Geoff > Status Update

A large city in Iran may have just posted the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/c...

'A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in 2015 cautioned that by the end of the century, due to climate change, temperatures in the Middle East may become too hot for human survival.'

Right now chances look good the 21st century will turn out to be at least as barbarous the 20th.

Science division of White House office left empty as last staffers depart
and
US government is removing scientific data from the Internet.
Who needs science anyway?

Matt wrote: "Science division of White House office left empty as last staffers depart
and
US government is removing scientific data from the Internet.
Who needs science anyway?"

Who indeed? We we will receive everything it is appropriate for us to know in the form of revelations directly tweeted from the Orange One. I see it as 1984 meets God-Emperor of Dune.

Science is just fake knowledge you know. It was invented by the Chinese to hurt US competitiveness.

I'm not a big fan of torture or anything like that, but if we ever do employ flogging as a punishment, I think it should be reserved for legislators who introduce laws called HONEST or PATRIOT whose purposes are DIS-honesty and UN-patriotism.

Why did we have to create a world that is so absurd as to be beyond parody?

Zadignose wrote: "Why did we have to create a world that is so absurd as to be beyond parody? "

To me the Trump soap jumped the shark with this ludicrous wrestling video. He either improves his performance on the G20 summit in Hamburg this weekend or I'll switch the channel.

Hey, I still think he has some fresh ideas! The planned visit to Poland with a speech in front of the memorial to the Warsaw Uprising has plenty of outrage potential!

Manny wrote: "Hey, I still think he has some fresh ideas! The planned visit to Poland with a speech in front of the memorial to the Warsaw Uprising has plenty of outrage potential!"

Right. Trump and foreign nations. After calling Brussels a "hellhole" and Belgium a "beautiful city" one can be anxious to hear what he says about Warsaw. A saw of a war perhaps?

I want to see how he explains that Merkel is exactly like Hitler because she's letting all these Untermenschen into Europe against the will of the Volk. I still haven't quite mastered Trumplogik.

David wrote: "Right now chances look good the 21st century will turn out to be at least as barbarous the 20th."

Well, we're doing shockingly well so far!

17 years into the last century, maybe 4 million people had died in the Congo. Most of the 15 million dead of the First World War had already occured. Most of the million dead of the Armenian Genocide had already occured. Most of the 9 million dead of the Russian civil war hadn't happened yet but were on their way; likewise, with the fall of the Manchu, the Warlord Era and its hundreds of thousands of deaths were just getting under way in China. Hundreds of thousands had already died from forced labour under the Portuguese. Tens of thousands at the least had died in Brazil from genocide, but that was dwarfed by the quarter of a million rubber-trade workers killed through forced labour in the amazon. Half a million were about to die in the Greco-Turkish war. Most of the somewhere-between-200,000-and-600,000 Filipinos killed by the US died in the 20th century. Likewise the hundred thousand Colombians killed in the War of a Thousand Days. The British had killed around a hundred thousand in Somalia in the war of the Mad Mullah. The population of French Equatorial Africa had dropped from around 15 million to around 3 million, even if most of that wasn't actual killing. Tens of thousands were worked to death just building the Congo-Ocean Railway. More than a hundred thousand had died in the Russo-Japanese War. Nearly 200,000 rebels (and civilians) had been killed by the Germans in East Africa. Our century's Libyan Civil War is mirrored by the last century's own Libyan Civil War. More than a hundred thousand had already died in the Balkan Wars; another hundred thousand were about to die in the Russo-Polish War. Tens and tens of thousands had died in the Herero and Boer wars, and tens of thousands more were about to die in the Finnish Civil War. Most of the million dead of the Mexican Civil War were already dead by 1917. These are just the big, headline conflicts and atrocities....
... and 1900-1917 is relatively peaceful compared with what happened later in the 20th century!

Anything's possible in the 83 years to come, of course. But so far, the 21st century has made a much better start than the 20th.

Yes, we're doing 'shockingly well.' one look at Yemen and Syria today and it's hard to do anything but pat ourselves on the back.

The violence may not be on the same scale yet, but look again at that paragraph I quoted. Do you think chances are good that humanity will be able to transition peacefully to an uninhabitable Middle East? Seems much more likely there will be a series of wars and refugee crises to dwarf anything we've seen so far.

Manny wrote: "I still haven't quite mastered Trumplogik."

The Chicago Tribune offers a reading list for comprehending Trump. Maybe this'll help.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/op...

David wrote: "Yes, we're doing 'shockingly well.' one look at Yemen and Syria today and it's hard to do anything but pat ourselves on the back.

The violence may not be on the same scale yet, but look again at ..."

Yes, actually, one look at Yemen and Syria today and it's hard not to feel good about the human race. Because one look at them reminds us how the rest of us aren't doing that sort of thing anymore. A world where the Syrian Civil War is the worst war in the world is a much, much better war than a century ago! Whereas a century ago, the Mexican Revolution managed to kill about 10% of the country's population (many, many more people out of a smaller population than Syria - and that didn't even end it, another half-million were killed in the 1920s), and it's treated as a footnote compared to what else was going on at the time. And let's not forget, there were only 2 billion people in the world back then, compared to 7.5 billion now. And our ability to kill (and maim, and unhome) is orders of magnitude greater now than it was then... and yet we almost entirely refrain from using those capabilities. Today, when a dictator like Assad is thought to have use chemical weapons once or twice, it's an international incident - back then, it was Tuesday, with use limited only by availability and limited effectiveness. If you gave the humans of 1917 access to the chemical, nuclear, biological and just plain explosive capabilities of modern powers, the world would have been uninhabited by 1940...

And let's be clear here: that report doesn't say that the Middle East will be uninhabitable. It says that spending prolonged periods of many hours labouring outdoors in part of the Middle East may become extremely dangerous. But they're already moderately dangerous. It's already too hot there to spend much time outside. As temperatures rise, more and more time will simply be spent inside during the heat of the day, as it already largely is (as I understand it from what people who have lived there have told me). There will be health consequences, sure - particularly for construction workers (if we still have those in a century), who are already worked beyond safe limits. But we're not really talking the end of civilisation in the area, just a continuing change in the pattern of daily activity. [and presumably higher energy requirements to provide climate control.]

^^Yeah, honestly I think that's a fair assessment and a fair caution against hyperbole. We don't want to repeat the worst errors of human history, or to create new catclysms, and it's scary and disturbing to see ourselves moving in such directions, but mega-death is not a new phenomenon. Just one that we naively hoped our species had outgrown.

Peter,

Democrats, the media, and Hollywood have decided they’d rather see our country fail than succeed with President Trump at the helm.

While their childish decision to play politics with our country may not come at a cost to them, they are selfishly hurting the millions of working Americans who voted for a new direction for our nation.

I want to assure you that my father understands that the livelihood of so many Americans is at stake. Americans need relief -- and he’s fighting for you.

No matter what the Left throws his way, no matter how they try to obstruct him, I can guarantee you that our President will keep fighting until our America First platform becomes the law of the land.

Thank you for your support,

Eric Trump

P.S. Won't you consider making a donation to help re-elect President Trump in 2020? Let's Keep America Great!

$250 can make all the difference in the world (if I get you plus 7 million additional suckers). And don't forget our #MAGA commemorative snuff-pouch.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/...

So this is the justice system we in the so called Third World don't stop praising?

The person who started a war on a pack of lies goes scot-free from any charges or liability for causing death and destruction in Iraq.

If English law doesn't recognise the crimes he's accused of, how about the Hague then?

(His chimp buddy from Texas should accompany him, in the name of their special relationship, if nothing else)

Apparently Britain is the right country in which to start wars of aggression, because it's legal there. Previously, I don't recall this being well publicized.

I am not proud of my British passport this week. But at least I no longer pay tax.

Manny wrote: "Apparently Britain is the right country in which to start wars of aggression, because it's legal there."

As it is in... all countries? Are there some where it's illegal?

The legal system exists to protect citizens of the state from other citizens of the state. It doesn't exist to control the foreign policy of the state. There are many things that are immoral that are not actually illegal in a given country - 'justice' in this sense is legal justice, not divine justice.

The proper place to prosecute disputes between states is in an international court. And indeed, initiating a war of aggression is illegal in international law and subject to the jurisdiction of the international criminal court. However, that jurisdiction does not apply to crimes committed before, aiui, 2011, because it took a long time for all the parties to agree to allow it to fall under that jurisdiction.

[you might say: why should that matter? shouldn't we be able to prosecute countries for acting immorally whether or not everyone else agrees to it? Except that that would itself be a war of aggression.]

The UK could also be prosecuted at the International Court of Justice, if the General Assembly of the UN requested it. So far they haven't. It could also be deemed to have broken the law by the Security Council of the UN, though as it itself has a veto power there, it's unlikely.

If you wanted to prosecute Blair personally, you'd need to find some specific crime under UK statutes that he had personally committed (because aside from international disputes not falling under UK jurisdiction (because we're not an Empire anymore), ministers are not personally liable for the actions of their departments or governments - they are only liable for actions they personally take, or where they exceed the authority of their office; so Tony Blair can't be prosecuted for something that Her Majesty's Government persuaded a majority of the people's representatives in the House of Commons to ask Her Majesty to do; this is a pretty fundamental legal principle - otherwise, ex-ministers would be continually being thrown in jail for the consequences of the actions of their departments).

So to prosecute Blair personally, in this country, you'd presumably need to prove some sort of misconduct in public office charge. [Lying to parliament is of course illegal as a form of contempt of parliament, but as Blair's no longer in parliament and the parliament he lied to (assuming he did) no longer exists, I don't think there's any route there.]

Wastrel wrote: "Assembly of the UN requested it. So far they haven't. It could also be deemed to have broken the law by the Security Council of the UN, though as it itself has a veto power there, it's unlikely."

This says it all. If you're a Bush or Blair of the world you can wage illegal wars and destroy countries at will. Some people will talk, but that's all about it. Nothing will change for you or the country you led into the war. But if you're some African warlord or an Asian warmonger, or even someone who faces up to foreign powers, the conscience of the world would rouse and arrest warrants would be issued, sanctions would be placed, and you would be turned into a pariah, whether you're at fault or not.

Lying to the parliament are reasonable grounds for prosecution if pursued. But as far as I know the sham inquiry headed by Chilcot minced words and came up with funny language* to give Blair an easy way out (just a reprimand to the bad boy), because none of these world powers would ever prosecute one of their leaders to the full or see them standing in the court at The Hague. It's a question of national prestige and political expediency, and that's more important than some fancy ideas about giving justice to the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead. Tribal is not the word often associated with Western politics. But things look very different when seen from a different vantage point.

* "Balir was not straight with the nation over Iraq war" instead of "Blair lied to the nation and led us into an illegal war."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/...

Jibran, your analysis comes across as intuitively far more convincing. I presume Wastrel is correct in a narrow technical sense, but it's hard to see that it really amounts to much more than legalistic window-dressing for Western tribalism.

On the same logic, surely North Korea would be within its rights when it persists in developing an intercontinental nuclear strike capacity, which so far they have not come close to using? But that is not sanctioned by the UN.

Yes, indeed, Wastrel is technically correct and therein lies the problem of world's power imbalance and the failure of the safeguards in place to stop the abuse of power.

The fact is that there is no accountability in international arena. It takes one foreign power to break the norms of international law or use power disproportionately to influence it, and the rest follow.

Apologies for bringing an old horse like Iraq war in here. I visited the country recently and can't forget the utter ruin it has become. Of course Western invasion isn't the only factor that brought Iraq to this state but like we say about the Original Sin - it all began in 2003.

Finally some real news!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP90_...

I mean, this is the really real Trump news, is it not? It's getting harder and harder to figure it out.

It's got Russian subtitles, so I guess it must be genuine. But I admit I'm not sure either. Maybe I've just never noticed how much Kellyanne Conway looks like a giant bat?

I've been moving furniture lately to make some money, and have found a lot of my new colleagues turn out to be Trump sympathizers. Despite their sometimes noxious view, they really are sweethearts. I get it. We're all just trying to hustle and/or grift.

I have friends in South Korea who say they know lots of people trying to get all their money out of the country as they think war with the North is close.

Oh and now this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-...

This is not going to end well for anyone.

It is getting close to the time to throw an end of the world bacchanalia.

Actually, North Korea might be one area where Trump's style works. There are only three outcomes in the situation: NK backs down, NK (and much of SK) is obliterated, or everyone just tolerates NK being able to nuke Chicago on a whim. It's a classic two-player game. And having an unpredictable maniac who will choose the worst possible solution in order to rescue his own pride is a classic winning strategy in these games - it's why Kim has gotten as far as he has, after all.

If NK believe America will nuke them all if they do anything bad, they almost certainly won't do it. The problem is, they've never believed America would actually call their bluff, because the American president has never been both evil and insane at the same time. Now that the president IS both evil and insane, there's a good chance NK will be convinced enough that he's not bluffing that they actually back down. Of course, they might not, still, in which case tens or hundreds of millions of people will soon die. But effectively what Trump is (unintentionally, but apparently the generals and diplomats understand what's going on) doing is trading a tiny increase in the risk of armageddon for an subtantial improvement in the geopolitical situation. It's classic brinksmanship, and, statistically, it almost always works.

That said, if I were living in Seoul, I would rapidly plan to stop living in Seoul...

[NK is not going to launch a pre-emptive attack on Guam. They'd be annihilated. They're saying that because they don't dare lose face by not responding. But notice that they responded in the least threatening way possible. "We're going to think seriously about bombing Guam" isn't going to panic anybody (who doesn't live in Guam). Bear in mind that they could have said "if there is any more aggression from the US, we will pre-emptively nuke Denver and Chicago and bomb New York, Los Angeles and DC with conventional weapons", which they have the theoretical capacity to do. It would have been a much stronger response, but they know that it would have provoked war immediately; specifically sayign they're targeting Guam is like being dared to flick the ear of the biggest guy in your class and shouting "I'm not starting anything I'm not starting anything!" while you do it...

Also note that neither country has taken any substantial steps toward mobilising their armies; apparently both sides are at least weeks and probably many months away from being ready for war.]

I hope you are right. I haven't partied hard since my twenties and I really don't want to get one big one together now.

Yeah, agree with those who'd be a bit uncomfortable in Seoul, but the other morning I said "more sabre-rattling" on seeing the headlines about this, and haven't really changed my mind: these more informed opinions confirmed it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...

If there is a conflict on the Korean Pennisula China would get involved. All the players understand that.

Yes, China wouldn't let things get out of control right next door. And reports say that they have far more leverage over Kim-boy than they let on.

Anyway, I have long argued that the presence of American military in the Korean peninsula increases the chances of an eventual war, but conventional wisdom would have you believe the opposite.

If I were a citizen of the South, I would want a bilateral defence agreement with the US in case the Kims in the north lost their marbles. But I would not want permanent presence of US military because this would make South their first and closest target if some crazy US president decided to drop the....curtain on the North.

South-wallahs have the money and the military to defend their part of the peninsula in the event of a northern offence. They don't need permanent US military bases on their soil do they? Or maybe they were not given a choice....

We were in Seoul a few weeks ago, and I was interested to find that no one ever talked about the nuclear standoff. I'm not sure whether it's because it's too scary to think about, or because they've lived with it so long that it's become boring.

Whatever the reason, I pretty much forgot about it for a week and a half and played Go instead.

Jessaka wrote: ""Fire and Fury like no one has ever seen before" means to me that he is planning on WWIII. Just saying."

With a sane president, that would be true - as many people have pointed out, his words are very similar to the ones Truman used when he warned the Japanese in 1945 that the US were about to use nuclear weapons. But what Trump says often has no relationship whatsoever to the real world, he says it because he likes the sound of the words.

I hope he isn't really threatening nuclear action, because it's clear the North Koreans think it's just more Trump bullshit.

Manny wrote: "Jessaka wrote: "as many people have pointed out, his words are very similar to the ones Truman used when he warned the Japanese in 1945 that the US were about to use nuclear weapons. But what Trump says often has no relationship whatsoever to the real world, he says it because he likes the sound of the words."

I have seen this, too, and think it puts a bit too much stock in the thought that Trump has read the words of past presidents (much less emulating them), rather than a coincidence.

Jibran wrote: "Yes, China wouldn't let things get out of control right next door. And reports say that they have far more leverage over Kim-boy than they let on.

Anyway, I have long argued that the presence of ..."

South Korea couldn't defend against a North Korean attack. It would probably win any land war - but the problem is NK's 20,000 artillery pieces, 70 submarines, and vast array of conventional missiles, plus now nukes. The problem isn't that SK couldn't march into Pyongyang, it's that by the time they got there Seoul would have been flattened. They say the casualties in Seoul - disregarding the possibility of nukes - would be in the tens of thousands per day, and it would take at least weeks to take out all the artillery emplacements and silos, let alone the subs.

The guns aren't pointed at Seoul because the US troops are in SK. They're pointed as Seoul in part because they don't like SK, but mostly because SK's role in this little drama is to be the hostage that NK has taken - America can't try anything or SK gets shot. The troops are there to reassure SK that America won't just stand by and let them get shot, and hence to warn NK likewise - it's like having a cop stand in front of the gun. If NK fires, they'll kill Americans, which will make it impossible for any US president not to retaliate - so SK and NK both know that the US can't just let them sort it out and wash their hands of it.

[regarding nukes: I can understand the SK lack of panic. The idea of a nuke coming along and hitting Chicago is frightening because it poses a new risk. The idea of a nuke hitting Seoul is less frightening, because it would only marginally speed up the destruction that would be inflicted by the artillery in any case.]

[also, don't forget Americans went about their lives in imminent danger of nuclear holocaust for decades!]

Wastrel wrote: "The guns aren't pointed at Seoul because the US troops are in SK. They're pointed as Seoul in part because they don't like SK, but mostly because SK's role in this little drama is to be the hostage that NK has taken - America can't try anything or SK gets shot."

To be fair the dislike is mutual and lots of guns are trained at NK as well. One only needs to take a look at the US military footprint in the region. If NK could run, it would have nowhere to run.

The North won't attack as long as antagonistic states don't threaten its survival. How many countries have they attacked in the last 50 years? But provoke a war and they will retaliate in kind, even if it means regime suicide. My hair stand on end when I hear the US president or anyone in position of power talk about "regime change." Sure, the Americans can do it, but it would take complete destruction of the Korean peninsula to achieve that.

The regime in the north has to go, but it needs to happen from the inside, not by a foreign hand. In the past both parties knew where they stood and what war rhetoric meant. But with Trump no one knows where the US stands in theory and in fact. I think the North is testing waters with the Guam threat. In any case, if Russiagate gets dirty Trump might need a war for his own survival.

Jibran wrote: "In the past both parties knew where they stood and what war rhetoric meant. But with Trump no one knows where the US stands in theory and in fact. I think the North is testing waters with the Guam threat. In any case, if Russiagate gets dirty Trump might need a war for his own survival. "

This is the thing that's worried me most about Trump right from the start: far too many scenarios where it's in his interests to have the US get involved in a war. I'm guessing the risk is less though if Kelly remains as his chief of staff.

I have been googling likely nuclear target maps of the US lately. Can't find scenarios with China though. I have to assume they'd be the same sites as Russia would target.

Where is our friend Geoff? It seems like he has finally accepted the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the US for this year and a few more to come ;-)

Jibran, you're such an optimist. I keep wondering what President Pence is going to be like, and expect to find out fairly soon. Articles like this one are not encouraging.

From a blabbering reality show Republican to a dull conservative radical. Not very encouraging indeed. I reckon there's no relief until the next elections, and even then incumbents are reelected in America as a matter of habit.

Interesting analysis from that notoriously Marxoid publication known as Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/ar...

David wrote: "Interesting analysis from that notoriously Marxoid publication known as Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/ar..."

Hadn't seen the stuff about the data transfer rates before! If reliable, certainly interesting information.

It's amazing what people will willingly believe.

On the one hand, you have a group of anti-Clinton activists with names like "The Forensicator", posting on fringe conspiracy sites (at RT.com).

On the other hand, you have half a dozen cybersecurity firms, at least three of which independently examined the DNC malware themselves, and a dozen US intelligence services.

On that latter hand, you have a persuasive extension to a continuing pattern of Russian hacking activity.

On the former hand, you have a bizarre and utterly implausible conspiracy theory in which the DNC, which couldn't organise the proverbial, masterminded a scheme to hack its own computers and release damaging information that would get its leadership fired and damage its presidential candidate... for no particular reason? Presumably they then executed the matching hacks on the RNC to cover their tracks - did they also hack the White House, Joint Chiefs and State Department to bolster their story? Cunningly pretending that they couldn't master basic password security in order to hide their sinister scheme to scupper their own campaign through their high-level hacking wizardry (that could not only execute these hacks but could do it in a good enough disguise to persuade all the mislead all the cybersecurity experts). When did they murder Mr Rich, exactly? Was he present at the top-secret meeting in the basement of that pizza shop where they planned all this?


Come on, people. Just because a lone guy who knows he's right disagrees with all the experts and apparent logic doesn't NECESSARILY mean that all the experts are wrong and there's a vast and inscrutable conspiracy. We don't have to believe something as soon as someone says "the establishment doesn't want you to know this!" (one weird trick for understanding geopolitics).

Ah Wastrel, wouldn't it be nice if the article actually did posit such an absurd conspiracy theory? Since it doesn't, you're forced to resort to some pretty rank intellectual dishonesty.

The burden of proof is on those who somehow know the Russians did it. If your argument is the Russians did it because we know they did, I'm not convinced.

My reasons for suspecting collusion are rather simpler: Trump refuses to criticise Putin, has pushed for removal of sanctions on several occasions, and has repeated fake news originally from Russian sites. And when he won, the Russian parliament was openly cheering and opening champagne.

Doesn't add up to proof, but you gotta admit it looks suspicious.

But Trump did sign the sanctions bill, no? If he is a patsy for Putin, it seems like he's not doing a very good job at it.

There may be some level of collusion, but I doubt it amounts to Putin 'hacking' the election or actually subverting American democracy in any meaningful way. Plainly Putin wanted Trump to win. In itself that's not criminal.

David wrote: "But Trump did sign the sanctions bill, no? If he is a patsy for Putin, it seems like he's not doing a very good job at it."

He didn't have a choice. Congress were going to override him if he tried to veto.