Climate change is real. Look around you. The world’s fifth largest economy, California, is on fire in the north, south, west, and east parts of the state. Oregon is on fire. Washington state is on fire. Not only is Colorado on fire, it’s also experiencing snow storms.
Hurricanes, while normal, are intensified by climate change (Climate change didn’t cause Hurricane Laura but it did make the storm worse). While hurricanes are an North American thing, typhoons are the same as hurricanes, but occur in different weather pattern zone. While it seems to have been quite overshadowed by the floods, fires, and ice in America, Typhoon Haishen helped render 17,000 South Korean without power, after it became the third typhoon to hit South Korea over the last two weeks.
Some of the travesties that happen are due to idiocies (hello, gender reveal party) and some are due to other kind of idiocies such as greed (intentionally burning the Amazon), but climate change will make a travesty into a disastrous catastrophe because as things heat up the land and forest are more inclined to catch fire.
Four months ago the Associated Press wrote a great article on climate change and coastal flooding of April of this year. The article, which I’ve seen the AP write about at other times recently, titled “Extreme Coastal Flooding Could Be Daily Event by 2100“. Referring to a study in Scientific Reports, the AP says that:
In the United States, about 40% of the nation’s population lives in coastal areas at risk of hazards such as flooding, shoreline erosion and storm hazards. On a global scale, eight of the world’s largest cities are located on coasts.
This phenomenon of increasing sea levels is caused by two major factors: thermal expansion from warmer waters and melting from land-based ice. With the former, the oceans act as a sort of sponge for the atmosphere, absorbing more than 90% of atmospheric emissions caused by human activity, including heat that causes the waters to expand.
The only piece missing from one of the largest distributors of news in the world is that climate change is increasing because of human activity.
In an NPR article, “Everything Is Unprecedented. Welcome To Your Hotter Earth” Camilo Mora, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii, explains the science:
Keep in mind that all these things are related….CO2 is increasing the temperature. As a result, the temperature is accelerating the evaporation of water. The evaporation of water leads to drought that in turn leads to heat waves and wildfires. In places that are humid, that evaporation — the same evaporation — leads to massive precipitation that is then commonly followed by floods.
“Keep in mind that these thing are related”. Not only is the science related but the human element is connected. I don’t merely mean our contribution of fossil fuels. The struggle to mitigate climate change and end our patterns of climate degradation is a struggle for human rights. In this way, the fight for climate justice is connected to racial justice and the fights for other human rights, including a life of peace and an end to war.
The Yale School of Environment recently talked with Elizabeth Yeampierre of Climate Justice Alliance. Yeampierre drew “a direct line from slavery and the rapacious exploitation of natural resources to current issues of environmental justice.” Time also wrote about environmental racism just a couple months ago. It concludes, after a summary of recent and decades-long struggle for both the environment and racism, that “the increased attention to systemic racism and the urgency of climate change has made for a unique opportunity: address centuries of racism while saving the world from a global warming catastrophe.”
If the overall goal of saving the world from a global warming catastrophe that is caused in large part by CO2 emissions then the sensible thing to do is to target the emitters of CO2. Connected with the struggle for human rights and a peaceful world, it turns out that a 2019 article found that the “U.S. military emits more CO2 than most countries“. The article says that “the Department of Defense spews so much greenhouse gas every year that it would rank as the 55th worst polluter in the world if it were a country, beating out Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal, according to a new paper from Brown University’s Costs of War project.” While 55 of out of almost 200 doesn’t sound bad, it hardly sounds good.
The irony, Grist points out, is that “the military is concerned about what will happen as the world keeps heating up.” The Department of Defense has said that “half of its bases were threatened by the effects of global warming” including rising seas that regularly flood Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia – even on sunny days- as well as” melting permafrost threatens the stability of military buildings in the Arctic.” Further, “national security experts project that climate change will fuel more conflicts as resources become scarce.” Indeed, climate change probably create the conditions for the civil war in Syria.
Racism and war would both continue if there was no climate change, and it’s clear the war will continue, and perhaps increase, if climate change continues. The need to stop war and end racism are valuable goals and are hopefully the goals of all people not consumed by greed, but if we don’t end the human contribution to climate change we will end up with an unlivable planet.
Look around you. This is climate change in action. Can we really sustain this as a species?
This is a story about history and fiction inspired by the excellent novel The Three Musketeers. I happen to have acquired a 1906 copy as a family heirloom – the first several pages were very delicate hard to turn! – that I had rebound. Of course, it doesn’t vary from any other Three Musketeers except for excellent translation of the prose.
The story itself is inspiring. The historical references, for anyone interested in history (all of, I hope) makes the story even more exciting.
I don’t merely refer to Cardinal Richelieu and his spat with the Duke of Buckingham. Nor merely to Ann of Austria and her relationship with the the Duke of Buckingham (maybe it was the other way around) and her relations with Richelieu, and her lack of relationship with her husband, Louis XIII.
What really sparked my interest was a mention of François Ravaillac (yes, I’m citing Wikipedia). Ravaaillac, I never knew, assassinated Henry IV, the father of Louis XIII, in 1610. Further, Henry IV’s father, Henry III was also assassinated, in 1589,
While these deaths are mentioned they are but part of a mini-plot in the Three Musketeers. But the story, besides being about intrigue, is about the religious wars that led to the death Henry III and and Henry IV.
The last of the Huguenot, Protestant, rebellion against the French crown occurred, as it did in The Three Musketeers, on the tiny Isle de Re, off the coast of La Rochelle, between Bordeax and Nantes.
Four hundred years later, the idea of of a religious war between the French and and the French that ended in the French Catholics starving our the French Protestants doesn’t sound like a big deal. Unless we were to extrapolate and consider that to be a class war and a culture war, in which one side had the support of the government and the clergy, and the other side begged for help from foreign countries across the sea.
Voter suppression goes far beyond intentionally delaying the Postal Service or removing polling places with an end-goal of creating long lines and making people spend hours in line to vote.
The staff for Common Dreams published a story yesterday that should be – and is not! – front news on every paper. Just a few days ago Tennessee passed a law that makes it a felony to protest and camp on state property; the punishment for committing such a felony is up to six years in prison and the loss of voting rights.
This isn’t one state in the union that’s gone rogue. Twenty other states “punish felons by taking away their right to vote” which is a great excuse to arrest and charge any dissident with a felony. Responses quickly pointed out that the law, inspired by ongoing protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, is racially motivated and the opposite of why American fought a Revolutionary War.
Whether the law would withstand a Constitutional challenge (one would hope it is found unconstitutional!) is beyond the point. State governments increasingly criminalize protest. The criminalization of environmental protest, Deutsche Welle (DW) says began or intensified with Standing Rock protests in 2016. During and following this “States across the US subsequently passed ‘critical infrastructure’ bills that criminalized trespass, and hence protest, around oil pipelines like the Keystone XL.”
NPR, The Intercept, and others agree that criminalizing climate change, fossil fuel, environmental protest began in earnest because of and after Standing Rock. These criminalization efforts have increased during the Trump years. The West Virginia critical infrastructure law “mimics a model policy promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC);” regarding the ability to vote ALEC’s co-founder maintained a white supremacist view that ‘not everyone should vote‘.
Of course, if you want to make sure not everyone can vote you do what you can to suppress the ability of people to vote. If threat of jail and loss of voting rights aren’t enough for people the polling places should be removed, and if that doesn’t work their ability to vote by mail should be impacted. At least, that’s how it appears, as both Republican and Democratic governors have criminalized protest, and the federal government has worked to make voting more difficult.
The amount of effort put in to prevent the votes of non-whites or dissidents is astounding, racially and politically motivated, and is contrary to the premise of American democracy.
Three and a half years into a Trump presidency, most Americans don’t support him. Whether he’ll be reelected or not is a different matter. The Democrats have chosen Joe Biden to run against Trump, and there are at least two other major candidates running (Howie Hawkins and Jo Jorgensen).
Not withstanding where other candidates or former candidates stand (see PoliticalCompass),
let’s talk about Biden for a minute. Just a couple days ago the Democratic Party Virtual Convention finished its four days of platitudes. For those listening around the Convention, just before it you might have heard a top aid to Biden, former Senator Ted Kaufman, confirm that ‘When you see what Trump’s done to the deficit…forget about Covid-19, all the deficits that he built with the incredible tax cuts. So we’re going to be limited’ providing money to alleviate any problem.
What Kaufman said was code-word for austerity. Politically, austerity is “a set of economic policies a government implements to control public sector debt.” Austerity is a common, but very unpleasant and unnecessary, option used “particularly when a nation is in jeopardy of defaulting on its bonds.” The United States is nowhere near that point, despite the fact that it’s predicted our debt will exceed our economy this year (predicted in April with the caveat that it could be even worse should legislation change our spending).
As Investopedia says, “austerity refers to strict economic policies that a government imposes to control growing public debt, defined by increased frugality.” There are three main ways to pursue austerity: “revenue generation (higher taxes) to fund spending, raising taxes while cutting nonessential government functions, and lower taxes, and lower government spending.” Importantly, and I think that no policy-maker ever decided to investigate the matter before jumping into the fray, Investopedia says that “outcomes from austerity measures can be more damaging than if they hadn’t been used.”
Following the 2008-’09 financial crisis some countries were forced (by the IMF and European Central Bank) to adhere to austerity. The four countries that became famous for it were PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain), The Guardian says that it wasn’t until 2015, when Portugal chose a socialist government, that “austerity has eased, consumer and business confidence has recovered and GDP growth” – very important for economists – has stayed above 2%. Portugal is still in deep debt, but more costly is the fact that they lost an exodus of the young generation that will probably never move back.
Ireland didn’t recover – that is, they aren’t bankrupt – until 2013, and they had suffered the biggest blow to their economy since the Irish Potato Famine. Meanwhile, The Guardian said in 2018, “homelessness remains a major problem across the country” and more than eight percent “of the population live in consistent poverty.”
Greece almost went bankrupt three times between 2008 and 2015, until the right-wing government left office and the “radical left” government received another bailout. In its ten-year check-in with the PIGS countries, The Guardian says that after years “eye-watering austerity,” in Greece, “in which taxes have risen, welfare subsidies have been cut, pensions reduced and thousands of public sector workers made redundant, the government is poised to agree the final tranche of loans from the EU.”
Spain avoided economic collapse, but because some areas recovered quicker and better than others, there has been political strife that led to the arrest or exile of several leaders.
Austerity is not limited to the PIGS countries. The Guardian also reported recently of austerity in Britain and the plight of octogenarians that are forced to care for their disabled children because the government has decided it won’t.
The list goes on, on course. No country wants to go bankrupt. To avoid going bankrupt, countries resort to austerity measures that destroy the social net. When countries resort to austerity, taxes change, unending poverty becomes common, housing becomes an issue, welfare subsidies and pensions disappear, and the whole social net and the whole of society is fragmented.
The United States doesn’t need to turn to austerity measures. Despite huge income inequality and an economy impacted by COVID-19 the United States is not on the verge of an economic situation that call for austerity.
Let’s return to Biden. Some people interpreted the remarks on austerity – made by a surrogate, but in no way misrepresenting Biden’s views and plans – as a remark that Social Security will need to be cut. Austerity automatically negatively impacts the working class “main street”.
There is an increasingly long string of tweets on Twitter about “austerity”. While Twitter isn’t a new source it, like the rest of the social internet, is a good barometer of what people think. To look to the future, along with a lot of other people including David Sirota (Jacobin, supra), if Biden wins this election and fails to make transformative change a more wicked demagogue will likely win in 2024, making the Trump years look progressive and cuddly. Or, as Sirata put it, “if Democrats win this election and 2020 is a repeat of 2009, then 2024 is going to be a repeat of 2016, only with a much smarter version of Trump winning the presidency.”
To look to the past, as Sirota does looking at 2009, is important. The idea of austerity didn’t magically appear in the 21st Century. To give a short, essential, background John Maynard Keynes “advocated for increased government expenditures and lower taxes to stimulate demand and pull the global economy out of the depression” in the 1930’s (He might have been influenced by Frank Ramsey). These policies were well for a few decades; in fact, the policies never worked badly, but were replaced and subsumed by a different school of economic thought.
The Chicago School of Economics is a loose term for the ideas that replaced or subsumed Keynesian economics. In the 1950s and ’60s economists who taught at the University of Chicago; Milton Friedman may be the most notable of the scholars. In fact, says Investopedia, “What Keynes wrought, Friedman undid, and supporters of the free market are deeply in debt to this Chicago school academic for his effort.” Collectively, Chicago School economists became economic advisors to many governments where they urged policies for hard money and small government. Friedman was an advisor to Reagan and influenced Thatcher. I am not aware of anywhere that says the Chicago School advocates for austerity. Merely “hard money and small government”.
The hard money and small government that is the basis of Chicago school thinking is the same thing as austerity. It translates to the government not being able to provide for people – housing, opportunity, welfare subsidies, and a basic social net by choice of force. No one will force the United States to enter and endure austerity. Will the next president choose to lead Americans to austerity? If he does, what will that mean for the future?
I recently talked to my Congressman about legislation he should be working on. And by saying I did this, I joined a group of people who said more than me, and by Congressman I mean his local and D.C-based staffers. We were enjoining him to sign on to legislation that mitigates or abolishes harm that has been done by nuclear weapons, with the end goal of denuclearization.
To his credit my Congressman has signed on to some good legislation regarding nuclear weapons. There is also legislation regarding nuclear weapons he hasn’t signed on to. My Congressman, who is retiring (and by retiring I mean that he’s now running for state office) seems reticent to challenge Trump.
In fact, that seems to be the attitudes of the Democrats. The staffers, who live and breathe politics, confirmed that Mr. Congressman and many Democrats don’t want to sign on to to legislation that would challenge Trump’s authority, including bills that would affirm that no president can start a war – nuclear or otherwise – without authorization of Congress.
Remember that this is goes against the Constitution, which declares that only Congress can start a war. It is true that for the last seventy-five years, since the end of WWII, the president has gone around the Constitution, and started wars; it also seems that as La Resistance! the Democrats would want to at least, as he opposition party with a majority in the House, sign on to a bill reminding the president that only Congress can start a war.
However, La Resistance! thinks otherwise, and mainly issues platitudes.
STRESS begin in 1971 in Detroit. “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets” (STRESS) was a police program to patrol the streets of Detroit.
Historian Jill Lepore’s excellent piece “The invention of the police“starts with the history of the king needing men (sorry, women!) to maintain the peace. However, modern policing didn’t begin there, nor did it begin with Thomas Pain’s diction ‘the law is king’. Modern policing began because of slavery, Lepore said.
She reminds us that “the government of slavery was not a rule of law. It was a rule of police.” Lepore doesn’t forget the history of slave laws beginning in the U.S. as early as 1680, or the slave patrols. The horror of free blacks -especially the ones calling for violent uprising or equality under the law – led many cities to form police forces for the first time.
Policing may have been developed to deal with the threat of free slaves, but ipolicing isn’t limited to the black community in any way.
Between 1840 and the nineteen-twenties, mobs, vigilantes, and law officers, including the Texas Rangers, lynched some five hundred Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and killed thousands more, not only in Texas but also in territories that became the states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. A San Francisco vigilance committee established in 1851 arrested, tried, and hanged people; it boasted a membership in the thousands. An L.A. vigilance committee targeted and lynched Chinese immigrants.
In addition,
In the eighteen-seventies and eighties, the U.S. Army engaged in more than a thousand combat operations against Native peoples. In 1890, at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, following an attempt to disarm a Lakota settlement, a regiment of cavalrymen massacred hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children. Nearly a century later, in 1973, F.B.I. agents, SWAT teams, and federal troops and state marshals laid siege to Wounded Knee during a protest over police brutality and the failure to properly punish the torture and murder of an Oglala Sioux man named Raymond Yellow Thunder. They fired more than half a million rounds of ammunition and arrested more than a thousand people. Today, according to the C.D.C., Native Americans are more likely to be killed by the police than any other racial or ethnic group.
By the turn of the 20th century, at which time Jim Crow laws had been upheld by the Supreme Court, the police forces had been turned into military forces by former military men. Domestic policing adopted “the kinds of tactics and weapons that had been deployed against Native Americans in the West and against colonized peoples in other parts of the world, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.” Today’s police officers are disproportionately veterans of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many suffering from post-traumatic stress, Lepore reminds us, and that it has been found that “officers who are veterans are more likely than their non-veteran counterparts to be involved in fatal shootings. In general, they are more likely to use force, and more likely to fire their guns.” Police still use military weapons, even in situations where no weapon at all is necessary.
Regarding men in the police, for instance, in Philadelphia in 1911 about eleven per cent of people arrested were African-American. When a new police chief, a veteran of the Spanish-American war, and thee Philippines-American War, took over “that number rose to 14.6 per cent in 1917. By the nineteen-twenties, a quarter of those arrested were African-Americans, who, at the time, represented just 7.4 per cent of the population.”
In the “Progressive Era” 1920s “police patrolled Black neighborhoods and arrested Black people disproportionately; prosecutors indicted Black people disproportionately; juries found Black people guilty disproportionately; judges gave Black people disproportionately long sentences; and, then, after all this, social scientists, observing the number of Black people in jail, decided that, as a matter of biology, Black people were disproportionately inclined to criminality.” This hasn’t changed.
Currently, by population, by per capita incarceration rates, and by expenditures, the United States exceeds all other nations in how many of its citizens, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants are under some form of criminal justice supervision.
The effort to police any community that’s not white has long been a bipartisan effort. Lyndon Johnson declared a ‘war on crime’ in 1965 asking Congress to supply police departments with military-grade weapons. During the Watts riot that year the LAPD said fighting protesters was ‘very much like fighting the Viet Cong’. Johnson also asked Congress to pass the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which had the effect of diverting money from social programs to policing. Richard Nixon ended the era of many social programs completely, and focused on building more prisons.
The line ‘crime is a national-defense problem’ could be attributed to many people, but it was Joe Biden who said this in 1982. In 1984 “Biden and other Democrats in the Senate introduced legislation that resulted in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act,” and a decade later Biden helped draft the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, whose provisions included mandatory sentencing, Lepore reminds us. In 1991 Biden also introduced the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights, which provided protections for police under investigation. It’s an odd choice to nominate the person for president who helped develop our modern criminal justice system in this era of protests against police brutality.
In Detroit when the police developed STRESS they worked in disguise as taxi drivers or a ‘radical professor’. So many black men were killed that black police officers demanded the program be disbanded. This, Lepore, says, was the beginning of the movement to defund and reform police departments. The police in America are not the kings men; they are public servants and despite attempts to make it otherwise policing is not a partisan issue. Even police are police reform. It’s time to end STRESS against communities and create a system that affirms society, rather than oppresses it.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has put out a two trillion dollar plan to “boost investment in clean energy and stop all climate-damaging emissions from U.S. power plants by 2035.” (StarTribune)
At this point all people who Biden told ‘don’t vote for me!‘ should now be jumping up and down at the opportunity to vote for Biden, yes?
First, let’s look at target year of 2035: Michael Mann in 2014 published an article in ScientificAmerican. Although the article was published on April 1, it’s not a joke. The article, titled “Earth Will Cross the Climate Danger Threshold by 2036” says that if the world continues to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, global warming will rise to two degrees Celsius by 2036, crossing a threshold that will harm human civilization.
We have, at best, until 2036 (that’s 16 years from now) – a very short period of time. One might hazard a guess that Biden’s plan chooses 2035 for this reason.
In reality, we have a lot less than sixteen years. Last month The Guardian published an article suggesting saying the world has six months “in which to change the course of the climate crisis and prevent a post-lockdown rebound in greenhouse gas emissions that would overwhelm efforts to stave off climate catastrophe.” The executive director of the International Energy Agency said ‘the next three years will determine the course of the next 30 years and beyond’.
By 2050 – at which point most people who grew up using cell phones and apple computers are middle-aged – climate change will impact suitable croplands for four top commodities—corn, potatoes, rice, and wheat—will shift, in some cases pushing farmers to plant new crops, say researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute project. We’ll have food, but what that food is, and where it grows will be completely different. Not long from now.
We’re already seeing to results of climate change. Today, the same day most papers published reports of Biden’s triumphant plan, the paper also published a report of rising sea levels. Atlantic and Gulf state cities on the water could expect high-tide flooding 25-75 days a day in a few decades – a huge rise in what used to be a few days of flooding a year. No one wants to live in a city with failed infrastructure and frequent flooding. Although the NOAA has been told by Trump not to use the word climate change it acknowledged that that rise in ocean levels is likely caused by climate change, and man-made carbon emissions.
While it would appear that Biden’s plan appeals to the progressive left, The Star Tribune, unlike most of the AP articles on Biden’s proposal, report that
Biden’s proposal seemed designed to avoid antagonizing independents or moderate Republicans considering backing him.
The plan makes no mention of banning dirtier-burning coal or prohibiting fracking, a method of extracting oil and gas that triggered a natural gas boom in the United States over the last decade. The issue is especially sensitive in some key battleground states such as Pennsylvania.
Really, Biden is trying to avoid antagonizing independents, please the companies most responsible for carbon emissions, and appeal to the left all while producing a plan that is inadequate and insufficient.
We don’t have fifteen years.
This is a story about the Russia of history and current affairs. Part of the title refers to “The Great,” the story “satirical, comedic” story of Catherine the Great. But this story is neither “satirical” or comedic,” although it begins with, and was inspired by, the story of Catherine the Great.
THE GREAT
Catherine (née Sophie Friederike Auguste) was born in what was then Prussia to the prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, an area now in the middle of Germany. She was a a grand-niece of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and first cousin to Swedish kings. At fourteen she was sent to Russia (St. Petersburg was the capital) to marry the heir apparent to the Russian throne, Peter of Holstein- Gottorp, who was the grandson of Peter the Great.
According to the Russian mini-series Ekaterina after seven years of marriage (they were married in 1745), Peter and Ekaterina (Catherine) had yet to have sex. Peter is portrayed as a great lover of music, and an adequate musician. He would sit in a theatre in the palace, and command people to act for him. He would join in the acting. He loved dogs, in the same way Ramsy in Game of Thrones loved dogs. Peter loved Lutheranism (very popular in Germany) and hated Russian Orthodoxy. He played with toy soldiers but understood very little about the life of a soldier.
It was another decade before Peter’s aunt, the Empress Elizabeth – really somewhere between a regent and a usurper – died and Peter III succeeded to the throne in January of 1762. Despite the fact that the royalty of Russia were of German descent the German states (Prussia, Saxony) were enemies of the Russians. Under Elizabeth Russia allied with France and Austria, and Russia itself was fighting against Frederick the Great of Prussia at the time of Elizabeth’s death.
Peter III, a great lover of Lutheranism and an admire of Frederick the Great, immediately ended war with Prussia. Now, on the face of it, this sounds pleasant for anyone against war. However, by all accounts, Russia was winning the war and had taken Berlin at the time that Peter told his troops to retreat. After thousands of deaths and an apparent victory, no fighting force likes to be told to retreat, and receive nothing for their efforts. Peter didn’t end the war; he merely decided that the Prussians were his allies, and his allies the Austrians were enemies. He did this against advice and against the interest of his country. Meanwhile, his troops returned home.
His relationship with Catherine, which was never good, was terrible. Both of them were likely in extramarital affairs and were living separately. Various motion-picture renditions have them quarreling at dinners, and Peter refused to call Catherine an honorable name, such as “her excellency”. Although the mini-series Ekaterina either glossed over it or I missed it (the show is in Russian, with subtitles) Catherine spent time making friends with the noble families that felt spurned by Peter, either because of his foreign or domestic policies.
On the night of July 8-9, 1762 (happy anniversity!), one of Catherine’s co-conspirators was arrested (the show missed this part), and it was decided that immediate action was needed, before Peter’s expected marriage to a noble-woman / lady in waiting, and Catherine’s invalidation as the Empress Consort. With support of the military Catherine forced her husband to abdicate. Peter III died on July 17. Six years later, Catherine, well-ensconced in the power of the throne despite a war against the Ottomans in the south and the Poles in the west, and domestic uprising by “pretenders” claiming to be Peter, was declared Catherine the Great.
THE BUSINESSMAN
Now let’s focus on current affairs. No leader of a state or a country is referred to as The Great, but politics hasn’t changed.
In 2016, mainly out of desperation caused by a system that had been ignoring the populace for years, the United States elected businessman Donald Trump because he promised – falsely – to provide better healthcare and better jobs. Oddly, these are the same conditions Catherine the Great provided to her empire.
Trump loves the arts – or rather, he loves profiting off them. Like Peter, he he relishes in undoing the alliances and domestic policies his predecessor had maintained or put in place. It’s likely that both Donald and Peter did this and do this out of spite.
For decades the United States has been allied with countries that oppose Russia and its allies. Under Trump, this did an about-face, and Russia became our friend while we shunned states and countries that we had worked to build alliances with for security and humanitarian reasons. This is quite like how Peter pulled his armies back from a win, and decided that his enemy was his friend, and his friend was his enemy. (Whether the U.S. needs Russia as an enemy is not the point. It’s the rejection of former alliances – who mainly share our ideals – that is nonsensical.)
Trump is a businessman, not a politician. The alliances he cancels and the alliances he forms has nothing to do with national security. His actions are for his own business interests. Like Peter III Trump never served in the military, but he’s never been as interested in playing war the same way Peter did. Trump has merely continued the wars he inherited, while pushing away the allies that were – at least, they think they were – helping in the war, including the non-state allies of the Kurds.
There is nothing Great about Trump. He’s a businessman. Nothing he does is “satirical” or “comedic,” not even in the commedia dell’arte style. He does remind us though, of Peter III, who, in his short reign, tried to undo the alliances and systems that he inherited.
_______________
As an addendum, it’s important to acknowledge Peter’s good qualities. He abolished the secret police – the only short time, since Peter the Great, that Russia didn’t have secret police. He was in favor of democratic reforms.
Trump, on the other has, has made little effort to reduce the security state that he inherited, and has not promote democratic reforms. It is true, though, that he operates in a two-party system and the his opposition party (Democrats) just prevented him from withdrawing troops from Germany (our ally, until the Trump years) and Afghanistan (which we’ve been at war with before and during the Trump years.
This is not a game
Israel’s plan to annex large portions of the West Bank as soon as next week reminds me of a video game. In Europa Universalis (World of Europe) stronger states get to vassalize weaker states and make them pay homage – taxes (and in a real world, manpower). After years of pleasant relations the stronger state, having vassalized the weaker state, then get to annex the weaker state, and all the land and taxes and men now belong to the strong state, and after several more years those conquered vassalized and annexed lands become part of the mother country.
There are parameters of course for good relations, and stability, which of course could lead to revolt and a separatist movement. There’s also parameters for religion – where, if you convert the heathen, they become less likely to rebel, etc. In the game, you can only annex countries of your own religion with whom you have good relations, and a royal marriage (which, in the real world, might or might not lead to good relations). (You can also annex through war). A country asked to be annexed could refuse – perhaps at the loss of stability in their own land.
This is not a game
More than seventy-two years ago the United Nations proposed partitioning historic Palestine into two states. Although the UN had no authority to create states, for years the international community has been fixated on the two-state solution.
Where the borders for two states would be is unclear. Israel has never declared a clear border; the Palestinians have never had a chance to express what borders they envision for a truncated version of their indigenous land. The Green Line – the truce lines of the end of the Seven Day War of 1967 are the theoretical borders between the two states.
This is not a game
The only manner in which the current state of affairs mimics Europa Universalis is that there is no parity between the states. There is no equal negotiating power between the the Israelis an the Palestinians. There is no equal economy.
What the game is missing is the influence of superpower states. If you dare to annex another country in the game your relations with most states diminish, and it might be a good idea to prepare for the likely result that more than one alliance will declare war on you. Israel doesn’t want to move ahead with annexation without permission from the United States, and because of the United States nobody wants to put in real effort to prevent annexation.
Every major agency working to bring peace between Palestinians and Israelis is either committed to the two-state solution or to the more general idea of “peace”. Not only was the Partition Plan a two- state solution, but it was reaffirmed after 1967 that that was the only answer, and Oslo in 1993 reiterated that. At Oslo, both the Palestinians and Israelis agreed to the two-state solution, agreeing that definites (like the control of Jerusalem) would be decided later.
Twenty-seven years after that agreement of Olso the vassalization and colonization of Palestinian land has increased, leading to a reality in which the two-state solution is impossible, and Israel might annex all or parts of Palestinian land as soon as next week.
This is not a game. The two-state solution is a pipe-dream that always ensured that Palestinian land and the Palestinian people would be vassals of Israel. (By actual definition, of course, only the Palestinian Authority might be a vassal to Israel).
When was the last time someone tried to annex you? And what was your response?
The Dole Blog 