Ash Sarkar Destroys Sun Hack over Climate Change on Jeremy Vine

This week the UN issued a report stating that climate change was now ‘Code Red’ for humanity, and that irreversible damage had been done to the environment. So the right-wing press immediately got their best and brightest to dispute this. Thus Jeremy Vine had on his show Mike Parry, who I believe is one of Murdoch’s minions. He’s a former hack on the Scum, the Depress and now a host on TalkRadio. Which is owned by Dirty Rupe, that walking affront to responsible, civilised journalism. And it ain’t just me that says this. When he took over one of the leading Ozzie newspapers in the 1970s, its journos went on strike complaining that they didn’t want to see the paper they worked for and loved turned into a laughing stock. And when Murdoch took over an American paper later in the decade, the hacks did the same there. The subplot of Superman 4, in which the staff at the Daily Planet protest at being taken over by a right-wing publisher of yellow journalism, seems to have been inspired by these real events. Facing him was the awesome Ash Sarkar, the main woman in Novara Media. And she handed Parry his ample rear end.

Parry had tried to counter her by stating that as the majority’s of today’s carbon dioxide emissions come from China, who were also about to open several more coal power stations, it was absolutely useless Britain trying to do anything to stop greenhouse gas production. Sarkar responded by stating that we could pass laws banning British corporations from investing in fossil fuel and polluting industries in China. She also pointed out that historically, Britain was responsible for a vast amount of carbon dioxide emissions. Her co-host, Michael Walker, produces the stats to support her case. Historically, Britain is responsible for 22 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced. America and China both are responsible for 29 per cent, but India, despite its growing economy and vast population, only 3 per cent. Walker acknowledges that Parry is correct about the Chinese opening new fossil fuel power stations and that it’s a problem that needs to be tackled. But he also makes the excellent point that industrialising nations are right to be outraged at western demands to cut their carbon emissions, when the west has benefited so much from its own industrialisation that produced much of it.

Here’s the video. I’m afraid it’s a bit long, at over 21 minutes, and I haven’t watch more than a few minutes of it, but it is very informative and does expose the poverty of the right’s arguments.

Mind you, at least Parry was able to marshal some good, intelligent arguments, unlike Sky News Australia. I found a video from them which was so stupid I actually felt less intelligent after watching it. And I only watched it for a few minutes. The host, another right-wing blowhard, got their pet climate expert on to poor scorn on the left’s desire to cut carbon emissions. Because carbon dioxide is plant food, and if we cut carbon emissions, they’ll all die off. How stupid, they sneered.

Er, no. No-one is talking about totally removing carbon dioxide from the planet’s atmosphere. What they are talking about is getting rid of the excess carbon dioxide, or halting its production, which is responsible for rising temperatures across the globe and the consequent damage to the environment. But Murdoch and the right doesn’t want people knowing about this. It’s why the Koch brothers, who own a vast amount of the American oil industry, spent much of their money buying up and closing down independent climate and environmental research laboratories, which were then replaced by their own pet scientists and astroturf organisations. It’s why Donald Trump passed a tranche of legislation preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from publishing anything actually showing the damage being done to the environment. This is all being done for corporate profit, not for the benefit of ordinary folks, who will be left with the legacy of horrendously polluted countryside. Thanks to the oil industry, much of the Louisiana swamplands, for example, is seriously contaminated.

My guess is that the right will only start taking climate change seriously when their parts of the world, like the Cotswolds in Britain and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s part of BANES, becoming howling dustbowls and the dunes start advancing on Westminster, Kensington, Chelsea and Knightsbridge. Douglas Murphy in his book, Last Futures, a history of brutalist architecture, states that in the 1970s the scientists behind the report Limits to Growth ran computer models to predict the future. And with only two exception, they all predicted that if current trends continued, civilisation would collapse and humanity be all but extinct by the end of this century. The report’s been criticised for the simplicity of its models and the technology used, but its seems that much of it still stands up. He also states that when the environment eventually breaks down, the rich will retreat into specially engineered artificial biodomes, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves in the wilderness outside.

Great. The rest of the world becomes a Mad Max battleground while the rich retire inside something like the Eden Project, hoping that nobody like Sean Connery comes inside to wreck their utopia like the plot of Zardoz.

I’ve blogged about this before, but for those seeking genuine information on the climate crisis, books are available. I came across one in one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham. It covered the whole world, and I think it was one of the set texts by the Open University. For younger readers, last month’s Postscript catalogue contained one published by Dorling Kindersly, Dan Hooke’s Climate Emergency Atlas. The blurb for this stated that Hooke

offers a clear explanation of the science behind climate change, with concise text supported by numerous diagrams. World maps show the environmental impact of different countries, detailing issues such as their population growth, consumption and deforestation, as well as how they have been affected by the rise in global temperatures. A final section describes the actions being taken in response to the crisis, and the part individuals can play.

The catalogue says it’s suitable for ages 10+. It’s normal price was £12.99, but they were offering at £6.99. I don’t know if it’s still available.

Ignore Murdoch, the Koch brothers and right-wing politicians like Trump, Blair. and as it looks like now, Starmer. It’s people like Hooke, the Open University, Ash Sarkar and the other peeps at Novara Media and, indeed, just about every respectable climate and environmental scientist on the planet, who are actually an unashamedly telling the truth.

Murdoch is publishing disinformation and lies. It’s now more than ever important to listen to the Left and mainstream science, and stop the profiteering from trashing the planet.

Book on the Global Environmental Crisis

Yesterday I got through the post this month’s Postscript catalogue. Postscript are a mail-order booksellers. Flicking through it, one of the items I found on sale was The Climate Emergency Atlas, by Dan Hooke, published by Dorling Kindersley. The catalogue’s brief description of the book runs

Dan Hooke offers a clear explanation of the science behind climate change, with concise text supported by numerous diagrams. World maps show the environmental impact of different countries, detailing issues such as their population growth, consumption and deforestation, as well as how they have been affected by the rise in global temperatures. A final section describes the actions being taken in response to the crisis, and the part individuals can play. Age 10+.

The normal retail price is £12.99, but Postscript are offering it for £6.99.

I can’t say I want to buy the book, but I think it is needed. The Republicans in America, backed by generous donations from big oil magnates like the Koch brothers, deny that climate change exists. Trump when he got into the White House passed orders and legislation effectively silencing the Environmental Protection Agency, forbidding them from publishing anything showing the existence of climate change or environmental damage. There are also videos from the American right by people like Alex Jones ranting about how climate change is really some kind of ruse or hoax by ‘leftists’ to end free enterprise and create a socialised economy and society. Which is pretty much the kind of paranoid nonsense you’d expect from a conspiracy theorist like Jones. When Barack Obama was in power, Jones was telling the world and his uncle that Obama was going to declare a climate state of emergency in order to force Americans into refugee camps and so enslave them. Well, Obama’s been and gone, as has Trump and we’ve now got Joe Biden. And there has been no declaration of a state of emergency with Obama now seizing power as Maoist dictator. One could almost think that Jones spouted fear-mongering nonsense.

The Tories over here share a similar scepticism towards climate change. The Heil has run repeated articles against it. This is when they aren’t simply playing lip-service to it. Cameron declared that his would be the ‘greenest government ever’ and stuck a windmill on his house to show how serious he was. That was before he got elected PM. After he put his foot across the threshold of No. 10, it was a different story. He took the windmill down and set about supporting and promoting all the environmental harmful policies he could, such as fracking. While this isn’t a book I intend to buy, I do think it’s needed considering the attacks on environmentalism from the Tories and their media, such as Spiked and the mad right-winger, Alex Belfield.

‘I’: British Government Considering Solar Power Satellites

A bit more space technology news now. The weekend edition of the I, for Saturday 14th November 2020 carried a piece by Tom Bawden, ‘The final frontier for energy’ with the subtitle ‘Revealed: the UK is supporting a plan to create a giant solar power station in space’. The article ran

Millions of British homes could be powered by a giant solar power station 24,000 miles up in space within three decades, under proposals being considered by the government.

Under the plan, a system of five huge satellites – each more than a mile wide, covered in solar panels and weighing several thousand tons – would deliver laser beams of energy down to Earth.

These would provide up to 15 per cent of the country’s electricity supply by 2050, enough to power four million households – with the first space energy expected to be delivered by 2040. Each satellite would be made from tens of thousands of small modules, propelled into space through 200 separate rocket launches, and then assembled by robots.

The satellites would use thousands of mirrors to concentrate the sunlight on to the solar panels, which would be converted into high frequency radio waves. These would be beamed to a receiving antenna on the Earth, converted into electricity and delivered to our homes.

While the prospect of a solar space station beaming energy into our homes might seem outlandish, advocates are hopeful it can be done. The Government and the UK Space Agency are taking the technology extremely seriously, believing it could play a crucial role in helping the country to fulfil its promise of becoming carbon neutral – or net zero – by 2050, while keeping the lights on.

They have appointed the engineering consultancy Frazer-Nash to look into the technical and economic feasibility and it will report back next year.

“Solar space stations may sound like science fiction, but they could be a game-changing new source of energy for the UK and the rest of the world,” the science minister, Amanda Solloway, said.

“This pioneering study will help shine a light on the possibilities for a space-based solar power system which, if successful, could play an important role in reducing our emissions and meeting the UK’s ambitious climate-change targets,” she said.

Martin Soltau, of Frazer-Nash, who is leading the feasibility study, said: “This technology is really exciting and could be a real force for good. It has the potential to transform the energy market and make the net-zero target achievable – and from an engineering perspective it looks feasible.”

Previous analysis by other researchers on economic viability suggests space solar could be “competitive” with existing methods of electricity generation but that will need to be independently assessed, Mr Soltau said.

If the UK is to become net zero it needs to find a green source of energy that is totally dependable because the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun definitely doesn’t always shine.

This is where solar space comes in, with its panels sufficiently much closer to the sun that they are not blighted by clouds and darkness.

“This would provide a baseload of energy 24/7 and 365 days a year – and has a fuel supply for the next five billion years,” said Mr Soltau, referring to the predicted date of the sun’s eventual demise.

Until recently, this project really would have been a pipe dream – but two developments mean it is now a realistic prospect, Mr Soltau says.

The first is the new generation of reusable rockets, such as the Falcon 9 launcher from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which mean satellites can be sent into space far more cheaply.

The cost of launching objects into low Earth orbit has gone from about $20,000 (£15,000) a kilogram in the early 2000s to less $3,000 now – and looks to fall below $1,000 in the coming years, he says.

At the same time, solar panels are much cheaper and more than three times as efficient as they were in the 1990s, meaning far fewer need to be sent into orbit to produce the same amount of energy.

Mr Soltau is hopeful, although by no means certain, that his study will find the technology to be feasible in economic and engineering terms – with the technology looking like it’s on track.

The five satellite solar power station system envisaged by the Government will probably cost more than £10bn – and potentially quite a lot more – more than the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, which would produce roughly similar amounts of electricity, is expected to cost about £30bn, including decommissioning, Mr Soltau points out.

When all is said and done, there’s no getting away from the fact that building a satellite of that size and complexity in orbit is a mindboggling task. But it could well be feasible.

The article was accompanied by this diagram.

The captions read

1. Solar reflectors: Orientation of satellite with respect to the Sun controlled to constantly reflect sunlight onto the solar power array below.
2. Solar panels and transmitters: Approximately 60,000 layers of solar panels that collect the sunlight from the reflectors, and convert this to transmit high frequency radio waves.
3. Power transmission: High frequency radio wave transmission from satellite to receiver on ground.
4. Ground station: approximately 5k in diameter rectenna (a special type of receiving antenna that is used for converting electromagnetic energy into direct current (DC) electricity), generating 2 gigawatts of power enough for 2 million people at peak demand.

The solar reflectors are the objects which look rather like DVDs/CDs. The box at the top of the diagram gives the heights of a few other objects for comparison.

The ISS – 110m

The London Shard – 310m

The Burj Khalifa – 830m

The Cassiopeia solar satellite 1,700m.

The use of solar power satellites as a source of cheap, green energy was proposed decades ago, way back when I was at school in the 1970s. I first read about it in the Usborne Book of the Future. I don’t doubt that everything in the article is correct, and that the construction of such satellites would be comparable in price, or even possibly cheaper, than conventional terrestrial engineering projects. I went to a symposium on the popular commercialisation space at the headquarters of the British Interplanetary Society way back at the beginning of this century. One of the speakers was an engineer, who stated that the construction of space stations, including space hotels, was actually comparable in cost to building a tower block here on Earth. There was just a difference in attitude. Although comparable in cost, such space stations were viewed as prohibitively expensive compared to similar terrestrial structures.

Apart from the expense involved, the other problem solar power satellites have is the method of transmission. All the previous systems I’ve seen beamed the power back to Earth as microwaves, which means that there is a possible danger from cancer. The use of laser beams might be a way round that, but I still wonder what the health and environmental impact would be, especially if the receiving station is around 5 km long.

I also wonder if the project would ever be able to overcome the opposition of vested interests, such as the nuclear and fossil fuel industries. One of the reasons the Trump government has been so keen to repeal environmental legislation and put in place measures to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job, is because the Republican party receives very generous funding from the oil industry, and particularly the Koch brothers. And there are plenty of Tory MPs who also possess links to big oil.

At the moment this looks like a piece of industry PR material. It’s an interesting idea, and I’ve no doubt that it’s factually correct, but given the resistance of the British establishment to new ideas, and especially those which might involve government expenditure, I have grave doubts about whether it will actually ever become a reality. Fossil fuels might be destroying the planet, but there are enough people on the right who don’t believe that’s happening and who get a very tidy profit from it, that I can see the oil industry being promoted against such projects for decades to come.

Flooding: Private Eye Cover Shows How Nothing Has Changed Under Tories

Here’s a piece of de ja vue, courtesy of Private Eye’s issue for 10th-23rd January 2014. It shows former Prime Minister, David Cameron, surveying one of the areas then hit by disastrous flooding. Dodgy Dave has to bear some responsibility for the disastrous, as it was his government that cut funding for the flood defences.

Well, it’s six years later, we’ve got a Tory government that’s promising to increase funding to the public infrastructure, and Tweezer declared that ‘austerity was over’. But there has been no increase in public spending, or at least, none I’ve been aware of. And the country’s now hit by disastrous floods.

Which shows that almost nothing has changed.

Except one thing:

David Cameron at least visited some of the areas that had been hit, like the Somerset Levels, and pledged more funding – funding that should never have been cut anyway.

Boris Johnson, however, is nowhere to be seen. He’s retreated to Chevening, a 115 room mansion in Kent. He’s probably hiding from having to answer awkward questions about why he thought it would be a good idea to hire Andrew Sabisky, a racist, misogynist eugenics nut. Or if he holds the same vile views.

It also shows his own, cynical attitude to public welfare. Johnson hasn’t called any emergency meetings. He did before he was elected, but that was when he needed people’s votes. Now he has them, and is in No. 10, although obviously not physically, he just doesn’t care. But he has sent his deputy official spokesman – not his official spokesman, mind – to reassure us that he is receiving briefing updates and that the flooding is terrible for people affected.

How very reassuring!

Mike in his article points out that one reason Johnson may be dodging this issue is because it raises awkward questions about climate change and global warming. But Donald Trump and the Republic Party don’t believe in it, and are passing laws to gut their Environmental Protection Agency and prevent anyone in it from publishing any research showing that it exists. Because the Republicans and Trump are also heavily funded by the fossil fuel lobby, particularly the Koch brothers. And so they pretend that it doesn’t exist.

But Johnson needs Trump’s trade deal, which will do precious little for the country except hand over British industries and utilities, including a privatised NHS, to the Americans. But it will make Johnson and the Tories backing it rich, so Johnson wants to dodge the issue as well.

Meaning that as Britain starts sinking into the sea and primordial ooze, Johnson is holed up in his mansion hoping that it will all go away.

While Britain sinks, Boris Johnson hides

 

Tories Promised Fat Profits to Fracking Companies While Others Starved

Donald Trump made his contempt for environmentalists and public concerns about climate change and global warming very clear this week at Davos. He called them ‘prophets of doom’ and frankly denied the existence of global warming. As I pointed out in a previous post, this is not only in line with what the Republican base believes, but also the propaganda of Trump’s corporate sponsors in the fossil fuel industries. Trump has passed legislation to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and prevent it from publishing anything supporting climate change or global warming. The fossil fuel industry, particularly the billionaire Koch brothers, have also set up a network of lobbying and astroturf fake grassroots pressure groups to try and discredit global warming and the other environmental damage by the oil, gas and coal industries. Those same billionaires also use these networks to close down mainstream academic environmental research, and replace them with laboratories funded by themselves, which publish their approved material denying the reality of global warming.

Mike put up a post this week reporting Trump’s anti-environmentalist stance, and saying that this would be a problem for Britain if Boris Johnson is successful and makes a Brexit deal with America.

But the Tories have already shown their contempt for Green politics. Although Dave Cameron promised that his would be the ‘Greenest government ever’ and put a windmill on the roof of his house, that lasted only as long as he could get his foot in Number 10. The moment he won the election, those promises were dropped and the windmill came off his roof. And that wasn’t all. Cameron, like Trump, strongly favoured the petrochemical industries. While his government cut the welfare budget to leave the poor desperate and starving, he cut the tax for the fracking industry so that they could make even bigger projects. Vickie Cooper and David Whyte discuss this in the introduction to their The Violence of Austerity. They write

Indeed, some sectors have been seen as a vehicle for economic recovery and therefore singled out for special treatment. This partly explains the lack of any meaningful regulatory change in the financial sector but also why some high revenue sectors, such as unconventional oil and gas – or ‘fracking’, are being singled out for special treatment… In July 2013 the government announced that the fracking industry would receive a major reduction in its tax burden. Shale gas producers were told that they would be asked to pay just 30 per cent tax on profits compared to 62 per cent normally paid by the oil and gas industry. In response, Andrew Pendleton of UK Friends of the Earth observed:

Promising tax hand-outs to polluting energy firms that threaten our communities and environment, when everyone else is being told to tighten their belts, is a disgrace. (p. 19).

Fracking is particularly contentious, as not only does it pollute the water table but it also causes minor earthquakes. There have been major protests against it throughout the country, particularly against its operations in Lancashire. The Tories just before the election promised a moratorium on it, but did not refuse to stop it completely.

The Tories’ welfare cuts have led to people starving to death, as Mike’s report this morning about the death of Errol Graham. Mr Graham had problems with anxiety, and could not cope with unexpected changes and social situations. He was afraid to go out and could not meet or interact with strangers. Despite this the DWP stopped his ESA, which meant that he lost his housing benefit. He slowly starved to death. When the bailiffs broke down his door to evict him, he weighed only 4 1/2 stone.

Why are we learning about disabled Errol Graham TWO YEARS after the DWP stopped his benefits and he starved to death?

Obscene! Absolutely obscene!

And he isn’t the only one. 130,000 people have died due to austerity. But while the government is content to let people starve to death, it’s prepared to give vast profits to friends in polluting industries. Reading this, I think there’s little doubt that Boris will resume fracking the moment he’s given the opportunity. And that if and when he makes his wretched deal with Trump, it will signal real danger for our precious ‘green and pleasant land’.

This shows the foul pair’s priorities: the world burns, the poor literally starve to death, but they’re fine so long as polluting industries can foul the planet for profit.

 

Trump’s Climate Denial Is a Danger to Post-Brexit Britain

Yesterday Mike put up a piece reporting and commenting on Trump’s denunciation of Green activists at the Davos summit. He called them ‘prophets of doom’, who were trying to dominate, control and transform the lives of everyone in the world, and announced that he would not change his country’s high carbon economy. He would, though, sign up for planting, restoring and conserving a trillion trees.

This didn’t impress Greta Thunberg, who was also there. Mike quotes her as saying

“Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fuelling the flames by the hour, and we are telling you to act as if you loved your children above all else,” she said.

“You say: ‘We won’t let you down. Don’t be so pessimistic.’ And then, silence.”

And she asked: “What will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing… climate chaos that you knowingly brought upon them? That it seemed so bad for the economy that we decided to resign the idea of securing future living conditions without even trying?”

Beeb wildlife presenter Chris Packham also made a speech about the climate emergency at the BAFTA’s, warning that unless we act to solve the environmental crisis, future generations may look on Trump, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Vladimir Putin and Australia’s Scott Morrison in the same way as mass murderers like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, because of the millions killed through climate change.

Mike also makes the point that while the world’s leaders are doing nothing about climate change, Boris is moving closer to a trade deal with Trump, one that will also make him deny the danger. Mike states that our clown of a prime minister has missed opportunities to make a difference, and asks if he will sell us down the river again for the sake of a few American dollars.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/01/22/trumps-prophets-of-doom-speech-suggests-the-uk-should-not-enter-trade-deal-with-him/

The answer is yes, yes, he will. And it’s for the same reasons Trump and the rest of the Republican party are denying climate change: powerful corporate interests. The Republicans received very generous campaign funding from big industrialists like the Koch brothers and the other heads of the fossil fuel industry. These big businessmen also sponsor fake grassroots organisations and biased scientific think thanks in order to lobby against and discredit climate research and laws to protect the environment. The results have been disastrous. Since he took power, Trump has gutted the environmental protection agency and forbidden it from publishing anything supporting climate change or environmental decline in America. Koch money has seen universities close down proper climate and environmental research and their replacement with laboratories and organisations funded by the brothers and others in the fossil future industry. These present as fact the false information they want the public to hear: that climate change isn’t occurring, and the coal and oil industries ain’t wrecking the landscape. But these industries are. There are a whole sections of the Louisiana swamps that is heavily polluted by oil. The oil pipeline through indigenous people’s land in Idaho that made the news a few years ago was opposed because the indigenous people of the area feared that there would be spillages that would pollute the water they use for drinking and which nourishes their wildlife. They were right to do so. There have been a large number of similar spillages, which have not garnered so much media attention, which have similarly contaminated vast acreages of land. And then there’s the whole fracking industry, and the damage that has also caused the water table in areas where it has been allowed.

These are the industries funding Trump’s campaign. They’re part of the reason why there were right-wing jokers all over the internet yesterday sniggering at Trump’s put down of Thunberg. Trump and his supporters really do believe that environmentalists are some kind of crazy apocalyptic cult with totalitarian aims. There’s a section of the American right that really does believe Green activists are real, literal Nazis, because the Nazis were also environmentally concerned. And the corporate interests sponsoring Trump are the same industries that want to get a piece of our economy and industries.

The Tories have already shown that they are little concerned about the environment. They have strongly promoted fracking in this country, and the book The Violence of Austerity contains a chapter detailing the Tories’ attacks on the environment and Green protest groups. David Cameron’s boast that his would be the greenest government ever vanished the moment his put his foot across the threshold of Number 10.

If Boris makes a Brexit trade deal with Trump, it will mean that our precious ‘green and pleasant land’ is under threat from highly polluting, environmentally destructive industries. It will mean further reductions in funding for renewable energy in favour of oil, gas and coal, attempts in this country to discredit and silence respectable, mainstream climate research and scientists in favour of corporate-sponsored pseudoscience. And there will be further laws and state violence against environmental protesters.

Trump’s climate denial is a threat to the British environment, industry, the health of its people, democracy and science. But Boris depends on him for any kind of successful trade deal.

He will sell out and wreck this country and its people for those dollars offered by Trump and his corporate backers.

Giles Coren Racially Abuses Megan Markle

Just as the CST this weekend decided to smear 36 people as anti-Semites, largely because they supported Jeremy Corbyn, and hated the Tories, Rachel Riley, and Tom Watson, Times‘ columnist Giles Coren made his own racist comment about Prince Harry’s consort, Megan Markle. Harry had said that he intends to have only two children because of the the current environmental crisis. So Coren jumped in and declared that he really said it because Markle had ‘raised the drawbridge’ and it was really due to domestic squabbles between the royal couple. He then went on and declared that they had booked a meeting with a marriage guidance counselor, but had got Jane Goodall instead.

That’s Jane Goodall, the primatologist, who studied gorillas.

The good peeps on Twitter were not amused, and pointed out just how racist the tweet was. It’s the old sneer about Black people being subhuman monkeys. They also predicted that if Coren was taken to task for it, he’d immediately start trying to excuse it by saying he wasn’t being racist, honest, and then give out some remarks supporting him by his White friends, while issuing some kind of non-apology.

Zelo Street concluded his article on this nasty little piece of privileged racism

From Coren there has so far been silence. But he will have to say something, even if he attempts to cover his tracks by pretending he didn’t mean what he clearly did mean.

Attempts to normalise racism are worrying. Attempts to normalise racism coming from a supposedly quality paper are not just worrying – they are totally inexcusable.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/08/giles-coren-right-royal-racist.html

Coren is the Times’ restaurant critic, and like several other ‘slebs, he has quaffed deep of the well of mediocrity. It’s unlikely he would have got his job, and appeared on TV – he was one of the ‘Supersizers’ who every week looked back at the cuisine in different periods of the past with Sue Perkins – if he didn’t come from a privileged background.

He is also sadly not alone in his sneers and abuse at Markle. The I’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown commented on it in her column in this morning’s edition of the paper. She noted the ugly racism hiding behind these sneers. They’re based on outrage at an American woman of colour with genuinely feminist views marrying into the royal family. How dare she! Especially after she edited Vogue to list the leading, most influential and inspirational women.

I’ve no doubt that part of the sneer also comes from part of the Tory right’s bitter hatred of environmentalism. The Daily Heil published a whole slew of articles a few years ago declaring global warming to be fake, because the Russians apparently said so. And Trump’s government is doing its level, horrendous best to close down and silence the Environmental Protection Agency for the Republicans’ supporters and donors in the petrochemical industry, like the notorious Koch brothers. I’ve got a feeling the Times is one of the other newspapers, whose columnists have tried to discredit climate change. I seem to remember one of the producers of the BBC science documentary series, Horizon, remarking at a talk at the Cheltenham Festival of Science a few years ago how he had been forced to put right gently another very well established journo, who didn’t believe in it.

I believe a number of members of the royal family are also patrons of the World Wide Fund for Nature, what used to be the World Wildlife Fund, and so do have an interest in conservation. Which would suggest that Harry’s statement on why he was having no more than two sprogs is entirely genuinely. One of the problems is overpopulation, although in the West birthrates are actually falling to or below replacement level, so that there may well be a demographic crisis due to this. Quite apart from all the nutters, who believe that it’s all part of the ‘Great Replacement’ in which the Jews are secretly destroying the White race to replace them with non-White immigrants.

This isn’t the first Coren has expressed noxious, right-wing views either. A little while ago he took it upon himself to sneer at people from council estates. I have no idea why, except perhaps just sheer snobbery. Now he’s found a new target in Megan Markle. And it’s an example of the racism, snobbery and reactionary anti-environmentalism that now permeates and shames the Tory press. And it shows just how nasty the Times has become under Murdoch.

 

Sam Seder on Disney’s Animatronic Donald Trump

Well, as Freddie Mercury once sang in Queen’s epic track, ‘Machines’, ‘The machines take over’, and this time there really ‘ain’t no rock ‘n’ roll’. Or as the blurb for this video puts it instead, the Trump animatronic is so horrifying it’ll haunt your dreams.

Disney have created a robot version of America’s most unpopular fascistic president for their Hall of Presidents. The Trumpdroid stands in front of the other animatronic US presidents, and recites a speech, with appropriate gestures and body movements, about his august predecessors were responsible for crafting the American constitution and political structure, and so creating the freedom that Americans enjoy today.

And Seder and his co-hosts are right: it is very creepy. The robotics technology used to animate the machine is really impressive, but it does bear out the observation of one Japanese robotics scientist. I forgotten the fellow’s name, unfortunately, but he shrewdly observed that people are uncomfortable with things that resemble them closely, but are still very different. Hence the human discomfort with robots when they become a little too accurate. Something similar was also said by Red Dwarf’s Kryten way back in the 1990s. Lister, or one of the other members of the ship’s highly dysfunctional crew, ask him why his manufacturers have made him look very much less than a perfect replica of a human. He replies by stating that it’s because this would make people feel uncomfortable around him, for exactly the same reasons the Japanese scientist suggested. And way back in the mid-1970s, an irrational fear of robots – ‘robophobia’, or ‘Grimwade’s Syndrome’, was one of the plot elements in the Tom Baker Dr. Who serial ‘The Robots of Death’. This particular serial was set on a sandminer, a vast mining vehicle, operated by a small human crew under which was a much larger labour force of robots. And the robots start shaking off their servitude. It’s explained in the show that some people have an irrational fear of robots, because although they look like humans, they don’t employ any body language. And so to them they appear as ‘the walking dead’.

Rather more humorously, Seder and his friends joke that the other mechanical presidents are looking at the Trumpdroid wondering how on Earth it got there. And that the President Lincoln android is just about to tell the rest of them that there’s no choice for it now: they have to put the pistols to their heads and blow their little robot brains out. They also joke that it’s rather like the bit on the SF series Westworld, when the robots look down at themselves and finally realise what they are.

Rather more seriously, the clip begins with a discussion between Seder and a caller about the GOP’s tax bill, and why people join the Republican party. He states some join, because they hate the Environmental Protection Agency, and what to use highly toxic pesticides on their land, like Tom Delaye. Others really hate trade unions, and what to destroy them to keep ordinary people poor. But the majority do it to enrich themselves through corporate sponsorship. Such is the state of American politics. And the same comments also apply to the corporate Dems of Hillary Clinton, and to the Conservatives and Blairite Labour over this side of the Pond.

If these characters remain in power, perhaps the world would be much better if the machines really took over. Or the Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise. After all, as Ripley says in the 2nd film, Aliens, when she discovers the way she and the space marines have been betrayed by the Corporation, the aliens ‘don’t f**k each other over for a percentage’.

From C. 1989: Pravda International on Launch of Greenpeace Rock Album in Soviet Union

Pravda International, with pic of Yeltsyn before he became president. This seems to have been before the drunkenness took hold. It also doesn’t show his uncritical adulation of capitalism, which destroyed the Soviet economy and caused massive unemployment and poverty.

Way back in the 1980s when I was at College, I used to buy Pravda International occasionally. It was, very roughly, an English language version of the Russian Communist party newspaper, but with articles also drawn from the other Russian newspapers and magazines Izvestia, Argumenty I Fakty, Moscow News, as well as by the English editions own staff. Like many magazines over the years, it seems to have folded due to lack of interest. I tried to buy it from my local newsagent, but found out that it was unavailable. The two big magazine distributors had divided Bristol up between them, and one of them wouldn’t carry it. So guess which half of Bristol I was in.

I nevertheless kept hold of some of them, as they were records of an exciting, historic time. This was when Glaznost and Perestroika were in full swing, the Soviet Union was being democratised according to Gorbachev’s belief that democracy and Communism could be combined to produce a new, vigorous, prosperous Soviet Union. The Soviets were opening their borders and allowing western media into the country. The Cold War was thawing rapidly, and right across the Communist bloc censorship was being lifted. The Soviet people were making their voices heard, and books, plays, poetry and art that had previously been banned were now being published and publicly discussed. Stalin and his minions stood, thanks to dissident Marxist historians like Roy and Zhores Medvedev, openly condemned as monstrous mass murderers. And the families, friends and loved ones of his victims organised to demand memorials to the millions he had murdered. And instead of hatred, distrust and the looming threat of nuclear holocaust, for a few years it looked like the peoples of the West and East would live as friends and co-workers. The missiles were being decommissioned, the silos filled in. Across the world it seemed that our peoples would never again have to fear the threat of nuclear attack, or invasion from across the other side of the Iron Curtain.

And I also dug out the old copy of Pravda International out of a sense of mischief. RT UK and America have been under attack recently, accused of spreading Russian propaganda and interfering with our politics. What this means is that the Russian-owned news agency has actually done some good journalism, and uncovered the poverty, misery and despair caused by corporatist late capitalism and the gutting of the British and American welfare state and working class organisations. It’s what our own, domestic news networks should be reporting on, but instead they’ve been turned into part of the same corporate system, publishing nothing but mainstream propaganda for the corporatist elite and their puppets and shills in the political parties. I wanted to dig it out to show that the Russians have always had a media presence in the West, and there was a time when it also really frightened some capitalist interests. Although flicking through that issue of the magazine, many of the stories were about western businesses, including British firms, securing contracts to work with Soviet enterprises, as the economy opened up.

Russia, like everywhere else, is also suffering from environmental damage and climate change. Simon Reeve, in his recent TV journey across Russia from the Far East to St. Petersburg, stopped in Siberia to show the terrifying changes that are occurring in the Russian north. The permafrost is melting causing the remaining rock and soil to subside. This has created vast craters in the tundra. One Russian environmental scientist took Reeve to see one of these. It was staggering, the size of the vast Arizona meterorite crater in the US. It was as if a piece of land the size of a city had been scooped out of the Arctic.

These climatic changes are threatening the stability of many of the cities the Russians built up in the north. They’re also a further threat to all humanity, as they release methane, a greenhouse gas far more powerful than Carbon Dioxide. About 25 times more powerful. This threatens to create runaway global warming beyond the tipping point, to the point where the survival or human civilisation, if not the human species itself, is very much under threat.

Looking through this old issue of Pravda International, it was therefore particularly interesting to find an article by their staffer, Jennie Walsh, reporting the launch of a rock album by Greenpeace, released by the Soviet recording company Melodiya, to raise awareness of environmental issues.
The article, ‘Breakthrough for the Environment’, reads

The ecological pressure group Greenpeace has long highlighted the international potential of the environmental movement. The recent release of their rock compilation album, Breakthrough marks an important step forward for the campaign, and for Western music.

Two years ago Greenpeace chairman David McTaggart approached Ian Flookes of the Wasted Talent Artists Agency with a view to putting on a concert of Western bands in the Soviet Union in order to generate roubles for a Soviet-based Greenpeace campaign. Political problems prevented this at the time, but in the changing climate of perestroika the plans were restarted last year, though a compilation record was considered more appropriate.

‘After what happened at Chernobyl, I think the Soviet authorities have become extremely environment-conscious and their approach to Greenpeace and to the project has been one of great support’, Flookes told Pravda International.

With the full cooperation of the Soviet state record company Melodiya, who were granted independent status last year, Breakthrough is the first major release of contemporary Western rock music in the USSR.

It is the first time that Melodiya has been able to do a ‘normal’ promotion campaign, with many of the artists (who all gave their services free of charge) present at the Moscow launch in March. There was an incredible reception. One record store queue was over 7,000 people, which is quite phenomenal – even by Soviet standards!

The purpose behind Breakthrough, however, must not be forgotten amid such hysteria. Kate Karam of Greenpeace emphasised that in releasing the album, they wanted to educate as much as to entertain. Despite perestroika, it is still difficult to put out independent information in the USSR, and the album provided a vehicle for the distribution of a booklet highlighting the work of Greenpeace and the environmental problems of the USSR.

The profits from the record sales will be shared between Greenpeace and the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity, one of the first independent, non-governmental organisations to be founded in the Soviet Union.

The money will be spent only on projects within the USSR. This is a major indication of the political changes that have taken place. Greenpeace is quite a radical organisation by any standards, and to have some of the top soviet scientists and public servants (including Velikov, vice-president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences) support them through the Foundation, has been vital to the project. It is also an important challenge – a challenge to get programmes started in the USSR while maintaining the traditional Greenpeace principle of direct action.

Several environmental projects have now been formally agreed. Greenpeace will use some of the funds from the record to organise an East-West exchange programme in cooperation with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, for children to study environmental problems. Projects in the pipeline include work with the International Foundation to establish a central clearing house for information on atmospheric pollution problems and trying to involve the Soviet Union in the campaign to stop the industrial pollution of the Baltic Sea.

‘We don’t want to impose our Western standards about the environment on the Soviet Union,’ explains Karam. ‘I think that’s a danger with many of the Western organisations taking advantage of the new political climate there. Greenpeace is going to Russia to learn about their specific problems, because it is wrong to develop homogeneous attitudes about the environment. We need to study and talk to people before we launch into setting up offices and membership drives. Getting educational materials out in Russia is a big enough challenge right now without going straight into direct action projects.’

The popularisation of ‘green politics’ in the West may be little more than rhetoric on the part of its leaders, but it has encouraged the critical eye to fall on eastern Europe with regard to its environmental record. The socialist system may have failed the environment as much as the capitalist, but the big difference is the West has had 10 years lead time with environmentalists pushing legislation through. ‘I think the question is now how bad the USSR’s record is, but what is going to happen over the next 10 years – not in the past 50. I don’t think its fair to criticise.’

Now that the Soviet authorities have made active moves to encourage environmental concern, particularly by creating a Ministry for the Environment, Greenpeace are keen to see whether other east European countries follow suit.

Breakthrough is to be released in all the east European countries as well as in the UK, USA, India, Australia and Japan, emphasising the international aspect of the green movement.

The release of the album worldwide, under the title Rainbow Warriors, will probably be slightly more of a gamble than it has been in the Soviet Union. Compassion fatigue in the West, however, might be overcome by the quality of the record.

There probably hasn’t been an album released yet, which features so many top musicians – U2, Simple Minds, The Eurythmics, Bryan Ferry, Peter Gabriel and Sting to name a few. There are 26 tracks, all of which have recently been hits. For many, the album will probably have an intrinsic value just for this reason. The fact that it supports Greenpeace will be a bonus.

In the three weeks since the album was released in the USSR over 10,000 copies have been received on the forms that were enclosed in the information booklets.

The worldwide launch is on May 22nd and if it sells for reasons other than its musical content, its educational and mobilising potential could be as effective as the fundraising.

Now, unfortunately, we have had Russian hackers releasing scientific data in an attempt to discredit climate change and global warming, while Trump is also trying to stifle climate science, including the virtual closure of America’s Environmental protection Agency. He and the rest of the Republican party are determined that only the paid propagandists for the Koch brothers will be heard.

Scientists and Hackers Back Up Climate Data to Prevent Trump Deleting It

Here’s another act of resistance against the Trump regime. In this very short video, Farron Cousins from The Ring of Fire explains how, during Trump’s inauguration, a group of 60 climate scientists and hackers got together to go through the US government’s website to back up all the data on climate change. This information is now stored on servers in Europe. The scientists, technicians and hackers did so to prevent the information from being deliberately purged by Trump. The group intends to compare this with future releases of information on climate by Trump and his cronies in order to prevent him from falsifying evidence against climate change.

Cousins makes very short work of Kelly-Anne Conway’s statements that Trump believes in climate change. Conway is Trump’s spokeswoman, and she’s claimed that he believes in it, as he’s talked about it in the past. Well, no, he hasn’t actually. The only time the Permatanned Duce talked about it, he declared that it was ‘a Chinese hoax’.

Cousins shows how the Republicans not only do not believe in climate change, but they confuse it with weather. Conway apparently says that Trump’s aware that climate change is occurring, because the weather also changes. Cousins shows that while the weather does change from day to day, the climate is rather different. But as he says, the Republicans don’t believe climate change is real, because it still snows, so this obviously disproves global warming.

This is excellent news, as Trump has already shown his determination to expunge and falsify information on climate change through imposing gagging orders preventing officials working for the Environmental Protection Agency from publishing data that does not match the Trump-approved party line.

Other scientists are planning to organise a march on Washington as a protest against Trump’s and the Republicans’ attacks on climate science, evolution and renewable energy.

It’s great that so much is being done to defend climate science from attacks from Trump and the Republicans. And this is just one facet of a general movement by millions of people throughout the world against Trump and his policies.