People and birds often eat locusts but usually not enough to significantly reduce population levels over large areas."

In response to an FAO request of $70 million "to assist with immediate needs in all three countries, including ramping up control operations as well as implementing measures to safeguard rural livelihoods," the U.N. Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) agreed on Jan. 24 to release $10 million to the agency.

"This devastating locust outbreak is starting to destroy vegetation across East Africa with alarming speed and ferocity," U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said in a statement announcing the allocation. "Vulnerable families that were already dealing with food shortages now face the prospect of watching as their crops are destroyed before their eyes."

"We must act now," Lowcock added, confirming that the funds will go toward scaling up aerial operations. "If left unchecked, this outbreak has the potential to spill over into more countries in East Africa with horrendous consequences. A swift and determined response to contain it is essential."

East Africa is experiencing the most serious outbreak of locusts in 25 years, posing an unprecedented threat to food security.

Unusual climate conditions are partly to blame and farmers are asking the government to act. https://t.co/tcT5DduR01 pic.twitter.com/KP6zCu0rqv

— ABC News (@ABC) January 25, 2020

The Associated Press, in a report last week, detailed the climate connection to the regional locust crisis:

Heavy rains in East Africa made 2019 one of the region's wettest years on record, said Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker. He blamed rapidly warming waters in the Indian Ocean off Africa's eastern coast, which also spawned an unusual number of strong tropical cyclones off Africa last year.

Heavy rainfall and warmer temperatures are favorable conditions for locust breeding and in this case the conditions have become "exceptional," he said.

Even now rainfall continues in some parts of the vast region. The greenery that springs up keeps the locusts fueled.

"Countries are trying to prepare but this took them by surprise," Babiker said.

Depending on the breeding conditions, AP reported, the swarms of locusts could continue to imperil East Africa until June. That is bad news for a region that, as George Dvorsky noted at EARTHER Friday, is "still recovering from extreme weather." 

"[No] less than eight cyclones formed in the basin last year," he explained. "Mozambique was hit the hardest by Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, which caused widespread flooding. The heavy rains have come after farmers in East Africa deadly with multiple years of drought. That these locusts are now poised to descend upon recovering crops is truly tragic."

Putting the locust invasion into a global context, Dvorsky concluded that "given how 2020 has started, with awful wildfires in Australia and the upsetting Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, a pending crisis of biblical proportions seems unfortunately appropriate."

---

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

20 million starving to death: inside the worst famine since World War II

from Vox:

A woman with her child in the International Medical Corps hospital in Juba, South Sudan.

A report from South Sudan.

Updated by Jane Ferguson Jun 1, 2017, 6:00am EDT

When war came to 15-year-old Rebecca Riak Chol’s small town in rural South Sudan in early April, she and 27 other villagers fled into nearby marshlands to hide. They spent two grueling weeks slowly making their way to the relative safety of a region controlled by rebels from her same tribe. They were constantly hungry, constantly thirsty, and constantly in danger of being killed by the troops trying to hunt them down. Chol’s sister died along the way, but it wasn’t because she was found and shot. Instead, she — like growing numbers of South Sudanese — died from starvation.

“We didn’t have anything to dig with to bury her, so we just put grass on the body and left it there,” Chol told me during a conversation in the schoolyard of her new home in the small town of Thoahnom Payam. Two school buildings with mud walls and tin roofs flanked the dry dirt yard. In the center was an unused volleyball net.

One of Chol’s classmates, 16-year-old Marco Nuer, arrived here in February from a different violence-ravaged part of the country. Like Chol, he paid an enormous price: His father, brother, and sister starved to death along the way. He and his mother were the only ones to survive.

The two stories are tragically common in South Sudan, which is facing mass hunger on a scale unimaginable in almost every other part of the world. In February, the United Nations estimated that 100,000 South Sudanese were starving, and that 5 million more — 42 percent of the country’s population — have such limited access to proper food that they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. More recent figures are not available yet, but aid agencies fear the situation could be much worse now.

There are two things you need to understand about the famine decimating South Sudan, the world’s newest country and one that came into existence largely because of enormous assistance from the US.

First, South Sudan isn’t the only country in the region facing mass starvation. A potentially historic famine is also threatening Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen. Far from Western eyes and far from the headlines, an estimated 20 million people in those four countries are at risk of dying due to a lack of food.
A makeshift grave by the side of the road in Juba, South Sudan. A makeshift grave in Juba, South Sudan.

The UN has already officially declared a full-fledged famine in parts of South Sudan and warned that the other three countries will suffer mass death from food and water shortages if “prompt and sustained humanitarian intervention” doesn’t happen soon.

Second, these famines weren’t caused by natural disasters like crop failures or droughts. They were man-made — the direct result of the bloody wars and insurgencies raging in all four countries.

The upshot is that the current famines, unlike others in recent history, could have potentially been prevented.

Washington, which has been slow to act, seems to finally be taking steps to help fight the famine. The Trump administration proposed massive funding cuts to America’s humanitarian food aid, but Congress rejected those cuts and instead allocated close to $1 billion in new funding.

In a recent interview with Vox, Michael Bowers, the vice president of humanitarian leadership and response for the aid group Mercy Corps, said the current famine was “entirely avoidable.”

“It’s entirely a man-made construct right now, and that means we have it within our power to stop that,” he said. “Wars are hard to stop; famines are not.”

On the ground here in South Sudan, the civil war that has left millions on the brink of starvation shows no signs of ending anytime soon. And that means the numbers of men, women, and children dying from lack of food will continue to increase into the indefinite future.

In the intensive care unit of an International Medical Corps hospital in the capital city of Juba, the beds are occupied by the tiny, skeletal frames of malnourished children. The building is a simple temporary structure made of cinderblocks and plywood. Although children under 5 years old are the most vulnerable to malnutrition and the infections it can cause in small bodies, they are also incredibly resilient and almost always bounce back if fed high-calorie foods and given proper medicine.

The problem is that huge numbers of South Sudanese children aren’t getting that type of food. Many, in fact, aren’t getting food of any kind.