California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

While China Builds Infrastructure in the Americas, the US is Disconcerted

by John Lawrence

How dare they, the Chinese that is, build infrastructure in South America! Why, that's our back yard, our sphere of influence. China is building an elaborate $3 billion port in Chancay, Peru. It wasn't that long ago that the US was complicit in a plot to overthrow the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende who was a socialist. Be that as it may, many countries are turning to China preferring the building of infrastructure to the building of military bases of which the US has constructed about 750 in some 80 countries throughout the world. China is even bailing out Argentina financially. According to Reuters, Argentina's central bank said on [October 18, 2023] that China has cleared a currency swap line totaling a freely accessible $6.5 billion, part of a broader deal the South American country has been using to help it defend the embattled local peso. Many countries throughout the world are effectively saying to the US, "What have you done for us lately?" So the question is how can the US compete with a country who is building economic assets in other countries while all the US has to offer is the construction of military bases? Is it the world's policeman versus the world's builder, and which role will be more appealing?

"In the district of Chancay, Huaral province, approximately 80 kilometers from the Peruvian capital, Lima, a major private investment project is being developed that promises to change the logistics landscape in Latin America. It is the New Multipurpose Port Terminal of Chancay, a joint project by the Chinese company COSCO Shipping Ports Limited (CSPL), which owns a 60 percent share, and the Peruvian company Volcan Compañía Minera, with the remaining 40 percent.

"With an investment budget of over $3 billion, this ambitious project is in the development stage, over 40 percent complete. Construction began in 2011, and the terminal is expected to start operations in the last quarter of 2024."

Back to Argentina: "China has increased the amount and instead of $5 billion we are getting $6.5 billion," Argentine President Alberto Fernandez told Radio 10 from the Asian country, where he is for an official trip.

"Every time we went through difficult times, Xi Jinping's government gave us its support," Fernandez added. "This is an important step so that production (in Argentina) does not stop."

This is the second swap line with China activated during Fernandez's presidency. According to an official bank source, the total amount of the swap line stood at 47 billion yuans .

The move comes as Argentines head to the ballots on Sunday for a presidential election. Libertarian Javier Milei, who has vowed to dollarize the economy and shut down the central bank, is seen as the front-runner.

Well, Javier Milei won the election. It's unclear whether Milei's tough talk regarding China will mean that he will not let China bail them out! " According to Reuters, "Argentinian president-elect Javier Milei has criticised China and Brazil, which are among his country's most important trading partners. A few months ago, Milei even likened the Chinese government to an "assassin" and said the people of China were "not free". Milei's tough talk on China stands in sharp contrast with a vow of cooperation by the outgoing president, Alberto Fernandez, who visited Beijing last month and hailed China as a "true friend" of Argentina."

China is South America’s top trading partner and a major source of both foreign direct investment and lending in energy and infrastructure, including through its massive Belt and Road Initiative. Can the US compete? China has surpassed the United States as South America’s largest trading partner. Beijing has also expanded its diplomatic, cultural, and military presence throughout the region. Most recently, it leveraged its support amid the COVID-19 pandemic, supplying the region with medical equipment, loans, and hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. U.S. President Joe Biden, who sees China as a “strategic competitor” in the region, has pledged greater economic cooperation with Latin America, but some analysts argue the United States should be doing more.

But will the US do more? It can't even get modest amounts of aid for Israel and Ukraine passed by the Republican controlled House of Representatives. The Trumpist American Firsters don't want to spend money on other countries. However, they don't mind the trillion dollar military-industrial complex budgets. They are baked in the cake especially because all the financial and economic incentives align for the various interests. Lobbyists will make sure there is no reduction in that budget.

But China’s push comes as American wars overseas, unstable foreign policy election-to-election, and deep political polarization have intensified questions about US global leadership. Meanwhile, pressing issues like climate change, Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s assault on Gaza have sharpened discussion over whether the West is taking the right approach to respond.

All this coincides with longstanding calls from countries across the developing world for an international system where they have more say.

Many of those countries have substantially enhanced their economic ties with Beijing during Xi’s rule, including under a decade of his up to $1 trillion global infrastructure building drive, which leaders gathered to celebrate last month in the Chinese capital.

Economics tends to transcend politics in international relations. Up to now the economic success of the west and in particular the United States has exerted a pull on countries around the world. However, it can't be ignored that currently China is outpacing the US with its investments in other countries particularly with its Belt and Road initiative. Its alternative vision for economic development is very appealing. Its live and let live policy regarding lecturing other nations on their internal political systems also is seen by many as a refreshing alternative to the US' insistence that other countries should structure their political systems similarly to the US'.

Off the Top of My Head

Will There Ever Be a Department of Peace?

by John Lawrence

Let's face it. The US Department of Defense is really a misnomer. It's true name is the Department of War. Why not call it what it really is. That's its mission. That's its raison d'etre. In fact the United States Department of War, also called the War Department (and occasionally War Office in the early years), was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army, also bearing responsibility for naval affairs until the establishment of the Navy Department in 1798, and for most land-based air forces until the creation of the Department of the Air Force on September 18, 1947. The Secretary of War, a civilian with such responsibilities as finance and purchases and a minor role in directing military affairs, headed the War Department throughout its existence. The War Department existed from August 7, 1789 until September 18, 1947, when it split into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force. The Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force later joined the Department of the Navy under the United States Department of Defense in 1949.

But there is no countervailing Department of Peace! I'm proposing one. Furthermore, the trillion dollar annual budget for the Department of War should be divided in two with half going to the Department of Peace. So $500 billion for war; $500 billion for peace. Please note that I'm not advocating doing away with the war department. I'm just advocating balancing it with a Department of Peace. Halving the Defense Department budget will still leave it with a larger military budget than any other country in the world. So when will it be a good idea to actively pursue peace if not now? Can the human mind even visualize what a Department of Peace would encompass or be involved in? Part of its mission would be to do just that - imagine what peace would look like. How do you spend the allotted resources in such a way as to bring about peace in the world? Dare I say that eliminating poverty and disease in the world, assuring educational opportunities and building infrastructure would be a good place to start. The Peace Corps would be incorporated into a Department of Peace, and its budget made commensurate with the budgets of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force. Instead of extracting resources from what used to be called the Third World, the Department of Peace should be in the business of providing resources to the Third World. Instead of being totally focused on US interests, how about focusing on the interests of others particularly those who have been exploited by more technically advanced nations.

Bear in mind I'm not proposing defunding the Defense Department, just halving its budget and spending the rest on peace. The Defense Department would always stand ready to fight and win any war if all efforts for peace fail. But efforts at peace should take place preemptively and proactively long before tensions fester. Part of creating peace just consists of showing respect for all parties. That costs nothing. As an example of what not to do consider Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. They let it fester until the horrible recent events resulting in much destruction, death and suffering on both sides. Israel, the US and other interested parties had years to come up with a solution that was fair to both sides. But, admittedly, there was some trying especially by President Clinton, who almost got Israel and the Palestinian Authority to agree to peace. Yasser Arafat just refused at the last minute to say yes. But wars have been fought by human beings for millennia. Homo Sapiens probably wiped out the Neanderthals and other humanoid species. Why should we believe anything else given the history of human warfare in most cases based on religion and/or ethnicity?

China, at least, is building infrastructure throughout the world, and in particular in Africa with its Belt and Road initiative. This is a peace building exercise which is not recognized or given credit by the US. The US is a Johnny-come-lately to the idea of building infrastructure in the Third World. It can hardly accomplish this at home. If it wasn't for Biden's excellent diplomatic skills, nothing in that regard would be happening in the US itself. The US can barely keep its government open. It's not a good prognosis for the leader of the free world especially in light of the fact that a multiply indicted authoritarian who tried to overthrow the government is favored to win the next election straight out of the German playbook circa 1932.

Off the Top of My Head

The Absence of War is Not Peace

by John Lawrence

Human beings do not use the absence of war to create peace. They use the absence of war to prepare for the next war. The time between wars could be used in a more constructive way and that is to do everything possible to prevent the next war. Instead what we do is to build up our offensive and defensive capacities so that whatever side we are on prevails in the next war. The US military-industrial complex is allotted almost a trillion dollars a year whether or not there is war or absence of war. There is never ever really peacetime. It's sole purpose is to prepare for the next war. Meanwhile the Peace Corps is allotted next to nothing in order to create the conditions that might prevent the next war. What are those conditions you might ask? They are very simple: creating educational opportunities for the undereducated, creating economic opportunities for those in poverty, creating hospitals and clinics for those whose health is at risk, building infrastructure for those lacking access to modern infrastructure. In other words building more successful societies from the ground up for those lacking what the most advanced societies already have. Above all poverty and lack of healthful conditions must be alleviated all over the world including in the advanced nations themselves before anything approaching world peace can be achieved.

So what is the lesson of the Israeli-Gaza war? It is that in the time period before the war, nobody did nothing to create the conditions for a lasting peace which would have been the two state solution. Instead people just stood back content to have the Palestinians live miserable lives without political or economic rights. Nobody cared. Nobody worked hard to correct or ameliorate the situation. People were content just to let the situation fester until the next violence broke out, and then it did with very dramatic and horrific results. When there was an absence of war, people just said ho hum, there's no urgency to create the conditions for a lasting peace. Then when war breaks out everyone gets very excited and upset, horrible things happen to children and old people. People want revenge. Hate proliferates. War is exciting. Peace is dull and undramatic. People get bored with the absence of war. People's senses come alive during war. During the absence of war in which there is no real peace, people pursue their self interest or in other words lining their purses. During war they get all excited. There is nonstop news coverage. People get upset by (wo)man's inhumanity to (wo)man as if people doing horrible things to other people is unimaginable. It's not. People's senses come alive and they come out of their collective stupors.

If the US just spent half its defense budget on war and the other half on peace, it would still have a larger defense budget than any other country in the world, and just think what the Peace Corps could do with a $500 billion budget. Why it could even compete with China's Belt and Road initiative which is building infrastructure in parts of the world where inadequate infrastructure exists. The two largest world economies could compete creating peace in the world instead of trying to out compete each other with larger and better weapons and more vitriolic and challenging rhetoric. However, this is not OK with conservatives who feel very threatened by the Chinese COMMUNIST Party although the Chinese system brought 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years primarily by adopting a free enterprise capitalistic system. Oh but it is still authoritarian politically, you say. That is subject to interpretation as the Chinese political system is based on Confucianism which promotes a meritocracy unlike the US where any bozo can become President.

So where is the American Department of Peace? We have the Department of Defense(Offense). We have the Department of Homeland Security. We have the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). What agencies of the Federal government are devoted to creating a more peaceful world? Basically, none, and so is it any wonder that, while the human race continues to invent a plethora of gadgets, it can do hardly anything to create world peace? Peace depends on mutual respect among the leaders of the various nations of the world. Instead US authorities criticize and lord it over the leaders of other nations because they are not exactly like us. Instead of walking a mile in their shoes, they insist that every other nation walks a mile in our shoes.

Off the Top of My Head

Is the World Engaged in “A Battle Between Democracy and Autocracy”?

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden thinks so. Here's what he said: "But we emerged anew in the great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force." Politicians tend to look at the world in binary terms. It's all black and white. Their system is bad; ours is good. In reality there's a lot of gray; it's not simply black or white. If Biden were to be absolutely truthful, he would have to say that the US has a version of democracy and so does China. America's version would be decried by the founders who were totally against what they called "factionalism." Jefferson abhorred political parties. This is from history.com:

"Today, it may seem impossible to imagine the U.S. government without its two leading political parties, Democrats and Republicans. But in 1787, when delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia to hash out the foundations of their new government, they entirely omitted political parties from the new nation’s founding document.

"This was no accident. The framers of the new Constitution desperately wanted to avoid the divisions that had ripped England apart in the bloody civil wars of the 17th century. Many of them saw parties—or “factions,” as they called them—as corrupt relics of the monarchical British system that they wanted to discard in favor of a truly democratic government."

The US' version of democracy is based on a two party system with a voting system called first-past-the-post. Neither parties or voting systems are mentioned in the Constitution. The first-past-the-post voting system essentially precludes third parties. The effect of a third party candidate is that of a "spoiler." He or she takes votes away from the party he or she is most closely associated with which tends to elect the least popular candidate if the third popular candidate were not running. This has had disastrous effects on American popular elections as it did in 2000 when Ralph Nader running as a third party candidate took votes away from Al Gore with the result that George W Bush, who subsequently lied us into the Iraq war, was elected President. Gore would have gotten the US further along the road of climate change mitigation.

The European parliamentary multi-party system is arguably more democratic than the US two party system because more parties with varied interests can be represented. Their head of government, the Prime Minister, equivalent to the US President, is not popularly elected but is elected by members of parliament. The US tends to identify heads of government not popularly elected with undemocratic systems yet Presidents in the US were not popularly elected until the 17th Amendment was passed in 1912. China has a version of democracy in which the President is not popularly elected but is elected by the highest legislative body - the National People's Congress. Yet the US keeps insisting that China is an autocracy but the parliamentary systems of Europe are OK as was the US before 1912. China has multiple political parties but is dominated by one party - the Chinese Communist Party. The question is to what extent is the Chinese one party system less democratic than the American two party system in the sense of which system most closely represents the needs and wants of its people.

Democratic elections are held in China at the local or county level. These Congresses elect officials at the provincial level and they in turn elect the National People's Congress. The people vote democratically for officials only at the local level. Officials at higher levels are only indirectly democratically elected similar to the US system before 1912 or the parliamentary system. Voters have selected U.S. senators in the privacy of the voting booth since 1913. This system of “direct election” was not what the framers of the U.S. Constitution had in mind, however, when they met at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Article I, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, as written by the framers, provided for election of senators by state legislatures, something Donald Trump sought to exploit. Election of officials by the democratic vote of a body that was democratically elected by the people is arguably democratic in some sense just as the election of head of government by a parliament is arguably democratic. Therefore, it can be argued that China has some version of democracy. Moreover, eight minor political parties in addition to the Chinese Communist Party exist.

One can quibble about how democratic a political system is. The point is that there is no absolute version of democracy so different systems have to be judged on their own merits. A one party system is not necessarily less democratic than a two party system which is not necessarily less democratic than a multi-party system, all things considered. How well the system functions to meet the needs of its own people, the historical evolution of the present system and how well established is the rule of law which exists in conjunction with the democratic election of leaders and representatives should also be considered. For instance, in China stability is a primary value whereas in the US freedom is a primary value. According to Keyu Jin in The New China Playbook, the Chinese people don't mind video surveillance in public because it minimizes street crime. On the other hand in the US video public surveillance is considered an infringement of freedom even though much street crime has been solved by both public and private video cameras .

Off the Top of My Head

Should the President Be Popularly Elected by Direct Vote of the People?

by John Lawrence

In the US the President is popularly elected by the people after having been filtered through the archaic electoral college. In a parliamentary democracy the head of government equivalent to the US President is indirectly elected by the parliament not by a direct vote of the people. In China the president is also elected by a majority vote of the National People's Congress, the highest legislative body very similarly to how the heads of government are elected in parliamentary democracies. In Russia the President is nominally elected by a popular vote of the people similarly to the US although the system has been manipulated in such a way as to keep Putin in power. So what are the drawbacks of a popularly elected President by a vote of the people? The main drawback IMHO is that in the US an incompetent but popular boob like Donald Trump can be elected to the most powerful office in the land and arguably in the whole world. The election for President of the US is a popularity contest, and there is no requirement of experience or competency. In parliamentary democracies as well as China, supposedly the indirect election of President or its equivalent, "head of state," is an election by a meritocratic body of lawmakers. Therefore, it is more likely that a competent President or head of government will be elected.

In recent history in the US, the least competent but most popular person has been elected President based more on their personality and charisma than on their competency or knowledge of the job. It is more likely that a guy who "you would like to have a beer with" is elected President than someone who is more experienced and/or intelligent. Adlai Stevenson was branded as an "egghead" which effectively ended his political career. The leading Democratic figure of the 1950s, Stevenson was known for his wit, intellectual speeches, and liberal political convictions. For many Americans in the mid-twentieth century, he symbolized conscience in politics. Stevenson lost the Presidential election twice to Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II war hero. In 2000 Al Gore lost the election to George W Bush who promptly lied the US into war with Iraq. Gore, who was a staunch advocate for climate change mitigation, presumably would have employed government resources in that direction rather than fighting a fruitless war. Gore actually won the popular vote but was defeated by a combination of the Electoral College and the Supreme Court.

Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House that were then taken down by Ronald Reagan. So much for science taking precedence over popular ignorance and prejudice. Reagan also ran up the national debt substantially as did George W Bush and Donald Trump. Then when Democrats are elected President, Republicans cry bloody murder over the national debt while doing their best to prevent Democrats from spending any government money to actually help people. Fortunately, Joe Biden has been very successful in getting legislation passed to mitigate climate change among other accomplishments. But, his popularity as a candidate in 2024 in on the line as a majority of the American people don't want him to run again. Trump, despite 91 criminal indictments, is running neck and neck with Biden, one of the most accomplished Presidents in American history. One wonders whether the sclerotic American electoral system can withstand the challenges brought by popular but unscrupulous candidates for the Presidency by those you'd "like to have a beer with." Finally, the electoral College has all the disadvantages of indirect elections and none of the advantages.

Off the Top of My Head

Does China Have Some Version of Democracy and Capitalism?

by John Lawrence

The Chinese Communist Party in reality is just the Chinese Party. It is communist in name only. Kishore Mahbuboni in the book, Has China Won, says "...is America making a fundamental error of perception when it views the CCP as a Chinese Communist Party? This would imply that the soul of the CCP is embedded in its communist roots. Yet, in the eyes of many objective Asian observers, the CCP actually functions as the Chinese Civilization Party. Its soul is not rooted in the foreign ideology of Marxism-Leninism but in the Chinese civilization." China has had a capitalist economic system ever since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in 1978. China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty in about 40 years mainly due to the component of its system that represents private enterprise. It also has state owned enterprises but they have not been mainly responsible for China's rapid growth in GDP.

Xi Jinping has been President of the people's Republic of China since 2013. He is not popularly elected by the general public. Instead, he is elected by the National People's Congress (NPC), constitutionally China's highest state body, which also has the power to remove the president and other state officers from office. Elections and removals are decided by majority vote. This is not dissimilar to how the head of parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is elected. The British head of government is not elected by a popular election of the people either. He is elected by members of Parliament similar to most other parliamentary democracies. The US also originally had a system in which the President and Senators were not elected by a popular election of the people. Passed by Congress on May 13, 1912, and ratified on April 8, 1913, the 17th Amendment modified Article I, Section 3, of the Constitution by allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. Senators and the President. Prior to its passage, the President and Senators were chosen by state legislatures. The Chinese government has been based on a meritocratic bureaucracy for thousands of years. The popular vote elects the first representative body who elects the next higher body until the National People's Congress elects the President.

The cleavage between communism and capitalism is basically an historic artifact. Capitalism won. Almost all nations of the world have capitalistic economic systems including China. None of them have systems that are identical to the US. They all have some versions of capitalism and democracy. Prior to 1912 the US had a system similar to China's in that the President was not popularly elected but was elected by a vote of the states' senates. Today in order to maintain international tensions, US politicians keep up the dichotomy between the US and China by insisting that China's leaders are not elected democratically and that China has a communist economic system. The truth is that China has a version of democracy and a version of capitalism just as the US does. Vested interests in the US are responsible for maintaining the fiction that Chinese is communist and autocratic. In fact US democracy is vulnerable to being overthrown by a demagogue like Donald Trump which almost happened on January 6, 2020. The US is still vulnerable as a near majority of Americans prefer Trump to Joe Biden, a man who has passed landmark legislation like only a very few American Presidents have accomplished.

US democracy is also vulnerable in the sense that its first past the post voting system almost guarantees that third party candidates will be spoilers as happened in 2000 when Ralph Nader took votes away from Al Gore. Despite that Gore won the popular vote. If Nader had not been in the election, Gore would have overwhelmingly won the popular vote. However in the electoral college, which is an outdated feature of American democracy, it came down to who won the popular vote in Florida. The Supreme Court stopped the hand recount giving Bush the Presidency. There is still controversy over who would have won if that hadn't happened. In any case the Bush administration lied us into the disastrous Iraq war, something Gore probably would not have done. Also Bush was a fossil fuel guy while Gore was knowledgeable about global warming and would have pursued that agenda . History might have turned out differently, and more importantly the future history of planet Earth might turn out differently if Gore had won.

Chinese philosophy is based on Confucianism which emphasizes duty to family while the US is based on individualistic ethics emphasizing individual freedom. Keyu Jin writes in The New China Playbook, "According to the World Values Survey, which explores people's beliefs and values in more than 100 countries, 93% of Chinese participants value security over freedom, as compared to only 28 % of Americans. Such differences can be fully understood only by taking culture and history into account. In China, an interventionist state is rooted in paternalism, a hallmark of government in China since Confucian times, more than 2500 years ago;..." Although China's private enterprise capitalism has resulted in the fact that 800 million people have been pulled out of poverty in 40 years, GDP growth is not the sine qua non of Chinese capitalism. Under Xi China is turning a corner and reining in certain aspects of unbridled growth in order to mitigate certain unsalutary aspects of unfettered enterprise while emphasizing producing economic benefits for the 13% of the Chinese population still in poverty. So China is much more apt to put its finger on the economic scale while the US has more of a hands off policy on private enterprise. The downside of this is the unregulated growth of toxic social media and potentially artificial intelligence in the US. The US could mitigate the spoiler effect of third party candidates for President by adopting a different voting system. The current first past the post voting system practically guarantees that there will be a 2 party system with third parties acting as spoilers, something which could result in a second Trump Presidency despite 91 criminal indictments. Replacing first past the post with a voting system such as approval voting would eliminate the spoiler effects of third parties. It could be implemented simply by a vote of Congress since it would not violate any aspect of the Constitution. However, in the sclerotic American Congress it is unlikely that there will be any major changes in the US Constitution which is well past its "use by" date.

Off the Top of My Head

Contrasting the Chinese, EU and American Economic Systems

by John Lawrence

Since 2001, China has pursued a “going-out” investment policy. At first, the PRC (People's Republic of China) mainly encouraged SOEs (state owned enterprises) to invest overseas but in recent years, China's overseas investments have diversified with both state and private enterprises investing in nearly all industries and economic sectors. After Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, China opened up its economic policy with the result that approximately 800 million people were lifted out of poverty in about 40 years. This turned China into a capitalistic nation ruled by the Chinese Communist party although the word "communist" is largely an anachronism at this point. China developed a unique economic system comprised of state owned enterprises and private enterprise. It has been the private aspects of China's system that have mainly driven the huge increases in GDP to the point where China is likely to take over the US as the world's largest economy in terms of GDP in a few years.

There are 4 components of GDP: consumption, investment, government spending and profit from exports. Some of the reasons for China's becoming an economic powerhouse are that consumption is only 38% of GDP whereas US consumption is nearly 70% of GDP. While Americans consume, China produces, exports and invests. I would characterize the US as having a Taylor Swift economy, an economy based on consumption of entertainment and other disposable items with no lasting value. It has been reported that Taylor Swift and the Barbie movie have been at least somewhat responsible for keeping the American economy afloat. When you add in social media and professional athletics, much of American consumption is immediately disposed of as soon as the event is over. In the EU consumption is about 52% of GDP so somewhat larger than China's but much less than the US.

Chinese investment is 43% of GDP while The US' is about 16%. EU investment is about 25% of GDP so midway between the US and China. At 21.4% EU government spending is larger than either the US (17.6%) or China (16%). Like the American government the Chinese government doesn't spend a lot of money on welfare. Chinese families are basically savers and provide a lot of the same services to their own intergenerational extended families which are provided by EU governments. The American ethos is largely individualistic and so many family members who can't provide for themselves fall through the cracks. This is one reason for the homeless crisis in the US.

The Chinese economy is bolstered by the fact that it is a net exporter (2.5% of GDP) while the US (-2.7%) and the EU (-2.7%) are net importers which subtracts from their GDPs. China also exports capital and manpower in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative. Announced in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to strengthen China’s connectivity with the world. It combines new and old projects, covers an expansive geographic scope, and includes efforts to strengthen hard infrastructure, soft infrastructure, and cultural ties. As of October 2019, the plan touches 138 countries with a combined Gross Domestic Product of $29 trillion and some 4.6 billion people. Supporting a diverse array of initiatives that enhance connectivity throughout Eurasia and beyond could serve to strengthen China’s economic and security interests while bolstering overseas development. 

The Chinese political system, nominally communist, has the same elements of democracy that the early US political system had which is that locally elected bodies select the next higher political body with 3 successive iterations so that the National Assembly is chosen by the provincial assemblies at the next lower level. The original American Constitution had a similar feature in that the Senate was not chosen directly by the people but by state legislatures. State legislatures continued to elect senators until adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 which provided for popular election of senators. The Chinese system tends to meritocraticy with the best and brightest ascending to the top levels whereas the more democratic American system has within it the possibility of electing complete idiots like Donald Trump whose ascendancy served to prove how vulnerable the two party system really is. By contrast the Chinese emphasize harmony and stability which are attributes of their main philosophical inheritance: Confucianism.

Off the Top of My Head

The Best Democracy May Not Be One Achieved by Elections

by John Lawrence

For a truly democratic system we would have to go back to ancient Greece and the system developed by Aristotle: sortition. Sortition is the selection of a legislative body randomly by lot. If the American House of Representatives truly represented the American people it would be chosen in this way. There is no more representative way of choosing a democratic legislative body. In the ancient Greek legislative body known as the Council of 500, each representative was chosen by lot. If the American House was chosen in this way, it would a) eliminate the need for money in American politics and b) eliminate the need for political parties in American politics. People have been brainwashed to believe that only a government in which there are elections for the representatives is a true democracy. It's not the only or even the best way. Representatives chosen by lot are more representative of the American people than representatives chosen by election. So at least for the purposes of selecting this body, with sortition the two party system would go by the wayside.

So what would this say about the relative merits of a democracy in which the representative body was chosen by lot and a one party system such as the Chinese government. In other words how would a no party system compare to a one party system , and is a no party system more democratic than a one party system. Yes, certainly it would be. But is a two party system such as the US currently has necessarily more democratic than a one party system. In the Chinese system the lowest deliberative body is voted on by the people. Then there are 3 levels of elections. The first is for the municipal people's Congress which elects the people's congresses of provinces which elects the highest level the National People's Congress. If the National People's Congress were to be selected by lot, then the Chinese system would be truly democratic just as the American system would be if the House of Representatives were selected by lot. Based on this analysis one could argue that the Chinese one party system is just as much a version of democracy as the American two party system and that if both systems used sortition instead of elections by vote, both systems would be arguably more democratic. Whether a system is a one party system, a two party system or a multiparty system such as they have in Europe, the various systems should only be compared on the actual results the system is capable of manifesting and how much their various bodies reflect the wishes of the people.

The American system is currently on the brink of systemic failure due to the fact that there is such a great divisive split between the two parties.The American system notably does not always elect the best and brightest candidates. The Chinese system arguably is more merit based than the US system. In the US a clown and no nothing like Trump can be elected and cause great havoc. In fact he almost instigated a complete overthrow of the American system of democracy. People with money or financial backing stand a better chance of being elected than people of merit or good will. The First Amendment allows candidates to lie about virtually anything, and, if they can convince enough voters that their alternative facts are the true facts, they can win elections. While the Chinese system does not represent the ultimate democratic form of government, neither does the American system. Both systems could be reformed to allow more truly representative government and more successful and capable government. In fact in the US if the House of Representatives were formed by sortition and the Senate were formed by voting or sortition based on a pool of candidates that had at least minimal background, experience and educational requirements, the American system would be quite a bit more democratic than it is right now. The ideal system might be one that approaches as closely as possible to a no party system.

When Climate Change Hits Home

Flooding in Stony Point, New York

By David Gelles

New York Times, July 11, 2023

Seth Harrison/USA Today Network/via Reuters

Even if you’ve been paying attention to climate change, it can sometimes feel very far away, distant in both space and time. But on Sunday night, as I was writing my first edition of this newsletter, it came roaring into my kitchen.

I was with my family at our 100-year-old cabin in the Hudson Valley, north of New York City. It had been pouring for fourteen hours, and our ceiling started leaking. Then, around midnight, a wall of water flooded the house.

Many of my neighbors fared even worse. One woman died and dozens had to be rescued as a slow-moving storm system produced widespread flooding in New York State and New England.

We know that man-made climate change is making extreme weather like this more severe. Warmer temperatures enable air to hold more moisture, which leads to more intense rainfall and flooding.

On Monday, the New York governor said such climate-fueled disasters were “the new normal.” In general, the United States is nowhere close to ready for the threat of catastrophic flooding, especially in areas far from rivers and coastlines.

On the other side of the country, much of the Southwest is baking under a heat dome. Major cities have been choking on smoke from Canadian wildfires for a month now. Off the coast of Florida, ocean temperatures are reaching into the mid-90s Fahrenheit.

June heat in Phoenix. Temperatures are expected to be above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (or above 43 degrees Celsius) again this week.  Caitlin O'Hara/Getty Images

This is not just about millions of Americans, of course, but billions of people around the globe. Over the weekend, Delhi recorded its wettest July day in 40 years, Beijing residents flocked to underground air raid shelters to escape the heat, and floods carried away cars in Spain.

The planet is entering a multiyear period of exceptional warmth, scientists say. Greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, have already heated the Earth by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius (or 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels. Now a powerful El Niño system in the Pacific Ocean is releasing a torrent of heat into the atmosphere. The warmest days in modern history occurred this month. That all sets the stage for more damaging heat waves, floods, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes.

Yesterday, as I spoke with climate scientists for a story about the storm that walloped my house, they all sounded the alarm about what was coming in the months ahead.

“We are going to see stuff happen this year around Earth that we have not seen in modern history,” one meteorologist told me. “It will be astonishing.”

Abnormal as the ‘new normal’

Each of these anomalies creates new risks, threatening human health and biodiversity. Yet with disasters piling up and headlines blurring together, there is another profoundly dangerous risk: apathy.

As temperature records break and extreme weather becomes commonplace, the abnormal can begin to seem ordinary. That’s an all-too human reaction to adversity. We’re masters of adaptation, and can learn to endure even the most uncomfortable situations.

But in this case, indifference would be the biggest disaster of them all. Growing inured to the signs of a planet on fire would do more than blind us to the damage we’ve already done. It would also delay critical action at a crucial juncture.

Because as bad as things are, there are still real causes for optimism.

After decades of inaction, a monumental effort is finally underway to confront climate change. Wind turbines and solar panels are rapidly displacing fossil fuels. Sales of electric vehicles, heat pumps and induction stoves are soaring. Across government, business and civil society, there is a concerted, coordinated push to reduce emissions, protect nature and help humans adapt to a hotter planet.

The grand project to decarbonize the world economy can be seen as the biggest collective action in human history. On the agenda is nothing less than the remaking of the world’s entire energy and transportation systems, not to mention vast overhauls of the building blocks of modern life. And it all needs to happen with a pants-on-fire urgency as the planet heats up.

That may seem daunting, and it is. Progress is not happening nearly fast enough, and many obstacles remain. But it’s also the opportunity of a lifetime. Should we succeed, we’ll be creating a world with better air quality, more green space, healthier ecosystems and less waste.

It’s a head-spinning moment, one that requires us to honor two seemingly contradictory truths at the same time.

Yes, the fragile ecosystem that sustains human life is in trouble.

And also yes, we have many of the tools needed to get ourselves out of this mess.

Your part of the story

It’s this tension — between hope and despair, between urgency and inertia, between a world remade and a stubborn status quo — that will animate this newsletter in the months and years ahead.

I won’t be doing it alone. Manuela Andreoni, my co-pilot for this newsletter, is based in Brazil and brings us an essential international perspective and a voracious curiosity about climate and the environment. You’ll also be hearing from the Times’ new weather team as well as other reporters from around the newsroom.

My colleague Somini Sengupta has been shepherding this newsletter, sharing her keen insights twice a week. From here on out, we’ll be arriving in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and chiming in with additional rapid-fire analysis when news breaks.

And we want to hear from you. You can email the Climate Forward team and tell us what’s got you worried, what’s giving you hope and where we should be looking for the next big story.

A push to wean China from coal

President Joe Biden is trying to repair relations with China after months of increased tensions, and climate is among the top issues on the agenda. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen both discussed climate issues in recent visits to Beijing. And climate envoy John Kerry is scheduled to arrive on Sunday.

The diplomatic push reflects an inescapable truth: The United States and China are the world’s industrial superpowers. And any chance at staving off the worst effects of climate change will require both of them moving in the same direction.

“The U.S. and China together make up about 40 percent of emissions,” said my colleague Lisa Friedman, who is following Kerry to Beijing. “They are also the two biggest investors in clean energy.”

China has more solar energy capacity than the rest of the world combined and is the biggest manufacturer and user of wind turbines — a major reason why clean energy has become so affordable for all countries in recent years.

But fossil fuels still make up the majority of China’s energy sources. It consumes over half of the world’s coal, and continues to approve new coal plants at a rapid pace. The Chinese government’s goal is to continue growing the economy while avoiding problems like the power failures the country faced during a heat wave last year that disrupted several supply chains.

China’s investments in renewable energy appear to be sufficient to enable it to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, as it has pledged. But there are concerns about how high emissions will go before they start to decline.

U.S. officials are urging China to accelerate that energy transition and phase out coal. And after the Biden administration secured hundreds of billions of dollars to accelerate America’s transition to clean energy, they may finally have some leverage.

“What many analysts are saying is that the U.S. just did a big move on climate change,” Lisa said. “Now, it’s China’s turn.” — -Manuela Andreoni

Off the Top of My Head

Is Voting a Necessary Component of Democracy?

by John Lawrence

Many people consider voting the sine qua non defining characteristic of democracy. However, the inventors of democracy, the ancient Greeks, did not. Their legislative body, the Council of 500, was chosen not be voting but by lot, in other words randomly. Arguably, random selection is more democratic since it guarantees a legislative body which actually represents and reflects all of the people. Voting, at least in the US, does not result in a legislature that reflects the actual composition of the electorate because the candidates need a lot of money even to get on the ballot. Random selection requires no money, just a complete list of all citizens. A legislature which reflects the actual composition of the electorate is more democratic than one that reflects only the composition of the moneyed class. Therefore, voting must be disassociated from democracy in the larger sense. So let's ask the question how is the Chinese legislature, the National People's Congress, chosen? It is chosen by the people by voting although the nominees are chosen by the Communist Party. It could be argued and debated how well the National People's Congress reflects the actual composition of the electorate. It could also be argued which system, the American system or the Chinese system is more democratic in the sense that the national legislative body represents and reflects the actual composition of their respective electorates. My guess is that the American two party system is only slightly more democratic than the Chinese one party system. Someone should do a study and comparison.

In addition to getting money out of politics, random selection, which is also known as sortition, would end the districting system and gerrymandering. The House would reflect the composition of the US electorate. Instead of an elaborate system of voting and majority rule, all you would need is a data base of all 330 million Americans and a program for random selection. Voting systems in and of themselves are controversial (which of the several available voting systems should be used), and majority rule is notorious for leaving out minorities.  The US system know as first past the post practically determines that the US will be a two party system. Third parties contribute the "spoiler effect," which we've seen all to often in Presidential politics, for example, when Ross Perot and Ralph Nader ran as third party candidates. They just take votes away from the party that they are closer to on the political spectrum helping the other party to win. The Chinese have a one party system and the US has a two party system which is probably only somewhat more democratic than the Chinese system if the measure of democraticness is that the legislature represents a reflection of all the people. The European parliamentary system is a multiparty system where minorities are better represented than in the US or Chinese systems, and hence, is more democratic than either of them. A further benefit of random selection us that extremists and extreme parties are unlikely to be over represented in the outcome. In fact political parties would have no reason to exist if the legislature was chosen by sortition.

Rousseau says in The Social Contract, " 'Election by lot,' says Montesquieu, 'is of the nature of democracy. ' I agree , but how is it so? 'The lot,' he continues, 'is a mode of election which mortifies no on; it leaves every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country.' "Montesquieu , by the way was one of the chief architects of society that the Founders took as an example in their design of the US Constitution. Sortition was used in the Athenian democracy. With few exceptions, all magistrates were chosen by lot, beginning with the archons in 487–486 BC; likewise the Boule (council) of 500 and the juries of the law courts were chosen by lot. Sortition is used in the American system for jury selection.

My reform of the American system would be #1) The legislature should be chosen by sortition to serve 4 year terms. Pay would be high enough to induce the average person to want to serve. The only requirement would be US citizenship. #2) The Senate would be chosen by sortition among the people who met certain educational and experiential background requirements. The term would be 6 years. #3) The Supreme Court would be chosen from among the people with even more stringent background requirements especially in law and government. The term would be 8 years. #4) The President would be chosen by means of an electoral system with an advanced method of voting like approval voting. The electoral college would be abolished. The President would serve for 4 years with the possibility of serving two terms if the people elected him again. At any level of political participation people could opt out of the pool of which otherwise they might be randomly selected. We have already seen in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump how extremists can be elected by purveying false information and outright lies creating a cult following. The elimination of political parties altogether would transform politics from the Chinese one party system, the American two party system and the European multiparty system to in fact a more democratic no party system.

Off the Top of My Head

Who Would Have Thunk It: China is the World's Leading Exporter of Cars!

by John Lawrence

In an article by Fareed Zakaria entitled, The rest of the world doesn’t see China the same way we do, there is this: "Ten years ago, China exported a relatively small number of cars. Today, it is the world’s leading exporter of automobiles, handily ousting Japan from that position. It is especially strong in electric vehicles. Two of every three EVs made in the world are made in China." So far Chinese cars have not shown up in the US, but they will. American car manufacturers are playing catch up. "As you enter a car showroom in Berlin, you see what looks like a Bugatti or a Ferrari, except more stylish. It’s an EP9, a top-of-the-line race car that has been sold to a handful of customers for about $3 million each. The company behind it is Nio, one of China’s new carmakers, which is going to take the world by storm."

The economies of the western world including the US and Europe are inextricably intertwined with that of China. The difference is that the US under Biden's leadership is taking a semi-belligerent attitude towards China while Europe is taking a much more deferential and mutually respectful approach. Biden's latest gaffe is referring to Xi Jinping as a "dictator" just after Secretary of State Antony Blinken just returned from China having tried to stop the downward spiral of US-China relationship. One of the problems is that the US insists on insulting China and the Chinese leadership. They really can't afford to do that any more if they want to create a mutually respectful relationship. Respect in nation to nation relationships is of the utmost importance. It could be argued that the lack of respect toward Russia was a precursor to the war in Ukraine. What is true among individuals - that mutual respect is important for creating and maintaining salubrious relationships is important - is equally true with respect to nations. Why doesn't the US leadership get this?

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown explained the European dilemma. “Europe needs an industrial policy, but it cannot afford to mimic the [Biden] administration’s protectionism,” he told me. “For Europe, trade is vital; its prosperity is dependent on trade with the rest of the world, including China, in a way that America’s is not. [Unlike America, Europe] imports energy and is not self-sufficient. Despite the surface agreement across the Atlantic, this could become a growing divide.” He acknowledged that the Biden administration has made moves to expand trade ties, but he expressed concern that all of them are bilateral or regional efforts that might undercut global trade. They come, he said, “at the expense of any real discussion of what a modern multilateralist order would look like.” Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former prime minister of Denmark, concurred. “Europe cannot divorce itself from China,” she explained. “That would be the end of globalization. That is why we want to de-risk, not decouple.” “De-risking,” a term famously used by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is the hottest buzzword in diplomacy these days. Even the Biden administration now says it also wants to de-risk rather than decouple. But many I spoke with in Europe said they worry that this is just a rhetorical change and that U.S. policies — and Chinese responses — will keeping moving the ratchet up.

"Kishore Mahbubani, the former Singaporean diplomat and author of “The Asian 21st Century,” pointed out that discussions in the West often forget that the world’s growth is mostly coming from Asia. He used his own region as an example. In 2000, Japan’s economy was about eight times larger than Southeast Asia’s. In about three years, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is projected to be the same size economically as Japan. The largest trade relationship in the world is between China and ASEAN — almost $1 trillion. And ASEAN countries cannot grow without open and vibrant trade, especially with China." So the world is changing. The US is not changing with it, but instead is trying to maintain its grip on being the world's leading superpower. Criticizing other nations based on their forms of government is leaving the US open to the criticism that its foreign policy is subject to change with respect to other nations based on the election cycle and an administration coming into power every four years that has diametrically opposed views on the subject. China by contrast maintains a consistent approach over much longer periods so that once a successful policy has been implemented, it will probably remain in effect indefinitely and not be subject to an election cycle which can swerve back and forth and even spin out of control as it did on January 6, 2020.

The US also could be exposed to the criticism that any fool can become President as was the case in the election of 2016, not to mention any Congress person, while in China the best and brightest are usually promoted to the highest positions in government.

Off the Top of My Head

The Difference Between Chinese and US Philosophy

by John Lawrence

Western philosophy is predicated on the individual and the philosophy that the best society is one in which the individual is completely and totally free. Freedom of the individual is the bedrock of the US Constitution which spells out individual rights but not individual responsibilities. Freedom is spelled out in John Stuart Mill's book On Liberty, but it goes back even further than that all the way to the life of Jesus who, as demonstrated in the New King James version of Luke, when his mother was looking for him famously said to her,  “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” So for Jesus the freedom to pursue his career took precedence over familial responsibilities. Chinese philosophy places the emphasis on the fact that familial responsibilities should take precedence over individual freedom. That is the basic philosophical difference between US and Chinese philosophy. Confucius, who is the penultimate philosopher for Chinese society, had a different view regarding the relations of human beings to society. According to Roger T. Ames, Theorizing the Person in Confucian Ethics,"How or in what way (dao) do persons in their roles become consummately humane (ren)? This was the perennial Confucian question asked explicitly in all of the Four Books: in the Great Learning, in the Analects of Confucius, in the Mencius, and again in the Zhongyong. And from the time of Confucius onward, the answer was a moral, aesthetic, and ultimately religious one. Persons (necessarily plural) become humane by cultivating those thick, intrinsic relations that constitute our initial conditions that locate the trajectory of our life narrative - its whence and whither - within family, community, and cosmos."

The Chinese emphasis is on harmony and stability whether at the familial level or at the societal level. Western society emphasizes individual liberty in the hope that the societal level will take care of itself. The US Constitution emphasizes individual rights; there is no mention of individual responsibilities. There is the hope that individuals competing among themselves will end up with the result that society will flourish, but there is no direct connection as there is in Chinese philosophy. Article 53 of the Chinese Constitution states: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China must abide by the Constitution and the law, keep state secrets, protect public property, observe discipline in the workplace, observe public order, and respect social morality." Article 54 states: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China shall have the obligation to safeguard the security, honor and interests of the motherland; they must not behave in any way that endangers the motherland's security, honor or interests."

While the Chinese Constitution also grants political rights such as freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, and religion and also economic rights, the Constitution also emphasizes obligations and responsibilities. Article 51 states: "When exercising their freedoms and rights, citizens of the People's Republic of China shall not undermine the interests of the state, society or collectives, or infringe upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens."

There is an emphasis on order, social morality, not infringing on the interests of others or society in general. Americans find this emphasis on social cohesiveness and stability too restraining and inhibiting of their rights as guaranteed in the American Constitution. The US Constitution's emphasis on individual rights without a concomitant emphasis on responsibilities has produced major instabilities in American society. The fall back position for the US is complete dependence on the rule of law and the preservation of American institutions rather than a libertarian view of freedom. Basically, the US, in order to preserve US democracy has had to come up with an almost Chinese position regarding societal stability. The January 6 insurrection and subsequent indulgence in free speech by certain actors to and beyond the point of truth telling has resulted in a continuing threat to US democracy. Certain members of American society are pushing Constitutional guarantees of free speech and gun rights to the point of undermining US democracy in general. Perhaps the American Constitution needs to be rethunk or at least amended. The Republican party threatens the destruction of American society unless they get their way.

Off the Top of My Head

The World Needs the Cooperation of Russia to Forestall Global Warming

by John Lawrence

Ultimately, geography will determine which countries win and which countries lose as global warming and sea level rise progress. Landlocked countries with little or no exposure to the oceans will win as countries with large shoreline exposures and major coastal cities go underwater. Russia has no major cities that are exposed to sea level rise. Its only ocean exposure is in the far north to the Arctic ocean and a little bit to the northern Pacific ocean. In addition Russia has an abundance of fossil fuels which it is eager to sell to the rest of the world. It has an incentive to increase global warming rather than to mitigate it.

As the Arctic region warms, Russia profits from its northernmost regions becoming more inhabitable. In addition sea routes in the Arctic become more navigable. So Russia is in a position to profit from global warming and to profit financially from hastening global warming by selling fossil fuels. Russia has no disincentive to curtail the sale of fossil fuels which are its major natural resource and source of income. It can undercut and undersell renewables if it wants to. Sanctions have had little or no effect on Russia's internal economy. The departure of Starbucks and McDonald's accomplished nothing. Russia reopened these chains under Russian control with the profits staying in Russia instead of returning to the US. Starbucks became Starubles and McDonald's became Inanov's presumably.

On the other hand consider the world's major cities that are located right on the oceans and are subject to being submerged by global warming. Such cities as New York City, Miami, London, Amsterdam, New Orleans, Venice, Savannah, GA, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Osaka, Dhaka, San Francisco, Sydney, Boston, Lisbon, Vancouver, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Dublin, Honolulu, Lagos, Charleston, Long Beach, Key West and many others in China, Africa, Vietnam, Bangladesh and east Asia. The US and its partners in Europe have major exposure to oceans for many major cities. Billions of dollars in real estate are at stake, not to mention that major trading routes will be disrupted and infrastructure destroyed. Particularly, the US east coast is exposed not only to sea level rise, but to increasingly virulent hurricanes and tornadoes.

So considering the fact that the US has relatively the most to lose from global warming and Russia has relatively the most to win, does it make any sense to make a pariah out of Russia? Regardless of the war in Ukraine, worsening relations with Russia only hasten the day when geography will determine the outcome of the war on climate change. China also has a long shoreline and plenty of major cities that are exposed to the ocean. It would be in China's interest to partner with the US to combat global warming. Yet the US is in the business of making a pariah out of Russia and starting a Cold War with China. So even if  the US wins its wars with Russia and China, it can still lose the war with respect to global warming. In the final analysis Russia and Mother Nature will win. It's all about geography.

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

The Glory of War

by John Lawrence

Throughout history men have gone to war to cover themselves in glory and prove their masculinity. In World War I, many young British men were gung ho for going to war. They intended to cover themselves in glory and be home before Christmas. Instead many of them died face down in muddy trenches or were impaled on barbed wire. According to historycrunch.com: "...one of the main reasons for the excitement of the war was that many viewed it as an adventure. They read stories about soldiers bravely marching into battle and dying heroically on the battlefields for their countries. For many of these young soldiers, they viewed the Great War as their opportunity to play a role in the ‘glory of war’ and follow in the path of earlier soldiers in earlier European conflicts. To them, war seemed adventurous and a show of bravery that many claimed they ‘did not want to miss’." It was forever so but in general only the victors were able to cover themselves in glory.

War, I would contend, is primarily a masculine pursuit. It represents an attempt by men to prove their manhood. Even some American Indian tribes cultivated a warrior tradition. Their women would have nothing to do with men until they had proved themselves in war. According to Wikipedia: "What evolved among the Plains Native Americans from the 17th to the late 19th century was warfare as both a means of livelihood and a sport. Young men gained both prestige and plunder by fighting as warriors, and this individualistic style of warfare ensured that success in individual combat and capturing trophies of war were highly esteemed." Not for nothing were they called Braves. Martina Sprague in her book The Glory of War: The Way to Historical Immortality writes:  "What motivates men to go to war? The answer is the desire for recognition and the opportunity to gain eternal fame. War is perhaps the most common way in which a man can become a hero. We tend to romanticize war. War is portrayed as a daring adventure for a sacred cause, where the soldier will ultimately reach the highest level of self-actualization. As demonstrated by the great military figures in history, the promise of honor and heroism can help a man conquer the world."

Covering oneself in glory, proving one's masculinity, becoming a hero, these are ultimately traps which cause the perpetuation of war. Some men become addicted to war, the excitement of war. If one war ends, they will seek out the next one. Life is never so dull as life without war. It is the ultimate football game because the stakes - life or death - are so high. Witness the volunteers from other countries who are putting their lives on the line in Ukraine. The problem is that the pursuit of peace is never as exciting as the pursuit of war. Until peacemaking becomes as noble and glorious a pursuit as war, there is no hope for the human race to live peaceably and cooperatively side by side with each other. Until they give out as many medals and honors for peace heroes as they do for war heroes, the human race will go down fighting and ultimately extinguish each other.

I'm afraid that the war in Ukraine is only the latest example of people preoccupied with the excitement of war. Sure it was a clumsy and ignoble thing for Russia to do to so overtly invade Ukraine. They should have taken a page out of the CIA's book and been more subtle and covert about it. For example, the CIA undermined the democratically elected regime of Salvador Allende in Chile because he was a socialist and a Marxist ushering in the regime of Augusto Pinochet and his reign of terror. "According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was at least 3,095 [under Pinochet]. Operation Condor, a U.S.-supported terror operation focusing on South America, was founded at the behest of the Pinochet regime in late November 1975, his 60th birthday." I'm afraid that Zelensky is following the same playbook of promoting the war based on 'glory for Ukraine' and his David and Goliath symbolism. His insatiable lust for American artillery shells and other advanced weaponry is duly granted by President Biden and the European allies with the goal of "winning the war." No one except the Chinese seem the least interested in creating a peaceful solution to the war. Instead the war will only be escalated when Ukraine gets F-15 fighter jets. Then they will be able to hit Russian targets in Russia escalating the war even further. Until now tragically it's only Ukrainian civilian lives and property that are being destroyed.

It seems like revenge, hatred for Russia and glory for Ukraine are the ultimate factors at work here not a search for compromise which both sides can live with. Does Russia have any legitimate national security interests in Ukraine's not becoming a member of NATO? Did the US have any legitimate national security interests in Chile nor becoming a socialist and Marxist state? There are always many reasons for war, but few for peace. Meanwhile, a lack of cooperation among the world's nations is hastening the day in which global warming will put an end to human civilization unless we can wake up and see that peace and cooperation are more glorious than war.

Off the Top of My Head

Let's All Go Plant Some Trees

by John Lawrence

"Let's Go Fly a Kite" is a song from the1964 film, Mary Poppins, sung by George Banks when he realizes his family is more important than his job. Now the planet earth's survivability trumps even that concern so "let's go plant some trees" should be our new motto. China designated March 12 as National Tree Planting Day in 1979. The National People's Congress, China's top legislature, launched a nationwide voluntary tree-planting campaign in 1981, stipulating that every able-bodied citizen above 11 should plant three to five trees each year. Why not join China in a good natured spirit of saving earth by planting more trees? God in heaven, should this even be controversial? The narrative is that China and the US are big rivals and the best we can do is "compete" with each other. No one in a position of power is suggesting, God forbid, that we should cooperate with each other not even to save the planet from the ravages of global warming that we're already starting to experience. It just goes to show the sickness and the sorriness of the human race when peoples and countries cannot cooperate not even to prevent Mutually Assured Destruction which is the outcome for the human species and many other species if we don't get a handle on global warming. Instead we have global warmongering.

At the World Economic Forum in May 2022:

During his speech at the Forum’s 2022 Annual Meeting in Davos, Xie Zhenhua said: ‘China's forest cover and forest stock volume have been growing in the last 30 years, and China accounts for more than 25% of the world's new green areas. China responds actively to contribute to the 1t.org initiative from the World Economic Forum, and I am announcing here that China aims to plant and conserve 70 billion trees within 10 years to green our planet, combat climate change, and increase forest carbon sinks.’

 

In support of this bold contribution, Chairman Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum said:

‘We appreciate China’s effort in supporting the 1t.org initiative of the World Economic Forum and relevant UN initiatives, we highly appreciate China’s practices upholding relative international commitment such as the Paris Agreement and Biodiversity target through Nature-Based Solutions.’

If the 1.4 billion people of China each plant 3 trees a year, that's 4.2 billion tree planted per year or 42 billion trees planted per decade. If the 332 million people of the US took the same pledge to each plant 3 trees a year, that's approximately another billion trees per year or 10 billion trees per decade. Trees are a carbon sink. They extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It is the natural way to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and, consequently, the harmful effects of global warming. So why isn't there an effort in the US to emulate China in this regard? Shouldn't there be a shared interest here? What if the entire 8 billion people populating planet Earth committed to planting 3 trees a year. A single mature tree can absorb 22 lbs. of carbon a year, and makes enough clean oxygen for 4 people to breathe fresh air. A previous special report by IPCC stated that tree-planting could sequester around 1.1–1.6 GT of CO2 per year. A GT is one billion tons. Approximately 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere every year. Clearly, a lot of trees need to be planted to balance carbon dioxide emissions and sequester 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, but every tree helps. We can reduce the tonnage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere one tree at a time.

So let's join China this March 12 and declare a worldwide national tree planting day or just a global tree planting day in the spirit of cooperation among nations to create peace and save our planet from Mutually Assured Destruction which is the path we are on.

Off the Top of My Head

The Way to Cure Inflation: More Immigrant Workers

by John Lawrence

There is a supply shortage which means that there is not enough supply to meet consumer demand. At the same time there is a worker shortage. The worker shortage causes the supply shortage as companies have to cut back on their supply of product because they don't have enough workers to make more. They have to pay workers more because they are in a competition for workers. So there is a gap between supply and demand because there is a gap between available jobs and the supply of workers. The solution: increase the supply of immigrants to fill the demand for workers. Then companies could ramp up supply to meet demand, and wage price spirals would diminish. Instead, the government has restricted immigration. This limits the supply of workers especially those who are in demand for the lower skilled jobs. Republicans are all concerned about immigration when the solution to the inflation problem is to let more immigrants into the country to fulfill the need for essential workers. This would fill the void in the job market and increase supply of goods and services. This in turn would lower prices and go a long way to taming inflation. The Fed cannot solve the problem of inadequate supply of workers by raising interest rates. This will only tend to rein in asset prices which in and of itself is a good thing since housing and rents are too expensive. But it will not increase the supply of commodities for which there is more demand than supply.

After noting that reversing the Trump tariffs on Chinese products would lower inflation, Fareed Zakaria also noted the following:

The second one, he noted, would be immigration reform. This is the time to reverse more of Trump’s restrictions on immigration, many done by executive action and hundreds of which are still in effect, which have caused severe worker shortages in industries such as farming, construction and health care.

The problem, however, is not one relating to facts or logic. No one seriously disputes the validity of these claims. During the campaign, Biden lambasted Trump’s tariffs on China and much of his immigration policy. Yet after entering office, the Biden White House has behaved on these issues like a deer caught in the headlights — paralyzed by fear that any major shifts might get attacked by Republicans.

I also might add that cranking up the Cold War rhetoric regarding China is not the way to lower the price of consumer products most of which are manufactured in China. China is learning the lesson that Russia learned during their ongoing war with Ukraine. If you have a product or commodity that the west wants or needs, you can cause a lot of damage by withholding that product or in other ways making it more expensive. As Russia has made the price of gas more expensive, they have directly caused inflation in the US and Europe. One could also point out that sanctions on Russian oil by western governments have contributed to rising inflation so in that sense the Biden administration has shot itself in the foot. China could take a page out of Russia's book, and increase costs to western consumers. In fact it already has as container ships (wholly owned by Chinese companies) have raised their prices to transport goods from China to the US. The US needs to cooperate with China if it wants the trade relationships so vital to consumer spending, which is 70% of the US economy, to remain on a salutary basis.

It is to be noted that China turned the tables on the US by sanctioning Nancy Pelosi and her family after her trip to Taiwan. It's as if they're saying, "See, you guys aren't the only ones that can do sanctions." China could get into a sanctions war with the US if tensions between the two countries continue to escalate. China could take steps to increase the cost of Chinese produced consumer goods which are essential to the functioning of the US economy. Or it could even withhold some essential manufactured goods altogether. As Russia has us over a barrel with regard to gas prices, China could put us over a barrel with respect to any number of consumer goods that we are dependent on them for. On the other hand, if we cooperated rather than competed with China, that might go a long way to solve the climate change problem. Ditto for Russia. Those 2 countries have a lot to do with whether or not planet earth gets a handle on climate change. Can we afford not to cooperate. In the long run the fate of Taiwan or Ukraine is less important than the fate of the whole planet.

Off the Top of My Head

We Need a Department of Peace to Balance and Offset our War Department

by John Lawrence

Let's face it. the Department of Defense is a euphemism. It was called the Department of War until 1949. So let's call it what it really is. Don't get me wrong. There are times when war is necessary as occurred in WW II. However, we spend about $1 trillion on our War Department while spending little or nothing on peace. Is there really a Peace Corps? Yes, and its budget is about $400 million. That's about 4 ten thousandths of the War Department budget. My point is that we should be making at least the same effort towards peace as we're making towards war, and we should be putting our money where our mouth is. This doesn't mean we totally disarm ourselves. It means that we are making an effort towards creating peace in the world if at all possible and are willing to devote an equal amount of resources towards it. In our present state it's all about threatening war in order to to create a state of peace. It's Pax Americana similar to the Pax Romana which meant that you didn't mess with Rome or else you were threatened with violence. Instead of creating peace by means of a threat of war, we should be actively pursuing a peaceful world instead.

What would a Department of Peace actually do? Well, diplomacy would be under this department instead of the State Department for starters. Second, the American equivalent of China's Belt and Road initiative. Building infrastructure around the world just as China is doing. But what's most important at the present time is converting the world to green infrastructure. The middle class in India is growing. They want to live just like Americans. As more Indians enter the middle class they are consuming more fossil fuels to provide the energy to do so. This is contributing to the looming climate disaster. Just what we don't need is more carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere as a result of more people gentrifying into the middle class. Therefore, a Department of Peace, which should include the Peace Corps, would step up the efforts not only to change the fossil fuel habit in the US, but to actively change it around the world. About a half a trillion dollar budget would be about right while decreasing the War (Defense) budget which is 10 times the combined budgets of the rest of the world to half a trillion.

President Biden wants a Civilian Climate Corps reminiscent of the Civilian Conservation Corps which President Roosevelt established to build parks and plant trees during the Great Depression. An excellent idea in view of the fact that planting a trillion trees would suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Unless we do that there is already enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 410 ppm to melt both poles. Why not require participation in the Civilian Conservation Corps for people receiving welfare benefits who aren't otherwise employed or who are unemployable in the prevailing economy. I'm thinking about the homeless and others for whom this might be a first step to getting back on their feet in the so-called real world. I'm in favor of the government being the employer of last resort, and employment in a Civilian Climate Corps is the perfect solution both for them and for the environment.

Building the elements of peace around the world would entail looking out for the health care needs of people outside the US in our era of pandemics. This is also good sense in a selfish way since viruses can transmit world wide in a matter of days if not hours. They don't respect national boundaries. People to people cultural contacts with people of other nations brings about understanding and the realization that, no matter what the religious or ethnic differences seem to be, human beings are all essentially the same deep down and all have the same needs and aspirations. Helping others to realize their aspirations creates peace in the world. Cultural and educational exchanges are an important way to increase mutual understanding. There are many ways to create peace in the world. The US shouldn't be always taking the stance of trying to put down those peoples and countries who don't follow the US way of life. Others might have a different way of setting up their societies, but rather than taking this as a threat, we should engage diplomatically and peacefully if at all possible knowing that in the final analysis, if push came to shove, we also have the means to defend ourselves. A Department of Peace and a Department of War should go hand in hand. Today it is lopsided in favor of war.

Off the Top of My Head

Why the Fed's Raising Interest Rates Won't Work

by John Lawrence

Inflation is a supply and demand problem. The Fed only sees it as a demand problem: there is too much demand. Therefore, it seeks to reduce the public's ability to demand by reducing wages and creating more unemployment. Problem is that businesses are short staffed. They are trying to hire more workers, not laying them off. There is no "industrial reserve army" of people competing for jobs. Businesses are competing for workers. The reason why prices are going up (hence inflation) is not that there is too much demand, but that there is too little supply. This is caused by supply chain problems which comes down to the fact that most things Americans consume are produced overseas, mainly in China. Also the sanctions on Russian gas and oil combined with Russia cutting off supplies even beyond the sanctions means that everything that is transported including consumer goods is even more expensive. The problem is that the US does not produce much of what it consumes. Again it's a supply problem. Container ships coming from China raise their rates because gas is more expensive. This makes the goods they transport more expensive. When the major things Americans consume come from China (consumer goods) and Russia (energy costs), America is at the behest of countries that it considers enemies. And so is Europe.

The traditional way of fighting inflation is for the Fed to raise interest rates and drive up unemployment. When unemployment increases, demand decreases because unemployed people don't have as much money to spend. In other words money is withdrawn from the economy. This is of course to the detriment of the unemployed people which are usually those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. But as we've seen during the pandemic, those at the bottom of the economic ladder are usually those who are indispensable workers - grocery workers, agricultural workers, truck drivers, nurses, caregivers. The economy cannot function for anyone without their services. So the only way the Fed can achieve its goal is to drive businesses into bankruptcy. Then all those workers will be in the ranks of the unemployed and be forced to underconsume. Actually, the more that Americans consume, the more greenhouse gasses are created. Underconsumption could have a very salutary effect on the atmosphere and the environment.

Another way to withdraw money from the economy in order to reduce demand is to raise taxes. Again taxes are usually raised on the poor and middle class further immiserizing them. Congress refuses to raise taxes on the rich which Joe Biden has proposed doing. This would help inflation to some extent, but the rich don't consume basic items to the extent that the middle class and poor do. So in order to reduce demand to the point where it is more or less equal to supply, money must be taken out of the pockets of the poor and middle class. The other alternative is to increase supply. But since the US is dependent on supply from foreign suppliers, this is not that easy to do. Long range, the solution is for the US to make more stuff, but corporations have settled on a model of getting stuff produced where labor is cheapest and that means overseas.

Off the Top of My Head

Biden Could Solve the Gas Crisis Today by Taking Sanctions Off Russian Oil

by John Lawrence

Sanctions on Russian oil have been an abysmal failure. Russian oil profits are up 50% from last year! Just as American and British oil corporations have been scoring record profits, so has Russia. Oil prices are set on the world market and soaring prices result in record profits for Russia. If Putin had designed the sanctions himself, he couldn't have wreaked more havoc on the US and European economies. It's time for Biden to admit that his policy of sancti0ns against Russia has failed. They haven't deterred Russia from pursuing a war of attrition against Ukraine. They have demonstrated the abject failure of using US sanctions to control the actions of other countries. They are a total lost cause now and in the future. That's the lesson of the war in Ukraine for the west.

Bloomberg reported:

Russia’s oil revenues are up 50% this year even as trade restrictions following the invasion of Ukraine spurred many refiners to shun its supplies, the International Energy Agency said.

Moscow earned roughly $20 billion each month in 2022 from combined sales of crude and products amounting to about 8 million barrels a day, the Paris-based IEA said in its monthly market report. 

Russian shipments have continued to flow even as the European Union edges towards an import ban, and international oil majors such as Shell Plc and TotalEnergies SE pledge to cease purchases. Asia has remained a keen customer, with China and India picking up cargoes no longer wanted in Europe.

The IEA, which advises major economies, kept its outlook for world oil markets largely unchanged in the report. Global fuel markets are tight and may face further strain in the months ahead as Chinese demand rebounds following a spate of new Covid lockdowns, it said. 

Reduced flows of Russian refined products such as diesel, fuel oil and naphtha have aggravated tightness in global markets, the agency noted. Stockpiles have declined for seven consecutive quarters, with reserves of so-called middle distillates at their lowest since 2008.

But for all the disruption, Moscow has continued to enjoy a financial windfall compared with the first four months of 2021. Despite the EU’s public censure of the Kremlin’s aggression, total oil export revenues were up 50% this year. 

The bloc remained the largest market for Russian exports in April, taking 43% of the country’s exports, the IEA said.

So where is this "world market" that is setting the price of oil? Is it on Wall Street? I'd like to have a word with whoever is in charge of this "world market." Lord knows the US produces enough oil to supply all the US' gas needs so why not take US oil production off the world market and just sell it to the American people at a reasonable price? Oh, I guess that's not how capitalism works. Ironic, isn't it, that a formerly communist country like Russia is now profiting from capitalist markets! So even if the US, Canada and Europe are having record inflation with recessions predicted in the near future, Biden won't take the sanctions off of Russian oil, and basically this is all for spite, all because he hates Putin so much. Biden has staked American prestige on fighting a proxy war with Russia based on the almighty dollar and the power it supposedly possesses over every financial transaction going on in the world. Problem is that all the sanctions on Russia have only proven the weakness and futility of using sanctions to achieve policy goals. Russia has demonstrated that the sanctions just don't work. They haven't deterred Russia in the least. China and India have taken up the slack in Russian oil purchases.

Besides that, what Biden fails to understand is that like the US, Russia's currency, the ruble, is a fiat currency. That means that unlike China, it is not pegged to the US dollar. Russia's central bank can print as many rubles as it wants without asking US permission. The US can of course do the same thing - print as many dollars as it wants except the limiting factor is inflation. So the US can't print dollars right now, but Russia can still print rubles. That means that Russia controls Russian investment in Russia and Russian control of internal consumer markets. Imported products come mainly from China, and China is Russia's friend. Russia is demanding payment for its gas in rubles rather than dollars, and this supports the value of the ruble as a convertible currency just as Nixon's demand that the Saudis price their oil in dollars supported the value of the dollar and made the dollar the world's reserve currency.

All this boils down to the fact that Russia is in the driver's seat with respect to the war in Ukraine. It's hard to see how the unending supply of western weapons is sufficient to win the war for Ukraine now that the policy of sanctions has failed. Demonizing Putin is not a policy that is likely to have an effect on the war one way or other. Putin still has a lot of friends in the world and US inflation, while being primarily a function of sanctions on Russian oil, is also dependent on the supply chain of products coming from China, Russia's friend. Biden should be careful about whom he demonizes. After demonizing MBS, he's now about to get back in bed with him and the Saudis. Biden's Build Back Better policy could have helped the American people, and even now could fight inflation, but alas, after promising that it would be passed "in tandem" with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, it never was. What up with that?

Off the Top of My Head

Russia Stands to Profit From Global Warming

by John Lawrence

With half the Arctic coastline, Russia is in a position to dominate the Arctic region as sea ice disappears. Ships will soon be able to sail directly across the top of the world, bringing new commercial, political, and economic opportunities for the Arctic region, while substantially reducing transit times between Asia and Europe by up to a third compared with taking the Suez Canal. Also there is $1 trillion worth of precious metals and minerals under the ice, along with the biggest area of untapped petroleum deposits left on the planet. While the rest of the world suffers from global warming, Russia will profit from the opening of the Northern route across the Arctic region and a wealth of natural resources that it will be possible to extract. Siberia could become the world’s next breadbasket. Time magazine reports:

"The Russian government is already positioning itself as a net beneficiary of global warming, writing in its 2020 Arctic Strategy that “climate change contributes to the emergence of new economic opportunities.” With half the Arctic coastline under its control, it’s not hard to see why. Led by Rosatom, a state-owned nuclear technology and infrastructure enterprise, the country has invested approximately $10 billion to develop ports and other facilities along a 3,000 nautical-mile-long shipping lane that stretches from Murmansk, near the Finnish border, to the Bering Strait. The Northern Sea Route offers the shortest passage between Europe and Asia, shaving nearly two weeks off a journey around India, while saving fuel, limiting vessel wear and tear, and reducing emissions. The investments are already paying dividends. In 2010 international cargo shippers made only one full Northern Sea Route transit. In 2021 there were 71, according to Norway’s Nord University’s Centre for High North Logistics.

"Russia is building up its existing 40-strong icebreaking fleet by commissioning at least half a dozen nuclear-powered heavy icebreakers at a cost of $400 million each. When the first of the newest batch—the world’s biggest and most powerful, according to Russian officials—launched its maiden voyage in 2020, Russia hailed it as the start of a new era of Arctic dominance. In 2021, commercial tankers, equipped with special ice-hardened hulls, started transporting natural gas between Russia’s Arctic coast oil installations and Chinese ports in the middle of winter—a strategic advance that results in a timely lifeline for Moscow if European nations follow through on threats to cut off purchases of Russian gas because of the conflict in Ukraine. “The creation of a modern nuclear icebreaker fleet capable of ensuring regular year-round and safe navigation through the entire Northern Sea Route is a strategic task for our country,” said Vyacheslav Ruksha, head of Rosatom’s Northern Sea Route Directorate, in a statement."

The war in Ukraine may pale in significance compared to the climate change issues which Russia is in a position to exploit. While the rest of the world is trying to slow down climate change, Russia just may be trying to accelerate it. The more climate change the better according to them because it will make for an ice free Arctic, an ice free passage across the Arctic via the Northern Sea Route connecting Europe with Asia and the ability to extract trillions of dollars of natural resources. Part of the route goes very close to Nome, Alaska which could bring the US and Russia into direct military contact.

Because of the changes brought about by global warming, It makes it even more important to not make Russia a pariah nation but to bring it into the community of nations. The Northern Sea Route will bring Russia and China even closer together as China also profits from shorter shipping routes to Europe. Rather than helping to get the world off of fossil fuels, Russia will profit immensely from their continued use. They certainly will not look kindly on supplications to limit the exploitation of fossil fuels if the western world considers them to be a pariah nation. The lack of cooperation among major world powers or even major blocs of power would be enough to doom the earth to greenhouse gas oblivion which eventually would destroy Russia and China too although Russia would probably be the last nation to succumb.

Off the Top of My Head

How Are We Doing With Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

by John Lawrence

In 2009 President Obama pledged that the United States would cut carbon emissions “in the range of seventeen per cent by 2020". Let's see if the US succeeded. In 2009 the US produced 6772 million metric tons of greenhouse gas equivalents. In 2020 US totaled 5981 million metric tons of greenhouse gas equivalents. 17% of 6772 is 1151. So for Obama's pledge to be fulfilled greenhouse gas emissions for 2020 would have to have been about 5621 million metric tons. His pledge was almost but not quite fulfilled thanks to the fact that the pandemic decreased greenhouse gas emissions from 2019 to 2020 by 11%. In 2019 greenhouse gas emissions were 6571 million metric tons down only 3% from 2009! One might conclude that the pandemic was good for the environment, and also that Obama's pledge would not have been fulfilled except for the fact that so many cars were off the road due to the pandemic. More people worked remotely. This kept cars off the road. Going forward as many people who can work from home should continue to do so in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. In addition conversion to electric vehicles needs to be done posthaste.

The Copenhagen climate conference of 2009 was widely considered a disaster since no country would commit to actual reductions of greenhouse gasses. The Guardian reported:

"The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement in Copenhagen tonight, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

"After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord "recognises" the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but does not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.

"American officials spun the deal as a "meaningful agreement", but even Obama said: "This progress is not enough."

"We have come a long way, but we have much further to go," he added."

At this point in time it seems like a fool's errand to get all the countries of the world to cooperate to save planet earth from becoming uninhabitable for our species at least. With war raging in Ukraine and the world lining up on one side or the other, all hope of cooperation seems lost especially when Russia, the second largest producer of fossil fuels, is widely considered a pariah. Getting nations like Russia whose economy is dependent on the production of fuels which produce greenhouse gasses to cooperate seemed a stretch even before war broke out. Production of fossil fuels means money is at stake as long as there is a market for them, and that market doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. In fact the war has uped the ante for increased production. China and India need energy and they are dependent on the consumption of coal and Russian oil. They will not be cooperative with wealthy western nations to diminish dependency on fossil fuels especially if there is little trust between east and west. It would take Jesus Christ Himself to bring all parties together in a mutually beneficial agreement to save earth from global warming. But I think that God has left it up to humanity to figure this out without divine intervention, and if the human species can't figure it out, it's one more species that will go extinct.

As US Funds Pentagon Bloat, China Investments in Green Energy Soar

A staff member charges an electric bus at a charging station on April 1, 2022 in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

In the first quarter of 2022, China is expected to take 65% of the global market in new-energy vehicles.

 

Juan Cole

April 8, 2022 by Informed Comment

China is beating the pants off the United States in the burgeoning new energy vehicle market, out-producing and out-selling America with regard to plug-in vehicles by a massive margin. Whereas the Chinese government is supporting this new industry, the US government is still subsidizing fossil fuels and is spending $728.5 billion a year on the Pentagon at a time when the US is not even at war. The result is bloated and problematic engines of destruction like the failed F-35.

In 2021, about 4 million EVs were produced around the world. That year, China made 57.4% of them.

In the first quarter of 2022, China is expected to take 65% of the global market in new-energy vehicles, according to Yang Yang at China Daily.

China exported about 500,000 new-energy cars in 2021, 2.6 times more than the previous year,. China's EV exports to Europe rose fivefold to 230,000 units write Akashi Kawakami, Yohei Muramatsu and Saki Shirai at Nikkei Asia.

You know whose EV exports to Europe did not increase five times in 2021? America's.

In contrast, the US automakers accounted for just 12% of global EV sales in 2021, Nikkei Asia says, Worse, the US lost market share in this sector compared to 2020. We're not only not at the forefront of this industry, we are falling behind.

The US Republican Party and their plus-one, Sen. Joe Manchin, are preventing the US from becoming the dominant automaker in the world in this decade by consistently shooting down the green energy and transportation provisions of the now-moribund Build Back Better bill backed by President Biden.

The major Chinese automaker BYD announced Sunday that it now no longer even produces gasoline-driven vehicles using internal combustion engines (ICE). The US looks increasingly like a backward, lumbering dinosaur in this new, green technological environment.

Inside China, EVs had been 6% of new vehicle purchases at the beginning of 2021, but skyrocketed to 22% by the end of last year. That is an increase of 1.3% a month every month, Yang points out.

In absolute numbers, in January 2021, China sold 173,000 new energy cars. In January, 2022, 372,615 new plug-in vehicles were registered. That is more than double—115%.

This are incredible numbers.

In 2021, about 4 million EVs were produced around the world. That year, China made 57.4% of them. This year its market share is increasing significantly.

Chinese firms are aggressively invading formerly Japanese-dominated car markets such as Thailand, Nikkei Asia says. The country's largest producer of automobiles, SAIC Motor, sells its MG EP new-energy car in Thailand for 30% less than the price of a Nissan Leaf EV.

---

© 2021 Juan Cole

Juan Cole

Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His newest book, "Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires" was published in 2020. He is also the author of  "The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East" (2015) and "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East" (2008).  He has appeared widely on television, radio, and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. 

Off the Top of My Head

Two Contradictions in the Narrative About the War

by John Lawrence

1) That Saudi Arabia is a good friend. Then why do they refuse to pump more oil to relieve the gas crisis? 2) That it's a war between democracy and autocracy. Then why is the world's largest democracy, India, on the side of Russia? Let's take #1 first. If Saudi Arabia is our great friend, they could end the gas crisis tomorrow simply by pumping more oil. This they refuse to do. So whose side are they on? For all the criticism of Putin as a butcher, we forget that Mohammed bin Salman, affectionately known as MBS, had Jamal Khasoggi butchered. Khashoggi, 59, was a Saudi citizen living in Northern Virginia and writing columns for The Washington Post that were often critical of the Saudi monarchy. He was killed during a visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. His body was dismembered, and his remains have never been found. Then Donald Trump, defying Congress, proceeded to sell billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Saudis. Reuters reported:

"The Trump administration informed congressional committees that it will go ahead with 22 military sales to the Saudis, United Arab Emirates and Jordan, infuriating lawmakers by circumventing a long-standing precedent for congressional review of major weapons sales.

"Members of Congress had been blocking sales of offensive military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for months, angry about the huge civilian toll from their air campaign in Yemen, as well as human rights abuses such as the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey."

I repeat whose side are they on, and what values do they and our vaunted "western values" have in common? But enough on the Saudis.

Let's take #2. India, I repeat, the world's largest democracy, is on the side of Russia. At least they have not sided with the US, NATO and the west even though they supposedly share our democratic values which are totally at odds with "autocratic values." The narrative that the war in Ukraine represents a war between democratic values and autocratic values is totally bogus. India has long been a purchaser of Russian military equipment and was an ally with Russian support in its war with Pakistan. India’s friendship with the then-Soviet Union became official in 1971, after the two countries signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. That year, the Soviets backed India in a war with Pakistan that ultimately led to the independence of Bangladesh. The US backed Pakistan. Now India is taking up the slack by buying more Russian oil, oil that isn't being sold to the western world which needs it badly to get gas prices back to normal. China is buying more Russian Ural crude oil as well.

As the world rallies to condemn Russia, India remains silent on the sideline. In addition to India some other countries siding with Russia or at least remaining neutral are China, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Algeria, South Africa, Angola, Morocco. Nearly half of all the countries that abstained from condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine at the U.N. General Assembly are in Africa, and many are reluctant to join sanctions against Russia. In fact, only 28 out of the 54 African countries (just over 51 percent) represented in the U.N. voted in favor of the resolution. So not all countries are willing to turn Putin into a pariah and Russia into a pariah state. Even South Africa, which has a parliamentary democracy and is a strategic partner of the United States, was not willing to condemn Putin.

However, the war ends, it is important for world peace and the fight against climate change, let alone globalized markets, that some sort of constructive alliance among all countries be enacted taking the security interests of all countries into account. The problem with NATO is that it didn't do that. In fact the expansion of NATO eastward rubbed Russia's nose in the fact that it had lost the Cold War. Some American leaders gloated over that fact. Instead Russia should have been accepted into the community of nations. If Finland right on Russia's border can remain nonaligned and neutral without threat of invasion, perhaps that would have been the best course for other nations on Russia's border as well.

 

Off the Top of My Head

China Takes Vaccine Mandates to a Whole New Level

by John Lawrence

If you think that it's a good idea to get the pandemic over ASAP, then you want everybody to get vaccinated. If you want the economy to get running full steam ahead, then you want everybody to get vaccinated. While in the US population, there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy thus prolonging the pandemic, in China, if you don't get vaccinated voluntarily, they'll hold you down and jab you whether you like it or not. In China the public good supersedes private good. People are free up until the point that their actions harm society as a whole! What a revolutionary idea! In the US people are free even if their actions or lack thereof harm society as a whole.  In the US there is lawsuit after lawsuit and court after court dealing with Joe Biden's mandates, and those mandates are very carefully nuanced. They certainly do not apply to every citizen. China says in effect to hell with this shit everybody needs to get vaccinated or else. No wishy washing around.

The LA Times reported:

"At the end of August, police in China’s Hunan province came to the home of Zhang Jianping. They questioned him about why he had not been vaccinated against COVID-19, and took him by car to a hospital.

"In a social media post that included photos and videos to back up his story, Zhang said he was very clear that he did not want to be immunized. “I am not informed. I do not consent,” he says he told the authorities. But they held down his arms and legs and forcibly injected him.

"According to Yaqiu Wang, the researcher at Human Rights Watch who saw Zhang’s post, the local police and healthcare officials were acting in response to President Xi Jinping’s call for the vaccination of 80% of the country’s population by the end of October. Even though the central government in Beijing says that “informed consent” is the rule and injections must be voluntary, Wang says many such complaints of compelled vaccination have appeared on social media."

Many Americans cry crocodile tears over forcing anyone to get vaccinated. But they didn't cry crocodile tears or file lawsuit after lawsuit when young men were drafted to go to war in World War 2. There was no arguing with the government when it came to war in those days. It was compulsory and mandated. Conscientious objectors were not well tolerated. But when it comes to public health and the prevention of more deaths from COVID, well everybody has an opinion and personal freedom dictates that everyone's opinion should be heard and tolerated even if it causes more death. To date about 780,000 Americans have died from COVID. 675,000 Americans died of the flu in 1918 about 10 times as many as died in World War 1. 405,000 Americans died in World War 2. So although participation in those wars was mandatory, we don't want to infringe on anyone's personal freedom to fight a war on COVID which has already claimed more American lives than either world war or the 1918 flu pandemic for which there was no vaccine!

What fools these mortals be! And then there's global warming. Finally, I ask you - which economy will be operating full speed first? Well, obviously, the one that rids itself of the pandemic first. The other one will be mired in COVID for the foreseeable future.

Off the Top of My Head

Don't Be Fooled: The Chinese Communist Party Has Taken Capitalism to a Whole New Level

by John Lawrence

In 2021, Forbes listed Beijing with the most billionaires at 100 people, followed by New York City with 99 billionaires, and Hong Kong in third place with 80 billionaires. Does this sound like communism? But it is not traditional capitalism either. China has eliminated poverty among its 1.5 billion people while traditionally capitalist countries like the US tolerate large rates of poverty and homelessness. In the US in 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019. There were also 580 million people homeless living on the streets in unsanitary conditions. This is the price we've been taught that Americans have to pay in order for us to live in a free capitalist country. So what is the difference between the US version of capitalism and the Chinese version? It is basically that the Chinese central government directs the tools of capitalism while in the US there is little or no government direction. Whatever any individual can devise as a way to make money is acceptable. In China the government directs capitalist entrepreneurialism and energy. So Chinese society is much more unified; American society is much more diverse.

Stability and cohesiveness is very important to the Chinese government and Chinese society in general. That's why dissidents are cracked down upon. Their attitude is why risk the great progress Chinese society has made and is making in order that a few people can speak freely and perhaps create a dissident movement which could bring it all down around their ears. Hence the crackdown in Hong Long. Hence the crackdown on the Uighurs. Xi fears that what happened to the Soviet Union could happen to China. It could fall apart. The US tolerates unlimited amounts of free speech with the result that the US is a very unstable society as witnessed by the January 6 insurrection. The US came very close to a ooup d'etat and an overthrow of the elected government. The US definition of freedom is leading to a society which maximizes freedom at the expense of stability and cohesiveness while the Chinese limit freedom in the interests of stability and cohesiveness. Which model is better? The world is watching.

Perhaps there is a middle ground between Chinese authoritarianism and US anarchy. Is this the social welfare democracies of Scandinavia? Perhaps. While the US has divided itself into 2 tribes at total odds with each other, China has become not only very prosperous but they are all, for the most part, on the same page. They are unified while the US is divided. Perhaps China has overdone the limitation of individual freedom, but most Chinese would probably trade off some loss of freedom for the huge increase in prosperity that the average Chinese is experiencing. Would Americans trade off some loss of freedom in order to get out of the malaise they are experiencing? Even though there are more rich Chinese than rich Americans at least in terms of the relative numbers of billionaires, there are no poor Chinese while the economic divide in the US grows bigger with every passing day.

The question Americans have to ask themselves is is a society teetering on the brink of collapse worth the American definition of freedom or could perhaps a slightly less free society, say one with a corresponding ethic of social responsibility, lead to a better society in terms of a better and more humane quality of life for the greatest number of citizens? Has America taken the concept of individual freedom too far at the expense of social cohesiveness?

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy - Part 1

by John Lawrence

When my father was a high school teacher in Highland Park, NJ, he taught a course - Problems in American Democracy. So I'm hopefully carrying on a family tradition by trying to elucidate these problems which, to put it mildly, are probably much different today than they were in 1941! The big problem today is that so many people are detached from reality in terms of being in touch with what the real problems are. One of the real problems is climate change, how to get from here to net zero carbon emissions before planet earth becomes uninhabitable. Another real problem is homelessness and affordability of housing. Another real problem is the 80 million refugees in the world. Another real problem is for Americans to be concerned about world problems and not just confine their attention to what goes on inside the borders of the US.  Another real problem is physical and social infrastructure which will be addressed by Biden's Build Back Better bills. But the biggest problem of all, as I see it, is that elections every 2 years make continuity of direction for the US impossible especially when the 2 parties have become diametrically opposed. So today we have the reality that the American government could possibly swing back and forth between Trumpism and what we might call Bidenism. Back and forth between ignorance and enlightenment. To boot the American people are no longer tuned in to authoritative news sources. Too many are only tuned into social media which is greatly responsible for cultivating the divide between two American tribes - the no nothings and the do somethings.

People in the Trump camp could care less about voting for or against their own economic interests. You would think a lot of them would benefit from the initiatives that the Democrats have put forward. But either they are ignorant of them or are willing to vote against their interests just because of the tribe they belong to or out of spite. They are completely irrational. Rationality is not even on the table. Their hate and their spite rules everything as far as they are concerned. They are willing to go down numerous rabbit holes and believe all kinds of conspiracy theories because critical thinking or a concern about human welfare, their own and others, has no place in their consciousness. Their concern and understanding remains at the level of symbols like the American flag. A deeper understanding or analysis of situations is beyond them. What's more this misinformed and ignorant part of the population is significant in number and can easily be responsible for electing ignorant and conspiracy theory infused lawmakers who will do whatever is necessary to pander to their constituents. Thus America as a nation could swerve back and forth between ignorance and rationality as exemplified by Trump's withdrawal from Obama's climate initiatives like the Paris accords and Biden's reinstating them.

Contrast the instability of American democracy with the Chinese system of government in which stability is of utmost importance. They don't want anyone rocking the boat including tennis stars. While this heavy handedness does curtail some of the aspects of western notions of freedom, it preserves the priorities of the long term interests of China itself which has been going in what most experts concede is a very positive direction. According to the World Bank: "Since China began to open up and reform its economy in 1978, GDP growth has averaged almost 10 percent a year, and more than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty. There have also been significant improvements in access to health, education, and other services over the same period." China has had the goal of eliminating poverty altogether and claims as of 2021 to have done so. According to a Chinese source which admittedly may be biased: "Through continuous efforts, the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents in China had all been lifted out of poverty, and all 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages had been removed from the poverty list by the end of 2020. The strategy of targeted poverty alleviation is China's strongest "weapon" in its final battle against poverty, and a major innovation in the theory and practice of poverty reduction. China's success in poverty alleviation has proven that the problem of poverty, in essence, is how the people should be treated: the people-centered philosophy is the fundamental driving force behind this cause." Independent confirmation of these claims is unclear. The World Bank which is an unbiased source essentially agrees with the Chinese government at to its elimination of poverty: "In 1990 there were more than 750 million people in China living below the international poverty line - about two-thirds of the population. By 2012, that had fallen to fewer than 90 million, and by 2016 - the most recent year for which World Bank figures are available - it had fallen to 7.2 million people (0.5% of the population). So clearly, even in 2016 China was well on the way to reaching its target. This suggests that overall, 745 million fewer people were living in extreme poverty in China than there were 30 years ago. World Bank figures do not take us to the present day, but the trend is certainly in line with the Chinese government's announcement."

So what weapons does the US have in its arsenal for the alleviation of poverty and homelessness? Not many. Biden's Build Back Better plan will help, but the US in recent years has been more interested in funding weapons systems built by the military-industrial complex, weapons that destroy rather than weapons that build. It's only "progressives" that even care about solving the problems of poverty and homelessness in America or in doing something about climate change or about the refugee problem in the world and not just at our southern border. I note that not one Republican voted for Biden's Build Back Better bill in the House. Instead Republican leader Kevin McCarthy went on an 8 hour diatribe in a futile attempt to prevent the bill's passage.

Off the Top of My Head

Use the National Guard to Free Up the Supply Chain

by John Lawrence

We are 80,000 truck drivers short. We should use the National Guard on an emergency basis to drive trucks to get the contents of those containers out of port and on their way to consumers. Then there will be room for the waiting container ships to offload their contents. Why not? The National Guard has been used in other emergency situations. Why not this one? Marx theorized that the "industrial reserve army" was a necessary part of capitalism, and was composed of out of work people looking for work. This kept the cost of labor down. Only now the reverse situation is in effect. There are more jobs than people looking for them. Therefore, labor is in the driver's seat. Capital needs to pay labor more in order to get them to work. However, at the present time, although wages have come up somewhat, they have not come up enough to attract the needed truck drivers back into the work force. This will all eventually be ironed out as self-driving trucks which are already on the roads will increase substantially.

While the US has been sitting on its duff investing in the world's biggest military, China has been investing in infrastructure - ports and container ships in particular. According to Wikipedia:

"In 1961 China established a state-run maritime shipping company and subsequently signed shipping agreements with many countries, laying the foundation for developing the country's ocean transport. That organization developed into the present-day China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO). The Chinese government also invested heavily in water transport infrastructure, constructing new ports and rebuilding and enlarging older facilities. The number of container units handled by Chinese ports in 2011 reached more than 150 million. The country also manufactures 90% of the world's containers. The throughput of cargo and containers at China's ports has been the largest in the world for the past five years, with an annual growth rate of 35%."

China also manufactures more than 80 percent of the world’s ship-to-shore cranes, and own seven of the ten busiest ports in the world (including Hong Kong). The message is clear. While the US invested in battleships, China invested in container ships. The goods in those container ships are mainly manufactured in China. The US is addicted to them. Foreign demand for Chinese-made products has remained strong — both by companies’ accounts and official data. The customs agency said in the first half of this year, exports to the European Union rose 35.9% from a year ago to $233 billion, while those to the U.S. climbed 42.6% to $252.86 billion. The handwriting (and handwringing) is on the wall. The US can't continue to base its economy on a military-industrial complex while not producing the goods the American consumer economy wants to buy. By default China has sold many of the consumer goods into the ravenous American consumer economy which is 70% of the American economy while the US has invested in nothing but war. Now as the US has withdrawn from forever wars, the military is trying to gin up a Cold War with China. It won't work. Americans depend on China for consumer goods and get very mad when they're not readily available forcing prices up as we've seen from the container ship debacle.

The US has ceded leadership in many areas including ports, shipping and infrastructure while it has conducted its losing wars. Spending $300 million a day in Afghanistan only enriched defense contractors and corrupt politicians. With all that money being spent, today most Afghanis are simply begging for food. If that money had been spent on the Afghani people instead, today Afghani citizens would be enjoying a robust economy and a decent way of life. All that money was poured down a rat hole. Wasted money and time has only let China become the leader in the manufacture and transport of consumer goods. Climate change demands that the US and China cooperate - not compete - with each other. We need adults in the US government, and the only adults in the room are Democrats. Republicans have gone down the rabbit hole of Trumpism.

Off the Top of My Head

While General Milley Seeks to Bolster Pentagon Budget, Citing Threats from China, Cooperation Between the US and China on Climate Change Might Negate His Playbook

by John Lawrence

General Milley is out to justify his $200,000 a year paycheck by encouraging Congress and the American people not to cut the Pentagon budget. When the fate of the earth is at stake from global warming, Milley is more concerned about stoking tensions with China. Fortunately, despite the new Cold War some are trying to create, the US and China are actually cooperating on climate change. In an article, "US-China deal on emissions welcomed by global figures and climate experts," the Guardian points out that at the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, progress was made in resolving these tensions:

"An unexpected agreement between the US and China to work together on cutting emissions has been broadly welcomed by leaders and climate experts.

"The world’s two biggest emitters appeared to put aside their differences at the Cop26 climate summit and on Wednesday unveiled a joint declaration that would see close cooperation on emissions cuts that scientists say are needed in the next 10 years to stay within 1.5C.

"The agreement calls for “concrete and pragmatic” regulations in decarbonisation, reducing methane emissions and fighting deforestation, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said in Glasgow.

"The two countries will revive a working group that will “meet regularly to address the climate crisis and advance the multilateral process, focusing on enhancing concrete actions in this decade,” the joint declaration said."

"Advancing the Multilateral process"? General Milley doesn't want to hear that. It means cuts in the Pentagon's budget. His job is to stoke fears of China's prowess. The article continues:

"A US-China bilateral agreement in 2014 gave a huge push to the creation of the historic Paris accord the following year, but that cooperation stopped with the Trump administration, which pulled America out of the pact.

“While this is not a gamechanger in the way the 2014 US-China climate deal was, in many ways it’s just as much of a step forward given the geopolitical state of the relationship,” said Thom Woodroofe, an expert in US-China climate talks. “It means the intense level of US-China dialogue on climate can now begin to translate into cooperation.”

"EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans agreed the pact gave room for hope. “It shows … that the US and China know this subject transcends other issues. And it certainly helps us here at Cop26 to come to an agreement,” Timmermans told Reuters."

Yes, China and the US must transcend "other issues" like fighting each other in order to cooperate and save the earth from being devoured by climate change thus bringing the human experiment involving future generations to a disastrous end.

General Milley is right about the "fundamental change to the character of war" since the period preceding World War II, citing new widely available technologies like drones and artificial intelligence and the rise of China as a superpower. US News reports, ""Milley is trying to sustain the case for what he considers adequate levels of defense spending," says Michael O'Hanlon, director of research at The Brookings Institution. "But he is also trying to keep pressure on the Pentagon and services to innovate and to avoid fixation on previous types of weapons, forces and operational concepts.""

Countering these new technologies of war will not require new billion dollar airplanes and battle ships. The Pentagon budget, therefore, should be reduced as these new technologies are developed in order to remain vigilant against modern era threats to the US and our allies. It's hard to make the case against China as a major threat to the US when the Chinese defense budget in 2020t was about $196 billion. America's, on the other hand, was a hearty $778 billion, about 4 times as great. Cooperation with China on climate change and other issues might actually have the salubrious effect of bringing both country's defense budgets down. Could cooperation on a common enemy, climate change, actually bring about peace on earth?

 

Off the Top of My Head

Cooperation Among Virtual Enemies on Climate Change Next to Impossible

by John Lawrence

Can we stop fighting as the human race has been doing for millenia because we have a common problem that calls for cooperation: climate change? The human race and in particular nation states have never been able to cooperate on a world wide basis. What's more almost every aspect of contemporary society needs to be changed in order for planet earth to be rescued. For instance, the third largest greenhouse gas polluter after the US and China is cattle. Yes, cattle worldwide emit more carbon dioxide equivalents in the form of methane than any country on earth with the exception of the US and China. We should all stop eating beef immediately. How likely is that to happen? And then there's cooperation between the US and China, between the US and Russia. We can't chastise and sanction these countries and then expect them to cooperate with the western world when it comes to climate change.  Time magazine reported:

"From his first months as Secretary of State under Obama, Kerry set out to build a bridge to China on climate while tensions festered on other matters, putting the issue at the center of the relationship. In 2014, in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama, with Kerry by his side, announced agenda-setting plans to cut emissions, effectively inviting other countries to get on the same page. On the back of Kerry’s climate diplomacy, Obama and Xi feted each other a year later at a state dinner in Washington—perhaps the zenith of relations between the two countries in recent years. In the early days of the Biden Administration, longtime watchers of international climate politics speculated about whether Kerry would try to repeat that effort. Kerry told me that from the outset he knew that wouldn’t be possible—the Trump presidency had spoiled the well, and, while less vociferous, Biden hasn’t sought to placate China. “It’s a very, very different time now,” Kerry says. “It’s a very different set of political circumstances.”

"Instead, he sought a subtler form of rapprochement, traveling to China in April, becoming the first senior U.S. official to visit since the start of the pandemic. His message, he says, was to create a lane for climate collaboration amid the iciness. The reception was a sharp contrast from the jubilant atmosphere at the state dinner six years earlier. The two parties released a joint statement, agreeing to cooperate but not much more. Then in September, after making the 7,000-mile trip to Tianjin, Kerry encountered even more tense feelings. Despite the long journey, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi only met with him virtually, and said that climate collaboration could not be an “oasis” away from the other rifts in the relationship. “If the oasis is surrounded by desert, sooner or later the oasis will also become desert,” he said."

The crucial points are "Trump spoiled the well" and “If the oasis is surrounded by desert, sooner or later the oasis will also become desert”. Trump set the world back years when it comes to climate change. What will he do if elected President in 2024? The Chinese Foreign Minister's point is that you can't seek cooperation on climate change while at the same time fomenting a chilly relationship verging on a Cold War which the Pentagon is trying to do. For that matter how can we rely on China to produce the major amount of consumer goods for the US while trying to give China orders about how it is to conduct itself on the world stage. It just doesn't compute. You can't compartmentalize a relationship to that extent.

The other point is that how can the rest of the world believe what we say about the urgency of doing something about climate change which entails sacrifice while at the same time holding open the possibility that a climate change denier might be elected President in 2024?

Off the Top of My Head

The Dumbing Down of the American Electorate

by John Lawrence

It seems that about half the American people want rational, competent government which advances the interests of the American people and plays a constructive role on the world stage. The other half wants a government based on their pet peeves. They are amenable to being swayed by conspiracy theories and misinformation. The former are mainly Democrats; the latter, Republicans. This is nowhere better exemplified than the 2016 election in which competence and experience in the form of Hillary Clinton was defeated by resentment and lies in the form of Donald Trump. In contrast to China which promotes the best and brightest to high positions in its government, the US form of democracy allows for politicians to appeal to the lowest common denominator which has no knowledge or information about anything beyond the worship of symbols like the American flag. This is clear from the visuals of the January 6 insurrection in which the American flag was displayed ad infinitum as if that is what made these people true patriots who could demand that their hero, Donald Trump, should be President in defiance of every provision of American constitutional democracy.

Republican politicians pander to this group of no nothings and stoke resentment against intelligence and rationality which they define as elitism. Joe Six Pack is easily swayed to vote for someone like himself, a high school graduate who flunked civics class if he was even required to take a civics class. American history was taught from the point of view of white Europeans with hardly a mention of the lands stolen from Native Americans nor the travails of African American slaves who provided the labor to build most of the country and make white southern plantation owners rich. The diaspora of southern Confederate attitudes to much of the rest of the country other than the coasts has provided the grist for Republican politicians to convince this diaspora to vote against their own economic interests and to fully indulge their anger and resentment against those they call elitists who have much more knowledge, education and intelligence while at the same time really smart lawyers and operatives work to advance the interests of the very rich unbeknownst to the Joe Six Packs who voted for them.

When half the country votes based on conspiracy theories which the Republican party amplifies, what is the solution? More education for one thing. The January 6 insurrectionists sent to jail for their crimes need to be reeducated. They should be required to take a course on contemporary issues of American society and also a course on World Problems. Many Americans are so insular that they never even stop to consider what's going on in the rest of the world. It's not enough to start educating children; many adults need to be reeducated. If this smacks of what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs, it bears the similarity in the sense that many American adults do need to be reeducated, and their sentences should require it because many of them have been miseducated in southern schools which elevate states' rights to a primary position in American democracy. Problems of American Democracy, a course my father taught at Highland Park High School, should be required from kindergarten through college. The American people need to become more sophisticated as citizens if democracy is to have a future. Otherwise, Republican politicians will continue to pander to the least common denominator stoking their resentments while stealing their futures unbeknownst to them. Competence, intelligence and good hearts will continue to be defeated. Republican politicians' skill set consists of getting their followers to vote against their own interests while pandering to their resentments. Democratic politicians, for the most part, actually want to help the American people and not just the ultra rich.

When one country promotes smart people to high positions in government, and another country is prone to electing people based on lies and conspiracy theories, which country do you think will prevail on the world stage? One party in this country is acting intelligently trying to advance the interests of the average American while the other party does everything in its power to stands in its way while basing its appeal on misinformation, lies and conspiracy theories. How did democracy ever descend to this level?

Off the Top of My Head

The Shortcomings of Democracy

by John Lawrence

What other countries are concerned about is the specter of Trump coming back in 2024 and reversing everything Biden will have accomplished specially with regard to climate change. An American government no matter how well intentioned and competent cannot maintain itself in power for a long time. It can be replaced by a malevolent and incompetent one in relatively short order. It almost makes you look on other forms of government with envy. Angela Merkel was in power in Germany for 16 years. She was a steady hand on the tiller. Trump tried to rip the tiller out of the ship and he may come back to try and do it again. It's not only China which has long term stability, but China has been pretty consistent in delivering for the Chinese people over a fairly long term. Their government is stable no matter what else you want to say about it. They also promote the best and the brightest to high positions in the government. Trump put in place agency heads that were dedicated to destroying the agencies they were in charge of and many were incompetent political cronies to boot.

Coherence, cohesion - these are values that do not apply to the American people. The American people are freedom fanatics, freedomaholics. In most other advanced societies the value of freedom is balanced by the value of social responsibility. When freedom is way out of proportion with other values, you have a society that can come apart at the seams which is what is happening to American society. The American system engenders a two party system by its very nature, and almost inevitably it develops into two parties which are diametrically opposed to each other. A parliamentary system of government gives rise to  many parties, and that is less likely to devolve into a major societal divisions.

The other thing that contributes to the divisiveness of American society is the American predilection for guns. The supposed right of every American to own and use a gun creates a situation where angry people with a penchant for freedom are more likely to use their gun if they don't get their own way. If they sense that some people are on the other side of a divided society, they feel justified and entitled to use their guns to demand that society conform to their values much in the some way that a divided society resorted eventually to a civil war in America's past. Right now militias and paramilitary units roam the streets similar to the situation in Germany that predated World War II. If a society can't control or prohibit the private accumulation of guns, if it even encourages it, nothing good can come from this situation. All the preliminary conditions are in play for eventual uprisings which, if organized and controlled from above, can have disastrous consequences for civil society.

Off the Top of My Head

If Future Generations Are to Be Saved From the Ravages of Climate Change, the US and China Must Cooperate

by John Lawrence

What is more important: habitability of the planet or who "owns" Taiwan? Hawaii is 2500 miles from the US mainland; Taiwan is 100 miles from the Chinese mainland. Yet the US Pentagon is willing to have a war over Taiwan thus precluding any cooperation over climate change thus dooming human civilization on earth. Make sense? We should adopt a reverse Monroe Doctrine and let China "own" Taiwan. What would that mean? Basically a few politicians would lose their jobs. That's all. The Taiwanese would go on making millions of dollars just as the mainland Chinese have. Their lifestyles would not change. What would they have to give up? Basically, nothing. But conservative forces in the US want a Cold War with China. This precludes cooperation on climate change. The US and China are the two biggest greenhouse gas polluters. The US has polluted much longer than has China which has only developed rapidly in only the last 40 years or so. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere is due to US emissions.

The Monroe Doctrine was a United States policy that opposed European colonialism in the Americas. It argued that any intervention in the politics of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the United States. It has been used to keep foreign powers out of the western hemisphere. The argument has been extended to mean that the US has exclusive rights to what goes on anywhere near its shores. Yet the US "owns" Hawaii, 2500 miles from the mainland US. It also "owns" three Pacific territories: the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. Are the Chinese entitled to their own version of the Monroe Doctrine? If so, the western world should keep its nose out of concerns over Taiwan and any other issues regarding territory close to the Chinese mainland like the South China Sea. Cooperation with regard to climate change demands it. If we win this battle over what is legitimate Chinese territory but lose the war on climate change, all is lost not just for the US but for all peoples on the planet. We need to let nationalism subside.

Would we let a Russian affiliate control an island 100 miles off our shore? Cuba is a good example. It's about the same distance off our shore that Taiwan is from mainland China. Yet a nuclear war was almost fought to eliminate Russian influence in Cuba again citing the Monroe Doctrine. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Let the UN broker a deal to let China peacefully take control of Taiwan. I don't think anything much will change either for the mainland Chinese or the Taiwanese Chinese. If situations like these can be resolved peacefully, the US and China together can lead the world away from Armageddon, away from a fiery hellish demise caused by humans' inability to get along. Cooperation is paramount not only for peaceful relations among the various  nations and peoples of the earth, but crucially for the very existence of the human species.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Coal is So Hard to Get Rid Of

by John Lawrence

To forestall climate change we must get rid of coal yet coal is the cheapest and most abundant source of energy for power generating plants worldwide. China is building coal fired generating plants in India as India develops into a middle class country. As COP26 aims to banish coal. Asia is building hundreds of power plants to burn it. Millions of tons of coal each year will be imported to fuel a giant power plant that will burn the fuel for at least 30 years to generate power for the more than 70 million people that live in India's Tamil Nadu state. This plant is one of nearly 200 coal-fired power stations under construction in Asia, including 95 in China, 28 in India and 23 in Indonesia, according to data from U.S. nonprofit Global Energy Monitor (GEM). While the US is primarily responsible for the billions of tons of carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere, developing countries don't want to hinder their emerging development since they aren't the ones that contributed most of the CO₂ so far. Asia is home to 60% of the world's population and about half of global manufacturing, and coal's use is growing rather than shrinking as rapidly developing countries seek to meet booming demand for power.

Reuters reported:

"In 2020, more than 35% of the world's power came from coal, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Roughly 25% came from natural gas, 16% from hydro dams, 10% from nuclear and 12% from renewables like solar and wind. This year, coal demand is set for a new record, driving prices to all-time highs and contributing to a worldwide scramble for fuel.

"Record coal demand is contributing to a rapid rise in emissions in 2021 after a fall last year, when restrictions on movement for billions of people to slow the pandemic caused fuel use to plummet. While some of the new coal plants under construction will replace older, more polluting stations, together they will add to total emissions. "The completion of the capacity that is already under construction in these countries will drive up coal demand and emissions," said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clear Air.

"The carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the new plants alone will be close to 28 billion tonnes over their 30-year lifespans, according to GEM."

While India will continue to pollute with coal, their emissions will be dwarfed by China, the top global coal miner, consumer and emitter, whose leader, President Xi Jinping, is not expected to attend COP26. More than 1,000 coal plants are in operation, almost 240 planned or already under construction. Together, coal plants in the world's second-largest economy will emit 170 billion tons of carbon in their lifetime - more than all global CO₂ emissions between 2016 and 2020.

The solution is that the advanced countries like the US have to spend the money to rapidly convert Asia's fossil fuel energy plants to non polluters. Wind and solar are not enough to fill the bill. In order to get off fossil fuels quickly, nuclear power is the only feasible solution, and these plants must be funded and constructed in Asia by the US and the European Union. Bill Gates had plans to build an advanced digital nuclear test plant in China which were nixed by the Trump administration which was a global warming denier. What the rest of the developed world worries about is whether or not Trumpism will come back in the next election. If the earth is not to burn up from global warming, cooperation between the US and China is paramount. Yet the Pentagon continues to advocate for a Cold War with China, and even Biden's administration is ready to cast doubts warily on China. Yet there is no other way. We need to take resources away from the US military establishment which wants to keep itself in business by creating the pretext for war with China while turning China and Russia into pariahs and enemies of the western world. This is a huge mistake if we want our grandchildren to live on a habitable and sustainable planet.

Off the Top of My Head

The Good Things the Biden Administration is Doing That You Never Hear About

by John Lawrence

Even CNN goes on and on trying to create excitement over the differences withing the Democratic Party between the Moderates and the Progressives without talking about 3 great things the Biden Administration has done recently. They are

(1) EPA will slash the use and production of hydrofluorocarbons which one of the most toxic of greenhouse gasses — often found to be leaking from U.S. supermarket freezers — by 85 percent over the next 15 years; (2) the US will end its involvement in the war in Yemen and (3) the US has recently exchanged prisoners with China involving Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. Instead of touting these very significant accomplishments, CNN goes on and on trying to create excitement over the divisions within the Democratic party and Biden's lowering approval ratings. So I say to CNN: so what, who cares? Approval ratings mean Nada. Any President is presented with situations not of his own making and the government agencies tasked with responding to said situations don't always do it in the best possible fashion. Case in point: the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The significant point is that he ended it. Let's move on.

The New York Times reported:

A top executive and daughter of the founder of the Chinese tech giant Huawei was arrested on Saturday in Canada at the request of the United States, in a move likely to escalate tensions between the two countries at a delicate moment.

The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer, unfolded on the same night that President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China dined together in Buenos Aires and agreed to a 90-day trade truce. The two countries are set to begin tense negotiations in hopes of ending a trade war that has been pummeling both economies.

So Biden is still unwinding some of Trump's self-inflicted messes. At a time when cooperation with China is imperative in order to prevent the worst exigencies of global warming, arresting a top Chinese executive was not likely to help. Releasing her is.

The Washington Post reported:

The Biden administration finalized its first new climate rule Thursday, slashing the use of powerful greenhouse gases widely used in home refrigerators and air conditioners and often found to be leaking from U.S. supermarket freezers.

The regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency establishes a program to cut the use and production of chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons by 85 percent over the next 15 years.

Curbing these super-pollutants is a rare climate issue with broad bipartisan support. When emitted, the chemicals can warm the planet at a rate hundreds to thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide. The new rule implements a law passed by Congress last year.

White House officials said the new rule tackles global warming while supporting jobs to manufacture new alternatives.

The Biden administration is committed to doing good work on precventing and mitigating cimate cange. This is just another example the likes of which frequently go unbreported in the mass media because it doesn't creat the necessary excitement to support all their advertisers of which CNN has tons who come on the tube for 4 and a half minutes after every few minutes of "news." CNN must be making a forune and it show since they have money to support the making of CNN "films" on a weekly basis.

Common Dreams reported:

Anti-war groups on Thursday welcomed the U.S. House's passage of an amendment to the annual defense bill that would cut off the flow to Saudi Arabia of U.S. logistical support and weapons "that are bombing civilians" in Yemen. "This is BIG," tweeted the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) following the afternoon 219-207 vote, which fell largely along party lines, with just 11 Democrats voting "no." At issue was Rep. Ro Khanna's (D-Calif.) amendment to H.R. 4350, the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It's one of dozens of amendments to the NDAA under consideration by the House this week. According to Khanna, the vote "sent a clear message to the Saudis: end the bombing in Yemen and lift the blockade." Speaking on the House floor Wednesday, he made a succinct case for why the measure is so needed.  Khanna said his amendment "would end all U.S. logistical support and transfer of spare parts for Saudi warplanes that are bombing Yemen, that are bombing schools, that are killing children, that are bombing civilians in the largest humanitarian crisis around the world."

Back in February Biden had ended at least some of the support for that war as reported by the New York Times:

It didn’t happen in 2016, after a Saudi jet had dropped American-made bombs on a funeral in the Yemeni capital, Sana, killing more than 140 people. It didn’t happen in 2018, after a Saudi jet hit a Yemeni school bus with an American-made bomb, killing 44 boys on a field trip. But on Thursday, nearly six years after Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a punishing military intervention in the Arab world’s poorest country, President Biden announced that he was ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, including some arms sales. “This war has to end,” Mr. Biden said, calling it a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.”

Now the Democrat controlled Congress has finalized this. Trump, of course, was excited about the prospect of sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia. He welcomed the influx of dollars into the US Treasury without caring a hoot about innocent Yemeni victims of the bombing with US made bombs. As an Uber driver I picked up once a Saudi pilot who was being trained over here. Now the Biden administration along with Democrats in Congress has put the kibosh on aiding and abeting Saudi Arabia in their nasty war. Bien has shown his dedication to peace and has made efforts to bring peace to the world in the recent prisoner exchange with China and with doing what he can to end war in Yemen.

Off the Top of My Head

Good on President Biden for Using His Visit to the Flood Zones to Give a Tutorial on Climate Change

by John Lawrence

Previously, after a natural disaster no one mentioned climate change. There was much bemoaning and commiserating, but Biden took a different tack. He lectured the American people about climate change and how it contributed to the disasters that had befallen the unfortunate. What's more he said they would continue and get worse unless we undertake to do something about it. No more attributing the disasters to one in 500 year events. That language is totally out the window. No more statements like "I've never seen anything like this my entire life." Get used to it. People are going to see a lot more of these climate disasters from now on. As President Biden said, we can't prevent these disasters from happening on a regular basis, but we can do something about them getting a lot worse. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is running ads on TV about how wonderful the oil and gas industry is, and they are lobbying their evil little hearts out to get politicians on their side.

“The nation and the world are in peril,” President Biden said after touring storm damage in New York and Jersey. “And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”

"Folks — and we have to take some bold action now to tackle the accelerating effects of climate. If we don’t act — now I’m going to be heading, as Chuck knows, as the senator knows, I’m going to be heading from here to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP meeting [United Nations Climate Change Conference], which is all the nations of the world getting together to decide what we are going to do about climate change. And John Kerry, the former secretary of state, is leading our effort, putting it together.

"We are determined, we are determined that we are going to deal with climate change and have zero emissions, net emissions by 2050. By 2020 [sic] (he meant 2030), make sure all our electricity is zero emissions. We’re going to be able to do these things. But we’ve got to move. We’ve got to move. And we’ve got to move the rest of the world. It’s not just the United States of America.

"And so, folks, this summer alone, communities with over 100 million Americans — 100 million Americans call home — have been struck by extreme weather. One in every three Americans has been victimized by severe weather. The hurricanes along the Gulf, the East Coast, up through this community. And I saw the human and physical cost firsthand, as I said, in Louisiana.

"And, folks, the evidence is clear. Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here, it’s not going to get any better. The question: Can it get worse? We can stop it from getting worse.

"And when I talk about building back better — and Chuck is fighting for my program, for our program on the Hill — when I talk about building back better, I mean you can’t build to what it was before this last storm. You got to build better so that if the storm occurred again, there would be no damage. There would be.

"But that’s not going to stop us, though, because if we just do that, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse. Because the storms are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so, folks, we’ve got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red.

"The nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact. They’ve been warning us the extreme weather would get more extreme over the decade, and we’re living in it real time now."

Biden is telling it like it is. The American people are in for a lot more of these climate disasters, and we can't stop them immediately. It's going to take decades to get this problem under control, and that's only if we go full steam ahead by taking measures to get it under control. Meanwhile, there are measures which can be taken to mitigate the costs both human and financial from these climate disasters. People must move out of flood plains and areas prone to forest fires. We must underground utilities so that the power doesn't go out during hurricanes and wildfires. That goes for cell phones and cable TV too. People have to have secure means of communication even during a climate disaster. Building codes need to be upgraded. Water management needs to improve so that torrential rains do not just become runoff that turns into floods. That water is precious and needs to be transported to parts of the country that are in more or less perpetual drought. The power grid needs to be hardened. Transportation needs to be electrified. Power generation needs to use renewable sources, and advanced nuclear needs to be developed. Ways of making steel and concrete need to be developed that don't use fossil fuels and the methods of doing so need to be scaled up and spread throughout the whole world. Agriculture needs to be made organic and factory farms eliminated. It's not enough for the US and the developed world to do the right things. Green infrastructure must be developed and spread to the whole world. We must partner with China in a Green Belt and Road Initiative. They are very advanced in building infrastructure throughout the world. While the US has been fighting needless wars, China has been building infrastructure albeit not green infrastructure. From now on coal fired power plants in India and China need to be eliminated and replaced with renewable energy and advanced nuclear power generation.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Were There Tens of Thousands of American Citizens and Foreign Nationals in Afghanistan?

by John Lawrence

There were only 2500 American military and 50,000 American citizens? What's wrong with this picture? And now a ragtag group is taking over the whole country having defeated the world's mightiest military force? What's wrong with this picture? This is totally F-ed up. I assume that all these civilians were there to make money. Maybe there were a few who genuinely wanted to help the Afghan people, but sending in the US military to facilitate that is not the way to do it. The US should be providing aid to people in the world that have less than we do. When you have a hammer, it seems like every problem is a nail. When you have the world's mightiest military every problem seems to have a solution by sending in the military to solve it. Having 50,000 American citizens in a war zone is completely nuts. and then the only way to extract ourselves from the situation is to have a massive, chaotic airlift as we are experiencing now?

So now Biden has at least established the principal that the US military doesn't have to remain forever in every country it invades. But that seems to be the MO. There are almost 40,000 troops in Germany, 28,000 in Korea and 55,000 in Japan. The military of the United States is deployed in most countries around the world, with between 150,000 to 200,000 of its active-duty personnel stationed outside the United States and its territories. The US military maintains close to 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. So is it even possible for the world to function without the presence of the US military in practically every country? What if they just all were withdrawn? Would the world's economic and political structure, such that it is, completely collapse?

Every empire in world history has collapsed due to its being overextended. The Roman Empire which lasted for about 1000 years (compared to the US' less than 100) collapsed because it extended itself into northern Europe instead of being content with just controlling lands around he Mediterranean. While the US vision of the world is that the US military will effectively occupy almost every country with the notable exceptions of China, Russia, Iran and now eventually Afghanistan, China's vision seems to be its Belt and Road initiative which ties many countries of the world to China economically. Can the US pivot from military occupation to peaceful economic and humanitarian development? Or even pivot to being a constructive force to ameliorate climate change in cooperation with China and Russia? Military assets could be converted to more peaceful purposes and be integrated into the Peace Corps. But that would take the incentives for glory and patriotism out of the equation. Could purple hearts ever be given to members of the Peace Corps? The principal that Biden has established that the US can leave a country is a game changer. It doesn't mean that the US will never have anything to do with Afghanistan again. It means that US involvement will be more along the lines of humanitarian assistance.

Off the Top of My Head

1.9 Billion Fully Vaccinated in China. Only 170 Million in US

by John Lawrence

About 70% of the Chinese people have been vaccinated. There have been 94,631 cases and 4,636 coronavirus-related deaths reported in China since the pandemic began. In the US there have been 37,744,654 cases and 628,000 deaths.  About 170 million people or 51 percent of the total U.S. population, have now been fully vaccinated. China developed its own vaccines which are now being used in other mainly poor countries. Nature.com reported:

"The World Health Organization (WHO) has authorized the first of China’s COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, and another could be listed in the coming days, opening the door to wide distribution in lower-income nations through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative.

"The listing will boost global confidence in these vaccines, say scientists. China's five different vaccines have not been used widely in wealthy nations, but are already sustaining immunization campaigns in the global south.

“There is big demand for the Chinese vaccines,” says Firdausi Qadri, an immunologist at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, in Dhaka.

"The first vaccine to be listed is made in Beijing by Chinese state-owned firm Sinopharm. The other under review — named CoronaVac — is produced by private company Sinovac, also based in Beijing. Five COVID-19 vaccines are already authorized by the WHO, but unlike these, the Chinese ones use inactivated virus and are not widely used in Western nations.

"Sinopharm and Sinovac’s vaccines account for the bulk of shots given in China, which has so far inoculated 243 million people. More than 45 countries have already approved their use, but the WHO is among the first stringent regulatory authorities to review the data."

The Chinese vaccines, which use inactivated virus and not the newer mRNA technology used in western vaccines, are not quite as effective as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Yet they are sufficiently effective to ward off the virus and are much more available to the rest of the world. Because China has effectively contained the virus compared to the US, China is surging ahead economically and also with respect to winning friends in the rest of the world. CNN reported:

"Since China curbed its initial outbreak, the ruling Communist Party has held up the country's effective containment efforts as proof of the supposed superiority of its authoritarian political system. The success of its zero-Covid strategy is hailed as an ideological and moral victory over the faltering response of the US and other Western democracies, which had struggled to control surging cases and deaths."

China has made rapid strides in bringing its people out of poverty and into a middle class lifestyle. Since 1980 China has lifted about 800 million people out of poverty. It has done this by becoming a capitalist nation under Communist party leadership which seems like a contradiction in terms! China's version of capitalism is state capitalism while the US version is shareholder capitalism. In the US companies are only beholden to their shareholders; in China companies are ultimately beholden to the Chinese state. The Chinese communist party has its fingers in every capitalist pie so to speak.And their model, which is being exported to other Asian countries, is working. According to some measures, 2020 was the first time in 2 centuries that Asian GDP, as a share of world GDP at purchasing power parity, was higher than that of the rest of the world.

Off the Top of My Head

Will There be Another Bin Laden?

by John Lawrence

Pundits worry that Al Qaeda might reconstitute itself now that the Taliban control Afdghanistan. Bin Laden's attack on 9/11 wasn't dependent on geography. It was based on an ingenious, but evil, idea and a plan that could have been developed anywhere. All he needed was a plan and 20 hijackers, 15 of which were Saudi citizens as was bin Laden himself. Bin Laden's plan could have taken root anywhere. He didn't need Afghanistan to formulate it. He just needed a plan that was brilliant enough to fool  US intelligence. So whether or not the Taliban will allow terrorists to come into their country is irrelevant. Bin Laden's plan might just as likely have been developed in Saudi Arabia. The key thing is to have people in the service of US intelligence to anticipate and thwart plans developed by the likes of bin Laden who was smart enough to outwit US intelligence.

It was never necessary to invade Afghanistan in order to get bin Laden. US invasions and wars have been fruitless ever since the Korean war which left a nuclear armed dictator in the north. Attacks of the future will not be based on brute force but on intelligent evasions of US intelligence which is exactly what bin Laden did. George W Bush wanted to be a war time President. You don't get to be a war time President by conducting a special ops operation to get bin Laden. You need to invade a country. He invaded two - Iraq and Afghanistan - and both have become unmitigated disasters. Afghanistan alone has cost $2 trillion plus 2400 American lives. Iraq which was an enemy of our enemy, Iran, under Saddam became an ally of Iran under a democratically elected government since the majority of Iraqis are Shiites and Iran is a Shiite country. From a geopolitical perspective turning over Iraq to a Shiite majority controlled government was a huge mistake. Saddam, who was Sunni, was a barrier to Iranian influence in the Middle East.

Now China will become allied with Afghanistan. It practically abuts on Afghanistan. The two countries are only separated by Tajikistan. Reportedly, China has already recognized the Taliban government. NPR reports:

"China has reportedly promised big investments in energy and infrastructure projects, including the building of a road network in Afghanistan and is also eyeing the country's vast, untapped, rare-earth mineral deposits. And Beijing was already reportedly preparing to formally recognize the Taliban before the group seized control of the country."

Afghanistan will become an integral part of its Belt and Road initiative, and make big investments in the country as opposed to the US presence which was supposed to convert the Afghan government into a Little America with western institutions. This has never worked. Indigenous people want their own form of government. The US didn't learn the lesson in Vietnam and Afghanistan is just a repeat of Vietnam albeit taking longer for the final denouement. What the US should do is partner with China to make investments in Afghanistan to bring it into the modern world. We need to partner with China if there is ever to be a solution to the global warming crisis. This might be a start of that relationship which is necessary to save planet Earth. And if we are worried about Afghanistan going back to a medieval society, the best prevention of that scenario is to make investments in Afghanistan's infrastructure including human infrastructure. The Taliban might even welcome that.

America’s Greatest Danger isn’t China. It’s Much Closer to Home.

by Robert Reich

Sunday, June 20, 2021

China’s increasingly aggressive geopolitical and economic stance in the world is unleashing a fierce bipartisan backlash in America. That’s fine if it leads to more public investment in basic research, education, and infrastructure – as did the Sputnik shock of the late 1950s. But it poses dangers as well.

More than 60 years ago, the sudden and palpable fear that the Soviet Union was lurching ahead of us shook America out of a postwar complacency and caused the nation to do what it should have been doing for many years. Even though we did it under the pretext of national defense – we called it the National Defense Education Act and the National Defense Highway Act and relied on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration for basic research leading to semiconductors, satellite technology, and the Internet – the result was to boost US productivity and American wages for a generation.

When the Soviet Union began to implode, America found its next foil in Japan. Japanese-made cars were taking market share away from the Big Three automakers. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi bought a substantial interest in the Rockefeller Center, Sony purchased Columbia Pictures, and Nintendo considered buying the Seattle Mariners. By the late 1980s and start of the 1990s, countless congressional hearings were held on the Japanese “challenge” to American competitiveness and the Japanese “threat” to American jobs.

A tide of books demonized Japan – Pat Choate’s Agents of Influence alleged Tokyo’s alleged payoffs to influential Americans were designed to achieve “effective political domination over the United States.“ Clyde Prestowitz’s Trading Places argued that because of our failure to respond adequately to the Japanese challenge “the power of the United States and the quality of American life is diminishing rapidly in every respect.” William S Dietrich’s In the Shadow of the Rising Sun claimed Japan “threatens our way of life and ultimately our freedoms as much as past dangers from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.“

Robert Zielinski and Nigel Holloway’s Unequal Equities argued that Japan rigged its capital markets to undermine American corporations. Daniel Burstein’s Yen! Japan’s New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America asserted that Japan’s growing power put the United States at risk of falling prey to a “hostile Japanese … world order.”

And on it went: The Japanese Power Game,The Coming War with Japan, Zaibatsu America: How Japanese Firms are Colonizing Vital US Industries, The Silent War, Trade Wars.

But there was no vicious plot. We failed to notice that Japan had invested heavily in its own education and infrastructure – which enabled it to make high-quality products that American consumers wanted to buy. We didn’t see that our own financial system resembled a casino and demanded immediate profits. We overlooked that our educational system left almost 80% of our young people unable to comprehend a news magazine and many others unprepared for work. And our infrastructure of unsafe bridges and potholed roads were draining our productivity.

In the present case of China, the geopolitical rivalry is palpable. Yet at the same time, American corporations and investors are quietly making bundles by running low-wage factories there and selling technology to their Chinese “partners.” And American banks and venture capitalists are busily underwriting deals in China.

I don’t mean to downplay the challenge China represents to the United States. But throughout America’s postwar history it has been easier to blame others than to blame ourselves.

The greatest danger we face today is not coming from China. It is our drift toward proto-fascism. We must be careful not to demonize China so much that we encourage a new paranoia that further distorts our priorities, encourages nativism and xenophobia, and leads to larger military outlays rather than public investments in education, infrastructure, and basic research on which America’s future prosperity and security critically depend.

The central question for America – an ever more diverse America, whose economy and culture are rapidly fusing with the economies and cultures of the rest of the globe – is whether it is possible to rediscover our identity and our mutual responsibility without creating another enemy.

Off the Top of My Head

Can Too Much Freedom Be Toxic?

by John Lawrence

When liberty isn't balance by responsibility or concern for others, it can quickly get toxic. There can be too much liberty in a society, and that is taking place when a super market cashier gets murdered over her request for a customer to wear a mask. The non-maskers and non-vaxxers who say that their liberty trumps any responsibility to society have demonstrated that the US has emphasized liberty to the exclusion of anything else. What are reasonable limits to liberty?

Justin Holt writes in an article "What are reasonable limits to liberty?": "in the absence of a political order, our liberty is boundless, but a limitless liberty is self-canceling. If we can do anything, so can everyone else; thus, nothing can be done which is enduring and dependable. Second, in order to have enduring and dependable liberties, our range of action must be limited. For example, in order for property to exist, the actions of others to use this particular property must be limited. Third, these limitations on our actions provide a liberty that is fruitful, because our actions can be guaranteed to be enduring and dependable."

The general idea is that there is a private sphere in which full liberty is appropriate and a public sphere in which a citizen should defer to what is appropriate for the benefit of society. Where does a society draw this line? The US may draw it in one place and a society like China or Russia may draw it in a different place. The US has been verging on chaos while China values stability and continuity and draws the line in a different place. Even Russia draws the line differently. How much chaos is supported by free speech is almost out of control in the US. Free speech in the US makes possible what other countries might consider sedition. Clearly, what happened on January 6 was seditious. Sedition is defined as overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Speech on social media by organized right wing groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys was clearly seditious prior to the Januray 6 insurrection as was Trump's incitement to riot on that day. The US is very lenient on these issues as no one in that riot is being charged with sedition which is a more serious crime than mere trespassing.

What most people don't understand is that China and Russia as well as other societies draw the line in a much stricter place regarding sedition. What the US would call human rights, another society might call sedition. Other societies value stability and continuity a lot more than the US does. And then the US criticizes those societies based on its own values of free speech which resulted in a resurrection on January 6. Seditious speech on social media was tolerated by the US when it should have been sanctioned. While Joe Biden can call Putin a killer, according to public opinion surveys conducted by NGO Levada Center, Putin's approval rating was 60% in July 2020, and the highest of any leader in the world. This is not taken into account by US politicians and media. Clearly, the majority of the Russian people are very pleased with Putin's job performance. Also, while the US considers that Navalny has a human right to free speech, Russia draws the line on what is free speech and what is seditious speech in a different place. So while Joe Biden criticizes Russia on its treatment of Navalny, Putin has every right in the world to point out how free speech in the US led to the January 6 insurrection. According to Pew Research: "Russians are as satisfied with their country’s overall direction as they have been since Pew Research Center began polling Russia in 2002. A majority (58%) of Russians are satisfied with the way things are going in their country, while 37% report being dissatisfied." As for gun crime in Russia, NPR reports:

"It's illegal for Russian citizens to own automatic and semi-automatic guns. It's possible to apply for a handgun or shotgun license, though citizens are required to provide reasons such as hunting or target shooting. Applicants face strict background checks, including criminal history, a full psychological evaluation and a medical exam. They must pass a test on firearm laws and safety. Each weapon is then registered by the police during a home visit. Police take bullet patterns, test bullets and cartridges so bullets can be matched if the gun is used in a crime. A license lasts five years, after which applicants must go through the whole process again."

Pew Research reports similar approval ratings in China: "A broad majority of Chinese (89%) think things are going well with their economy, making them the happiest on this measure compared with all other 43 countries surveyed this year. And they believe things will only get better. Eight-in-ten say the economy will continue to improve over the next 12 months. And 85% think the younger generation will be better off financially than their parents. This optimism stands in stark contrast to findings in Europe and the U.S., where widespread majorities believe their children will be worse off going forward." Is everything perfect there? No, but a majority of Chinese value stability and continuity above free speech. Furthermore, in the People's Republic of China, access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world. With the exception of individuals with hunting permits and some ethnic minorities, civilian firearm ownership is restricted to non-individual entities. The result is a very low incidence of gun deaths although stabbings make up some of the difference. Still one can do a lot more damage with an AK-47 than they can with a knife.

Societies and governments survive by virtue of the approval of a majority of its citizens. Isn't that what democracy is all about - majority rule? Or at least majority approval of whatever form of government is ruling? The US interpretation of free speech led us to the January 6 insurrection because seditious speech was tolerated as free speech. Freedom gets toxic when citizens think they have free rein to do whatever they want without regard for others. At that point a society loses its cohesiveness and becomes unstable. The US has almost gotten to that point both in terms of the toleration of seditious speech combined with a toleration of gun violence based on the Second Amendment. The founders meant this amendment to apply to militias which were a well defined entity in the founders' day. They later became the National Guard so that the meaning of militia was lost with the result of misinterpretation of the Second Amendment and the uncontrolled proliferation of guns. So, in my opinion, the First and Second Amendments have both become toxic and need to be reformed and redefined.

Off the Top of My Head

The Infrastructure Bill and How to Pay for It Are Two Separate and Distinct Issues That Have Nothing to Do With Each Other

by John Lawrence

We know that the US government does not have to tax in order to spend since the US has a sovereign currency (See Modern Monetary Theory), and the Federal Reserve can just place the requisite amount of money for the infrastructure bill in the Treasury's account at the Fed. The problem is that, according to US law, if there is not enough money in the Treasury's account to pay for stuff, it must issue and sell Treasury bonds to make up the difference. These bonds then contribute to the deficit which is added to the national debt. We also know that the national debt never needs to be paid off, but Treasury bonds do need to be paid when the holder asks for the money when they come due. In addition interest does need to be paid on them. If the Fed keeps the interest rate for Treasuries at zero, this is not a problem. So why would anyone purchase Treasury bonds if they get zero interest? Well, countries that peg their currencies to the dollar (like China) need dollars in order to conduct business. Besides if someone comes to them with a basket full of renminbi and asks for US dollars, they have to be able to pay them the dollars and accept the renminbi. So there is always a market for US Treasury bonds. Even if there wasn't, the Fed would end up purchasing them and taking them onto its balance sheet where they would essentially disappear into a black hole never having to be paid back.

So what is the problem with just having the Fed create the money and place it in the Treasury's account without "paying for" it with taxes. No problem really. Joe Biden just wants to kill two birds with one stone. The first bird is the money for infrastructure. The second bird is doing something about the widening economic inequality by taxing the rich. There is no actual need to issue Treasuries in the first place except that US law requires it. The money could just go directly on the Fed's balance sheet without the intermediate step of selling Treasuries. There are however some good reasons for not taking too much advantage of this possibility. One is inflation. As more money floods into the economy through deficit spending, inflation could heat up whether or not the money comes from taxes. The other issue is that as other countries accumulate more and more Treasury bonds with or without interest being paid on them, they start to have the ability to use those dollars to purchase US assets. It's not inconceivable that a particular country - let's say China - couldn't accumulate enough Treasuries to buy up cities.

New York City has the most valuable real estate in the U.S. at $2.8 trillion — slightly more than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom for 2019. In fact, this is greater than the GDP of all but just five countries — India, Germany, Japan, China and the United States. The value of New York is comparable to the combined market value of tech giants Apple and Microsoft. China owns about $1.1 trillion in US Treasuries. If they demanded it all tomorrow, the Fed would have no problem paying them, but then they could buy up more than a third of New York City or almost all of San Francisco valued at $1.3 trillion. This could eventually become a problem so it would be better not to even make up the difference by issuing Treasuries in the first place. The alternative is for the Fed just to create the money and place it in the Treasury's account as authorized by Congress without the Treasury having to sell bonds to make up the difference between the amount of taxes and the amount of the authorization.

Then the issue becomes inflation. There is already wage inflation as employers are forced to pay more for employees, for a number of reasons, thus raising the price of products and services. This is "good" inflation since wage earners have not seen an increase in their income for 40 years. There is also "bad" inflation in that the increasing wealth of the upper 10% , and especially the upper 1%, is causing asset inflation in terms of the increasing cost of real estate and rent. Asset inflation is also happening in the stock market although it's hard to see how this is a bad thing except for the fact that about 50% of the people don't own stocks so that gap between rich and poor is only increasing. The third form of inflation occurs when there is too much money chasing too few goods and services. This could be caused by too much deficit spending. The fourth kind is the "super bad" inflation known as hyperinflation. This is the kind of inflation that affected the Weimar republic in Germany before the Second World War and also affects poor countries. It also recently affected Greece because Greece gave up its sovereign currency when it adopted the euro. Hyperinflation occurs when a country needs to borrow money from the capital markets subject to increasing interest rates. As their economy declines interest rates go up until finally they are paying more in interest than their economies can keep up with. The US can never be put in this position since it never has to go to the capital markets to borrow money. The Federal Reserve can just issue whatever money is needed and can set its own interest rate since the US dollar is a sovereign currency.

So while there are limits to the amount of prudent deficit spending, one of them is not paying for it through taxes. The US Federal government never has to tax in order to spend. It can pass a bill to build infrastructure with the only limitation being the physical and material resources that are available to do it.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/03/01/stephanie-kelton-explains-modern-monetary-theory.html

 

Off the Top of My Head

Joe Biden: "China is Eating Our Lunch"

by John Lawrence

There are many reasons for this. #1) China is a basically unified nation. The US is a divided nation. #2) China has consistent policies over the long term. The US is subject to a radical change of government every 2 years. #3) China puts the best and brightest in high government positions. The US is prone to elect celebrities and entertainers with little or no experience or expertise. #4) The Chinese government has strong centralized control. The US is fragmented into a multiplicity of different states and districts with states contradicting the central government because they think states' rights are paramount. There are 4 different districts for state assemblyman, state senator, national House representative and national Senator. Central government and state governments are at odds with each other with no entity having overriding authority.

This fragmentation of authority in the US affects many things including the response to pandemics and global warming. Americans can not even agree on the wearing of masks during a pandemic much less whether global warming is real or a hoax. Republicans fan the flames of these divisions encouraging their followers to believe lies and falsehoods. Americans can not even agree on the truth. China has no such problems. If the central government says that the Chinese people should wear masks, by God, they surely will or else face dire consequences. Americans have a freedom fetish. They think they are free to do whatever the hell they please regardless of the consequences to others. Americans will choose to get vaccinated or not based on their own whims when not getting vaccinated could prolong the pandemic or even make it worse.

Gun ownership is another American fetish which is destroying the country while China maintains strict standards of gun control. In the People's Republic of China, access by the general public to firearms is subject to some of the strictest control measures in the world. With the exception of individuals with hunting permits and some ethnic minorities, civilian firearm ownership is restricted to non-individual entities. In this regard China is like much of the developed world whose governments do not give their citizens free access to guns. The Constitution's Second Amendment is literally killing Americans on a daily basis. Mass shootings are proliferating and even children are able to get their hands on weapons of war.

William Nordhaus in The Spirit of Green writes: "One of the American disadvantages in fighting pandemics is its federal structure. Many of the most important decisions and legal authority on public health reside at the state and local levels while the federal government has resources, expertise, and central command. The CDC organizes and authorizes testing but has tiny fiscal resources; states and localities have authority for shutdowns and quarantines but are uncoordinated, have little expertise, and are perennially fiscally stressed."

Lack of coordination, fragmentation and outright hostility to doing what experts and authority figures say is the right course means that Americans are working at odds with each other. Each entity is rowing in a different direction. Some states mandate mask wearing while others pass laws outlawing mask wearing. Americans assert their right not to wear a mask and not to get vaccinated when medical experts tell them that those things will minimize the negative outcomes for themselves and their neighbors. Less variants will materialize which at some point may overcome the effect of vaccines to control them if they follow simple public health recommendations.

Americans think that their Constitutionally derived freedom gives them the right not to follow any authority figure no matter how well intentioned, expert and unbiased even though their actions may cause harm to themselves and others. China would never condone placing self interest over the interest of the community. China is full steam ahead with everyone rowing in the same direction. Americans are at odds with each other flying off into different directions simultaneously. The American ship of state is rudderless.

Off the Top of My Head

Future Generations Will Analyze This Era and Judge Whether Autocracy or Democracy Was More Successful

by John Lawrence

So far autocracy is winning. The vast majority of the Chinese people are on the same page as the Chinese government while the US is a nation divided - one half diametrically opposed to the other half. The Constitution itself needs to be revised as its First and Second amendments are causing many of the problems. The Second amendment is contributing to the US being the mass murder capitol of the world, but the First amendment is also insidious as it has morphed into something perverted and toxic in the form of social media and spun out of control allowing the spread of vicious gossip and lies gone viral. This has given vent to the worst impulses among the American people. Facebook's very business model has contributed mightily to this outcome as it allows hate groups to identify one another and come together on a common platform provided all too profitably by Facebook.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state warns of the danger to democracy of lies flourishing online – and says big tech’s wings must be clipped in an article in The Guardian. She of course has been the victim of outrageous character assassination perpetrated by lies on social media over the course of 30 years or more. The Guardian reports:

"Her bid for the White House was engulfed by a tidal wave of fabricated news and false conspiracy theories. Now Hillary Clinton is calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation that includes reining in the power of big tech.

"The former secretary of state and first lady warns that the breakdown of a shared truth, and the divisiveness that surely follows, poses a danger to democracy at a moment when China is selling the conceit that autocracy works."

Uncontrolled social media makes more money by perpetrating lies than it does the truth because the truth is often boring, bu lies especially when shared by a large group of people are often very entertaining, and the American people demand constantly to be entertained. Maybe this is because their lives are otherwise quite boring. Anyway boredom is the crux of the matter. The “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which made the preposterous claim that Clinton ran a child sex trafficking ring at a Washington pizza restaurant, entertained the masses in a viral manner. This segment of society loves them a reality show TV star like Donald Trump or even a B movie star like Ronald Reagan. They would rather have the impersonation of a competent leader than a competent leader him or herself, but then Hitler was very entertaining as well. So are most autocrats. Social media represents the First amendment run amok.

The Guardian continues:

"Far-right Republicans have become openly anti-democratic, endorsing Trump’s falsehoods and seeking to suppress voters of color.

"The traditional the-truth-is-somewhere-in-the-middle approach will no longer do, Clinton argues.

“They’ve got to rid themselves of both-sidesism,” she says. “It is not the same to say something critical of somebody on the other side of the aisle and to instigate an attack on the Capitol and to vote against certifying the election. Those are not comparable, and it goes back to the problem of the press actually coming to grips with how out of bounds and dangerous the new political philosophy on the right happens to be.”

"The press cannot be expected to restore a common baseline of truth on its own, however.

“The technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press, and I do think that there has to be not just an American reckoning but a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the platforms currently enjoy,” Clinton said."

News shows on TV need sponsors and sponsors want eyeballs glued to the tube. What is more gluing than some outrageous lie such as the ones Qanon perpetrates. So the "business of America is business" crowd is out there perpetrating lies because that is more profitable than perpetrating the boring truth. Entertainment is everything. We are entertained to death and that had resulted prepandemic in a full employment society where the lower 50% serve, bartend, cater, cook, work as baristas, housekeep, provide security, take tickets for the upper 50%. Profitable business decisions have made lies and deception profitable. Every day during the Trump administration, the media covered Trump's outrageous lies and behavior because it was more profitable than reporting the dull facts. Even Trump's adulterous affairs were "forgiven" because they made him a more vivid character providing juicy gossipy entertainment even for the tsk tsk crowd.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argued presciently 35 years ago that television was reshaping our culture and trivializing public life—news, politics, religion, education, and business—by turning it into entertainment. He warned that we would become so inundated with irrelevant information that we’d lose sight of what was important—even worse, we wouldn’t care as long as we felt entertained. With the proliferation of digital media today and worries about excessive “screen time,” his analysis still resonates.

Hillary added: “In particular Facebook, which has the worst track record for enabling mistruths, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy, for goodness’ sake, even genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya. So governments are going to have to decide right now that the platforms have to be held to some kind of standard, and it’s tricky.” So do the Chinese have a better idea to control the out of control lies perpetrated in the West? For one thing they wouldn't stand for it. Freedom of speech has morphed into something sinister and out of control. The same could be said about the Second Amendment. Maybe the moral of the story is that constitutions need to be updated at least once a century in order to keep up with new technological developments. The US Constitution is 233 years old.

Off the Top of My Head

Our Grandchildren Won't Have to Pay Back Money Spent on a Green New Deal, But They Will Pay With Their Lives if We Don't Do It Now

by John Lawrence

It's a myth that a sovereign country with a sovereign currency and a floating exchange rate has to borrow money to pay its bills. The US can just issue the money. It doesn't need to tax in order to spend. So why isn't the US as well as all the other nations with sovereign currencies such as Japan, Britain and China going all out to supply as much money as necessary to prevent global warming from "going viral" as they say? The only restraint is the question of whether the human and physical resources to do the work are available. In a society such as China, if the government wanted its people to stop whatever they were doing and become part of the work force to forestall global warming, it would be done. In the US it would not be so easy to commandeer workers to leave their jobs as servers, bartenders, chefs, dealers, workers at Disneyland, workers on cruise ships etc to leave their jobs and go to work in Joe Biden's global warming and infrastructure rebuilding work force. The businesses large and small would have a conniption fit like they're having now getting these workers back to work because their pandemic unemployment has not run out.

The only time when workers went all out to solve a major global problem was World War II. Rosie the Riveter and all the others joined the work force to defeat Hitler. They even were willing to defer consumption so that the financial and material resources that were necessary weren't spent in the consumption market thus letting the necessary physical resources be available for the war effort. Today we have a nation consisting of a bunch of spoiled brats who wouldn't do anything the government asked them to do crying that their "freedom" to do whatever they wanted was paramount. We live in a society composed of consumers who demand to be endlessly entertained by movies, TV, theme parks cruise ships, athletes, restaurants, social media and Las Vegas. Half the country works as servers, baristas, bartenders, housekeepers, actors, athletes, dealers, entertainers and such like jobs to entertain the top half. Some of these are highly paid; most are not. Such was the nature of the "full employment" society before COVID hit. It was a full employment society consisting of trivial jobs at minimum wages for the most part. Biden will have to persuade workers to leave their jobs in the "entertainment" industry in order to create actual results in the real world such as building green infrastructure. The entertainment industry will not be pleased nor will the upper half of society which demands to be continually entertained. 70% of US GNP is consumption and a lot of what people want to consume is encompassed by sports bars, travel and tourism, the leisure and hospitality industry in general. The spoiled brats think its their birthright to have such services available, and the last thing they want to do is to roll up their sleeves and join a union.

Together with the presumed right to be entertained, we have a large percentage of the country that has been processed through the military and developed this consciousness that military prerogatives should prevail uber alles. These are the insurrectionists and Trump supporters that want civilian society to reinforce military values such as command and control. They want an autocrat for President. Freedom is the only value that counts for them. Democracy, equality, fraternity, social equity don't matter. They want to preserve the American way of life which, in addition to a right to be entertained wherever and whenever they have the resources to consume, includes also the right to exclude the prerogatives of minorities for social justice. Is it any wonder that the insurrectionists in January 6 contained a large number of current and former members of the military and police forces? Their attitude is that whatever is good for the military is good for American society in general. The military has become a way of life and consciousness for them. They think that, because they served, they are entitled. Spoiled brat militarists I'll call them. The endless wars, bloated military-industrial complex budget and the military bases in practically every country in the world provides the economic and job base of the nation unfortunately.

Biden thinks he is out to prove that American democracy can compete in the civilian world on an equally competent basis with other countries. That will be a hard nut to crack. The US is dooming itself in two ways: the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. Let's take the Second Amendment first. In no other major country in the world do citizens have a right to unlimited uncontrolled gun ownership including military style weapons. This is producing news cycles when, hardly is one mass murder out of the way, than another one comes along to dominate the news. The news channels can hardly keep up with them all. No other society including The US' major competitors would tolerate such a situation. The Second Amendment has become toxic and perverted, and in and of itself is enough to doom the US to second class status. In addition to that the First Amendment has become toxic and perverted, and the major reason for that is social media. Social media makes possible the vicious spread of toxic lies and untruths. Witness Trump's use of Twitter to corral and consolidate his followers around the thesis that he, not Biden, actually won the election. Social media allowed him to rally his supporters based on angry themes and memes connected with white supremacy and a return to the good old days when white, Protestant Anglo Saxons ran the country, the good old days when Negroes knew their place in society, the good old days when you didn't have multiple nationalities and religious groups asserting their rights under the Constitution to live freely and enjoy all the perquisites of American society, the good old days when gas guzzlers were the only vehicles in town and no one need be concerned about anything except maximizing their profits and living the American Dream, where the American Dream consisted of having more stuff than your parents did.

Joe Biden's first 100 days have been remarkable in that he has been able to get as much accomplished with slim majorities in both Houses of Congress. Is this enough though to move America forward at the pace that China, for instance, is moving? China is a more or less unified society. 99% or more of Chinese citizens are on the same page as the Chinese government. China is winning friends and allies all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative while the US withers away its resources on endless wars and confuses its allies with the possibility of radical swings with each change of administrations. China's military budget of $183.5 billion is dwarfed by a US military budget 5 times that amount. The US is a divided country where one of the major parties base their appeal on lies and deception, and its supporters are only too willing to eat it up because it's entertaining and represents military values of command and control. Good government, as Biden has illustrated, is somewhat boring because it is based on solving real human problems. Let's hope that Biden's version of reality based on truth and problem solving wins out over the lies based reality of the other side, and the US, even if it doesn't remain the world's dominant power, can become a constructive member of the world community helping to solve problems at home and abroad.

Off the Top of My Head

America to End Forever War in Afghanistan Thanks to Joe Biden

by John Lawrence, April 15, 2021

So far Biden is making all the right moves, and I'm sure he has more up his sleeve. He's playing 3 dimensional chess while the Republicans haven't even learned to play checkers yet. The military-industrial complex is crying, "Oh, no," because they justify the huge expenditures on them by the need for continuance of forever wars. They are aghast at the prospect that their trillion dollar annual budget will be inevitably reduced. It has become obvious that the biggest threat to the US is not international terrorism but domestic terrorism. The FBI and the National Guard will deal with that very nicely; they don't need the Pentagon. The FBI is doing a remarkable job cleaning up the terrorists who took part in the January 6 bungled coup attempt. Over 400 arrests and counting so far. The idiots self videoed their own arrest warrants.

The US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. As an added service they also train the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the Three Percenters. The military-industrial complex has done a lot to militarize the consciousnesses of young Americans, especially young non-college bound Americans. College graduates, especially in engineering, often end up, like I did, in the military-industrial complex working for companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and General Dynamics. As a country we have been spending our money in all the wrong places, but the military-industrial complex wants to hang on to its prerogatives. When I was an employee of General Dynamics many years ago, they encouraged you to vote Republican. Otherwise their budgets might be cut and there might be a RIF (Reduction in Force). When the military-industrial complex is cut down to size, right sized as they say, the Republican party will lose its raison d'être, its justification, because that's all in reality that it stands for - large defense budgets and tax cuts for the wealthy.

If we really want to compete with China, then we should cut our defense budget down to the size of China's and spend our money in more constructive ways like China is doing like building infrastructure with its Belt and Road initiative. The only infrastructure the US has been doing in foreign countries has been the building of military bases of which there are approximately 800 in practically every country in the world. Meanwhile, China has one military base in a foreign country - in Djibouti! If the US wants to compete with China, it will take a page out of China's book and build infrastructure not military bases. China and the US need to cooperate on problems facing the whole earth like global warming. It's no consolation to win the competitive war while the home we all live in goes up in flames or drowns as the case may be.

Republicans want Biden to tell them how he's going to pay for all his ambitious social programs? Let's see. Let me count the ways. Taxes on the rich - that's a good one. Reduce the size of the military-industrial complex budget. Even better. Military contractors, among others, provide the campaign donations for the Republican party as long as the guys they are providing the financial jet fuel for are hardliners for a "strong" defense. Well now, maybe they should stand up for transferring the money to the FBI so they can deal with domestic terrorism instead of a useless military engaged in forever wars which are only killing civilians, destroying real estate and creating refugees. The world doesn't need an America which thinks it has the self-appointed job of being the world's policeman or moral arbiter. There is something in the Bible about taking the beam out of our own eye before telling our neighbor to take the mote out of theirs.

The US bloated military is wasting our money while militarizing the consciousness of our young men many of whom think their patriotism justifies invading and laying waste to our Capitol. Lawmakers were shocked, shocked to find out that the invaders of the People's House were present and former members of the military and police forces! Patriots! This is what happens when you define patriotism in military terms. The true patriots are the doctors and nurses, supermarket workers, delivery drivers, meat packers and others who put their lives at risk to help us get through this pandemic. True patriotism consists of reducing our military-industrial complex and defense budget to a reasonable size comparative with other countries and the real threats in the world while building up our infrastructure assets and social safety net programs as every other advanced country has already done. Joe Biden is on the road to doing this. May he prosper and prevail. And God bless our doctors and nurses.

Off the Top of My Head

If Republican Voters Want the Infrastructure Bill, Why Don't Republican Lawmakers?

by John Lawrence, April 12, 2021

Is this a failure of representative democracy? Polls show that a majority of Republican voters support Biden's infrastructure plan including the "care" components thereof. Yet Republican Senators are dead set against it, and the bill will probably not garner one Republican vote. It can still pass the Senate based on budget reconciliation which only requires a majority vote as long as all Democrats vote for it. Other Biden proposals involving voter's rights and gun control would require at least 10 Republican votes in the Senate under the current rules which involve the filibuster for non-budgetary items. In a representative democracy, a party should represent its voters. Otherwise, you don't really have a representative democracy which the US purports itself to be. So at present the US is in the position of being a government swerving back and forth from a representative democracy as long as Democrats control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency and a dictatorship of an elite when Republicans control either party or the Presidency.

The same applies to other issues like gun control, voter's rights and immigration which aren't subject to budgetary reconciliation and must garner 60 votes in the Senate. One of the minimum elements of democracy is majority rule. Because the filibuster is anti-majoritarian, this leaves the American democracy in the position of not really being a democracy at all in terms of non-budgetary items. So the US is on its way to being an authoritarian regime if Republicans control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress. All that would be necessary is a President like Trump with authoritarian tendencies. Then the US government becomes a government that's all about the use of power to get its way internationally and domestically, not about making the world a better place. Unfortunately, this leaves the US in the eyes of other nations as being untrustworthy since there is no consistent policy going forward. Other countries have more consistent leadership and hence are considered more trustworthy.

China, on the other hand, has very consistent policies going far into the future. China isn't perfect but most of the Chinese people and the leadership are on the same wavelength. US leadership likes to make a big deal of the plight of the Uyghurs, a Chinese minority that represents less than 1% of the Chinese population. So it's pretty remarkable that the only problem China seems to have with a minority that resents Chinese leadership  is with a minority that composes 0.31% of the population. The US should be so lucky yet the US harps on the Chinese over this situation of which little is actually know by the western world. China has pilled 800 million people out of poverty since 1990, one of the outstanding feats in human history, yet the US leadership continues to harp about the Uyghurs while giving no credit to China on poverty reduction. During the same time period the wages of US workers has stagnated. Kishore Mahbubani, author of the book, "Has China Won" writes: "In contrast to America's stagnation, China's culture, self-concept, and morale are being transformed at a rapid pace - mostly for the better." Rather than China's recent success being an assessment of the comparative values of Marxist-Leninist doctrines vis a vis American democracy, The Chinese Communist Party could more appropriately be called the Chinese Civilization Party since it reflects the 2000 year history of China more than it does Communist ideology.

So the response of the US to the progress of China in the last 30 years, instead of congratulating them on their remarkable accomplishments, is to be fearful that China is getting ahead of us. Well, duh, if you compare a society that is mostly all on the same wavelength and making remarkable steps forward with one that is divided and experienced a certain segment almost accomplishing a coup d'etat in a recent insurrection which threatened the lives of lawmakers in the seat of democracy itself. However, rather than viewing the world situation as a competition between the US and China, a more fruitful approach would be to cooperate with China with regard to climate change and pandemics, two things that affect the whole world and which require fast action, not a lackadaisical approach in which maybe we'll cooperate down the road, but in the meantime we have to compete. There's no time for that. The planet earth has almost passed an inflection point after which there will be no more time available.

Off the Top of My Head

Joe Manchin Is Living in La La Land

by John Lawrence, April 8, 2021

Joe Manchin is not facing the reality that exists in the US today. He is nostalgic for a day when a bipartisan consensus was possible. Today it's not. The best we can do is to go ahead with Joe Biden's agenda with the slim majority Democrats possess in the Senate, but Manchin is essentially siding with Republicans, the Party of No. Manchin wants stability in American governing, but his vision of stability is one in which Republicans will negate every attempt Biden makes to bring the US into the 21st century and effectively compete with China. Yes, America will swerve back and forth policywise if Federal control switches between parties. But that's the best that American democracy is capable of at this point in time. The alternative that Manchin suggests is a stability of no progress. China has no such problem. Their society is basically all on the same long term wavelength. They will go full steam ahead with progress.

In his recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Manchin states: "The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation." Is he kidding? "usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground" There is no way that is going to happen in the current political environment. There is very little to no common ground. Democrats want to get things done for the American people to improve their lot. Republicans only seek political power because their personal fortunes go up to the extent that they hold political power, and all they care about is their personal power and fortunes. Republicans have determined that their personal power increases to the extent that they make the Democratic agenda fail. Mitch McConnell actually stated this when Obama was President. McConnell was quoted as saying: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." That's pretty clear. It's not about helping the American people except for the wealthy class of which they themselves are members. It's about making the other party fail.

So Joe Manchin has his head up his ass if he thinks there is going to be a new age of bipartisan consensus. It's wishful thinking. It's not going to happen right now or any time in the near future. Maybe some day, but right now the best hope is for the Democrats to go ahead and make improvements in American society while they hold power. Any other course only dooms the US to fall further behind the rest of the world, doom earth to catastrophic climate change and lets China zoom ahead in making progress. Joe Manchin is incredibly naive or else he wants to be the main power broker in the US Senate. "Generations of senators who came before us put their heads down and their pride aside to solve the complex issues facing our country. We must do the same. The issues facing our democracy today are not insurmountable if we choose to tackle them together." Doesn't he realize that the only issue Republicans want to face is how to make themselves and the rich even richer? Doesn't he realize that the only thing Republicans are interested in is political power? They will lie and cheat, create conspiracy theories and do anything that's even quasi legal to achieve and maintain political power.

Manchin is playing his role as the skunk at the party which is too bad. Biden's job is not trying to form a bipartisan consensus with Republicans. It's trying to appease Joe Manchin in order to get anything done. The only hope for America is to go big when Democrats hold power which they do only by a miracle in the fact that two Democratic Senators were elected in runoffs in the state of Georgia. Somehow Biden will get Manchin to go along with most of his agenda that Republicans will not be able to undo if and when they control the Federal government again. The atmosphere has already set the record this year of 420 parts per million of carbon dioxide making it unlikely that our planet will not face the worst consequences of global warming. Only cooperation with China, not only on this but on future pandemicsand other issues, will give our grandchildren the slightest chance at a decent life. To the extent Republicans control the Federal government this chance will be reduced to zero.

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans Are Restricting Voting Laws

by John Lawrence, February27, 2021

Republicans know that, if all eligible voters actually vote, they will lose. So they are busy at work at the state level to enact more restrictive voting laws making it as difficult as possible for people to vote. This will primarily affect Democratic voters, and they know that. They have been using voter suppression techniques ever since black people won the right to vote. They know that making voting easier will encourage more Democratic voters because many of them can't take a day off to go to the polls. So mail-in voting which was facilitated in many states because of the pandemic worked to their disadvantage. They are hurrying to correct that. Since Republicans control many state legislatures which set the voting rules, they are having a field day changing the laws so that they don't suffer any more humiliating defeats.

So Joe Biden needs to make the best of the two years he has during which Democrats control both Houses of Congress. Assuming that a Republican will be elected President in 2024, the nation will swerve to the right and disassemble all the Executive orders Biden has put in place. As a result of this division America will be seen, if it's not seen that way already, as unstable and inconsistent. World leaders will increasingly turn towards China for leadership because what China values most in consistency and stability. The US can't decide whether it wants to be a democracy or a republic. Democrats want a democracy in which it would seem appropriate that every citizen over the age of 18 should cast a vote. This should be made as easy and accessible as possible. Republicans, on the other hand, want a republic in which the levers of power are controlled by white Americans of European descant like they always have been and which the time honored methods of voter suppression of minorities and poor people remain fully in effect.

Paul Weyrich was an American conservative political activist and commentator, most notable for co-founding the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation, both conservative think tanks.He famously said: "So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." Quite a revealing quote. He identifies with "Christians" but chastens them that they shouldn't want everyone to vote. The question I ask is 'what would Jesus say?' Would Jesus want everyone to vote or not? Probably Jesus would be in favor of democracy as compared with a conservative minority that wants everything kept the way it has always been "from the beginning of our country." It makes me doubt the validity of the Christian religion as practiced by the "moral majority" of right wing Christians in this country. Jesus was for the poor and disenfranchised. They're not.

America can not remain a great country on the world stage if it swerves back and forth every two years between Democrats who genuinely want to make America and the world a better place and "America First" Republicans who don't give a hoot about the rest of the world except to dominate it with an outsized military establishment. The US is veering on the edge of autocracy if 74 million voters want Trump as their President in 2024 and Republicans are successful in suppressing 7 million voters because that was the margin between Biden and Trump. Trump did considerable damage not only to the US reputation vis a vis the rest of the world, but also within the US itself. It is a question of whether the US is a fact based country run by intelligent people or a no nothing country based on lies and conspiracy theories while the rich steal everything in sight and Republicans give their hoi polloi supporters political entertainment to keep their anger stoked. The rest of the world has looked to America as the Rock of Gibralter in the past because of its consistency and stability and its promotion of human rights (except the human rights having to do with economic rights). They may be looking now towards China for stability and consistency and be more concerned about intelligent leadership and economic human rights, especially if they observe that America's touting of human rights eliminates those of black people.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Should Blue Collar Workers Have to Pay Taxes to Bail Out White Collar Student Loan Debt?

by John Lawrence

Short answer: There is no need for the Federal government to tax in order to spend. That has been demonstrated by Modern Monetary Theory. However, taxation, if imposed in order to fight inflation, needs to be imposed primarily on the rich and upper middle class, not on the poor or lower middle class. The smart thing for the Biden administration to do would be to decrease taxes on the lower middle class ^i.e. blue collar workers before 2022 thus drawing them away from the Trump camp. In general the American people need to be educated that deficits don't matter except just as accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. Biden's COVID relief initiative of $1.9 billion will not raise taxes nor will his follow-on trillion dollar initiative for the build-out of green infrastructure.

The question, "Can We Afford to Pay for the Green New Deal?" is equivalent to the question "Can We Afford to Pay the Costs of Avoiding Annihilation?". In the past we have been able to afford a massive build-up to pay for the Second World War. The climate challenge is the moral equivalent of war. If we lose this war we lose not just our freedom. We lose the habitability of the entire planet. Various attempts have been made to cost out the components of a Green New Deal. Green power generation and transportation are not sufficient in themselves to get to net zero carbon emission, but they are a start. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, major industrial processes also generate much greenhouse gas emission. For instance, every ton of cement that is produced contributes one ton of carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere. Every ton of steel produced results in 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, and every ton of plastics produced emits 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide. So it's not enough just to deal with green transportation (electric vehicles) and green power generation (solar and wind).

The cost of "greening" these industrial processes is pretty steep. Capturing carbon dioxide at the site of the manufacturing process is possible, but there is no cheap way to do it. Bill Gates is investing in promising start-ups and is counting on innovation to come up with new processes and materials which will not result in so much carbon dioxide being released into the air. Gates points out that we need to electrify every possible manufacturing process and make sure that all that electricity is generated cleanly. He advocates a new generation of nuclear power sources as wind and solar can not possible fill every energy need mainly because they are intermittent. Nuclear can fill the gap for consistent power generation when solar and/or wind are offline. Smart nuclear power which Bill Gates has been instrumental in developing would solve the problems encountered so far of explosion and what to do with nuclear waste. As a last resort Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide from the air is possible but also costly.

What it all boils down to is this: we will need on the order of a trillion dollars a year for 10 years commitment to address climate change if we have a prayer for avoiding the worst consequences. What's more a lot of this commitment must be made in cooperation with China which is one of the worst polluters. Rivalry and even a Cold War must be set aside if the world is to avoid the worst outcome from global warming. India and China are building coal fired power generation plants at a rapid pace because coal fired power plants are so cheap comparatively and those countries are developing so quickly. It's not enough just to "green" the US. It has to be cooperation on a world wide basis. Competition has to be set aside and replaced by cooperation. The ownership of intellectual property is irrelevant when it comes to saving the planet.

A national budget for a Green New Deal shouldn't contribute to inflation since there are currently so many unemployed people available for work, and particularly because so many of the small businesses that were lost during the pandemic are not coming back. Also further robotizing of manufacturing processes will eliminate whatever blue collar workers are left working in those fields. In World War II there was some postponement of consumption in order to fight inflation. That may be necessary for the moral equivalent of war which the Green New Deal represents. If so, workers in certain nonessential industries may have to be repurposed and retrained for industries involved in combating climate change.