Edward Said was no 'tree-hugger' but opposed the roots of global warming

17 people on a boat off the Dover coast — BBC photo

"Bombs, drones and boats follow the [fossil fuel 'rich']
'Aridity Line'" — Naomi Klein

UK news broadcasts are currently dominated by reports of 'illegal migrants' attempting to enter the UK illegally, and earlier this year I witnessed intense floods in Herefordshire where I now live. Against that backdrop, a London friend currently helping his mum in Kent, sent me this from London Review of Books website, in which author Naomi Klein speaks about the 'othering' — i.e., treatment of 'illegal migrants' etc. as effectively subhuman — that legitimises treating people as such.

Klein also mentions the UK Government avoidance of addressing the real issues behind the flooding as key for a right wing media industry to use the 'othering' as a diversion against thinking of the consequences of global warming as a global issue, the roots of which are in what is falsely declared as "human nature."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown

A real "wow!" of an essay, tying together media myths, greenwashes and political acuity in an educational and informative way. It's long, but you can listen to it instead if preferred.

I'll never look at carbon capture of conservation zones again without considering them as "the face of the new enclosure acts"...my oversimplification of her statements. You'll probably be stunned by the JNF section too, but I know you're better informed than me on such matters.

 The talk he was referring to by Naomi Klein was actually given in June 2016, but the recency of the recurrence of such matters helps enormously in explaining why I overlooked the headline in following Naomi Klein's text down the page as I listened at

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown

and thought she was talking of the early 2020 floods in England and the current drive to get the Royal Navy to stop the boat people from landing on our shores.

I sat riveted talking to Naomi Klein's citing of why the work of Edward Said is invaluable in tackling the roots of global warming, that take up about 47 minutes of the online recording, and took a break from the full 1:27:42 worth to blog this up now.

There is, of course, so much to quote from and I'm due for a late lunch, but shall conclude direct reference to her talk with this extract:

Fossil fuels, unlike renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar, are not widely distributed but highly concentrated in very specific locations, and those locations have a bad habit of being in other people’s countries. Particularly that most potent and precious of fossil fuels: oil. This is why the project of Orientalism, of othering Arab and Muslim people, has been the silent partner of our oil dependence from the start – and inextricable, therefore, from the blowback that is climate change. If nations and peoples are regarded as other – exotic, primitive, bloodthirsty, as Said documented in the 1970s – it is far easier to wage wars and stage coups when they get the crazy idea that they should control their own oil in their own interests. In 1953 it was the British-US collaboration to overthrow the democratically elected government of Muhammad Mossadegh after he nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP). In 2003, exactly fifty years later, it was another UK-US co-production – the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The reverberations from each intervention continue to jolt our world, as do the reverberations from the successful burning of all that oil. The Middle East is now squeezed in the pincer of violence caused by fossil fuels, on the one hand, and the impact of burning those fossil fuels on the other.

 In conclusion, I draw attention to these articles at New Internationalist magazine about attacks by Erdogan's Turkey with Trump's complicity on Kurds in North-Eastern Afghanistan and Brazilian President Bolsonaro's attempts to assimilate the indigenous people of the Amazon as fellow travellers on the road to climate catastrophe.

Betrayed again

Water as a weapon of war

Frack Free United: URGENT ACTION: Let's Ban ALL Forms Of Fracking For Good

As editor of this Web Log (blog) I forward the below, even though Steve at FFU via ActionNetwork.org <contactus@frackfreeunited.co.uk> does not seem to recognise that slower readers find it very difficult to read so much within just 3 minutes.

I am such a slower reader, but consider however long it takes me to forward this edit -- with relevant Google search tags added -- a useful investment of my time in helping save Planet Earth.

Alan Wheatley

From: Steve at FFU via ActionNetwork.org <contactus@frackfreeunited.co.uk>
Date: Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 8:00 AM
Subject: URGENT ACTION: Let's Ban ALL Forms Of Fracking For Good

Please spare 3 mins to read this email. Urgent Action. Ask your candidates to sign the Frack Free United Election Pledge. We must BAN all types of fracking definitions and techniques to protect communities from the companies 'Flouting the rules' Why? Just days before the general election, the Conservative Government placed a moratorium on 'fracking' in England. Make no mistake, this is is a massive win in our campaign and together we have dealt a serious blow to the ambitions of the onshore fossil fuels industry. But, there are still many questions to be answered on the definition of fracking and if the moratorium covers other extreme extraction techniques such as ACID stimulation. You would think that the definition of fracking is simple, consistent and without constraints... Think again. The devil is in the definition detail...Check out why, click here. This is why we must keep on the pressure and ask this question of ALL our politicians from ALL parties - "Will you call for an immediate BAN of fracking AND all onshore unconventional oil and gas exploration and production, including coal bed methane and acid stimulation?" Please contact your parliamentary candidates and ASK THEM TO CLICK HERE AND SIGN OUR FRACK FREE PLEDGE. ... So far, over 100 candidates already signed up, and we have 2.8% Conservative Party, 4.7% Independent/Other, 15.9% Labour Party, 30.8% Green Party and 45.8% Liberal Democrats. We have produced an election leaflet (Click here) and please get in touch if you or your candidate would like some leaflets to hand out. When we started the FFU project in early 2016, our plan was to change the policy of the major parties and together we must celebrate how far we have all come, united in our cause. Make no mistake… This grassroots campaign has grown into a movement that has inspired the world and has impacted energy geopolitics. It's amazing how far we have come... now let's finish the job. Best regards Steve and the team #VoteFrackFree Our pledge to you. It is our intention to keep setting the agenda and continue to put pressure on the government to halt all forms of fracking. We will continue to work tirelessly push our message to everyone who can make a difference in our communities. If you can help please do. No matter how big or small the gift, every penny will go into campaign efforts and will help us to get our message out. PLEASE DONATE HERE [Personally, as a very poor pensioner, I'm not in a position to donate money to 'good causes'. I do recall though that donating one's time as in my forwarding this item via blog post can be helpful.]

Sent via Action Network, a free online toolset anyone can use to organize. Click here to sign up and get started building an email list and creating online actions today. Action Network is an open platform that empowers individuals and groups to organize for progressive causes. We encourage responsible activism, and do not support using the platform to take unlawful or other improper action. We do not control or endorse the conduct of users and make no representations of any kind about them.

Debt slavery of a nation disastrous for planet Earth

I preface this intro to a New Internationalist magazine online article by stating that I am in favour of the UK remaining in the European Union. The EU is not perfect in my view, and should be reformed from within. And as a member state of the EU as well as being one of the G8 economies of the world, the UK potentially can help transform the EU as an agent to reverse Climate Catastrophe tipping point.

I note though that the EU's European Central Bank — together with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank — has operated like an economic and environmental criminal regarding the formulation of land usage for former Soviet Bloc nations Poland and the Czech Republic, toward orienting those nations' economies toward fossil fuel extraction and large scale farming for export.

Naomi Klein has written of how the Troica [IMF, World Bank and European Central Bank] perverted the prospects for the Polish economy by way of "debt slavery" of a nation. The events also form the backdrop to Andrzej Stasiuk's novel 'Nine'. See The Portrayal of Despair in Poland after 1989: Stasiuk's 'Nine' and Melanie Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine'.

For more on the EU's Common Agricultural Policy's impact on Poland, for example, see Compassion In World Farming's review of Julian Day Rose's 2013 book In Defence of Life. More recently, the 'Conference of Parties' [to an international agreement aimed at limiting global emissions of greenhouse gases] COP24 was hosted in Poland. You can read up at New Internationalist website of how the purpose of those talks was perverted by commercial sponsorship.
https://newint.org/search?key=cop24+poland+fossil+fuels&sort_by=search_api_relevance

More recently the impact of the European Central Bank on the Greek economy has become infamous in terms of the hardships of the Greek people, yet the environmental impact of such debt slavery is only just emerging, as Zoe Holman outlines at New Internationalist:

Greece opens its arms — and seas — to hydrocarbon giants

The state hopes deep-sea mining will pay off its crippling debts – but the only outcome will be environmental devastation, argues Zoe Holman.

The Syriza Party leader was first elected on a promise to scrap the draconian terms for a bailout set by the European Union and the IMF. He later went back on his pledge, accepting the EU's mandated austerity measures.

One afternoon in early July, Jenny Pyliou looked out onto her land, part of a protected nature reserve in Thesprotia, northeastern Greece, to see a group of researchers for the Spanish energy company Repsol sticking rods with explosive devices into one of her fields. Her husband called the police,  who on arrival, instructed the workers to remove the instruments, noting that oil exploration activities had not be approved in the area.

The following day, the men returned to reinstall the devices, informing the Pylious that they were extremely costly and that the couple would be liable for any damage if they removed them. Such antics by the oil companies, who get up to them with relative impunity, are what Greeks can now expect more of following the government’s licensing in late June of major hydrocarbon exploration by oil giants ExxonMobil and Total.

‘Now that Pandora’s box has been opened, this issue is going to stay with us – one way or another, Greece will be labelled as an oil country,’ says Giorgos Velegrakis, a post-doctoral researcher on the history of oil in Greece at the University of Athens and a member of the nationwide Initiative Against Hydrocarbon Exploration. ‘This was out of the question a decade ago, but now you never know what will happen.’ ....

Former Finance Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, has written illuminatingly regarding the debt trap, and I commend:

• https://www.thenation.com/article/can-yanis-varoufakis-save-europe/
• https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/26/talking-to-my-daughter-about-the-economy-by-yanis-varoufakis-review

Meanwhile, I believe that the current state of Greece surrendering its national sovereignty to major agents of Climate Catastrophe may give an indication of what might be included in Boris Johnson's ' 'bold new agenda' for the UK Parliament.

The HydroCarbon Industry is truly a nasty face of global industry despite all its greenwash

The purveyors of non-renewable energy from hydro-carbons seek to profit from the colder winters that global warming is bringing on: they have as much compassion for their customers as heroin and cocaine pushers have for theirs. There might not currently be laws against what they do, but ....

Much better for the UK and the globe are Fuel Poverty Action and its agenda.

I close with a youtube reference to an American tale of how mining destroyed a family home and its surrounds in western Kentucky. It's a Jean Ritchie song that I've treasured for over 40 years, and a much lighter song that she recorded with Oscar Brand, 'A Paper of Pins'.





Alan Wheatley

One of the many people power acts that can help avert climate catastrophe

From Katharine Tu, of https://www.sumofus.org/:

Alan,
In the untouched outback of Australia, a coal company is starting to dig a coal mine so big and so dirty that if completed, it will seal our fate to catastrophic climate change.
Coal giant Adani is doing everything it can to build what will be one of the largest new coal mines in the world. It has ignored the objections of traditional owners, scientists and conservationists, and squeezed through every legal loophole it can.
There is hope. If we can stop Adani from getting insurance for the mine, we can stop this disastrous project in its tracks.
Which is where you come in Alan. Public pressure has already forced dozens of global insurers to rule out insuring the Adani mine.
But multi-billion dollar insurer AIG is staying silent. That’s why we need your voice -- because if enough people like you speak up, together we can force AIG to reject Adani’s mine too.
Tell AIG to insure our future and not a climate-wrecking coal mine. 
....

We’re in a race against time to stop one of the world’s biggest new coal mines from being built before it ruins our climate forever.

There’s one thing that can stop this dirty coal mine from going ahead: insurance. Tell insurance giant AIG to insure our planet’s future and NOT Adani’s mine now.
 Sign the petition