alanjjohnstone
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Oily Beto
“…O’Rourke wants to be everything to everyone. To take a look back at his career, that’s an invitation he’s extended to the fossil fuel industry. With just about 11 years to begin rapidly transitioning the US off of fossil fuels – per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – an O’Rourke presidency is not a risk the US or the world can afford to take… his six-year record in Congress – representing a solidly blue district – included siding with Republicans more than his fellow Democrats did, including on some key climate votes
Weekly Worker on Marx’s “anti-Semitism”
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1242/marx-and-jewish-emancipation/
So EU elections may after all take place if this Brexit delay goes ahead.
Shall we have a token candidate standing under our registered name World Socialist Party (EU)?
I have already pointed out that nonentities can become presidents, ALB.
He is likely to garner the anti-radical Democrat vote
The money-laundering scam. They were all at it.
https://www.dw.com/en/how-millions-of-dirty-dollars-were-laundered-out-of-venezuela/a-47867313
“There are two exchange rates in Venezuela: the national currency, the bolivar, and the US dollar,” Malcher told DW. “The rate of the bolivar to the US dollar is fixed by the central bank.”
But not everyone can convert bolivares into dollars, and vice-versa. Only a few companies can operate an official conversion from bolivares to dollars – including PDVSA.
All those who don’t have access to official exchanges must operate on the black currency market, which has very different rates than the official ones.
Bolivares have a much higher value at the official exchange rate than at the black market rate – and the group of fraudsters reportedly exploited both the official and unofficial currency exchange systems. “The fraudsters had dollars,” Malcher explained. “With the dollars, they bought bolivares on the black market. They then gave a loan to PDVSA, which paid them back at the official exchange rate” – which resulted in them having many more dollars than what they started out with.
This allowed the group to increase their initial investment tenfold.
The operation began in December of 2014, and was meant to embezzle $600 million (about €534 million). By May 2015, the group had been able to double the amount to $1.2 billion (€1.07 billion).“A great many different models were chosen,” Malcher told DW. “We know that a very large part of the money first went to Malta, namely to shell companies which had ‘nominee shareholders,’ strawmen to whom the companies belonged – but only on paper.”
“From Malta, they then reportedly invested this money in different businesses. For example, they invested in bonds issued by a company, or they reportedly invested on a grand scale in real estate in Spain. Or they transferred it through so many banks that the sender was no longer recognizable,” Malcher said.Beto O’Rourke to run for president. The former Texas congressman confirmed Wednesday that he will enter the 2020 race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
One more dire scenario to add to the many others.
“…potentially devastating temperature rises of 3C to 5C in the Arctic are now inevitable even if the world succeeds in cutting greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris agreement, research has found. Winter temperatures at the north pole are likely to rise by at least 3C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century, and there could be further rises to between 5C and 9C above the recent average for the region, according to the UN.
Such changes would result in rapidly melting ice and permafrost, leading to sea level rises and potentially to even more destructive levels of warming. Scientists fear Arctic heating could trigger a climate “tipping point” as melting permafrost releases the powerful greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, which in turn could create a runaway warming effect…If melting permafrost triggers a tipping point, the likely results would be global temperature rises well in excess of the 2C set as the limit of safety under the Paris agreement. Nearly half of Arctic permafrost could be lost even if global carbon emissions are held within the Paris agreement limits, according to the UN study…Even if all carbon emissions were to be halted immediately, the Arctic region would still warm by more than 5C by the century’s end, compared with the baseline average from 1986 to 2005, according to the study from UN Environment. That is because so much carbon has already been poured into the atmosphere. The oceans also have become vast stores of heat, the effect of which is being gradually revealed by changes at the poles and on global weather systems, and will continue to be felt for decades to come.”
“What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic,” said Joyce Msuya, the acting executive director of UN Environment. “We have the science. Now more urgent climate action is needed to steer away from tipping points that could be even worse for our planet than we first thought.”
But as always the scientists offer a glimmer of hope.
“There was still a need to fulfil the aims of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change and to take further action that could stave off some of the worst effects of warming in the near term. “We need to make substantial near-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, black carbon and other so-called short-lived climate pollutants all over the world,” said Kimmo Tiilikainen, Finland’s environment minister. Making drastic cuts to black carbon and short-lived pollutants such as methane could reduce warming by more than 0.5C, according to previous research….”
Can capitalism fulfil “urgent” and “drastic” and “substantial” action? Can such vocabulary be translated into political and economic policies?
New Zealand Extinction Rebellion critiqued
https://libcom.org/news/can-extinction-rebellion-aotearoanz-help-save-world-13032019
“…The entire system of production based on wage labour and capital needs to be replaced with a system which produces for human needs. All the half measures of converting aspects of capitalism to limit the damage to the environment, while the fundamentals of capitalism remain in place, are just wishful thinking, and to pretend they could solve our problems is deception on a grand scale….”
Having made such a fuss that they were not withdrawing embassy staff, the US has now removed them all.
Why?
Ominous?
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47532522
Former Indian central bank governor Raghuram Rajan told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme
“I think capitalism is under serious threat because it’s stopped providing for the many, and when that happens, the many revolt against capitalism,”
He said governments cannot afford to ignore social inequality when considering the economy.
He said authoritarian regimes arise “when you socialise all the means of production”.
Media Lens analyses the anti-Corbyn campaign
The Fake News Nazi: Corbyn, Williamson and the Anti-Semitism Scandal
“…He has been smeared for not bowing low enough, for not singing loudly enough, for hating women, for disrespecting gay people, for consorting with terrorists, for refusing to unleash a nuclear holocaust, for being a shambolic leader, for being a shambolic dresser, for leading Labour towards certain electoral disaster, for being a Putinite stooge, for aping Trump, and so on. Now, finally, someone widely admired for thirty years as a decent, socialist MP, has been transformed into an anti-semite; or as game show assistant and political commentator Rachel Riley implies, a ‘Nazi’…But the smear campaign against Corbyn is not rooted in concern for the welfare of Jewish people; it is not even about blocking a political leader who cares about Palestinian rights. It is about preventing Corbyn from undoing Tony Blair’s great achievement of transforming the Labour Party into a second Tory Party, thus ensuring voters have no option challenging corporate domination…”
I’m convinced that if AOC was eligible to run as president she would be in the running.
She is 29 and you have to be at least 35 to be the US President
Geo-engineering deemed safe. Or is it?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/11/solar-geoengineering-climate-change-new-study
“…study co-author David Keith, a Harvard professor who works in engineering and public policy, said researchers should not rule out geoengineering yet.
“I am not saying we know it works and we should do it now,” he said. “Indeed, I would absolutely oppose deployment now. There’s still only a little group of people looking at this, there’s lots of uncertainty.”…there is the possibility that solar geoengineering could really substantially reduce climate risks for the most vulnerable”…”Alan Robock, a geophysics professor and researcher at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said “We’re not able right now to say whether, if global warming continues, we should ever decide to start spraying this stuff into the stratosphere. Would solar-radiation management, would geoengineering make it more dangerous or less dangerous? That’s the question we have to answer, and we don’t have enough information.”
The US has begun building parts for a new ground-launched cruise missile in anticipation of the end of a cold war treaty that banned them, the Pentagon has confirmed. Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said on Monday that fabrication had begun on components for a new ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM),
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/us-cruise-missile-development-russia-inf-treaty-
The Wall St candidate is yet to emerge within the Democrat hopefuls.
However, Big Business has a reserve to parachute into the race if need be
“…Joe Biden is poised to come to the rescue of the corporate political establishment — at a time when, in the words of the [New York] Times, “the sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats.” ….”
