Day: November 4, 2023
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NPR News: 11-04-2023 8PM EDT
Pro-Russian Ukrainian Politician Reported In Intensive Care After Being Shot Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
At a time when America is involved in two wars — both of which are at this moment killing thousands of innocent people, and either of which could spiral out of control and cost many American lives — the leaders of the Republican Party are holding the nation hostage to their own reactionary agenda.
The catastrophe unfolding in Gaza is also driving a generational wedge in the American left-liberal community, just when a largely unified neofascist American right threatens to engulf our politics.
Michael Johnson, the new speaker of the House, supports additional war funding for Israel but opposes additional funding for Ukraine — as does his puppet master, Donald Trump.
Ukraine is fighting to stop Putin’s aggression. If Ukraine loses this war, Putin will be emboldened to push into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and every other nation he claims was once part of the Russian Empire. America will be drawn into a violent confrontation.
I find additional aid to the Israeli government problematic at a time when it is violating the laws of war (the Geneva Conventions) in Gaza, and likely radicalizing more Islamic militants around the world. At the least, we should condition such aid on Israel’s commitment to establish two fully sovereign states.
Johnson’s plan to finance the Israeli aid package by cutting back IRS funding is bonkers. On Wednesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — the budget scorekeeper — said the bill would increase the federal deficit by $12.5 billion over the next decade.
Meanwhile, Johnson and his extremist Republicans in the House — encouraged by Trump — are planning to hold the nation hostage to fund the U.S. government after November 17. They will demand spending cuts, claiming they want to reduce the budget deficit and national debt.
But those spending cuts will harm Americans dependent on such spending. Besides, the budget deficit and debt are largely the products of the Trump, George W. Bush, and Reagan tax cuts, all of which have mainly benefited big corporations and wealthy Americans (and almost none of which “trickled down” to average working people).
Without those massive tax cuts, we would not have the large deficits and debt we have today. If we want to reduce those deficits and the national debt, the first step is to repeal the Trump tax cut.
Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, and Michael Johnson are not identical, of course, but they are all on the authoritarian spectrum.
None respects or supports democratic institutions. All bully their opponents. All are beholden to oligarchs (in America, billionaire backers).
All are pulling us into a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, between freedom and strongman tyranny.
The next U.S. presidential election is almost exactly one year from now. All of us have a moral duty to do everything we can — non-violently — to ensure that our democracy endures.
This article was published at Robert Reich’s Substack
The transformation to a fossil-fuel-free, all-electric economy would take the world back to living conditions in the 1800’s by ridding the world of crude oil, coal and natural gas usage and result in:
- The pre-1800’s, when the world had no fuels other than wood, dung, and crop waste, and used animals for transport.
- A food crisis in which billions will die. Fossil fuels are used to plant, harvest, process, refrigerate, deliver, and cook food for most of the 8 billion people living on earth. And for the plastic to keep it safe and fresh a lot longer.
- A forest and wildlife crisis as billions go back to using wood as their primary cooking and home heating fuel. Cutting down forests. The air would be far dirtier because of burning wood for fuel.
- There would be no products that are based on oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, coal, and natural gas! Such as life-saving medical equipment, plastics, many chemicals that make our lives better, and just about everything we take to be modern, such as cell phones.
- The elimination of all of today’s militaries and space programs as the world reverts to when civilization existed without oil.
- Eliminate the need for airports that now accommodate more than 20,000 commercial aircraft and more than 50,000 military aircraft.
- Eliminate the needs for major shipping ports that accommodate military and cruise ships.
- Eliminate the more than 50,000 merchant ships, that are moving products around the world that are made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil, coal and natural gas!
Cloudy days, nights, and evenings for solar, and wind droughts, are the death of a continuous supply of electricity. Without fossil fuels there will be no “continuous” reliable electricity to support communications, hospitals, electronics, manufacturing, air conditioning, refrigeration, or heating, etc.
In a world policymakers want to be dominated by wind turbines and solar panels to generate occasional electricity whenever the wind blows or the sun shines, there will be nothing to “electrify” as there will be nothing that needs electricity. We cannot manufacture anything without fossil fuels, and they are the raw materials of everything we take for granted.
In the 1800’s nothing needed electricity. There was none.
Today’s policymakers do not understand that everything that needs electricity is made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, coal, or natural gas from the light bulb to the iPhone, defibrillator, computers, spacecraft, and medications. Thus, renewables of wind turbines and solar panels are not displacing the need for fossil fuels.
Interestingly, all the components of wind turbines and solar panels are also based on fossil fuels derivatives for manufacture. Thus, in a fossil-free society, we’re back in the 1800’s. Life was short and hard for the common man!
A few impacts on today’s humanity of a fossil-fuel-free society are that it would:
- Drastically reduce the homeless population as all the tents and sleeping bags utilized by the homeless are all made from fossil fuels!
- Drastically reduce the unfunded pension liabilities associated with current longevity, as few people would live beyond their 40’s!
- A smaller number of colleges would be needed because there would be no need for doctors for hospitals, or engineers for infrastructure development, that are all based on the components made from fossil fuels!
- A significant loss of lives of the 8 billion on this planet from diseases, starvation, and weather-related fatalities, without the food, medications, and products that are all based on the components made from fossil fuels!
We should be careful with what we wish for. From the proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” tells us that:
- You can’t rid the world of fossil fuels and
- Continue to enjoy the products and fuels that are currently made with the derivatives manufactured with fossil fuels.
Just as food is fuel for our bodies, fossil fuels are food for our way of life. They provide the energy and products we need for prosperous lives. No sane person would cut off their main food supply without lining up for a new food supply first, unless they wanted to starve to death. Do those that want to end fossil fuels want our way of live and civilization to starve to death?
We want a bright future for our kids and grandkids, don’t you? Fossil fuels provide the energy needed.