OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #208, DECEMBER 18, 2024.

 OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #208, DECEMBER 18, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett

WARRING
Matthew Ehret Insights.  “Which Foreign Policy Paradigm for the USA? Hegemony and Annihilation or Restoration of Sanity?”  TRANSCEND Media Service.  10 Dec 2024. Compared to the great initiatives of the past 260 years, the USA of the past several decades is a strange and foolish creature running roughshod over the dignity of people and nations in a race for mass nuclear extermination.

PREVENTING WARS
THE NUCLEAR RESISTER (Nov. 12, 2024).
 This number reports on resisters jailed from California to New Hampshire.  A day- by- day record of the US and Canadian protesters of the genocide in Gaza fills two full pages.  Jailings for protesting a variety of issues are reported from around the world: Australia, Japan, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, England.  The present condition of Daniel Hale, US drone warfare whistleblower, is described; Hale received the inaugural International Ellsberg Whistleblower Award.  Two books are noted:  Arise and Witness: Poems by Anne Montgomery, RSCJ, highly praised, and Ground Zero Comics: Move Beyond Nuclear Weapons.  Seattle area residents will be interested especially in the second book, which centers on the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, home of the world’s largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons just 20 miles away.  And much more!     --Dick

STOPPING WARS
Reminder: Film Screening Tomorrow!!

friendsofpalestinenwa [This notice arrived too late for my last War Watch Wednesdays but the film offers important history and is available on You Tube.  –D]

Dec 9, 2024,

Hi friends,

Friends of Palestine Northwest Arkansas invites you to a film showing of “Gaza Fights for Freedom,” directed by Abby Martin. This Tuesday, December 10, 6-8 p.m. at the Fayetteville Public Library in the Ziegler Room.
 “Gaza Fights for Freedom” elevates Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation by focusing on the Great March of Return, “the weekly, non-violent demonstrations organized by Gaza civil society, that lasted for 20 months and resulted in over 200 Palestinian deaths. Many if not most Americans never thought about or heard about the Gaza Strip prior to October 7, 2023. This film provides important insights into the decades-long struggle of Gaza Palestinians against occupation and in particular, the blockade Israel imposed on Gaza in 2007, that turned the Strip into a concentration camp.”      
2 Attachments • Scanned by Gmail

 

PREVENTING AND STOPPING WARS

Ending Russophobia  in UNGA

Jeremy Kuzmarov.   “Intelligence services have penetrated and corrupted human rights NGOs, says former senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner.”   Mronline.org (6-14-24). 

On April 7, 2022, the UN General Assembly voted to exclude Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.

Originally published: CovertAction Magazine  on June 7, 2024 (more by CovertAction Magazine).    WarAmericas, Europe, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Russia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireOrganization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P), UN General Assembly.  [The Managing Editor of CAM lives in Tulsa.  Give im and it your support.   –D]

On April 7, 2022, the UN General Assembly voted to exclude Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. The resolution received the required two-thirds majority of those voting, minus abstentions, in the 193-member Assembly, with 93 nations voting in favor and 24 against.¹

The vote was highly politicized and reflected the success of the Western information war against Russia, which was falsely blamed for launching an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and for committing the overwhelming majority of atrocities in the war, including a massacre at Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, which independent investigators concluded was actually carried out by Ukraine.

Alfred de Zayas, a former senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner and Secretary of the UN’s Human Rights Committee, wrote in his book The Human Rights Industry (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2023) that the UN General Assembly’s decision to exclude Russia “added to the general atmosphere of Russophobia that we have seen over the last three decades,” and “to the world’s perception of engineered bias in the UN itself, where the manipulation of States’ votes was enabled by a failure to call for a secret ballot, as requested by Russia.”²

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS #209, DECEMBER 16, 2024.

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS #209, DECEMBER 16, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett

PLANET OVER PROFIT
POP is a youth-led climate justice group building people power and using direct action to take on the fossil fuel industry and put Planet Over Profit. 
Fossil fuel companies - and the banks and asset managers that finance them - are driving us off the cliff of climate collapse.    The wealthiest 1%, with their dirty investments and private jets and yachts, rob us of a livable future while ordinary people struggle to make ends meet and survive.   If our so-called “leaders” won’t act on climate, it’s on us to hold them accountable and reclaim our tomorrow. We will take direct action against the people who are burning our world until the fire is out.    We target fossil fuel companies, their financiers, and their allies in office. We disrupt the lives of the super-rich 1% who are most responsible for this crisis. We organize and mobilize to take money out of fossil fuels and put it into our communities. We believe that only through building mass people power can we halt climate collapse.   It’s now or never. Join us.    https://www.planetoverprofit.us/    

 

Inside Climate News (ICN) is an excellent source of current climate-related action information.  I count 17 separate stories reported in the ICN Weekly of 12-14-24.   <newsletters@insideclimatenews.org> 

 

Robert Hunziker.  “Climate Change Trial at The Hague.”  December 13, 2024.   FacebookTwitterRedditEmail 

The stakes are extremely high as the impact of fossil fuels on climate change goes to The Hague for hearings December 2-13, 2024 to determine whether nations are obligated to phase out fossil fuels. Will the esteemed court issue an opinion that truly impacts climate change?  [ Here are the sources for this extraordinarily comprehensive article.  –D]

The court’s opinion is expected in 2025.

 (Source: James Hansen, International Court of Justice Proceedings in The Hague, December 9, 2024)

What if it is determined that “international law requires nations to phase out production, distribution and use of fossil fuels”? What happens next?

 (Source: Courts May Be More Effective on Climate Action Than UN, Bloomberg Law, Nov. 22, 2024)

Potential benefits of the hearing before The Hague

Perilous Times on Planet Earth: 2024 The State of the Climate Report,

(Source: Paul Krugman, The Stench of Climate Change Denial, The New York Times, May 27, 2024)

What happens at 2°C (above pre-industrial)

 (Source: Why Heat Waves of the Future May Be Even Deadlier Than Feared, The New York Times, October 25, 2024)

Mysterious Global Hotspots.

Antarctic Emergency Session of 450 Polar Scientists – The Link

Antarctica Emergency: Scientists Shocked as Sea Ice Melts / New Scientists Weekly 279.

What 2C of Warming Will Look Like: A Comprehensive Assessment, Earth.org. d/d September 2, 2024.

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #207, DECEMBER 11, 2024.

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #207, DECEMBER 11, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett

 Resisting Militarism, Wars, and Empire

GEORGE ORWELL AWARDS from the NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

[Everyone should read Orwell’s 1984, and everyone connected professionally or indirectly to the study of LANGUAGE and POLITICS should be promoting the NCTE awards.   Maybe I’m talking about everybody.–Dick]
This award recognizes people who have made notable contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse. The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has given out this award since 1975. Wars and other dysfunctions are planned,  started, and sustained by deception by language manipulation.  The award is given to an author, editor, or producer of a work that contributes to honesty and clarity in public language.  The Committee welcomes nominations for the .Orwell Award,   
The earliest: 
 1977 Walter Pincus, Washington Post "A patient, methodical journalist who knew his job and who knew the jargon of Washington. Mr. Pincus was the man responsible for bringing to public attention, and thus to a debate in the Senate, the appropriations funding for the neutron bomb."-
1976 Hugh Rank, chair, NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak, "Intensify/Downplay" schema for analyzing communication, persuasion, and propaganda.
1975 David Wise .  The Politics of Lying (on Nixon and Johnson)..

The latest:

2024 Recipient:
Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education by Jessica Lander. . . .
 2023  Kisha Porcher & Shamaine Bertrand.  Black Gaze Podcast. . . .
2022  David Chrisinger.   Public Policy Writing That Matters, second edition. . . .
2021 Kristin Kobes Du Mez.   Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. . . .     Etc.

The Doublespeak Award from the National Council of Teachers of English

 Prior to 2022, NCTE annually awarded a single Doublespeak Award example of language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words   uplicitous and deceptive language. Click here to see a list of previous recipients. In 2022, the NCTE Executive Committee decided that the organization would produce an annual list of multiple examples of such language from a public spokesperson or group, to be called The Year in Doublespeak. In addition to identifying examples, the committee will contribute to our ReadWriteThink platform by providing peer-reviewed lesson plans and other pedagogical resources that make use of the identified examples. This work will help literacy instructors to continue teaching students about public language and to encourage them to participate in public language. This work began in 2023.    

Here are the first awards:
1977 The Pentagon and the Energy Research and Development Administration In explaining qualities of the neutron bomb: "an efficient nuclear weapon that eliminates an enemy with a minimum degree of damage to friendly territory."
1976 The State Department's announcement of plans to appoint a consumer affairs coordinator said the coordinator would: "review existing mechanisms of consumer input, thruput, and output, and seek ways of improving these linkages via the ‘consumer communication channel.'"
1975 Yasir Arafat, PLO Leader In answer to a charge that the PLO wanted to destroy Israel, he was quoted as saying, "They are wrong. We do not want to destroy any people. It is precisely because we have been advocating coexistence that we have shed so much blood."
1974 Colonel David H. E. Opfer, USAF Press Officer in Cambodia After a U.S. bombing raid, he told some reporters: "You always write it's bombing, bombing, bombing. It's not bombing! It's air support!"

Here are the latest awards (see note above): 

2019 To Donald Trump, President of the United States, for perpetuating language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, and self-centered. . . .
 2018 To Rudy Giuliani, Attorney to the President of the United States and former Mayor of New York City, for his "truth isn't truth" statement. . . .
 2017 To Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President of the United States, for coining the term “alternative facts” to defend President Trump's falsehoods about inauguration crowd sizes.

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS #208, DECEMBER 9, 2024.

 

 

OMNI CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS #208, DECEMBER 9, 2024.  Compiled by Dick Bennett

More Books from “Ecosocialist Bookshelf”
Articles from Climate and Capitalism

 

MORE BOOKS FROM “Ecosocialist Bookshelf, September 2024.”  September 2, 2024.  

Climate change silently accumulates a thousand tiny conflagrations, increasing health risks for billions of people, reducing productivity and amplifying inequality in a host of ways.

Rob Jackson.  INTO THE CLEAR BLUE SKY: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere.  Simon & Schuster.  Jackson, chair of the Global Carbon Project, argues that we must not only slash emissions, but also repair the damage by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.  Restoring the atmosphere means reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the air to pre-industrial levels to heal the harm we have done. The question is how, and how long will it take?

Julie Guthman.  THE PROBLEM WITH SOLUTIONS: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food.    University of California P.
A concise and feisty takedown of the all-style, no-substance tech ventures that fail to solve our food crises. Guthman digs into the impoverished and ill-informed solutions for food and agriculture currently being promoted by Silicon Valley technocrats.

 

Joe Roman.  EAT, POOP, DIE: How Animals Make Our World.  Hachette Book Group.
If forests are the lungs of the planet, then migrating animals are its heart and arteries, a global conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients. Roman shows how animals’ basic biological activities — endless cycles of eating, pooping and dying — make and remake the world. Understanding these processes is a vital part of all serious efforts to repair our damaged planet.

Andrew Greenfield.  LIFEHOUSE:  Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire.  Verso.
Drawing lessons Black Panther survival programs, the Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort ,and solidarity networks of crisis-era Greece, as well as autonomous Rojava, Greenfield argues that mutual care and local power can help shelter us in a time of global catastrophes.

On Barak.  HEAT, A HISTORY; Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet.  University of California P.
Despite record-breaking temperatures, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of global heating. Using examples from the hottest places on earth, Barak shows how we have become desensitized, and charts a way out of short-term thinking, towards meaningful action.

 

Hans A. Baer and Merrill Singer.   BUILDING THE CRITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE: Towards a Socio-Ecological Revolution.   Routledge.
Baer and Singer open a dialog with contending perspectives in the anthropology of climate change.  They aim to lay the foundation for a brave new sustainable world that is socially just, highly democratic, and climatically safe for humans and other species.

 

Climate & Capitalism 11-28-24

Climate & Capitalism <feedblitz@mail.feedblitz.com>                         

    

COP-out 29: The Baku Betrayal.   The 2024 climate summit was a disaster for the developing world, a betrayal of both people and planet.   Source   Extreme heatwaves exceed forecasts, kill thousands   New research shows that climate models underestimate regional heating by large margins   Source Other recent articles ... Atlantic circulation weakening much faster than predicted Extreme heat weakens land’s power to absorb carbon CO2 from burning fossil fuels sets new global record Warming turns ordinary dry spells into unprecedented droughts