Yesterday’s Visualizing 400ppm Carbon Dioxide showed before/after coastline maps of what we can expect given the carbon we have already put into the atmosphere. All of Delaware and Maryland’s eastern shore disappear, Florida south of Gainesville goes for a swim, and the San Francisco Bay reaches Sacramento.
The effects in Indochina and neighboring Bangladesh are even more profound. Yangon, Myanmar (4.4M), Bangkok, Thailand (8.3M), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (7.5M), and Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2.3M) will all be submerged if the increase is only 20M and historically we should expect more like 25M at that level of CO2.
On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.
Good thing I have access to CCTV-English (Chinese state television) for international news or I would have totally missed the scoop that Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu has frozen new settlement activity in the Palestinian West Bank. CCTV-English is a free channel on Freeview, New Zealand’s free digital hook-up.
I suspect this relates to China recently surpassing Australia as our most important trade partner. It looks like World War III is about to break out any day now in Syria. Thus what I like most about CCTV-English is that they have a correspondent in Damascus (unlike US networks, the BBC or even Al Jazeera) with sources among rebel groups and the Syrian military. .
Two nights ago, I was really intrigued to learn that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in China at the time of the Israeli air strikes on Syria. So was Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. This was no accident, as China’s new president Xi Jinping was very hopeful the two leaders would take up his offer to mediate a meeting between them.
Israel’s Export Imperative
Netanyahu was in China hoping to increase exports to the world’s second largest economy. Given that 40% of Israel’s GDP is based on exports, Bibi is keen for trade with China(Israel’s number 3 trading partner) to reach $10 billion over the next three years. While also interested in increasing exports, Abbas is more interested in economic aid China has offered, as well the likelihood their intervention could shift the stalemated peace process.
China’s new president Xi Jinping has issued a four point proposal for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to a statement issued by Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying: “The immediate priority is to take credible steps to stop settlement activities, end violence against innocent civilians and lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip in order to create the necessary conditions for the resumption of peace talks.
Syrian Electronic Army Hacks Israel's Main Infrastructure Control System (SCADA)
Submitted by siavash on Wed, 05/08/2013 – 16:53
Cyberwarzone
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) launched a successful cyberattack on the main infrastructure system of Haifa, one of the most important ports in Israel, disrupting the operation of the servers in charge of urban management systems and public utilities in the city.(Report FNA)
The world we inhabit badly needs red lines, but “the right red lines”, writes Falk.
Richard Falk
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
EXTRACT
Debate on Syria: ‘Missing red line'
What is missing from the debate on Syria, and generally from the challenge to foreign policy, is a more fundamental red line that the US at another time and place took the lead in formulating – namely, the prohibition of the use of international force by states other than in cases of self-defence against a prior armed attack.
This prohibition was the core idea embodied in the United Nations Charter, and it was also consistent with the prosecution and punishment of surviving German and Japanese leaders after World War II for their role in “Crimes against Peace“, that is, aggressive warfare. The only lawful exception to this prohibition was use of force in accord with a prior authorisation given by the UN Security Council.
Robert Fisk: We Might As Well Name Our Newspapers ‘Officials Say'
May 7, 2013
Watch the full 20-minute interview with Robert Fisk on Democracy Now! at http://owl.li/kN9jD. Longtime Middle East correspondent of the British newspaper The Independent, Robert Fisk, tells Democracy Now! that journalists covering Syria and other conflicts are too often relying on anonymous government sources for their stories.
ROBERT FISK: Oddly enough, you have to be in Syria to realize how mad it is. There's an odd thing that when you actually are traveling around Syria — Latakia, Tartus, Damascus and further north than Latakia — and you listen to the news coming out of Washington, it's like Americans are living in this kind of fantasy world that bears no relation to planet earth, where I'm trying to report. And this is getting steadily worse.
And I think one of the problems is, as I say, this parasitic, osmotic relationship between journalists and power, our ever-growing ability, our wish, to — you know, to rely on these utterly bankrupt comments from various unnamed, anonymous intelligence sources. And I'm just looking at a copy of the Toronto Globe and Mail, February 1st, 2013. It's a story about al-Qaeda in Algeria. And what is the sourcing? “U.S. intelligence officials said, “a senior U.S. intelligence official said,” “U.S. officials said,” “the intelligence official said,” “Algerian officials say,” “national security sources considered,” “European security sources said,” “the U.S. official said,” “the officials acknowledged.” I went—boy, I've got another even worse example here from The Boston Globe and Mail sic, November 2nd, 2012. But, you know, we might as well name our newspapers “Officials Say.” This is the cancer at the bottom of modern journalism, that we do not challenge power anymore. Why are Americans tolerating these garbage stories with no real sourcing except for very dodgy characters indeed, who won't give their names?
