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China’s Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe

August 26, 2022

China’s Water Crisis Could Trigger Global Catastrophe

China’s water crisis is nothing new, but it’s gotten worse – and is now on the ‘brink of catastrophe‘ and could trigger a global catastrophe, according to Foreign Affairs.

Dried-up riverbed of Jialing river, a Yangtze tributary, China, August 2022
Thomas Peter / Reuters

Given the country’s overriding importance to the global economy, potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China would rapidly reverberate through food, energy, and materials markets around the world and create economic and political turbulence for years to come. -Foreign Affairs

For starters, there’s no substitute for water – which is essential for food production, electricity generation and sustaining all life on earth.

In China, which consumes ten billion barrels of water per day (approximately 700x its daily oil consumption), decades of economic and population growth have pushed northern China’s water system to unsustainable levels.

According to the report, the per-capita water supply around the North China Plain at the end of 2020 was nearly 50% below the UN’s definition of acute water scarcity at 253 cubic meters. Other major cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, are at similar (or lower) levels.

For comparison, Egypt had per-capita freshwater resources of 570 cubic meters, and has nowhere near as large of a manufacturing base as China.

Not fit for human consumption

Also worrisome, is that 19% of China’s surface water is not fit for human consumption according to China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Roughly 7% was deemed unfit for any use at all.

Groundwater was worse – with around 30% considered unfit for consumption, and 16% unfit for any use.

In order to utilize this water, Beijing will need to make major investments in treatment infrastructure, which will require a significant increase in electricity usage in order to power the equipment.

Working against progress is China’s farming and industrial industries, which dump contaminants into the country’s groundwater – potentially setting the stage for decades of additional impairments.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

China & US War in 3 Months?

August 10, 2020

China & US War in 3 Months?

The former Labor Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd has come out in a piece he wrote in Foreign Affairs – Beware the Guns of August—in Asia. Rudd is claiming that the US and China may go to war in three months ahead of the US elections. This is clearly the left trying to claim that Trump will start a war just to win the White House. This seems to be simply part of this entire global quest to usher in socialism and end capitalism. The left simply wants total power. Just look at Melbourne, Australia. This one beautiful city I visited often ios now a prison camp using COVID to strip people of all human rights. The police may now enter anyone’s home without a warrant and they imposed a Curfew 8:00 pm.

This entire issue of rising tensions will not lead to war under Trump. Even if China were to invade Taiwan, the US is not likely to send in ground troops. China is flexing its muscles because the West is committing politic-economic suicide with COVID. China knows the agenda and it is being driven by Bill Gates. Activists have been pushing US institutions to sell all investments in China because they are not yielding to the Climate Change Agenda. This is breaking the economic link the does prevent war.

In addition, China is moving to expand its own domestic consumer economy. It has adopted a different pather than Europe which clings to socialism and Germany is still a mercantilistic economy. China will become the new Financial Capital of the World because it is adopting a domestic view while the Democrats in the USA are trying to follow Europe and subjugate the productive capacity of the nation under Marxist class warfare.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Africa, A New Tactic to Suppress Online Speech: Taxing Social Media

January 15, 2019

In Africa, A New Tactic to Suppress Online Speech: Taxing Social Media

Think things are bad in the US and Europe when it comes to social media speech suppression?

Check out, Africa.

Will this be our future?

Aware of the threat that social media poses to their power, repressive regimes in Africa have employed various methods to stifle internet-based mobilization. These include internet shutdowns, targeted social media applications shutdowns, website takedowns, extensive surveillance of digital communications, online propaganda, and the detention of online critics, writes Babatunde Okunoye for Foreign Affairs.

According to Okunoye, in 2018, repressive governments adopted yet another tactic: taxes on social media usage. In countries such as Uganda, Benin, Tanzania and Zambia, there are now laws in place which impose daily taxes on social media and other over-the-top services. In Uganda, for instance, citizens have to pay 200 Ugandan Shillings (US $ 0.05) per day to access Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp as a law adopted last year. Citizens of Benin have had to pay 5 CFA francs ($0.008) per megabyte consumed through social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter as stipulated by Decree No. 2018 – 341 of July 25 2018. The decree also introduces a 5 percent fee, on top of taxes, on texting and calls. These laws also make the cost of maintaining personal websites by citizens prohibitively expensive. As a result of the Electronic and Postal Communications Regulations 2018, citizens in Tanzania now must pay a $920 fee to receive the government’s permission to maintain a website…

Most citizens believe that these measures were drawn up to restrict the space for freedom of expression in worsening human rights contexts in countries like Uganda and Tanzania. While some of these social media taxes have been couched as measures to raise government revenue, given the poor economic situation prevalent in much of Africa, virtually everyone sees them for what they really are—attempts to stifle the right to freedom of expression and association of the millions of Africans demanding more from their governments.

Perpetual War: Treadmill of America’s Mind

October 25, 2017

Perpetual War: Treadmill of America’s Mind

Like a caged hamster on a running wheel, the American people are trapped in perpetual wars that the foreign policy elites offer no way to end, only excuses to continue, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

The newest issue of Foreign Affairs features the theme of “America’s Forgotten Wars,” with a cover illustration that juxtaposes a carefree scene of Americans enjoying a picnic with a scene of American soldiers fighting and incurring casualties in some sandy and desolate battle space.

Hamster on a running wheel. (Photo from Wikipedia)

The picture depicts truthfully the detachment between, on one hand, the daily interests and attitudes of most Americans and, on the other hand, the disturbing reality of the United States being engaged continuously in a variety of lethal military operations in multiple lands overseas.

Andrew Bacevich has elsewhere provided several reasons why, as he puts it, “the vast majority of the American people could not care less” that their country has become mired in what amounts to permanent warfare abroad. These reasons include, for example, that the true costs of these military expeditions have not been completely tabulated and that “blather crowds out substance” in American public discourse about foreign policy.

The pattern of permanent U.S. involvement in warfare, which has prevailed for the past 16 years, departs markedly from what had been the traditional American approach toward war and peace, and therein lies an additional set of reasons why Americans at home are not now up in arms over how fellow citizens have had to take up arms and fight endlessly overseas. That tradition grew up throughout the Nineteenth Century and was cemented by America’s greatest overseas military effort ever: World War II.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Foreign Affairs Mag Advances Domestic Terrorism To Remove Alternative Media

October 8, 2017

Foreign Affairs Mag Advances Domestic Terrorism To Remove Alternative Media

Is Foreign Affairs magazine advancing “domestic terrorism” because it could help remove alternative media, and even jail editors and writers or worse. The recent article is entitled “Should We Treat Domestic Terrorists the Way We Treat ISIS? What Works—and What Doesn’t.” It begins as follows:

The mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday night has again raised fears about terrorism. There’s much we don’t yet know. The Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed the attack, but the FBI claims that there is no international terrorism link. The attacker, Stephen Paddock, was 64 years old and white, fitting a stereotype of a right-wing terrorist more than a jihadist one. And he may just be a crazy nut. But regardless of Paddock’s particular pathology, the situation highlights how the United States treats similar forms of violence differently depending on the nature of the perpetrator.  

Many commentators have already demanded that we make a case for domestic terrorism including such prominent Youtubers as Philip DeFranco. He runs a website of some six million and offers mildly libertarian commentary. But perhaps he doesn’t understand that he may eventually become a victim of what he wants to invoke. There are many such well-meaning people who quite possibly misunderstand what is happening

How about PropOrNot? This outfit lists around websites “friendly” to Russia and in total includes many of the major alternative websites in the country. Those who run the website say they believe these sites provide propaganda for Russia.

A recent reading of PropOrNot seems to reveal that the site may have reduced some of the finger-pointing. It says that it does not “censor.” However it continues to list websites nonetheless. The Washington Post drew information from PropOrNot long ago when it was trying to paint alternative websites as Russian sympathizers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Splendid Isolation: A Sane Foreign Policy For America

December 9, 2015

Splendid Isolation: A Sane Foreign Policy For America

A proper foreign policy for the US would be consistent with and recognize the limitations placed upon our country by the physical world in which we live.

First of all it would recognize that all countries, including the US, have limited resources. These resources are provided by the private economy; there is no other. All government spending, for whatever reason and however justified, weakens the private economy. Most importantly, the US must reject the myth of “war prosperity”. Military spending detracts from an economy’s productive capacity. It uses precious capital to produce non-consumable goods and robs the economy of some of its most productive citizens. A nation’s leaders must recognize that frugality in a nation’s military spending is as important for the nation’s long term welfare as is frugality in one’s personal household spending .

Secondly, a sane foreign policy would distinguish between what is in one’s true national interest and what is not. It would not embark on military adventures or commit the nation to future military action when national security is not threatened. Furthermore, a sane foreign policy would recognize that it is impossible for the US to judge disputes in foreign lands, as if it were an impartial jury deciding the guilt and innocence of the parties involved.

For the above reasons, the US would not intervene in the internal affairs of other nations, for it would not be able to understand the animosities which led to the conflict. Nor would it commit itself to an open-ended collective security treaty. Not only would such a treaty oblige the US to intervene militarily in long-standing foreign disputes, it would encourage new disputes to the degree that members of the alliance would feel less need to engage in difficult negotiations to find peaceful solutions to the inevitable frictions which arise among nations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Did “China” Really Say “War” With the United States is “Inevitable”?

June 8, 2015

Did “China” Really Say “War” With the United States is “Inevitable”?

The Stenographic Press Strikes Again!

Spoiler: No.

It would seem a certain amount of foreign affairs reporting starts out as pabulum fed by the government and its loyal allies to available journos, who further if incompletely digest it and then crap it out on the digital pages of various newspapers, magazines, and think tank white papers for the delectation of a somewhat undiscriminating public.

In other words, the media is often just the messenger, and there’s no point in getting aggravated about crappy coverage and blaming the messenger when the real problem is crappy policy.

But sometimes, especially in the runup to a big foreign policy show—which the U.S. South China Sea gambit certainly has become—the evolution and devolution of media coverage provides useful insights into who’s pushing what and why.

I currently have a piece up at Asia Times, “China Hawks crosshair Obama on South China Sea” on a rather important example.  It extensively fisks an interesting and rather ugly op-ed by Bloomberg View’s Josh Rogin, which seems to represent only the most recent iteration of sustained a campaign by China hawks to ensure that President Obama has no political alternative but to greenlight a yearned-for act of escalation: a US Navy Freedom of Navigation sail-by within 12 miles of one of the PRC’s reclaimed “island” features in the South China Sea.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Why the GOP’s Vision of North America’s Energy Future Should Scare All of Us

February 13, 2015

Why the GOP’s Vision of North America’s Energy Future Should Scare All of Us

It will be a nightmare of environmental degradation and global conflict.

It’s a ritual long familiar to observers of American politics: presidential hopefuls with limited international experience travel to foreign lands and deliver speeches designed to showcase their grasp of foreign affairs. Typically, such escapades involve trips to major European capitals or active war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, however, has broken this mold. Before his recent jaunt to London and into the thickets of American vaccination politics, he chose two surprising destinations for his first trips abroad as a potential Republican candidate.  No, not Kabul or Baghdad or even Paris, but Mexico City and Alberta, Canada.  And rather than launch into discussions of immigration, terrorism, or the other usual Republican foreign policy topics, he focused on his own top priority: integrating Canada and Mexico into a U.S.-led “North American energy renaissance.”

By accelerating the exploitation of fossil fuels across the continent, reducing governmental oversight of drilling operations in all three countries, and building more cross-border pipelines like the Keystone XL, Christie explained, all three countries would be guaranteed dramatic economic growth.  “In North America, we have resources waiting to be tapped,” he assured business leaders in Mexico City.  “What is required is the vision to maximize our growth, the political will to unlock our potential, and the understanding that working together on strategic priorities… is the path to a better life.”

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russian Sanctions Might Be Obama’s Greatest Blunder

January 26, 2015

Russian Sanctions Might Be Obama’s Greatest Blunder

One of the greatest foreign policy blunders of the Obama Administration was the push by the U.S. for economic sanctions against Russia. That led to Russia fleeing into the arms of China for refuge. In response, Russia, Europe’s largest and most populated country, is now intent on moving its vast storehouse of resources eastward, strengthening America’s largest emerging rival.

Over the last two years, the two countries have completed a $700 billion agreement for Russia to deliver energy to China, amounting to about 17% of Chinese annual supply, for a period covering twenty years, with China financing much of the initial costs of pipeline construction.

What Russia has done, in that one move, is to help repair a major hole in China’s military armor, making it invulnerable to a U.S. cut-off of sea bourn energy supplies, which until now was one of the greatest fears of Chinese military strategists.

From the Chinese perspective, this is a gift that fulfills its wildest dreams. It’s also a gift that could severely undermine the West’s plans to deliver expensive Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) to China and Asia, while already facing competition from Qatar and Australia LNG, will now also run up against Russian pipeline gas through China.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Foreign policy shift puts Canada at risk of armed attacks | Al Jazeera America

October 24, 2014

Foreign policy shift puts Canada at risk of armed attacks | Al Jazeera America.

A drastic shift in Canada’s Middle East policy has put the country “on the map” of international armed groups like the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), analysts say, following two lethal attacks in the span of a week — one of which is said to have been inspired by the group.

“Canada seems to have gone far right” under the administration of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said Roksana Bahramitash, director of research for the Canada Research Chair in Islam, Pluralism and Globalization at the University of Montreal.

The Harper administration’s dramatic stance on Middle Eastern affairs, what analysts call an unprecedented departure with previous governments that focused their diplomacy on aid and peacekeeping missions, “puts Canada in a position it has never been in before,” said Bahramitash.

Since Harper took office in 2006, Ottawa has sent funds to support the opposition in Syria’s ongoing civil war, expressed vocal support for Israel amid the ongoing offensive in Gaza and shuttered diplomatic ties with Iran at a highpoint of tensions between Washington and Tehran over its nuclear program.

…click on the link above to read the rest of the article…

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