Gotta Beef with Trees

 

           From insightcrime.org

Cow belches and flatulence have been on the humorous, but very real, side of greenhouse gas emissions (producing methane, which is 23 times heavier than carbon dioxide). The demand for beef is still rising, and cattle ranches have been absorbing increasing amounts of forests that used to be part of the carbon dioxide absorption system. Aside from the issue of raising and killing sentient beings as a food source, that cutting back/burning forest land for ranching is increasingly challenging to environmentalists seeking to contain global warming.

We are losing forests for all kinds of reasons. Some from wildfires, which are themselves a product of global warming. But vastly more land for agricultural and mining reasons. Even to organized crime. Jennifer Devine, Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State University, writing for the November 15th TheConversation.com, tells us: “Every year the world loses an estimated 25 million acres (10 million hectares) of forest, an area larger than the state of Indiana. Nearly all of it is in the tropics.

“Tropical forests store enormous quantities of carbon and are home to at least two-thirds of the world’s living species, so deforestation has disastrous consequences for climate change and conservation. Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, slowing its buildup in the atmosphere – but when they are burned or logged, they release their stored carbon, fueling further warming. Tropical forest loss generates nearly 50% more greenhouse gases than does the global transportation sector.

“At the 2021 U.N. conference on climate change in Glasgow, more than 100 world leaders pledged on Nov. 1 to halt deforestation by 2030. In the Declaration on Forests and Land Use, countries outlined their strategy, which focuses on supporting trade and development policies that promote sustainable production and consumption…

“Among major products that promote deforestation, beef is in a class by itself. Beef production is now estimated to be the biggest driver of deforestation worldwide, accounting for 41% of global forest losses. In the Amazon alone, cattle ranching accounts for 80% of deforestation. From 2000 to 2011, beef production emitted nearly 200 times more greenhouse gases than soy, and 60 times more than oil palm in tropical countries with high deforestation rates.

“Beef is produced in many countries, but it mainly drives forest losses in Latin America. On the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa and the plains of the U.S. Midwest, cattle graze without directly contributing to deforestation… [B]eef production in these regions indirectly contributes to deforestation by increasing demand for soy-based feed… Under President Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon – mainly for beef and soy production – has accelerated.

“Together, soy and palm oil drive nearly 10% of deforestation annually – almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares)… Clearing land for palm oil plantations fuels large-scale rainforest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia, where most of the world’s palm oil is produced, destroying habitat for endangered and threatened species such as orangutans, elephants and tigers. More recently, palm oil production has expanded to other parts of Asia, Central and South America and Central and West Africa.” The rising demand for wood products is also driving deforestation. 

All bad stuff, but even when deforestation is clearly illegal, whether from bribes to officials to pretend that clearing fires are “acts of nature” or simply to look the other way, there is another very ugly side to deforestation few of us ever think about: the involvement of organized crime: “Making the supply chains for [beef, soy palm oil and wood products] more sustainable is an important strategy for reducing deforestation. But another industry plays an important role, especially in tropical forests: organized crime. Large, lucrative industries offer opportunities to move and launder money; as a result, in many parts of the world, deforestation is driven by the drug trade.

“In South America and Central America, drug trafficking organizations are the vanguard of deforestation. Drug traffickers are illegally logging forests in the Amazon and hiding cocaine in timber shipments to Europe. In my research, I have analyzed how traffickers illegally log and raise cattle in protected areas in Central America to launder money and claim drug smuggling territory. Other scholars estimate that 30% to 60% of deforestation in the region is ‘narco-deforestation.’

“Legal and illegal activities also interweave along the commodity chains for palm oil and soy. Forest Trends, a U.S. nonprofit that promotes market-based approaches to forest conservation, estimates that nearly half of deforestation for commercial products like cattle, soy, palm oil and wood products is illegal. According to the group’s analysis, exports tied to illegal deforestation are worth US$61 billion annually and are responsible for 25% of total global tropical deforestation.” Devine. We seldom link corruption to climate change, but as you can see, that hard fact is just one of so many barriers humanity faces to contain climate change’s existential threat to life as we know it.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as my continuing presentation of variables that push against the containment of greenhouse gasses, it is equally clear that the issue is vastly more complicated than most of us realize… even as we must find a viable answer.

International Nationalism

Many of my bloggers are aware that I am a “US Foreign Service” brat, the stepson of an American diplomat who entered the US Department of State after service as an Army (later Air Force) officer during WWII. My mother, who worked as an analyst with the Department, married my stepfather… and we were immediately posted to the US Embassy in Beirut Lebanon. How exotic that was for me, but I soon fell in love with the country and the people, understanding the complexity of dealing in a world of different belief systems, expectations and values. I learned to respect those differences, making friends and absorbing the differences by discovering the similarities. I was 13 when I arrived, 17 when I left.

The United States was obsessed with fighting “communism” in those days. America was generally held in high regard as the model society. Excellent local Lebanese high schoolers often found their way to colleges and universities in France, England but most of all the United States. One of the best universities in the entire Middle East was the American University of Beirut, where I wound up taking an advanced science class when my high school ran out of advanced placement courses in that field. It was exceptional. It was also the home of the best regional hospital and a training ground for top medical students. I got some pretty spectacular emergency treatment there on more than one occasion. Don’t ask!

For so many developing nations and those without a history of super-exceptional colleges and universities, from Mexico to the People’s Republic of China, their go-to alternatives were often the best institutions of higher learning in the United States and England. Some future presidents and prime ministers got their educations in significant part in this way. Russia offered a tailored course of instruction with severe political bias as an alternative, but they carefully focused on training foreign students to be their operatives and allies when they graduated. Western universities simply mingled foreign students into their general curricula, what every student was offered regardless of country of origin. 

For colleges and universities that were in dire need of financial support, these students were usually full-tuition attendees with scholarships from their countries of origin… or perhaps with parents who found some way to pay full freight. This full-tuition aspect of foreign students, not relying on any local financial aid, later became a subject of controversy as foreign students seemed to be displacing American born students, primarily for these financial reasons. As the federal government and states cut direct grants for post-secondary education while raising tuition, an absurd and deeply impactful failure of our nation to invest in itself, foreign students were often coveted by American colleges and university who needed the money.

For a number of those attracted to the highest level of scientific and engineering, many remained in the United States creating one of the greatest pools of American startups-turned-mega-corporations, a massive set of job creators in this country, filling up our rather substantial deficit of locally born Americans with the right STEM education. That was the way it worked for decades. When I was in my undergraduate years in the United States, I thoroughly enjoyed the friendships I made with individuals from all over the world. Some of my classmates wound up in the highest reaches of leadership in their home countries. They carried their understanding an appreciation of the United States into their diverse roles.

With the downfall of the Soviet Union, the rise of China and the sequential bungling of our exceptionally long wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, the United States slowly became suspicious of foreigners, turning inwards and slowly closing doors that were once flung open to create deep connective tissue between America, once the exemplar of democracy and economic success, and so many developing countries. Even before the pandemic decimated cross-border travel and education, the philosophy of American “superiority” and “America First” began to seal our borders against one of the most powerful aspects of American power across the globe: training future business, scientific and political leaders.

Xenophobia manifest itself in immigration restrictions, not just across our southern “we’ll build a wall and Mexico will pay for it” era but in our denying educational and H-IB visas for essential workers where the US simply did not have sufficient qualified STEM applicants. The Trump era was highly exclusionary to foreigners, a trend that does not seem to have reversed itself during the Biden administration, pushed a bit harder by the never-ending COVID experience. As the neo-populist anti-science, anti-education sentiment has taken root as a driving force in the Republican Party, the denigration of higher education, exacerbated by the exclusionary era of “white American me,” seems to have been slammed at every level. National security, justifiable at some level, was often the justification for throwing foreigners, particularly Chinese, out of US universities… a “baby with the bathwater” policy.

But make no mistake, this exclusionary trend was also becoming a global epidemic as Emily J. Levine, Stanford Associate Professor of education and history, writing for the November 14th Los Angeles Times, explains: “The cosmopolitan values of higher education are in retreat before a rising wave of provincialism. International student enrollment at universities in the United States continues to decline, while branch campuses of American universities abroad are being reorganized or shut down. This trend has ominous implications — and not only for education and research.

“Universities stand at the intersection of national interest and universal goals. While they play a role in nation-building, they also promote the pursuit of truth, which has historically benefited from the free exchange of ideas and the free movement of scholars and students across borders…. In an era of dwindling global institutions, the university is the latest to experience a decline in power and influence. The open flow of ideas is now at risk.” 

Some countries, notably Canada as evidenced by the above graphic, invited the best and the brightest to study and work in that country, an effort to absorb those future leaders and scientists that could no longer study or work in America. Major US tech companies in dire need of STEM expertise quickly opened new research centers in Canada. Canada wanted those job-creators even as the US no longer did. Joint research efforts involving the US are dying on the vine, just as other nations see our policies as their opportunity to replace us (does “they shall not replace us” sound familiar?).

“In 2020, President Trump issued an order banning Chinese graduate students and researchers in a number of scientific fields. President Biden’s administration has maintained the ban. This year, Sen. Tom Cotton(R-Ark.) proposed a prohibition on funding from Chinese entities to U.S. universities and the end of the 10-year multiple-entry visa program for Chinese citizens.

“American nationalists like Cotton rarely acknowledge that the Chinese are following a path laid by U.S. students. In the 19th century, nearly 10,000 Americans traveled to study at universities in Germany. When they returned, they established institutions modeled on the ones they found abroad.

“The Americans’ adaptations of the German universities were so effective that by 1900, the flow of traffic reversed. Germans attended the World’s Fairs in Chicago and St. Louis to learn about American developments in higher education, such as coeducation and applied mathematics. Research and innovation in the natural sciences and the humanities expanded as a result of this ‘competitive emulation.’

“Despite some German concerns that American students might steal trade secrets, intellectual curiosity overcame protectionism. Scientists and scholars from the two countries became partners as well as competitors. Professors traveled back and forth between New York and Berlin on exchanges, sharing and advancing ideas. One Prussian education leader marveled that this mutual learning ‘represents progress … in the direction of the intellectual unity of the human race.’

“The two world wars undermined academic cooperation. The university was pulled toward the state, and faculty members promoted themselves as experts who could advance national goals… After World War II, it took numerous efforts to revive the dormant values of transatlantic scientific exchange and transparency. Even the international programs of the Cold War era, such as the Ford Foundation-funded Free University of Berlin, the Fulbright Program and the German Academic Exchange Service, were more expressions of ‘soft power’ than true scientific partnerships.” Levine. As America disengages from the world, closes the opportunity to build lasting bridges and train/hire the best and the brightest on earth, we simply plunge in our influence and global competitive edge. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and that “soft power” has been the major path to America’s success at the cutting edge of scientific/engineering achievement and political influence in modern times.

Learnin' to Live in a Police State

   

 US Capitol 1/6/21  US Capitol 1/6/21

Charlotteville 8/17Charlotteville 8/17

Rittenhouse with Assault Rifle

Books banned in Texas

Germany: Burning the Reichstag

Hitler’s Private Brownshirts

Civilians kicking Jews

Nazi Book burningLearnin’ to Live in a Police State

                                                Walkin’ in Hitler’s Footsteps

“Yet we cannot avoid noting with concern how today, and not only in Europe, we are witnessing a retreat from democracy.” Pope Francis speaking in Greece, December 4th.

There are so many signs that “undesirable” Americans are being marginalized, pushed aside, denied rights, labeled as suspects and eliminated, literally and figuratively. Especially non-white, non-traditional minorities. History has been here before, even in the United States. Slavery and Jim Crow laws. According sparsely populated states vastly more voting power in Congress than huge-population urban states. Voter suppression and gerrymandering to push out vestiges of unwanted voters that the legislatures of over twenty of our states would prefer gone. A highly partisan Supreme Court that has been appointed from a distinct minority of voters, that does not reflect the majority will, by reason of such voting anomalies. Introducing censorship, “what politicians deem reflective of their position and purging the rest” into academia, from public primary and secondary schools to state colleges and universities. Book banning. Faculty loyalty surveys. Few gun restrictions. Moving the whole country back in time.

Take a good hard look at the two maps above. One sure seems to suggest we are a right-wing country with the majority hard into the red. Not really but… That’s where the current political configuration is centered despite a Democrat in the White House and slight Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Yet because of the filibuster reality, state control of voting and voting districts and the allocation by our Founding Fathers of two US Senators from each state regardless of size, notwithstanding that unambiguous majority of Americans (over 85% live in urban areas) represented in the 3D spike in the second map, on a national basis, 30% of American voters call the shots for the rest. The United States is not a truly representative democracy. Ah, but as Pope Francis noted above, autocratic populism is shoving democracy out the door all over the world. The United States just seems to be on the very active side of that movement.

Add the proliferation of almost as many guns – including semi-automatic assault rifles – as there are people, heavily concentrated in those states marked in red above, and you may be witnessing a transition from what we thought was a peaceful democracy where Americans respected and lived with election outcomes to a dramatically clearly oppressive autocracy. We’ve seen autocrats rise and oppress their people all over the world – Maduro, Castro, Xi, Putin, etc. – and moaned about the toll in human rights and the will of the people. We were boastful, having fought in two world wars to support democracy over brutal autocracy, believing the autocratic oppression would never happen here. The Civil War is long gone. Never again? Ah… if only…

This blog isn’t as much about the empowerment of well-armed vigilantes in lieu of trained police officers. I’ve already written about that. See my November 20th Vigilante Justice an American Tradition and my November 29th The New American Right of Self-Offense blogs. Or the confusion over what “critical race theory” (CRT) is so the right can ban it. Covered in my November 18th OK, OK, It’s Really Bad… But What is It? blog. Or even the challenge to Roe vs Wade currently before that partisan US Supreme Court. See my November 4th Circumventing the Constitution – Unintended Consequences blog. The rise of our right, militias and the concomitant political American leadership shift are reflected in the above photographic comparison of pre-WWII Germany and the contemporary United States.

Today’s is more about the culture wars: banning books and demanding that academics declare their political views as a condition of keeping their jobs. Think that isn’t happening? Well, welcome to right wing mandates that are flowing like polluted water, washing away minority rights, opposing viewpoints, free speech and democracy in a flood of toxic legislation… under the leadership of Texas and Florida, where two governors vying for Trump greatness in 2024 are tripping all over themselves in anti-democratic lurches to the right. The “rest of the red” generally follows suit.

Evangelicals are now empowered to impose their social and religious prejudices on those with other beliefs (most of us) – including through red state anti-CRT and public-school book bans by statute or executive order. Facts folks would like to ignore have left the building. Andrew Solomon, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia and a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale, found his 2012 book “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity,” which showed compassion and support for children facing gender identity issues, was being held up as derelict and unpatriotic. It was banned in China… and Texas. Lot of red states have these book bans and teacher restrictions (violations result in firings and defunding offending schools). 

But that’s just the beginning. Back in June, “In his continued push against the ‘indoctrination of students,’ [Florida] Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday [6/22] signed legislation that [requires] public universities and colleges to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints to support ‘intellectual diversity.’

“The survey will discern ‘the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented’ in public universities and colleges, and seeks to find whether students, faculty and staff ‘feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom,’ according to the bill.

“The measure, which [went] into effect July 1, does not specify what will be done with the survey results. But DeSantis and Sen. Ray Rodrigues, the sponsor of the bill, suggested on Tuesday [6/22] that budget cuts could be looming if universities and colleges are found to be ‘indoctrinating’ students.” Tampa Bay Times, June 22nd. 

It gets worse. A December 2nd Press Release from DeSantis’ office proposes: “Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced more than $100 million in funding proposals to support Florida’s National Guard and establish the Florida State Guard, a civilian volunteer force that will assist the National Guard in state-specific emergencies.” DeSantis announced that the proposed unit would “not be encumbered by the federal government,” adding that this force would give him “the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible.” 

The State Guard movement was implemented in a few states when their federally controlled National Guard was called up during WWII. But the only thing that has changed for Florida is Governor DeSantis’ desire to have his own personal force to enforce his autocratic yearnings. For those who believe that it cannot happen here, unfortunately it is. Remember, we already fought one Civil War. The issues are disturbingly similar.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the dramatic shift of American legal realities to the right have made the United States look very much like those nations we have excoriated for years as abusers of human rights.

Russian Pretexts Hover Over Ukraine

 

Russia’s track record over its former sphere of influence/Soviet territory leaves little doubt of Vladimir Putin’s ambition to absorb and annex as many of the former CIS counties back into Russian control as he can. Russia invaded and seized a part of Georgia in 2008. His military subsequent forced annexation has been concentrated on Ukraine. Despite a treaty between Russia and Ukraine – in exchange for Ukraine’s removing its nuclear weapons stockpile to Russia – to respect each other’s territorial integrity, using the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians, Russia forcibly and shamelessly annexed the Crimean peninsula six year later: “the Russian invasion and subsequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine… occurred between February and March 2014. This event took place in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and is part of the wider Russo-Ukrainian conflict.” Wikipedia

At first Crimeans celebrated. But Russian oppression soon reversed that joy. The Western World, led by the United States, responded with severe economic sanctions, which punished the Russia people, but sacrifice in support of Mother Russia is a long-standing practice there. Putin remains one of the richest individuals on earth, personally unscathed by sanctions. Putin smiled at European dependence on Russian natural gas as the only affordable way (via a pipeline) for most of Europe to fuel heating for its homes in increasingly cold winters. He has leverage.

Russia has pushed upgrading its nuclear weapons and building hypersonic missiles that can elude defense systems – purportedly more modern than any US counterpart – for years. Putin eyed the richest part of Ukraine, in the east, and began his moves in April of 2014 using local agitators and Russian soldiers (“little green men” – pictured above) dressed as Ukrainians, to tear at Kiev: “On April 12, armed pro-Russian militants seized government buildings in a coordinated and professional operation conducted in six cities in eastern Ukraine. Many of the militants were outfitted in bullet-proof vests and camouflage uniforms with insignia removed and carrying Russian-origin weapons. These armed units, some wearing black and orange St. George’s ribbons associated with Russian Victory Day celebrations, have raised Russian and separatist flags over the buildings they seized, and called for referendums and union with Russia.

“Even more so than the seizure of main government buildings in Ukrainian regional capitals Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv last weekend [mid-April 2014], these operations bear many similarities to those that were carried out in Crimea in late February [2014] and culminated in Russia’s illegal military intervention and purported annexation of Crimea. In the earlier Crimean case, highly organized, well-equipped, and professional forces wearing Russian military uniforms, balaclavas, and military gear without identifying insignia moved in first to take control of Crimean government and security facilities before being later replaced by regular Russian military forces.” April 2014 Press Release by the US Department of State. There were additional consequences.

On July 17, 2014, halfway through a flight from Amsterdam to Malaysia, a passenger jet was shot down by a Russian-built missile over the war-torn Ukraine-Russia Border. All 298 people on board, most of whom were citizens of the Netherlands, died in the explosion. It was apparently a case of mistaken identity, but ground forces made the official investigation by Dutch and Malaysian authorities almost impossible to complete. Russia continues to covet at least eastern Ukraine. And perhaps Belarus as well.

In recent weeks, Russia has been building up its military forces on its border with Ukraine. Many believe that Russia is about to invade and annex part if not all of Ukraine, unafraid of any expected Western/NATO response. “Tensions over a Russian troop buildup along Ukraine’s border have been a focus of [U.S. Secretary of State Antony J.] Blinken’s weeklong Europe trip and topped the agenda of his meeting Wednesday [12/1] with NATO counterparts in Latvia. The Ukrainian government is seeking to align with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the West.

“‘We don’t know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order should he so decide,’ Blinken told reporters in Riga, Latvia’s capital. ‘We must prepare for all contingencies… We’re also urging Ukraine to continue to exercise restraint because, again, the Russian playbook is to claim provocation for something that they were planning to do all along…”

“Blinken said the U.S. has ‘made it clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high-impact economic measures that we’ve refrained from using in the past.’ He gave no details on what kind of ‘high impact’ sanctions would be considered… The European Union’s Parliament approved a nonbinding resolution in April to cut off Russia from the so-called SWIFT system of international payments if its troops entered Ukraine.” Associated Press, December 2nd. Coming on the approach of an exceptionally cold pre-winter season in Europe, Putin is probably counting on the continent’s desperate need for Russian natural gas to blunt the impact of any possible sanctions. His timing cannot accidental. Sanctions have failed to alter Russian aggression so far. 

A scheduled video conference call on December 6th between Biden and Putin produced a Russian denial of any intention to invade Ukraine despite a massive troop build-up, countered by Biden’s pledge of extreme economic sanctions (noted above, as well as preventing some of Putin’s cronies from traveling). Russia complained about NATO’s intentions in the Ukraine… and there was always the threat of Russia’s cutting off its natural gas pipeline to the rest of Europe. Biden followed up his conference with Putin with calls to NATO leaders. While no one expects a Russian invasion anytime soon, at least not until the end of the Olympics… you never know.

As the world struggles with another rising COVID variant threat, as China builds up it forces in the South China Sea with its crosshairs focused on Taiwan, and as the United States continues to tear itself apart through irreconcilable polarization, Vladimir Putin just might smell an opportunity to continue to seize territory with little in the way of a meaningful deterrent.