OMNI
CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS #226, April 14, 2025. Compiled by Dick Bennett
Save
PBS.
AUTOs V. CLIMATE: 3 Articles.
John J. Mearsheimer. Why Leaders Lie.
Demand
Progress: Save PBS
A top Trump ally in Congress just introduced legislation
to strip all federal funding from PBS and public radio, following a
slanderous congressional hearing attacking public broadcasting as
"anti-American."1,2 Trump
himself piled on by attacking PBS as "horrible and completely biased"
and demanded that Republicans "rid our Country of this giant SCAM."3 It's all part of a coordinated
attack on PBS and public radio. Demand
Progress has mobilized tens of thousands of people to contact Congress and
defend PBS, and with the threats only escalating, we need to do even more to
fight back. Will you make a donation
to support our work, including our efforts to save PBS and public radio?
[And
or join ARPBS monthly or annually. –D]
AUTOs V. CLIMATE: 3 Articles
Patrick Davis. “Toyota’s Unholy Alliance with Climate Deniers Threatens Climate Progress.” Public Citizen News (March/April 2025). “…Toyota has emerged as the top auto industry financier of climate deniers, financing 207 of their congressional campaigns.” [Good example of PC’s important research in the public interest. –D]
“How SUVs came to be a massive climate problem.” Editor. Mronline.org (2-5-22). The
harmful political economy of auto manufacturing.
KENDRA PIERRE-LOUIS, ERIC ROSTON AND ZAHRA HIRJI. “Report
warns on climate change.”
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Nov 15, 2023. U.S. needs to swiftly cut emissions
to prevent more danger. Read more...
John J.
Mearsheimer. Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics.
For
more than two decades, John J. Mearsheimer has been regarded as one of the
foremost realist thinkers on foreign policy. Clear and incisive, a fearlessly
honest analyst, his coauthored 2007 New York Times bestseller, The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, aroused a firestorm with its
unflinching look at the making of America's Middle East policy. Now he takes a
look at another controversial but understudied aspect of international
relations: lying.
In Why Leaders Lie, Mearsheimer provides the first systematic
analysis of lying as a tool of statecraft, identifying the varieties,
the reasons, and the potential costs and benefits. Drawing on a trove of
examples, he argues that leaders often lie for good strategic reasons, so a
blanket condemnation is unrealistic and unwise. Yet there are other kinds of
deception besides lying, including concealment and spinning. Perhaps no
distinction is more important than that between lying to another state and
lying to one's own people. Mearsheimer was amazed to discover how unusual
interstate lying has been; given the atmosphere of distrust among the great
powers, he found that outright deceit is difficult to pull off and thus rarely
worth the effort. Plus it sometimes backfires when it does occur. Khrushchev
lied about the size of the Soviet missile force, sparking an American build-up.
Eisenhower got caught lying about U-2 spy flights in 1960, which
scuttled an upcoming summit with Krushchev. Leaders more often mislead their
own publics, sometimes with damaging consequences. Though the reasons may be
noble--Franklin Roosevelt, for example, lied to the American people
about German U-boats attacking the destroyer Greer in 1940, to build a case for
war against Hitler--they can easily lead to disaster, as with the Bush
administration's falsehoods about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
There has never been a sharp analysis of international lying. Now a leading
expert fills the gap with a richly informed and powerfully argued book. Read More by Eric Alterman, When Presidents Lie: A History
of Official Deception and Its Consequences.: https://sites.nd.edu/truth-and-politics/why-leaders-lie-the-truth-about-lying-in-international-politics/
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