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Javier E

Fossil fuel production on track for double the safe climate limit | Environment | The G... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-double-the-safe-climate-limit

fossil fuel production climate change environment

shared by Javier E on 20 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas as can be burned in 2030 while restricting rise in the global temperature to 1.5C, analysis shows
  • The report is the first to compare countries’ stated plans for fossil fuel extraction with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which is to keep global heating well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5C.
  • Scientists have warned that even the difference between 1.5C and 2C of heating will expose hundreds of millions of people to significantly higher risks of extreme heatwaves, drought, floods and poverty.
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  • It exposes a huge gap, with fossil fuel production in 2030 heading for 50% more than is consistent with 2C, and 120% more than that for 1.5C.
  • It complements an earlier UN analysis showing the current Paris agreement pledges to cut emissions would still lead to a catastrophic 3-4C rise.
  • “We’re in a deep hole – and we need to stop digging,”
  • Most action to tackle the climate crisis involves reducing emissions, but Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme, said a focus on fossil fuel production was long overdue.
  • Most of the action pledges made by countries under the Paris deal do not even mention changes to production.
  • The UK is a “striking” example of this mismatch, said Cleo Verkuijl, at the SEI’s centre in Oxford, UK. It was the first major economy to commit to net zero emissions by 2050, she said, but also subsidises fossil fuel production at home and abroad and intends to extract “every drop of oil and gas” from its North Sea field
  • The report highlights the nations that are taking some action, including the closure of most coal mines in Spain and some in China, along with the end of new offshore oil and gas exploration licences in New Zealand and some parts of the Arctic governed by Canada, the US and Norway.
  • The report said it was crucial that workers in fossil fuel industries were helped into new employment as production ramped down. “Leaders need to [talk with] workers and their unions to plan a just transition away from fossil fuels,
  • The analysis is based on the published national plans of eight key producers: Australia, Canada, Russia, US, China, India, Indonesia and Norway, which account for 60% of global fossil fuel production
anniina03

Libya civil war: UN envoy Salamé says foreign intervention must end - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-africa-51161758

politics Crisis

shared by anniina03 on 19 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The UN's Libya envoy Ghassan Salamé has called on foreign powers to stop interfering in Libya's civil war.
  • On the eve of peace talks in Berlin, Mr Salamé said foreign support of proxy groups in the conflict had created a "vicious cycle" of violence.But Mr Salamé told the BBC that he was optimistic about the negotiations.It comes after nine months of conflict between the powerful General Khalifa Haftar and the UN-backed government in the capital Tripoli.
  • Mr Salamé called on international powers to stop supporting local proxy groups with mercenaries, arms, financing, and direct military support.He said such actions created "a vicious circle where their proxies call for intervention in their fight, and their own ambitions bring more divisions."
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  • Libya has been wracked by conflict since the 2011 uprising which ousted long-time strongman Muammar Gaddafi.
  • According to the UN, the fighting has killed hundreds of people and displaced thousands more from their homes.
Javier E

The End of Wilson's Liberal Order | Foreign Affairs - 0 views

www.foreignaffairs.com/...end-wilsonian-era

wilson liberal order international relations internationalism foreign policy biden

shared by Javier E on 01 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • He was not a particularly original thinker. More than a century before Wilson proposed the League of Nations, Tsar Alexander I of Russia had alarmed his fellow rulers at the Congress of Vienna by articulating a similar vision: an international system that would rest on a moral consensus upheld by a concert of powers that would operate from a shared set of ideas about legitimate sovereignty.
  • Wilson’s contribution was to synthesize those ideas into a concrete program for a rules-based order grounded in a set of international institutions. 
  • In the decades that followed, however, his ideas became an inspiration and a guide to national leaders, diplomats, activists, and intellectuals around the world.
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  • Self-determination, the rule of law between and within countries, liberal economics, and the protection of human rights: the “new world order” that both the George H. W. Bush and the Clinton administrations worked to create was very much in the Wilsonian mold. 
  • When the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989, it seemed that the opportunity for a Wilsonian world order had finally come. The former Soviet empire could be reconstructed along Wilsonian lines, and the West could embrace Wilsonian principles more consistently now that the Soviet threat had disappeared.
  • American leaders during and after World War II laid the foundations of what they hoped would be a Wilsonian world order, in which international relations would be guided by the principles put forward in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and conducted according to rules established by institutions such as the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the World Trade Organization.
  • the order of things
  • The next stage in world history will not unfold along Wilsonian lines. The nations of the earth will continue to seek some kind of political order, because they must. And human rights activists and others will continue to work toward their goals. But the dream of a universal order, grounded in law, that secures peace between countries and democracy inside them will figure less and less in the work of world leaders. 
  • Although Wilsonian ideals will not disappear and there will be a continuing influence of Wilsonian thought on U.S. foreign policies, the halcyon days of the post–Cold War era, when American presidents organized their foreign policies around the principles of liberal internationalism, are unlikely to return anytime soon. 
  • Today, however, the most important fact in world politics is that this noble effort has failed.
  • Wilsonianism is only one version of a rules-based world order among many.
  • the pre-Wilsonian European order had moved significantly in the direction of elevating human rights to the level of diplomacy. 
  • The preservation of the balance of power was invoked as a goal to guide states; war, although regrettable, was seen as a legitimate element of the system. From Wilson’s standpoint, these were fatal flaws that made future conflagrations inevitable. To redress them, he sought to build an order in which states would accept enforceable legal restrictions on their behavior at home and their international conduct. 
  • Although Wilson was an American, his view of world order was first and foremost developed as a method for managing international politics in Europe, and it is in Europe where Wilson’s ideas have had their greatest success and where their prospects continue to look strongest.
  • His ideas were treated with bitter and cynical contempt by most European statesmen when he first proposed them, but they later became the fundamental basis of the European order, enshrined in the laws and practices of the EU.
  • the arc of history
  • The real problem of Wilsonianism is not a naive faith in good intentions but a simplistic view of the historical process, especially when it comes to the impact of technological progress on human social order.
  • Wilson was the devout son of a minister, deeply steeped in Calvinist teachings about predestination and the utter sovereignty of God, and he believed that the arc of progress was fated
  • he shared the optimism of what the scholar Herbert Butterfield called “the Whig historians,” the Victorian-era British thinkers who saw human history as a narrative of inexorable progress and betterment. Wilson believed that the so-called ordered liberty that characterized the Anglo-American countries had opened a path to permanent prosperity and peace.
  • Today’s Wilsonians have given this determinism a secular twist: in their eyes, liberalism will rule the future and bring humanity to “the end of history” as a result of human nature rather than divine purpose
  • In the early 1990s, leading U.S. foreign policymakers and commentators saw the fall of the Soviet Union through the same deterministic prism: as a signal that the time had come for a truly global and truly liberal world order. On all three occasions, Wilsonian order builders seemed to be in sight of their goal. But each time, like Ulysses, they were blown off course by contrary winds. 
  • Technical difficulties Today, those winds are gaining strength. Anyone hoping to reinvigorate the flagging Wilsonian project must contend with a number of obstacles
  • The most obvious is the return of ideology-fueled geopolitics. China, Russia, and a number of smaller powers aligned with them—Iran, for example—correctly see Wilsonian ideals as a deadly threat to their domestic arrangements.
  • Seeing Wilsonianism as a cover for American and, to some degree, EU ambitions, Beijing and Moscow have grown increasingly bold about contesting Wilsonian ideas and initiatives inside international institutions such as the UN and on the ground in places from Syria to the South China Sea.
  • These powers’ opposition to the Wilsonian order is corrosive in several ways.
  • It raises the risks and costs for Wilsonian powers to intervene in conflicts beyond their own borders.
  • The presence of great powers in the anti-Wilsonian coalition also provides shelter and assistance to smaller powers that otherwise might not choose to resist the status quo
  • Finally, the membership of countries such as China and Russia in international institutions makes it more difficult for those institutions to operate in support of Wilsonian norms: take, for example, Chinese and Russian vetoes in the UN Security Council, the election of anti-Wilsonian representatives to various UN bodies, and the opposition by countries such as Hungary and Poland to EU measures intended to promote the rule of law. 
  • Biological and technological research, by contrast, are critical for any country or company that hopes to remain competitive in the twenty-first century. An uncontrollable, multipolar arms race across a range of cutting-edge technologies is on the horizon, and it will undercut hopes for a revived Wilsonian order. 
  • The irony is that Wilsonians often believe that technological progress will make the world more governable and politics more rational—even if it also adds to the danger of war by making it so much more destructive. Wilson himself believed just that, as did the postwar order builders and the liberals who sought to extend the U.S.-led order after the Cold War. Each time, however, this faith in technological change was misplaced
  • As seen most recently with the rise of the Internet, although new technologies often contribute to the spread of liberal ideas and practices, they can also undermine democratic systems and aid authoritarian regimes.
  • Meanwhile, the torrent of technological innovation and change known as “the information revolution” creates obstacles for Wilsonian goals
  • It also makes it harder for national leaders to pursue the compromises that international cooperation inevitably requires and increases the chances that incoming governments will refuse to be bound by the acts of their predecessors. 
  • Wilsonians prioritize arms control not just because nuclear warfare could destroy the human race but also because, even if unused, nuclear weapons or their equivalent put the Wilsonian dream of a completely rules-based, law-bound international order out of reach. Weapons of mass destruction guarantee exactly the kind of state sovereignty that Wilsonians think is incompatible with humanity’s long-term security. One cannot easily stage a humanitarian intervention against a nuclear power. 
  • What is more, the technological progress that underlies the information revolution significantly exacerbates the problem of arms control. The development of cyberweapons and the potential of biological agents to inflict strategic damage on adversaries—graphically demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic—serve as warnings that new tools of warfare will be significantly more difficult to monitor or control than nuclear technology.
  • Today, as new technologies disrupt entire industries, and as social media upends the news media and election campaigning, politics is becoming more turbulent and polarized in many countries.
  • it’s not for everybody One of the central assumptions behind the quest for a Wilsonian order is the belief that as countries develop, they become more similar to already developed countries and will eventually converge on the liberal capitalist model that shapes North America and western Europe
  • The Wilsonian project requires a high degree of convergence to succeed; the member states of a Wilsonian order must be democratic, and they must be willing and able to conduct their international relations within liberal multilateral institutions. 
  • Today, China, India, Russia, and Turkey all seem less likely to converge on liberal democracy than they did in 1990. These countries and many others have developed economically and technologically not in order to become more like the West but rather to achieve a deeper independence from the West and to pursue civilizational and political goals of their own. 
  • In truth, Wilsonianism is a particularly European solution to a particularly European set of problems
  • With the specter of great-power war constantly hanging over them, European states developed a more intricate system of diplomacy and international politics than did countries in other parts of the world.
  • Although it would take another devastating world war to ensure that Germany, as well as its Western neighbors, would adhere to the rules of a new system, Europe was already prepared for the establishment of a Wilsonian order.
  • The idea of a single legitimate state with no true international peers is as deeply embedded in the political culture of China as the idea of a multistate system grounded in mutual recognition is embedded in that of Europe. There have been clashes among Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, but until the late nineteenth century, interstate conflict was rare. 
  • In human history as a whole, enduring civilizational states seem more typical than the European pattern of rivalry among peer states.
  • For states and peoples in much of the world, the problem of modern history that needed to be solved was not the recurrence of great-power conflict. The problem, instead, was figuring out how to drive European powers awa
  • International institutions face an even greater crisis of confidence. Voters skeptical of the value of technocratic rule by fellow citizens are even more skeptical of foreign technocrats with suspiciously cosmopolitan views
  • After colonialism formally ended and nascent countries began to assert control over their new territories, the classic problems of governance in the postcolonial world remained weak states and compromised sovereignty. 
  • expert texpert
  • The recent rise of populist movements across the West has revealed another danger to the Wilsonian project. If the United States could elect Donald Trump as president in 2016, what might it do in the future? What might the electorates in other important countries do? And if the Wilsonian order has become so controversial in the West, what are its prospects in the rest of the world?
  • Postcolonial and non-Western states often joined international institutions as a way to recover and enhance their sovereignty, not to surrender it, and their chief interest in international law was to protect weak states from strong ones, not to limit the power of national leaders to consolidate their authority
  • Yet from the standpoint of Wilson and his fellow progressives, the solution to these problems could not be simply to vest power in the voters. At the time, most Americans still had an eighth-grade education or less
  • The progressives’ answer to this problem was to support the creation of an apolitical expert class of managers and administrators. The progressives sought to build an administrative state that would curb the excessive power of the rich and redress the moral and political deficiencies of the poor.
  • The Internet and social media have undermined respect for all forms of expertise. Ordinary citizens today are significantly better educated and feel less need to rely on expert guidance. And events including the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the 2008 financial crisis, and the inept government responses during the 2020 pandemic have seriously reduced confidence in experts and technocrats, whom many people have come to see as forming a nefarious “deep state.”
  • Wilson lived in an era when democratic governance faced problems that many feared were insurmountable. The Industrial Revolution had divided American society, creating unprecedented levels of inequality.
  • when it comes to international challenges such as climate change and mass migration, there is little evidence that the cumbersome institutions of global governance and the quarrelsome countries that run them will produce the kind of cheap, elegant solutions that could inspire public trust. 
  • what it means for biden
  • For all these reasons, the movement away from the Wilsonian order is likely to continue, and world politics will increasingly be carried out along non-Wilsonian and in some cases even anti-Wilsonian lines
  • the international order will increasingly be shaped by states that are on diverging paths. This does not mean an inevitable future of civilizational clashes, but it does mean that global institutions will have to accommodate a much wider range of views and values than they have in the past.
  • Non-Wilsonian orders have existed both in Europe and in other parts of the world in the past, and the nations of the world will likely need to draw on these examples as they seek to cobble together some kind of framework for stability and, if possible, peace under contemporary conditions. 
  • For U.S. policymakers, the developing crisis of the Wilsonian order worldwide presents vexing problems that are likely to preoccupy presidential administrations for decades to come. One problem is that many career officials and powerful voices in Congress, civil society organizations, and the press deeply believe not only that a Wilsonian foreign policy is a good and useful thing for the United States but also that it is the only path to peace and security and even to the survival of civilization and humanity.
  • Those factions will be hemmed in by the fact that any internationalist coalition in American foreign policy must rely to a significant degree on Wilsonian voters. But a generation of overreach and poor political judgment has significantly reduced the credibility of Wilsonian ideas among the American electorate.
  • But American foreign policy is always a coalition affair. As I wrote in my book Special Providence, Wilsonians are one of four schools that have contended to shape American foreign policy since the eighteenth century.
  • Hamiltonians and Wilsonians largely dominated American foreign-policy making after the Cold War, but Obama began to reintroduce some Jeffersonian ideas about restraint, and after the Libyan misadventure, his preference for that approach clearly strengthened.
  • Trump, who hung a portrait of President Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office, sought to build a nationalist coalition of Jacksonians and Jeffersonians against the globalist coalition of Hamiltonians and Wilsonians that had been ascendant since World War II. 
  • Even as the Biden administration steers American foreign policy away from the nationalism of the Trump period, it will need to re-adjust the balance between the Wilsonian approach and the ideas of the other schools in light of changed political conditions at home and abroad.
  • Saving the planet from a climate catastrophe and building a coalition to counter China are causes that many Wilsonians will agree both require and justify a certain lack of scrupulosity when it comes to the choice of both allies and tactics. 
  • The Biden administration can also make use of other techniques that past presidents have used to gain the support of Wilsonians
  • Even as the ultimate goals of Wilsonian policy become less achievable, there are particular issues on which intelligent and focused American policy can produce results that Wilsonians will like
  • International cooperation to make money laundering more difficult and to eliminate tax havens is one area where progress is possible.
  • Concern for international public health will likely stay strong for some years after the COVID-19 pandemic has ended.
  • Promoting education for underserved groups in foreign countries—women, ethnic and religious minorities, the poor—is one of the best ways to build a better world,
  • however problematic Wilson’s personal views and domestic policies were, as a statesman and ideologist, he must be counted among the most influential makers of the modern world
anonymous

Trump pardon of Blackwater Iraq contractors violates international law - UN | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...rnational-law-un-idUSKBN294108

trump unitednations

shared by anonymous on 30 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • U.S. President Donald Trump’s pardon of four American men convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007 violated U.S. obligations under international law
  • U.S. contractors opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians.
  • worked for the private security firm Blackwater owned by the brother of Trump’s education secretary
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  • By allowing private security contractors to “operate with impunity in armed conflicts”, states will be emboldened to circumvent their obligations under humanitarian law,
  • These pardons violate U.S. obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level.
Javier E

Opinion | Democrats can win the debate over critical race theory. Here's how. - The Was... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...critical-race-theory-heres-how

Critical Theory race education racism s

shared by Javier E on 09 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • Democrats, beware: Glenn Youngkin’s successful campaign for governor of Virginia will serve as a template for Republican candidates eager to exploit fears of critical race theory by demanding “parental control” of education.
  • The absolute worst thing you can say is what McAuliffe said: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” At some level, he was right; there would be chaos if every teacher had to run every lesson plan by the parents of every student. But his comment came across as tone-deaf after parents had spent 18 months supervising their kids’ education at home — and stewing about shuttered classrooms. McAuliffe paid the price for not feeling parents’ pain.
  • It’s also not productive to argue, as many on the left have, that critical race theory, or CRT, isn’t being taught and that raising the issue is nothing but a dog whistle to racists.
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  • CRT might have started off as an esoteric academic theory about structural racism. But it has now become a generic term for widely publicized excesses in diversity education, such as disparaging “individualism” and “objectivity” as examples of “white supremacy culture” or teaching first-graders about microaggressions and structural racism.
  • You don’t have to be a Republican to be put off by the incessant attention on race in so many classrooms.
  • George Packer wrote in the Atlantic in October 2019 that he knew “several mixed-race families” that transferred their kids out of a New York City school that “had taken to dividing their students by race into consciousness-raising ‘affinity groups.’”
  • Packer spoke for many liberal parents when he protested the tendency to make “race, which is a dubious and sinister social construct, an essence that defines individuals regardless of agency or circumstance.” As an example, he cited Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) saying, “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice; we don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.”
  • This is the kind of “stupid wokeness” that Democratic strategist James Carville blamed for his party’s setbacks in Virginia and New Jersey — and it is something that Democrats need to disavow if they want to win outside of deep-blue enclaves
  • Democrats should admit that, even as racism remains a pervasive problem, some efforts to combat it backfire if they exacerbate racial divisions or stigmatize White students.
  • liberals today need to focus on the collateral damage that Republicans inflict in the name of fighting CRT: They are trying to ban books and fire educators. In short, they are practicing the very “cancel culture” they decry.
  • Conservatives argue that CRT, with its focus on group identity, is un-American. But what’s more un-American than attempting to ban books and fire teachers for their views? That’s what happens in China. Democrats can win the CRT debate if they call out the illiberal excesses of both the woke left and the anti-woke right.
kennyn-77

US rejoins coalition to achieve 1.5C goal at UN climate talks | Climate crisis | The Gu... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...e-15c-goal-at-un-climate-talks

guardian crisis climate goal

shared by kennyn-77 on 02 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • The US has rejoined the High Ambition Coalition at the UN climate talks, the group of developed and developing countries that ensured the 1.5C goal was a key plank of the Paris agreement.
  • urge rich nations to double the amount of climate finance they make available for poor countries to adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.
  • One negotiator said fears that the 1.5C target was in danger of slipping out of reach had prompted the group’s resurgence. “We are extremely concerned about 1.5C,” they said. “That’s why we are calling for a way to keep 1.5C as a viable option.”
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  • The goal of holding temperature rises to 1.5C rather than 2C is much harder to achieve, as it requires emissions cuts of at least 45% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. But science shows it is much safer – beyond 1.5C, many of the impacts of climate breakdown, such as melting ice sheets, become irreversible, and many small islands would face inundation from rising sea levels and storm surges.
woodlu

Ten years into Kim Jong Un's rule, North Korea is more North Korean than ever | The Eco... - 0 views

www.economist.com/...21806770

politics economics crisis history

shared by woodlu on 13 Dec 21 - No Cached
  • Less than a mile from the observatory, North Koreans can be seen tending to fields, driving lorries along the road to a small quarry and riding bicycles past a cluster of low-rise blocks of flats not far from the river bank.
  • If any of them took a moment to peer back the other way, they could see gaggles of South Korean school children trying to get a closer look at their village through the row of binoculars erected at the viewpoint.
  • ten years into the rule of Kim Jong Un, the North’s millennial dictator. The latest hope for opening and reform was dashed when Mr Kim and Donald Trump, then America’s president, failed to come to an agreement to exchange relief from sanctions for arms control at their final meeting in Vietnam in 2019.
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  • ever more of the few remaining links between North Korea and the outside world have been severed as Mr Kim has instituted one of the world’s strictest border closures in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • there are reports of severe food shortages and political purges, even as North Korea’s state media rebuff any diplomatic overtures from America or the South.
  • from a low level and mostly in the capital, where those with spare cash could enjoy new coffee shops, foreign restaurants and well-stocked supermarkets.
  • Others, such as this newspaper, doubted that Mr Kim would develop an appetite for serious reform but still assumed that he would not be able to resist pressure for change entirely.
  • He reformed laws governing agriculture and state-owned enterprises to allow a degree of private enterprise in the economy, invited outside experts to advise him on the establishment of new special economic zones, awarded official status to hundreds of informal markets and largely turned a blind eye to petty wheeling and dealing.
  • binge of “socialist construction”, filling Pyongyang with futuristic skyscrapers, water parks and a dolphinarium. He also set to work on new tourist infrastructure elsewhere in the country, notably at his summer retreat in Wonsan on the east coast. Trade with China picked up, driven largely by a new class of quasi-entrepreneurs operating from within state enterprises.
  • Some observers at the time expected the regime to collapse within weeks or months, to be followed by economic opening under Chinese supervision.
  • things visibly improved
  • suggesting both economic improvements in parts of North Korea beyond Pyongyang and a growing awareness of what life was like in the outside world. “In earlier years people would say they were fleeing to survive; now most say they fled for freedom,”
  • the boundaries of that “better life” have been gradually curtailed in the more recent years of Mr Kim’s reign.
  • The point of building a “prosperous state” was to make his rule more stable. It did not extend to allowing a proper market economy or granting more political freedoms to ordinary people.
  • accompanied by heightened repression inside the country, more control at the borders and the acceleration of the nuclear programme
  • Aid organisations have not had access for nearly two years, making it especially hard to discern what is going on in the country.
  • hints of increasing distress, with food running low and even the privileged in Pyongyang suffering shortages.
  • Mr Kim himself has admitted that the food situation is “tense” and urged his people to prepare for hardship.
  • increased penalties for smuggling and for watching foreign entertainment, such as South Korean dramas.
  • Mr Kim continues to rebuff offers of aid and even covid vaccines. Attempts by South Korea and America to revive a spirit of detente, for instance by negotiating a formal end to the Korean war, have gone unanswered.
sidneybelleroche

US ambassador labels UN meeting on Ukraine an 'absolute success' | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...meeting-on-ukraine-an-absolute

shared by sidneybelleroche on 01 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-GreenfieldLinda Thomas-GreenfieldRussia delivers written response to US over Ukraine-related proposal US, Russia face off over Ukraine at Security Council meeting The Hill's Morning Report - What's Putin's next move? MORE, on Tuesday characterized the recent U.N. Security Council meeting on Ukraine as an "absolute success."
  • When asked how the public meeting affected efforts to resolve tensions through quiet diplomacy, Thomas-Greenfield said it was "one more diplomatic effort to give the Russians an opportunity to explain what they are doing on the border with Ukraine."
  • Russia denies that it has plans to invade but has issued security ultimatums to the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that include denying Ukraine any entrance to the alliance in the future and committing to never placing offensive arms in the former Soviet state.
Javier E

World 'population bomb' may never go off as feared, finds study | Population | The Guar... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...r-go-off-as-feared-finds-study

population forecast crisis history demographics

shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 23 - No Cached
  • The long-feared “population bomb” may not go off, according to the authors of a new report that estimates that human numbers will peak lower and sooner than previously forecast.
  • on current trends the world population will reach a high of 8.8 billion before the middle of the century, then decline rapidly. The peak could come earlier still if governments take progressive steps to raise average incomes and education levels.
  • The new forecasts are good news for the global environment. Once the demographic bulge is overcome, pressure on nature and the climate should start to ease, along with associated social and political tensions.
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  • The new projection, released on Monday, was carried out by the Earth4All collective of leading environmental science and economic institutions, including the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Stockholm Resilience Centre and the BI Norwegian Business School. They were commissioned by the Club of Rome for a followup to its seminal Limits to Growth study more than 50 years ago.
  • “This gives us evidence to believe the population bomb won’t go off, but we still face significant challenges from an environmental perspective. We need a lot of effort to address the current development paradigm of overconsumption and overproduction, which are bigger problems than population.”
  • Previous studies have painted a grimmer picture. Last year, the UN estimated the world population would hit 9.7 billion by the middle of the century and continue to rise for several decades afterwards.
  • But the authors caution that falling birthrates alone will not solve the planet’s environmental problems, which are already serious at the 7.8 billion level and are primarily caused by the excess consumption of a wealthy minority.
  • The report is based on a new methodology which incorporates social and economic factors that have a proven impact on birthrate, such as raising education levels, particularly for women, and improving income.
  • In the business-as-usual case, it foresees existing policies being enough to limit global population growth to below 9 billion in 2046 and then decline to 7.3 billion in 2100.
  • too little too late: “Although the scenario does not result in an overt ecological or total climate collapse, the likelihood of regional societal collapses nevertheless rises throughout the decades to 2050, as a result of deepening social divisions both internal to and between societies. The risk is particularly acute in the most vulnerable, badly governed and ecologically vulnerable economies.”
  • In the second, more optimistic scenario – with governments across the world raising taxes on the wealthy to invest in education, social services and improved equality – it estimates human numbers could hit a high of 8.5 billion as early as 2040 and then fall by more than a third to about 6 billion in 2100. Under this pathway, they foresee considerable gains by mid-century for human society and the natural environment.
  • “By 2050, greenhouse gas emissions are about 90% lower than they were in 2020 and are still falling,” according to the report. “Remaining atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases from industrial processes are increasingly removed through carbon capture and storage. As the century progresses, more carbon is captured than stored, keeping the global temperature below 2C above pre-industrial levels. Wildlife is gradually recovering and starting to thrive once again in many places.”
Javier E

U.N. Court Acquits 2 Serbs of War Crimes - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-of-crimes-in-balkan-wars.html

war crimes court UN

shared by Javier E on 31 May 13 - No Cached
  • a United Nations court on Thursday acquitted two close aides of the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, spurning the prosecution’s demand for life sentences for his once all-powerful secret police chief and the chief’s deputy.
  • The judges, voting 2 to 1, found that the men had formed, directed and paid special secret combat units during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia from 1991 to 1995, but that they were not criminally liable for crimes committed by those units.
  • Legal experts expressed astonishment at the acquittals, which apparently rested on new standards applied by senior judges.
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  • This and other recent acquittals have effectively absolved Serbia of any responsibility for atrocities committed by proxy armies in Croatia and Bosnia and by the covert network of paramilitary combat units trained, paid and supervised by the secret police.
  • “The entire doctrine of command responsibility has been ditched,” said Eric Gordy, who teaches the politics of Eastern Europe at the University College London and follows the trials closely. “So has the liability for aiding and abetting.”
  • “This and several other recent decisions have become completely irrational,” he said, citing as evidence the Serbian attack in late 1991 that virtually leveled the town of Vukovar in eastern Croatia, where both Mr. Stanisic and Mr. Simatovic were present with special units and giving directions. “There is no way they could not have known there were crimes involved,” he said.
Javier E

Killing Puts Spotlight on Bolivian Drugs and Crime - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-bolivian-drugs-and-crime.html

bolivia crime

shared by Javier E on 06 May 13 - No Cached
  • Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America, yet it has a single-digit homicide rate that is closer to those of the continent’s more developed countries, like Chile and Argentina. But the rate appears to be rising. Bolivia had 8.9 homicides per 100,000 people in 2010, up from 6.5 in 2005, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Still, the country is far safer than neighbors like Brazil, with 21 murders per 100,000, or Venezuela, with 45, according to the United Nations figures.
julia rhodes

North Koreans Question Test Costs - 0 views

www.rfa.org/...costs-02122013181953.html

north question test costs korea policy economic culture economics crisis

shared by julia rhodes on 22 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Pyongyang’s third nuclear test which they say underscores a diversion of scarce funds towards weapons programs instead of coping with chronic food shortages.
  • the people are frustrated that precious resources are being diverted from efforts to address economic impoverishment, North Korean defectors and rights groups told RFA’s Korean service.
  • “North Koreans cannot understand the nuclear test when they see hunger in the country,” Song said.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • “It’s unacceptable because there are many North Koreans starving to death while the authorities are wasting a lot of money—several hundred million dollars—on the test.”
  • Pyongyang had spent U.S. $1.3 billion on its rocket program in 2012.
  • he official estimated that the cost was the equivalent of 4.6 million tons of corn, which could have fed North Koreans for “four to five years
  • The leadership change has created a stir at the lowest levels of the military,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
  • “Not only me, but many North Korean defectors in South Korea, knew that Kim Jong Un was young and had studied abroad, so we believed that he would be different from his father and grandfather [national founder Kim Il Sung] in terms of policy making,” she said.“But our initial hope has clearly not materialized, making us sad
  • the regime was attempting to assuage the anger and fears of the North Korean people, who he said no longer trust their government
  • “The reason for the test is to divert or soothe the people’s discontent over the malfunctioning of the regime. In order to do that they must find an enemy from outside,” Jang said.
  • f North Korea’s Yanggang province, which borders China, told RFA that anger within the regime following the removal of several generals from the ranks of government during a broad political reshuffle had forced Kim Jong Un to test the device as an overture to the military
  • “The North Korean regime has no consideration for human rights—it is only concerned with maintaining political power.”
  • China’s Liaoning province said that the action is likely to affect North Korea’s trade with China, valued at U.S. $5.64 billion in 2011.
  • it is surprising
  • that North Korea conducted the test during the Chinese Lunar New Year [China’s most important holiday of the yea
  • “I’m worried about the possibility that I might not get back money for the goods I gave to my North Korean counterparts on credit, because they are likely to say that the country is in a state of emergency and that they are unable to pay me back due to political reasons
horowitzza

'How to stab a Jew': Israel at UN condemns Palestinian president for inciting violence - 0 views

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10/16/how-to-stab-jew-israel-at-un-condemns-palestinian-president-for-inciting/

israel crisis

started by horowitzza on 19 Oct 15 no follow-up yet
lindsayweber1

ISIL atrocities reported near Mosul: UN - News from Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ted-mosul-161025150423846.html

mosul offensive battle isis iraq

shared by lindsayweber1 on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group has been committing a wave of atrocities around the Iraqi town of Mosul, according to the reports received by the United Nations, as Iraqi troops close in to capture the ISIL stronghold. The allegations, which remain "preliminary", have come from a range of civilian and government sources, who cannot be named for security reasons, the UN rights office spokesman Rupert Colville said on Tuesday.
  • The campaign to retake Mosul comes after months of planning and involves more than 25,000 Iraqi troops, Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters and state-sanctioned Shia militias.
sarahbalick

North Korea's 'biggest' nuclear test sparks global outrage - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-37317782

north korea

shared by sarahbalick on 09 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • North Korea's 'biggest' nuclear test sparks global outrage
  • World leaders have reacted with anger after North Korea carried out its fifth and reportedly biggest nuclear test.
  • firmly opposed" the test, Japan "protested adamantly" and the US warned of "serious consequences" including "new sanctions". The UN Security Council will meet later behind closed doors to discuss the issue.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The isolated communist nation has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since its first test in 2006. Talks involving world and regional powers have failed to rein in the North's nuclear programme.
  • The test came on the country's National Day, which celebrates the founding of the current regime and which is often used as a show of military strength.
  • That would be a drastic step which might halt the economy and cause serious suffering to ordinary people.
  • China's foreign ministry said it would lodge a diplomatic protest and urged North Korea to avoid further action that would worsen the situation.
maxwellokolo

Yemen conflict: At least 10,000 killed, says UN - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-38646066

shared by maxwellokolo on 17 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • maxwellokolo on 17 Jan 17
     
    At least 10,000 people have been killed in the war in Yemen between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition supporting the government, the UN says. The organisation said the death toll "underscores the need to resolve the situation" that has lasted for more than 21 months.
abbykleman

Bill O'Reilly is defining 'un-American' activities in the Trump era - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...an-activities-in-the-trump-era

shared by abbykleman on 04 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 04 Jan 17
     
    This momentous point in the history of the United States presents a number of issues, including allegations that Russia hacked key U.S. institutions during the presidential election; the future of the country's health-care system; congressional ethics! So what topic does Bill O'Reilly choose to cover?
izzerios

Washington is first state to sue Trump over immigration order - Chicago Tribune - 0 views

www.chicagotribune.com/...travel-ban-20170130-story.html

shared by izzerios on 31 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Washington state's attorney general declared Monday that he was suing President Donald Trump over his temporary ban on immigration
  • Trump's executive order also suspended the United States' entire refugee program and set off nationwide protests over the weekend
  • Ferguson was one of 16 state attorneys general who released a statement Sunday calling Trump's immigration action "un-American and unlawful."
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • suspending immigration for citizens of the seven countries for 90 days is aimed at protecting the nation against extremists
  • complaint seeks to have key provisions of the executive order declared unconstitutional, Ferguson said.
  • "We are a country based on the rule of law and in a courtroom it is not the loudest voice that prevails, it's the Constitution," Ferguson said. "At the end of the day, either you're abiding by the Constitution or you are not. And in our view, the president is not adhering to the Constitution when it comes to this executive action."
  • complaint claims that Trump's actions are separating Washington families, harming thousands of state residents, damaging the state economy, hurting Washington-based companies
  • "This is un-American, it is wrong, and it will not stand," Inslee said. "The clear intent of this executive order is to discriminate against one faith amongst all God's children."
  • Ferguson said he has been in contact with other attorneys general but at this point Washington state was acting on its own regarding the legal action.
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