US Regional Presence Makes ME Peace and Stability Unattainable

US Regional Presence Makes ME Peace and Stability Unattainable

As long as tens of thousands of US combat troops, heavy weapons, and its jihadist proxies remain active in Middle East (ME) countries, a perpetual state of war will exist -  peace, stability and security to be unattainable.

That's the reality of where things stand in the region, why Iran, its allies, and the Arab street's main geopolitical goal is freeing the Middle East from the hostile US presence.

That's what Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meant by the Islamic Republic's "ultimate revenge," calling for it to be delivered by "the nations of the region."

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif stressed the same goal, saying the following:

"The Islamic Republic had to show a military reaction to the US government's measure and it did, but this is not the end game." 

"The end will be the withdrawal of the US which does not need military action, and it is the result of the Americans' move and the result of support they showed in this arrogant and stupid move," adding:

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has declared that if the US makes a mistake, it will definitely be given a response." 

So far a "slap in the face alone," it displayed Iran's military capability to penetrate US air defenses at a key regional base, striking targets with pinpoint accuracy.

Satellite images showed considerable damage to multiple Ein Al-Assad airbase sites, reportedly struck by 15 high-velocity Fateh-313 and Qiam missiles - Qiam missiles reportedly equipped with radar jamming systems and fragmentation warheads.

An IRGC statement said that despite the Americans being on high alert, Iranian missiles penetrated Pentagon air defenses, no missiles intercepted and destroyed - no claim otherwise by Trump or the US military.

The purpose of Iran's retaliation was at least twofold - striking the US in response to General Soleimani's assassination, a Trump region act of war, along with displaying IRGC military capability to hit US targets with pinpoint accuracy, likely anywhere in the region.

According to one analyst, it appears Iran intended to damage or destroy structures on US bases targeted to weaken their military capability, while trying to avoid or minimize deaths and injuries.

In his Wednesday morning remarks, Trump said nothing about striking back militarily in response to Iran's missile attack on US bases in Iraq - sticking to his usual anti-Islamic Republic rhetoric, indicating more (unlawful) sanctions to come.

There's almost nothing left to impose them on besides Iranian officials, symbolic alone when targeting them.

Iran is likely more powerful militarily than any nation the US (preemptively) attacked in the post-WW II era.

It's able to hit back hard against the US and its regional allies if attacked, what US intelligence and Pentagon officials likely explained to Trump, getting him to back off from greater Middle East war.

Already bogged down in three unwinnable quagmires (in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen), it's hard imagining that Pentagon commanders want a 4th one against a nation able to inflict considerable damage to US regional facilities and large numbers of casualties to US troops.

Al-out war with Iran would also likely make Trump a one-term president. Bodybags returning home in large numbers could doom his reelection prospects.

Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson withdrew from consideration for second terms because of the unpopular wars they waged in northeast and southeast Asia respectively.

Trump continues war on Iran by other means with no letup - short of turning it hot following Soleimani's assassination, an act of war with no hot war follow-through so far.

The threat of US war on Iran by accident or design remains - even though Trump stepped back from the brink Wednesday.

With hardliners Netanyahu, Pompeo, and others likely pushing for added toughness on Iran, anything ahead is possible.

Trump's top priority is getting reelected. Most likely, he'll avoid doing whatever hurts his chances - but as he says time and again:

"We'll see what happens."

Given US rage for dominating other nations, anything ahead is possible.

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Six reasons Donald J. Trump is the Anti-Christ

Six reasons Donald J. Trump is the Anti-Christ

Just a few days ago, the world celebrated the beginning of a New Year, and already there are serious doubts about whether the world will still be here to see the end of it.

As I've argued in several previous Pravda.Report articles, as I've gotten older, I've become convinced that most struggles and conflicts in the world are not based on "good vs. evil," but instead between evils that most people are willing to accept and evils they are not.  This is why many so-called "leaders," despite being the vilest types of human beings, are accepted, and even deified, by millions, and in some cases, billions of people.

My arguments are bolstered by a concept in criminology known as the Social Control Theory.  Social Control Theory asserts that, left unchecked, human nature is more inclined towards, and attracted to, evil; thus, certain social institutions were created to reduce this inclination and attraction.

One of these institutions is religion.  It is exceedingly powerful, because people who speak out against it are often accused of being hostile to the individuals and concepts that created a particular faith.

But, realistically speaking, over time it has become evident that much of this defensiveness comes from the fact that religion has become "big business," and that many people and institutions, both honorable and unscrupulous, have found it a convenient way to not only make lucrative livings, but also to cajole and control the hearts and minds of others.

At this point you might be asking what this has to do with Donald J. Trump being the anti-Christ.  For the answer, I give you:

Reason Number One:  Donald J. Trump has become a false God to the pseudo-Christian movement.

  

America's corporate-controlled media often refer to this movement as "right-wing Christianity."  However, when looking at despicable human beings like Mike Pence, who unabashedly ignore Trump's racism, mendacity, misogyny, narcissism, adultery, and delusions of being "chosen by God," Christian is not the first word that comes to mind.  The mere fact that so many people who profess to be Christians can so openly ignore, and even embrace, Trump's evils clearly portend a person who can manipulate the hearts and minds of people to serve his own ends.

Reason Number Two:  An anti-Christ will exploit patriotism to lead nations into unjust wars for self-serving political and/or financial gain.

  

It would seem, having been lied to about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which led to the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam; having seen George H.W. Bush use the invasion of Panama to divert attention from his political cronies who illegally enriched themselves during the Savings and Loan debacle; having seen his son George W. Bush lying about "weapons of mass destruction" in order to invade Iraq so he could award his political cronies oil leases and lucrative "rebuilding" contracts, Americans should be wary of politicians rushing to war.

But, as I've also argued in previous Pravda.Report articles, if there is one factor that will contribute to Armageddon, it is humankind's obsequious myopia.  Politicians know, especially around election time or in times of political crisis, that whipping up the drums of war and the blind patriotism that incessantly accompanies it, often serve as a diversion from political criminality and/or a pathway to reelection.

So, when I stated in my article Nancy Pelosi: America's Neville Chamberlain (Pravda.Report, October 16, 2019) that "America will once again be engulfed in a war manufactured by draft dodgers and based on lies," I was not exaggerating.  At the time I wrote this article, I already had concerns that Trump would steal a page from the "Bush/Cheney playbook" to improve his reelection chances.  And now, with an impeachment trial in the Senate looming and an election coming later this year, starting a war would certainly be within the realm of Trump's desire to retain, and enhance, his increasingly autocratic grip on the reins of power.

Reason Number Three:  Jesus's life was one of courage and selfless sacrifice.  Trump's life is one of cowardice and selfish greed.

  

Two words prove the veracity of this reason- "bone spurs."

I have often found it disturbing how many politicians, like George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, are more than willing to show their alleged "toughness" and "resolve," as long as somebody else is doing the fighting and the dying.  After all, Bush sure didn't seem so tough when he performed some still nebulous "National Guard" duties to avoid serving in Vietnam, nor did Trump, when he avoided this same war thanks to the aforementioned (and some say fictitious) "bone spurs."

Reason Number Four:  Jesus demonstrated humility and criticized ostentatious displays of piety.  Trump demonstrates narcissistic, sociopathic megalomania.

  

Trump, and his followers in the pseudo-Christian movement, are more than eager to trumpet how he was "chosen by God" to lead America.  What could be more dangerous to the world during this time in history than a willingness to beatify an unhinged demagogue with a messianic complex exhibited not by a willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of others, but by a soulless eagerness to sacrifice the lives of others to fuel his, and his followers, delusions?

Reason Number Five:  Jesus was compassionate and brought out the goodness in average men and women.  Trump epitomizes cruelty and brings out their evil.

  

Most Christians know that, before meeting Jesus, the Apostles were ordinary men.  One of the reasons His story has endured for over two thousand years is because He brought out their greatness.

Jesus also felt no discomfort interacting with people that many in His time viewed as the "dregs of society," giving them hope, comfort, and, in some cases, healing.

He also stated that it was easier for a "camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

Many argue, and I agree, that this passage is not so much a condemnation of wealth as it is an acknowledgment of what such wealth routinely does to the souls of those who possess it, often turning them into greedy, heartless, and venal people so callous about human exploitation and suffering that even their alleged acts of "charity" are driven by the egotistic desire for fawning adulation and/or financial gain.

Trump, on the other hand, has demonstrated a disturbing ability to not only darken the hearts and minds of a people and a nation, but also to bring out, and prey upon, the worst in humanity for his own nefarious ends. 

And his views about the less fortunate in society became glaringly clear by his desire to deny food stamps to millions of needy Americans, while ensuring that the richest one percent, many of whom are, like him, the products of inherited wealth, continue to get richer.

Many of Trump's supporters, in order to pretend they have not been seduced by his evil, cynically like to claim that they support his economic policies, but not his social views. Yet this is like arguing that eating the meat of a poisonous meal is different than eating the vegetables, when, either way, the results are equally as fatal.

Reason Number Six:  Jesus hated the religious hypocrisy of his day and openly condemned it.  Trump instigates this hypocrisy and openly embraces it.

  

While I obviously don't know what was in Jesus's mind when He castigated the religious charlatans of His day, I can't help but believe that some of it may have been motivated by the speed in which these hypocrites hid behind "God" to divert attention from their mendacity, greed, and corruption. 

America's pseudo-Christian movement routinely uses this same technique, claiming that critics are being hostile to God whenever their lavish lifestyles or self-serving machinations of the Christian faith are scrutinized or questioned.  And the mere fact that they deify a man like Trump openly attests to their hypocrisy.

Naturally, this list could go on, but I believe you get the idea.  While I realize that some of the religious arguments made in this article open me up to criticisms about interpretation of scripture or similar sentiments, if you give such criticisms from your own minds and spirits, and are not directed to do so by some individual claiming to speak for God, then you are exercising the greatest gift God gave you-the ability to think for yourself.

And, if you are thinking for yourself, I leave you one final thought.  Many in the Christian community have contended that the anti-Christ will be known to them, because he will divert people away from God and focus solely on worldly things.

But what if the anti-Christ is aware of this, and instead decides to "embrace" the religious community so its members will be oblivious to the fact that, instead of being bulwarks against evil, they have become facilitators of it?

Photo: By Luca Signorelli - Orvieto Cathedral, Public Domain, https://ift.tt/36z1pot

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One less hero

The death of General Qassem Soleimani at the American hand was a cowardly political murder for the sole purpose of blowing up the table and plunging the Middle East into a chaos from which only the United States and their few regional allies, Israel in the first place, can emerge winners. Although from a strictly military point of view such a thing always happened, it is good to remember that over the centuries other perspectives have also been seen and that there have been brave men who in war refused to follow some paths because thought as dishonorable.

President Trump, in whom I had placed high hopes for a pacification of the ongoing conflicts, tweets his satisfaction for Soleimani's death and promises further terrible military actions if Iran tries to fulfill its revenge purposes. The Donald threatens also to hit places of great historical and cultural value for the Iranian nation. In this by differentiating himself from the Nazis who saved works of art while stealing them from invaded countries and making himself equal to ISIS (of which the Americans were creators and defenders) which worked hard to destroy Palmyra, fortunately blocked in time by Russians and Iranians.

Russia and China do not speak much. Perhaps they have given themselves to an underground diplomacy that they hope is more effective, but who really rules in Washington? In any case, they would do well to remember that it will be up to them after Iran. The redesign of the Middle East pursued by the Americans serves both to carry out in style the Brzezinski doctrine for the partition of Russia and the preventive confinement of China.

If the situation worsens, Internet connections with Iran may be cut off. I therefore rushed to ask ParsToday's Davood Abbasi a few questions, the answers to which I thankfully report here.

1) Can you briefly remind us who was Qassem Soleimani?

A) A boy from a peasant family in Kerman, an area of ​​eastern Iran, who in the space between 1980 and 1988 had gone to the front to defend his country. Initially he worked in the supply section of the front but showing his talents ended the war as commander of the army of the city of Kerman. He became commander of the Quds forces of the Pasdaran, that is the division that carries out operations across borders, he was in charge of operations against ISIS. The defeat of Isis is his greatest work. Surely, he is the person to whom we owe mostly the end of ISIS. I believe the news of his death cheered terrorists from the Middle East region more than anyone else. Recall that by defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq, he probably also saved the lives of thousands of Europeans and Americans. Unfortunately, he was not rewarded by the West for the services he had given to Western populations as well. He died as a martyr, like the descendants of Muhammad he was inspired by, like Ali and Hussein. Among other things, he died not far from where these Shiite Imams died, that is, in Iraq. He went there to examine the ways with Iraqis to face the challenges posed by the latest pockets of resistance of ISIS.

2) Is it true that the US command in Iraq had been warned of the arrival of the general because Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission?

A) It is true that he made the flight completely in the sunlight because he arrived in Iraq as the official authority of the Iranian government. It could have also reached Italy, for example, if Italy had asked for Iran's cooperation or help in anti-terrorism matters. Killing him, contrary to what the Americans claimed, did not need complicated intelligence information or great organizational skills. It is a cowardly and dastard action.

3) What do you answer to those in the West say that General Soleimani also died due to a settings of score within Iranian politics?

A) Pure fantasy.

4) The situation that has arisen recalls with anguish the accident in Sarajevo, which led to the First World War. How much do we have to fear the future?

A) Iran will respond; it will definitely do it; but it will do so as it is worthy of its millenary culture. True, Americans are much stronger, but I think it is clear that Iranians are much smarter. The answer will be divided into two areas.

a) Strategic: this answer will be the most important. Trump does not know that he served on a silver plate to Iran the just cause for throwing Americans out of the whole Middle East. Iraq will throw the Americans out of its territory, by any means necessary. Losing Iraq once and for all will be the heaviest pledge the US will pay for the assassination of Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis.

b) Military: this answer will come but not immediately. It is difficult to understand how and when. If, as I think, the strategic part goes well, the Iranians will probably postpone the action to a remote time and could limit it in size.

So far Abbasi. However, I also want to bring back the thought of Senator Richard Black who, from the beginning of the Syrian carnager, was the only American politician to vigorously distance himself from official American politics and to admit its disastrous drift. In a statement on January 3, Senator Black says:

"The death of General Soleimani is a great tragedy. We have killed one of the two generals most responsible for defeating ISIS and al Qaeda.

We are not genuinely fighting a war on terror. I fear that in a sense, we are becoming the terror.

His killing, coupled with rapidly growing troop movements, may presage a new war of aggression -this time, against the Iranian people. I pray that we draw back from the vast war that looms.

We've now begun the 30'h year of war against Iraq. We've dropped a quarter million bombs on the country and its people. We've spent a trillion dollars there, yet never bothered to effectively rebuild the electrical grid we destroyed in the "shock and awe" bombings a generation ago. Has the war ever concerned democracy? I think not.

General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, told us how the Secretary of Defense, in 2002, ordered the preparation of plans to overthrow seven nations in fave years. Iran was the final target. The schedule changed, but our objective did not. Neither our soldiers nor our people have a voice to stop it."

It is a statement which tasted desperate, of a man who fought for his country in a foreign land, Vietnam, and whose value, loyalty, patriotism cannot be questioned.

Many experts of these days forget, or ignore for convenience, that General Soleimani was a high-ranking officer of a legitimate army, not a rioter in bad shape and badly dressed. According to some sources, he was in Iraq to negotiate a new season with Saudi Arabia. How will Iranian negotiators, but also Russian and Chinese negotiators, now trust an American invitation?

Iran, a cohesive country of three thousand years old, does not have many choices. Soleimani's elimination, a figure already mythical and now handed over to the nobility of the Shiite martyrdom, occurs shortly after the failure of another Maidan in an Iranian key: insurrection suppressed, insurgents stopped, foreign espionage network compromised. This means that even if Iran does not respond to this provocation, the Americans would do another in a few weeks, in a crescendo impossible to accept.

The next few days are crucial: if Tehran falls, then it will be up to Moscow and Beijing.

******************

Costantino Ceoldo - Pravda freelance

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Er...What happened to Diplomacy?

Er...What happened to Diplomacy?

The bully is feared in the playground until that critical mass of generalized hatred sees him lynched in a shocking display of collective violence

By now it is clear that the United States of America does not understand what Diplomacy is. It is the fundamentals underlying what is called a democratic approach, namely debate, discussion, dialogue, mutual understanding, give and take, win-win solutions, humility, intelligence, compassion, respect and gravitas but not insolence. None of these, the USA has. Except for insolence, and in great quantities.

So it comes as no surprise to discover, the hard way, that the USA does not use any skills in Diplomacy because it does not possess any. It is like asking a 65-year-old male who has never been in a kitchen in his life to produce a perfect risotto, when he has no idea what arborio rice is, no idea of the quantity of liquid to rice proportions and thinks risotto is "some kinda African pizza".

The result will be a disaster and his wife will be picking pieces of onion off the ceiling for decades to come. Let us draw a comparison with Diplomacy, Washington-style.

Washington's bombing list

Here is a bombing list of countries attacked by the United States of America since 1950 (1)

Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War); Guatemala 1954; Indonesia 1958; Cuba 1959-1961; Guatemala 1960; Congo 1964; Laos 1964-73; Vietnam 1961-73; Cambodia 1969-70; Guatemala 1967-69; Grenada 1983; Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets); Libya 1986; El Salvador 1980s; Nicaragua 1980s; Iran 1987; Panama 1989; Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War); Kuwait 1991; Somalia 1993; Bosnia 1994, 1995; Sudan 1998; Afghanistan 1998; Yugoslavia 1999; Yemen 2002; Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular basis); Iraq 2003-2015; Afghanistan 2001-2015; Pakistan 2007-2015; Somalia 2007-8, 2011; Yemen 2009, 2011; Libya 2011, 2015; Syria 2014-2015.

It is said that a resort to violence when a discussion or argument has been lost is a clear sign of failure, the resort to brute force being a primary reaction and an admission of defeat. The problem is, the longer acts of aggression go on, the worse it becomes for the aggressor. Such an approach does not engender respect, it engenders fear in the short term, then in the medium term this turns to loathing, white-knuckled seething hatred and a thirst for revenge. So the murder of General Suleimani caused more problems than it solved.

Such an approach was too predictable with someone with the black-and-white vision of a George W. Bush, the "with us or aganist us", "winning hearts and minds" by blasting the faces off kids "Well they shouldn't have been there, should they?" which gives rise to the question, what is the United States of America doing in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter? The jurisdiction of the President of the USA starts and finishes on the borders of his country.

Such an approach with something like President Trump at the helm is compounded with astonishing statements such as his reported threat to bomb cultural sites in Iran. While this would have the advantage of Iran not being able to reply in kind (because the USA does not have any itself worth mentioning) it is also a war crime and would send shock-waves around the world, including in the chihuahua countries, Washington's yapping allies.

War crimes have been committed before, for instance by the USA and its chief chihuahua the UK in Iraq, a shocking breach of international law outside the auspices of the UNSC, war crimes were committed by both countries in the Kosovo campaign where terrorists and organ traffickers from the UÇK were handed what is now a narco-trafficking de facto "state", carved out of Serbia's heart, war crimes were committed in Libya (2).

The problem is that international law exists but is very weak because its implementation depends on the law of the jungle, on the recognition or not of international lawmaking bodies and the non-exietence, incredibly, of any organism capable of enforcing it. The human world today is a mirror image of a herd of antelopes, the dominant male being challenged in a series of fights for the domination of the herd.

If this is how far humankind has developed in fifteen thousand years of civilization, what a pitiful comment on the species, what a disgusting epitaph for the USA and this raises the question, what to do to make things better?

While Suleimani's death has been cheered in the USA and by its two Mid-East bedboys Israel and Saudi Arabia, and ISIS, now regrouping between Syria and Iraq, and by many in Iraq tired of seeing their country turned into a war ground between Iran and the USA, Suleimani was also a diplomat and probably had far better skills in this area than those who took him out. Unless of course we will be informed in two years' time that he has been killed, again. Suleimani was also considered by many as a hero in his country and beyond. Trump is not.

One problem is that US Presidents use bellicose acts abroad to cover their own problems at home (Clinton, his midriff and Kosovo), Bush (Iraq) just before the election, Obama (bin Laden) just because, Trump (Iran) just before the election. But this is not Diplomacy.

Another problem is the fact that in the USA, Pentagon action is seen as a precursor to weapons sales, and these have to be tried and tested in the field. But this is not Diplomacy.

Finally, the sale of weapons is intrinsically tied up with US foreign policy. In short, it is a business, which might make the US foreign policy understandable. But this is not Diplomacy.

The only way forward is for all countries to work together to provide the United Nations Organization with the collective clout it needs to draw up international legal precepts and to enforce them. Non-recognition of these rules means non-membership of the Organization and an inability to use any of its resources. This would mean, in today's scenario, UN out of US, US out of UN.

(1)   Global Research

(2)   Law Case of the Century, my indictment against NATO political and military leaders in 2011 https://ift.tt/2SVAlvm

Photo: By suneko - https://ift.tt/1J3Nffm, CC BY 2.0, https://ift.tt/2ZQEd2e

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2020: What to expect? More of the same

2020: What to expect? More of the same

January 1 started off well, with a threat from the President of the USA against Iran because the US Embassy is experiencing hostility in... Iraq.

Is it just me or is everyone else also getting tired of bellicose gestures, threats, invasions, arrogance, sabre rattling, hatred, venom and a generalised unpleasantness around the world, centered without fail on the USA and its officials and allies? Perhaps if the USA had not interfered in Iraq in the first place back in 2003, the Middle East would be far more stable, ISIS would not have appeared and Iraq, Syria and the entire region would be more balanced? Nuns would not have been decapitated and raped, not necessarily in that order but also, by western-backed terrorists, Syrian families would not have been destroyed.

01/03: First US terrorist strike of the year

Now already on January 3, the USA has launched a terrorist strike at Baghdad International airport murdering General Qasem Suleimani, head of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and according to early reports, at least five others, in retaliation for what Washington says were plans to attack US forces in the area and for the deaths of what Washington claims are "hundreds" of US casualties. The reply: What were they doing there?  The question: How can such a terrorist strike be justified when identical strikes by other forces are classified as terrorist acts? The second question: How to justify a mass murder like this when the target was General Sumeimani? The third question: Was it not General Suleimani who was one of the leading figures eliminating ISIS? The President of the United States of America is just that, the President of the USA, and his jurisdiction begins and ends on the USA's frontiers. We can therefore conclude that either Donald Trump is a bullshitter and his claims to keep US forces at home are bullshit, or else it is not him pulling the strings.

UK commits suicide with Boris Johnson's Flying Circus

Speaking of the USA, let us take a look and see what its chief yapping chihuahua is going to do this year. Why, at a time when everybody else is coming together in large trading blocks, the United Kingdom is set to go it alone and leave the EU, along with Gibraltar, which voted to remain in the EU, dragging Scotland and Northern Ireland out of the EU when they voted to remain inside, when more people voted for non-Leave parties in the December election than for the Conservative Party of Boris Johnson and his clique of Brexiteers and the Brexit Party combined.

It is obvious that things will not run well for the UK because economic trends rule the way things work, not governments or pie-in-the-sky cloud cuckoo land ideas about pink fairies, unicorns and the UK doing its own trade deals when everyone else is queueing up to do deals with the EU of 450 million people against the UK's 66 million. Watch this space in one year's time and I predict massive unemployment, loss of income, less money available for public services, a decrease in the value of the Pound and a slow slide towards a second-rate, peripherical nobody on the edge of Europe, on the fringe of its deals without any say whatsoever in what happens, back to the middle of nowhere, an island of sheep, shepherds, underqualified imperialist dreamers. Europe has already paved the way for them to come crawling back in five years' time, if indeed anyone will have them back.

Until then, pull up your chairs and get ready for a few years of Boris Johnson's Flying Circus, starting on January 3 when the chief advisor to Number Ten, one Dominic Cummings, de facto the unelected Prime Minister of the UK, called for "wierdos and misfits" to apply for government posts. What, more of them?

Climate Change

The complete lack of direction and agreement on serious policy issues are the two reasons why this immensely and critically important issue refuses to get off the ground because until all nations agree on a direction and implementation of policy, especially the main polluters, such as who else? the USA of course, the task remains at square one, or in this case, zero.

If politicians for once listened to experts, and if these experts spoke their minds and not what they are taught to say, perhaps we would be nearer to success but the fact is that when you talk to experts, they themselves do not agree on fundamental issues, such as the quantity of carbon emissions regarded as a required starting point or the accepted level of increased temperature above which climate change would spiral out of control.

Some say the 2 degrees Celsius temperature rise is far too high, others claim 1.5C is better, others that anything above 1C is too much, others that any of these figures are a shot in the dark and they are merely a political figure to start discussions.

Oceans have risen and fallen over the years - the first inhabitants of the UK walked across, not from Calais but from what is now The Netherlands, and sea shell fossils can be found over a hundred kilometres inland around Europe's coastline. The Milankovic cycles theory (ocean currents and winds affecting climate being directly related to the cyclical changes in the Earth's tilt) is borne out by registers of temperature rise and fall over 400,000 years which appear to fit perfectly into the Serbian mathematician's cycles. This all works very well with those who claim that climate change is cyclical and so, no worries, be happy. However, and here it comes - there is an exponential spike starting at the Industrial Revolution and steepening as time goes on, especially in the last decade. What is alarming is not the cycles of change but the rate of change, in which flows which took place over tens of thousands of years are now happening in a decade. So it is worrying.

Australia's horrific bush fires

Extreme weather events bear out the theory that rising temperatures caused by Greenhouse Effect Gas (GEG) emissions have been rife in the recent years, currently so evident in Australia's horrific forest and bush fires which to date have wiped out half a billion animals, exterminating entire species, quite apart from the human cost in life, injuries and lost possessions. Let us spare a thought for the tremendous heroism of the Australian firefighters, professionals and volunteers, risking life and limb to save humans, their possessions and animals. A forest fire is a terrifying and overwhelming event to behold, as those of us who have been involved in one first-hand will understand.

Planet Earth 2020, where money rules the roost

Once again, money speaks louder than words. It is not the effect on forests and animals and families which dictates policy, it is the bottom line of the accounts. We recall what happened to the Roman billionaire Marcus Licinius Crassus whose dream of conquering Parthia ended at the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC with the defeat of his legions and his own capture, his greed being paid for by pouring liquid gold down his throat, according to the gossip of the time. The human loss was the destruction of seven legions (42,000 infantry, of which 20,000 died and 10,000 were taken prisoner) and the sight of the head of his own son, Publius Crassus, on a spear.

Sometimes people in power only realize the horrors of their policies when it is too late.

Sport: UEFA, Copa America and a lame duck Olympics

On a lighter note, this is the first time the UEFA Soccer Championship is held in cities, not countries, once again while Europe comes together, the UK drifts apart but the final will be at Wembley Stadium on July 12, bringing to an end a month of soccer. Copa America takes place at the same time in Argentina and Colombia. This is followed up in Japan between July 21 and August 9 with the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. This will be a hollow event not worth following because once again the main challenger for medals, the Russian Federation, has been the victim of another blanket ban whether or not athletes were guilty of doping or not, and as if western athletes have never been involved in identical scandals. Politics and sport? No thanks. I have crossed the Olympic off my Summer watch list and frankly I could not care less what happens there. Not interested.

Conclusion: Same old, same old....

Looking back at my piece...same old, same old. It makes me feel sick and tired of the way this planet is managed, I am sick and tired of the insult to nature by the very existence of humankind, I am sick and tired of the impotence of forces of Good against the powers of Evil which appear to have our destruction as their ultimate goal.

Take a look at the world around us. It is a world of symbolic power and control mechanisms, dominated by flags and frontiers and passports, dictating a person's lot before (s)he is born. Is everyone equal as a fundamental birthright? Does every child have the same opportunities? And NATO countries continue to spend one point two trillion dollars each and every year on weapons systems to murder people and the world spends tens of millions of dollars on firework displays each and every year, pointless reiterations of prehistoric rituals to scare away the Devil when it is dark.

Food for thought?

Photo: By jjron - Own work - scanned to digital, originally taken on a Ricoh compact film camera., GFDL 1.2, https://ift.tt/2tptCPJ

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