Tag: USA

Palestine, Ukraine and the Wars for the New American Century.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

A recent article on Labour Hub tries to link the struggle in Gaza and the war in Ukraine as parallel “struggles for self-determination”; not noticing that one struggle (Gaza) is in resistance to the US centred global imperial system, the other (Ukraine) is a struggle to join it as an auxiliary ally.

People in the Palestine Solidarity movement have strongly felt and taken note of the difference in the response from Western governments to these “struggles for self determination”.

  • The flags of Ukraine and Israel have both been flown on public buildings, head teachers and college principals have been told by the DFE to “stand with Israel”.
  • Palestinian flags – and Keffiyas – have been denounced as “threatening”, or “symbols of terrorism” or “hate” and children drawing flags on their hands or wearing badges in schools have been referred to Prevent. This has become increasingly shrill as the movement has grown and public sympathy for the Palestinians has grown with it.

Like many similar articles, this one has two glaring pieces of disavowell at the heart of it – a selective approach who who is entitled to self determination and a failure to take account of the very active role of the United States and NATO – and a logic that leads those sections of the labour movement who support their line to end up campaigning for the rearmament and militarisation drive that our ruling class is determined to push, even as our societies crumble for want of invetsment and fail to rise to the challenge of climate bteakdown.

All peoples are entitled to self determination, but some are more entited than others.

If a struggle for “self determination” is based on denying that right to another people, it has no leg to stand on. The Palestinian struggle, including the way it is defined in the revised Hamas Charter (2017) is against Israel as a racist state, not against the Jewish population, in the same way that the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa was a struggle against the state, not white people as such.

The dominant, far right, form of Ukrainian nationalism, however, denies the national rights of Russian citizens and heroises historic figures like Stepan Bandera, a recruiting seargent for Nazi concentration camp guards. The US and NATO are quite comfortable with this, but no one on the Left should be.

In this Labour Hub article, like so many others, the Russian population in Eastern Ukraine is ignored. Its as if they don’t exist, didn’t rebel in 2014 against the overthrow of a government they’d voted for, and weren’t bombed and shelled indiscrimately by the Ukrainian armed forces from then onwards. At most they are posed as “Russian proxies” with “no interests of their own”; just as Ansar Allah in Yemen is belittled as “Iranian proxies”. This writes them out of history just as surely as the Israelis would like to do to the Palestinians, who are still described in some quarters there as “not a people”.

As this statement from No Cold War – The War in Ukraine must end – points out; A 2001 census found that nearly 30% of Ukraine’s population considered Russian to be their native language. States with large linguistic and ethnic minority populations can only maintain their unity if the rights of such minorities are respected. The policies of the Ukrainian government after 2014, which included suppressing the official use of the Russian language in numerous spheres, were therefore bound to lead to an explosive crisis within the Ukrainian state. As the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which certainly cannot be accused of being pro-Russian, stated: ‘the current Law on National Minorities is far from providing adequate guarantees for the protection of minorities… many other provisions which restrict the use of minority languages have already been in force since 16 July 2019’. There are only two ways to resolve this situation: restoration of the full linguistic and other rights of the Russian-speaking minority within the borders of the old Ukrainian state or the secession of these regions from Ukraine. Which outcome is realised will be a key subject of the negotiations. Nonetheless, it is clear that any attempt to maintain the Russian-speaking minority within the Ukrainian state while continuing to deprive them of their rights will not succeed, nor will any attempt by Russia to impose another state on the Ukrainian-speaking population of western and northern Ukraine.

All efforts to resolve these issues by military means will continue to be futile and will only result in further intense suffering, above all for the Ukrainian people. These realities will become increasingly obvious if the war continues – which is why it must be brought to a halt as rapidly as possible and negotiations must commence.

A “self determination” that denies the national rights of a large minority and denies it equality before the law within the area controlled by an ethnically defined state sounds a lot like Israel – a living expression of Marx’s dictum that “a nation that oppresses another cannot itself be free”. Not something any Socialist should be defending.

The limits of geopolitical Flat Earthism

Its important also to grasp the broader geo political context of these wars in a way that makes sense of both of them. This is because articles like this one reflect a widespread view on the left in the Global North that the world is geopolitically flat. That every country is capitalist. That there is no structure to global imperialism.

This is profoundly disorienting and can lead to the same people challenging the dominant narrative coming from our own ruling class on Gaza, while actively repeating it over Ukraine.

This is inherently distorting for any accurate understanding of whats going on; especially if you fall for, or worse, promote the sort of manichean propaganda that the Russians (or Hamas) are all evil, murdering rapists, while butter wouldn’t melt in the mouths of the Azov battalion or the IDF.

The bottom line on this is…

Who is threatening whom?

In the case of the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, from 2008 to 2023 there were 319 Israeli deaths and 6,779 Palestinian deaths; thats a ratio of 21 Palestinians to 1 Israeli before Oct 7th and the ensuing IDF offensive.

That looks like this.

With 1,200 Israelis killed on that day and 235 since, and over 29,500 Palestinians killed in the Gaza strip and another 399 in the West Bank thats a ratio of more than 24 to 1.

That looks like this.

The balance of threat and the balance of death in this conflict is obvious and evident; and needs smoke screens of indignation to try to obscure it.

As there are millions of people in this country who feel a connection with the Palestinians, and have sources of information outside the establishment media, it has been impossible to control this narrative, to allow Israel to get on with what its doing with no scrutiny, and this is rebounding on the government and opposition, both now forced to oppose an IDF attack on Rafah and in some disarray. As there is no such community here with any links in the Donbass, even the existence of Russian speakers in eastern Ukriane is barely known about, let alone understood, and the narrative has been much more tightly controlled.

And, as the war in Ukraine is now being visibly lost by NATO, we are back to the sort of over heated rhetoric that was common two years ago – that NATO is an essentially defensive alliance needed to stop the Russians steamrollering over Europe.

This argument is politically absurd. Taking control of a continent would require a political project that could hold the allegiance of enough of the people who live there for it to be viable. It is not simply a technical military exercise. Russia does not have such a project. It has the military capacity and the political pull to absorb Russian speaking parts of Ukraine into the Russian Federation, and thats it. Even taking over the Western parts of Ukraine has been described as like “swallowing a porcupine”; let alone anywhere else.

Even if it could be reduced to the level of technical military capacity, the threat is actually in the opposite direction.

In 2023, NATO countries spent $1,100 billion on their militaries. Russia spent $100 billion.

This uses NATOs own figures for its spending. Monthly Review has assessed that US spending is actually about double the amount claimed.

That imbalance looks like the graph above and shows the absurdity of NATOs claim to be both defensive and worried about the potential of being attacked by a power with less than a tenth of its strength. The Russians however, clearly have every reason to be worried about what NATO wants all that expenditure for; especially as it conducts annual “war games” in Eastern Europe practicing for a war with them.

It was fear of that threat, and the failure of NATO to even negotiate about it, which led to the current phase of the war in Ukraine.

Two phases of the wars for the New American Century.

The global context for this is that, for the first time since 1871, we are living in a world in which the United States is no longer the largest economy. China already is in Purchase Power Parity terms; and at current growth rates is likely to overhaul the US in Current Exchange Rate terms before 2030.

The “unipolar moment” and “end of history” is long gone. This analysis of the structure of global imperialism by the Tricontinental Institute goes into this in immense detail and is essential reading. Its core point is that the US has integrated the Global North into a subordinate imperial economic bloc and set of military alliances, but its decline is leading to increasing challenges from a far more diverse set of regimes in the Global South, with China as the core; and China’s highly succesful Socialist economic model at the heart of it. Those who disagree with this definition of China nevertheless have to acknowledge its success, and perhaps concede that that’s how the Chinese themselves define their society. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

In its resistance to its slipping domination, the USA threatens the end of humanity because, with its primacy in capital formation, production and trade gone, financial control and technological lead slipping, the US is trying to push the challenges it faces increasingly onto the military field; which it still believes that it can dominate. That is what makes our current decade the most dangerous in the whole of human history.

The first stage of the wars for the New American Century, the War on Terror after 9/11 2001, was directed at weak powers that the US could overwhelm, killing 4.5 million people according to Browns University, but nevertheless ending in defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria; and chaos in Libya. This was when they thought they could incorporate China into their world order.

The second phase, now they know that they can’t, threatens to be worse, and could kill all of us, with a nuclear first strike an active part of US war planning.

This is where the tension in the world is coming from. This is who is driving it.

There is an argument within the US ruling class between those who think that it has to take Russia on first before it can get on to the confrontation it wants with China – the position of the Biden administration and more traditional Republicans – and those, like Trump, who think they might be able to get Russia onside against China. Putin’s response of ridiculing questions on these lines from Tucker Carlson in his recent interview, shows that this is wishful thinking on Trump’s part.

The second phase

The US and its allies have now crossed the security red lines of a nuclear armed power (Russia) in Ukraine, and have fuelled the attempted genocide in Gaza; because they have to be seen to be able to impose their will.

  • The US has repeatedly vetoed ceasefire motions for Gaza in the UN Security Council.
  • Russia and China have voted for a ceasefire in Gaza, along with the world majority, in both the Security Council and the General Assembly.
  • In General Assembly votes, Ukraine has been among the tiny minority who have voted with the US against a ceasefire.

Israel and Ukraine are both using weapons supplied by the US. Neither could pursue their war without them.

  • The US signed up to provide $38 billion in military aid to Israel between 2016 and 2026, and additional aid has gone in since October 7th.
  • It has gave Ukraine £113 billion between 2022 and September 2023, with more on the way.

The US is intervening in and arming both in its own interests. The Israelis are already an established US attack dog and the Ukrainian regime aspires to be; and has been playing that role since 2014.

A “Big Israel” in Eastern Europe

The forces the US is supporting – or using – in each war are the same sort of ethno nationalists with far right backing.

Netanyahu has Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalal Smotrich. Zelensky has the Right Sector and the Azov battalion.

Just to dispell any doubt, speaking in April 2022, President Zelensky was very clear that he wanted Ukraine to be “a big Israel” in Eastern Europe. A country where there were “soldiers in cinemas and supermarkets” and “people with weapons”, not a “liberal European” state at all.

This vision was eagerly and approvingly embraced by US commentators (its possible that they wrote it) because being like Israel is being a military frontier state for the US.

Israel has been the lynch pin of US domination of the Middle East. President Zelensky has volunteered his country to do the same in Eastern Europe.

The Left in NATO countries, marinading as we are in the ideological stomach juices of the belly of the beast, should never forget who our ruling class is.

NATO and other direct US allies – the world’s wealthiest countries – account for 75% of global military spending, are the core of global imperialism, organised as a coordinated bloc, with the US dominating its subordinate rivals.

Russia is not part of this bloc. It is a target for it.

Not recognising that NATO expansion in Eastern Europe has predatory intent takes self delusion a little far. See the map displayed by Kyrillo Budanov, Head of Ukrainian Military Intelligence for the partition of Russia that this aims at if you have any doubts.

Climate Breakdown helps drive US brinkmanship

The accelerating breakdown of the climactic conditions for human civilisation adds urgency to the increasing US brinkmanship that we have seen in Ukraine and Gaza. To try to survive it with the current imbalance of global wealth and power intact requires catastrophic defeats to be imposed on the Global South, and any power not included in the US dominant bloc; in short order.

This can’t be kicked down the road anymore; hence the emergence of apocalyptic maniacs as mainstream political options for the ruling class – from Trump to Bolsonaro to Millais – and the increasingly unhinged quality of mainstream political debate.

Into the vortex of barbarism

We are spiralling into a vortex of barbarism in which light minded fools like Grant Shapps can float the possibility of nuclear war with “Russia, China, Iran, North Korea” and argue that we should arm even more to prepare for it; and this is repeated in a blase way by media talking heads as though this wasn’t suicidal insanity. A mainstream consensus urging us on to Armageddon stretches from the military itself – with former Generals calling for the UK to be put on “a war footing” and floating the idea of conscription – to Boris Johnson arguing in the Dail Mail that a Trump Presidency might be “just what the world needs” because of his “willingness to use force and sheer unpredictability” – to Timothy Garton Ash, arguing in the Guardian that Trump’s America First volatility gives Europe the opportunity to become a more serious military imperialism in its own right – to the Labour front bench, with Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules mysteriously not applying to the large increases in military spending pencilled in by the Tories (in a country which already has one of the highest military spending burdens in the world).

Supporters of Ukraine Solidarity Campaign like Paul Mason are following the logic of their support for NATOs war aims by arguing, in his case, that the investment needed to combat climate change cannot be afforded because “the cost of borrowing has increased”, but at the same time saying that the UK should follow the US and EU in using debt to finance arms spending. Suicidal logic.

The whole labour movement should be pushing in the opposite direction.

Gaza; “The West” takes its mask off.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

On Friday the International Court of Justice threw out Israel’s objection to proceeding with South Africa’s case that it is committing genocide in Gaza, on the grounds that it is plausible that it is, gave it specific instructions on what it had to do, and ordered it to report back to the court by February 26th on what it has done to comply.

Simply put, it has to cease attacking civilians and allow in aid. There was a brief moment of hope that this might provide some pressure towards a change of course. But, hope, above all else, must be crushed.

Over the weekend there was no let up in the Israeli assault. This is from the latest UN daily report:

  • “Intense Israeli bombardment from air, land, and sea continued across much of the Gaza Strip on 27 and 28 January, resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement, and destruction.”
  • Between the afternoons of 26 and 28 January, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, 339 Palestinians were reportedly killed (165 people on 28 January, 174 people on 27 January), and 600 Palestinians were injured (290 on 28 January and 310 on 27 January).

Incoming truckloads of aid, averaging 156 a day in the preceding week, are now being held up at Kerem Shalom by Israeli demonstrators.

On Saturday Israel’s leaders responded to the ICJ ruling by demanding that countries cease to fund UNWRA – the backbone of what aid structure there is in Gaza – on the grounds of “allegations” that 12 of its employess “participated” in some undefined way in the attacks on Oct 7th. These allegations have not been published. UNWRA has sacked the named individuals while an investigation takes place.

These Israeli allegations put even more of a target on the back of every aid worker in Gaza, 154 of whom have already been killed by the IDF.

The UN Reports that UNRWA is the main humanitarian agency in Gaza, with over two million people now dependent on its services and some 3,000 out of its 13,000 staff in Gaza continuing to report to work, despite the ongoing hostilities.

So, far from seeking to comply with the Court, and recognise what a deep hole they are digging themselves into with their armoured bulldozers, Israeli leaders have sought to bluster, calling the South African case “outrageous”, carried on as though no ruling had been issued, and to hit back by undermining what limited aid has been getting in.

This is in a situation in which the UN reports that

  • 2.2 million people are at imminent risk of famine.
  • 378,000 of these are at “catastrophic” level (extreme lack of food, starvation, exhaustion of coping capacities)
  • 939,000 are at emergency level.

The ICJ will take a long time to come up with a definitive judgement. Without a ceasefire, the scale of this famine could well have made the case de facto for them by the time they decide de jure.

The response of “the West” has been instructive. A rush further down the rabbit hole towards confrontation with the rest of the world.

Faced with “plausible” accusations of genocide from the ICJ – the World Court on these questions – they issued diplomatic versions of Itamar Ben Gvir’s dismissive tweet “The Hague schmague. The UK with characteristic patronising condecension snarked that the South African case was “not helpful”. Its “plausibility” in the eyes of the court was not acknowledged. Instead we had the worn out mantra that Israel is “entitled to defend itself”; while the Palestinians, presumably, must suffer what they must with no right to resist. The same mind set that led the Observer to write that Israeli violnece is “understandable” while Palestinian violence “defies comprehension” (Editorial Oct 15th).

Faced with unpublished allegations of a tiny number of UNWRA employees being involved in Oct 7th, the US and nine of its core subordinates have leapt to broadcast Israel’s case from their bully pulpits and to cut UNWRA’s funds.

The ICJ ordered Israel “to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”. UNWRA is the body that organises that. In striking at UNWRA, Israel is signalling that, in doing the exact opposite of what it has been ordered to do, far from respecting international law, it is doubling down on defying it.

This was an opportunity for “the West” to de escalate, if that were their intention. Perfect legal cover. In backing Israel up, and actively imposing its own collective punishment on the people of Gaza, “the West” is tearing off its moral mask.

So, even after the ICJ ruling, the UK and US continue to supply Israel with weapons and argue that the condition for a viable ceasefire is for Israel to have achieved its military objectives before one happens. Given the way that Israel is doing that, that makes them overtly complicit in the ongoing slaughter.

They are, perhaps, hoping that by doubling down they can make what the ICJ says to Israel in a month’s time irrelevant, drowned in a brute display of unaccountable force.

This is what the West’s “rules based international order” looks like with the pretences stripped away. Not naked in the conference chamber, or courtroom, but strutting across the world with their big swinging dicks horribly on display.

Even if we avoid the wider war that is now looming, and which this stance has made more likely, this will neither be forgotten nor forgiven. Now we see you.

“Capitalism won’t solve the energy transition fast enough”

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

These are the notes for a recent speech at my local Constituency Labour Party. The title and the quote at the beginning is from Jason Hickel, who is the Energy editor at the Financial Times; so has something of a horses mouth quality to it.

“There’s too much to do and, given the urgency and the need to get the solutions right, this isn’t a task for your favourite ESG focussed portfolio manager, or the tech bros. The sheer scale of the physical infrastructure that must be revamped, demolished or replaced is almost beyond comprehension. Governments, not Blackrock, will have to lead this new Marshall Plan. And keep doing it. The Western nations that did so much of the damage will have to finance the transition in the developing world – it is astonishing that this is still debated. Massive deficit funding will be necessary.(my emphasis)

For all the clean tech advances and renewable deployment in recent decades, fossil fuels share of global energy use was 86% in 2000, and 82% last year.”

The scale of the challenge

According to Adam Tooze we need to be investing $4 Trillion per year in energy transition. 

Others have argued as much as $6.5 Trillion per year

As the world economy is roughly $100 Trillion a year, between 4 and 6% of it needs to be invested in the transition.

A large sum, but to put it in context, last year (2022) subsidies for fossil fuels amounted to $7 Trillion and Fossil fuel profits were $4Trillion.

This is an opportunity – because there’s your magic money tree…but also a problem, because fossil fuels are so entrenched in everyday life and political power.

Fossil fuel companies have known about the effect of greenhouse gases for 60 years, and have reacted in the same way as the tobacco and asbestos companies did over the links between their products and cancer.

Even now, Shell is arguing that – to be compatible with their interests – Net Zero will only be achievable some time in the 22nd century (so between 50 and 100 years too late).

This entrenchment in political power is seen in Sunak’s latest announcements and more structurally in the high level of climate denial in the US Congress – where Senators and Congresspeople are bought up by FF companies. Showing once again that the USA is the best democracy money can buy.

This leads to a mind boggling level of cognitive dissonance. In 2019 the US military produced a report which stated that the impact of climate breakdown would lead not only to states collapsing around the world, but also that extreme weather events in the US itself would lead to infrastructure and civil society collapsing to a degree that they would expect to be called in to fulfil para state roles, before collapsing themselves from the overstretch that would impose. At the same time, they projected a need to be ready to intervene as the Arctic ice melts, to make sure that the US gets its customary lion’s share of the fossil fuel resources revealed under the ice; thereby helping fuel the collapse that they predict.

Which brings us to a related problem. The ratio of military to green transition spending. In the US, for every $1 allocated to green transition via the Inflation Reduction Act, they are currently spending $18 on their military. And this will get worse as the US and its allies, already responsible for two thirds of global military spending, are sharply increasing it.

The figures on this for China might surprise you. For every $1 they spend on their military, they spend $2 on green transition.

This means two things

  1. A shift from military to green transition spending is an urgent task for the climate and labour movement globally – and therefore the Atlanticist foreign policy framework of the current Labour leadership is as wrong as it can be – and will be thrown into complete crisis should Donald Trump be re-elected next year (which is highly possible).
  2. Countries that see themselves as Socialist are more part of the solution than they are given credit for. The one relatively developed country that the UN considers operates on sustainable lines is… Cuba.

Going back to Tooze to underline this point.

$4Trillion per year needed for energy transition.

Last year, $1.7 Trillion invested in renewable energy, but $1 Trillion was invested in fossil fuels. So, the net gain of 700 billion amounts to about 20% of what we need to be doing. Another way of looking at this is that we need to be doing five times as much as we are at the moment.

According to Tooze, China is the only country investing at anything like the scale and pace we need.

This is underlined by the International Energy Agency that reports that last year China invested 70% more in the transition than the USA and EU put together. And next year the projections are that their investment will be double that of the US and EU combined.

Specifically, in 2024, China is projected to account for 

50% of global solar installations

60% of new onshore wind

70% of new offshore wind.

Labour’s projected £28 billion a year would get us up to US or EU levels; so about half of where we need to be.

This week the IEA put out an updated road map to Net Zero and keeping under a 1.%C increase.

Their essential point is that this is still possible, but only if advance (rich) countries in particular up their targets and ambitions – the opposite of what Sunak has done this week – with an enhanced target of 2045 for Net Zero. No new oil and gas is a bottom line.

To have any chance of getting to that £28 billion, what we need is Just transition bodies with union and community involvement at every level in every sector – so plans for investment – and community mobilisation around them – can be made. This transition can’t happen as a “trickle down” process. It has to be forced up, and the unions in particular will need to take the lead on this, not react defensively.

Ukraine, Ecocide and Complicity – or, why the climate movement should not allow itself to become a fig leaf for NATO.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This poster is displayed on the side of the Dutch Embassy in Moscow and shows the number of people killed in the Donbass between 2014 and 2022. If you walk down the Arbat in the same city you will see hundreds of poster sized billboards memorialising the children killed by Ukrainian shelling into the Donbass in that time. If you go to Donetsk City, you will see a memorial garden for these children. That shelling continues daily even now.

Framing an argument to bury the truth

There is a manipulative form of polemic that starts with a particular image, or emotive incident, that is guaranteed to mobilise an empathetic emotional response from a viewer or reader. If you watch BBC News reports on Ukraine, and think about what they are doing as well as what they are saying (and not saying) you will see this in an almost perfect form. Everything is geared to eliciting an emotional, sympathetic response on the calculation that – because emotion always trumps reason – this will then blot out questions about why these events are taking place; because it will be taken for granted who is to blame.

You might argue that that’s what I’ve done here, but images like that above will never appear on the BBC, or in the Guardian, because its the wrong sort of emotional response. The wrong dead children. The wrong sympathy. None of these kids will have Fergal Keane deployed, with sad backing music and beautifully filmed mordant images of grieving parents, your heart strings will not be expertly plucked to resonate with theirs. But they are just as dead. And the imposition of an ideological no fly zone, through the current banning of RT and policing of social media, means that you are very unlikely to see them anywhere else either. But they are just as real. So, this is just a small challenging counter image to stick onto the gigantic montage of images that have created the one sided picture that you’ve been exposed to already.

And if the deaths of those poor people in the pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk this week is to be taken as justification and fuel for sacrificing even more people to pursue this war with an enhanced sense of moral indignation; is that not equally true for the people in Donetsk?

Because in narrative framing, anything that is out of sight is out of mind. In the case of wars, some people’s deaths are framed as their just deserts because they have the misfortune to belong to a people or state targeted by ours. As the infamous Sun headline crowing over Croatia’s ethnic cleansing of the Krajina in the Yugoslav wars put it, “Serbs you right”.

The Climate Movement and truth

There is now a move to align the climate movement in the Global North/West with the war aims of NATO. A press conference in Kyiv at the end of June, with President Zelensky, Mary Robinson and Greta Thunberg, announced a European body to evaluate “the environmental damage resulting from the war, formulating mechanisms to hold Russia accountable and undertaking efforts to restore Ukraine’s ecology”.

A Commission to examine the ecological damage done by the war as such is, however, not what this Commission is. Such a Commission would have to recognise that the way to stop the ecological damage is to end the war. NATO does not, yet, want to do that, so this Commission is structured to attribute all the blame to one side. Participants in this Commission from the climate movement, whatever their intentions, will find themselves providing a moral fuel to continue the war with single minded righteousness: thereby providing a thin green fig leaf for the most destructive militaries in the world. These are now rapidly expanding and increasing their carbon boot print to an unprecedented degree; and intend to use it. This Commission’s effect will be to prolong the war; thereby generating ever greater ecological damage and human loss.

A frame that aims to “hold Russia”… and only Russia…“accountable” means that ecological damage committed by Ukraine or NATO are either outside their purview, or considered not to exist.

Shells and missiles fired by the Ukrainian armed forces are no more ecologically benign than those fired by the Russians. In the case of the depleted uranium shells supplied for British Conqueror tanks, they can be worse. Ignoring this requires a level of cognitive dissonance that can only be sustained by an act of intense will; or generated by a red mist of moral indignation – generated by the the narrative framing above – sufficient to enable people to look straight at it, and not see it.

Anyone arguing that any ecological damage is ultimately the Russians’ fault “because they invaded” should not forget that this war started in 2014; when the Ukrainian Air Force bombed Donetsk city, opting for a military solution to a political crisis. Does anyone doubt that this would have led the Kyiv government being universally denounced in the West as a regime that “bombs its own people” had they been US opponents?

If you think that the road to peace runs through a Ukrainian victory, have another look at the picture of that girl in the ruins in Donetsk, and the picture of the Crimean Theatre students below, and reflect on the fact that the full realisation of Ukrainian/NATO war aims will involve the ethnic cleansing of their whole region; and that Kyiv has been completely explicit about that.

Theatre students in Simferopol Crimea wearing orange and black ribbons and singing songs on Victory Day May 6th 2023. Photo Dan Kovalic. For a view of how Crimea broke from Ukraine in 2014 and what it is like now see Dan’s article with Rick Sterling here.

President Zelensky was quite blunt that this Commission will be “support for Ukraine”, in the context in of him rejecting any prospect of a ceasefire and frozen conflict and promising to continue the war regardless of the cost. That cost will be measured in escalating environmental damage and human lives and the devastation of his country. The remark of the US officer in Vietnam who remarked that “in order to save the village, it was necessary to destroy it” haunts his speeches.

Collusion in confusion

Participation in a Commission on partisan lines will by definition require collusion with an a priori propagandist interpretation of any event. Four extreme examples of this that pass for conventional wisdom in the West so far.

  • The oft repeated narrative that the Russians were shelling the Zaporozhe nuclear power plant, when it was occupied by their own troops. Even after the Ukrainians admitted they were doing it, the media here still tried to muddy the waters. Ukraine being not only willing to shell a nuclear power station but having actually done it is not something they want us to dwell on. Especially now. The statement from President Zelensky at that press conference with Thunberg and Robinson alleging a Russian plan to blow up the Zaporozhe power station in the coming weeks is particularly alarming in this context; because it might be a cover to resume the shelling – with the blame preemptively allocated -as a pivot for global outrage and mobilisation, as argued by Dmitriy Kovalevich here.*
  • The bizarre accusation that the Russians blew up their own Nordstream gas pipelines releasing up to 350,000 tonnes of methane, doing an enormous amount of environmental damage. It has been a US aim to cut Europe off from Russian gas supplies for over a decade; well before the war. Blocking the certification of Nordstream 2 in February 2022 was a big victory for them. But only a provisional one, because the Russians remained in control of the pipelines and any peace settlement would see them turned back on. Blowing them up rules that out and stops the Russians having that option. It takes peculiar mental gymnastics to imagine that the Russians would destroy their own infrastructure to hand a geopolitical advantage to the United States. Articles by Seymour Hersch detailing US involvement have been largely suppressed in the media here.
  • The case of the ammonia pipeline blown up in Kharkiv is similar, in that the flow of ammonia from Russia to the West had been shut down by the Russians weeks previously as a tit for tat for the West not fulfilling its obligations under the Russia- Ukraine grain/fertilizer deal; so blowing it up would only make sense for a force trying to cut all potential trade between Russia and the West.
  • Claims from the UK Ministry of Defence that the depleted uranium shells they have supplied with their Conqueror tanks are really nothing to worry about, repeated in the media with a straight face. The use of these munitions in Iraq has had horrific impacts. For example The Falluja Hospital’s birth defects Facebook page, where medical staff catalogue cases, reveals the striking diversity and quantity of congenital anomalies. Babies in Falluja are born with hydrocephaly, cleft palates, tumors, elongated heads, overgrown limbs, short limbs and malformed ears, noses and spines. The use of these shells will poison wherever they are used in Ukraine for years after the guns fall silent, while the British politicians who supplied them have roads named after them in Kyiv.

A further example and exemplar of the approach that we are likely to see more of in the framework of this Commission is a recent article on Open Democracy Khakhovska dam destruction is part of the climate emergency. This makes the valid point that the dam’s collapse is environmentally disastrous, but then rests the gigantic accusation of “ecocide” on a conditional presumption, that the destruction of the dam is “likely to have been the work of Russian forces”. “Likely”. Not definitely. Not even probably.

“Likely”. So, how likely? If your brief is that all ecocide is carried out by the Russians, it becomes necessary not even to ask this question; allowing carte blanche to the Ukrainian/NATO side to do their worst and just attribute the consequences to the other side. “Likely” is a small word, easily passed on from when reading at speed, but it is an admission that everything that follows by way of emotional mobilisation could very well be applied against the cause the author supports if readers allow themselves to think and question a bit.

Because its a matter of public record that the Ukrainian armed forces have been shelling and firing HIMARS missiles at this dam for months.

Their military and political leaders hastened to delete posts bragging about doing so as soon as it was breached, but many of them have been recorded and are in the public domain.

Taking a step back, there are three possibilities for how this dam was destroyed. Longer analyses of this can be read here and here, but in a brief summary these are the theories.

  1. The Russians blew up the dam to enable them to withdraw troops from the riverside to redeploy them against the main expected thrust of the Ukrainian army offensive further east; even though this would deplete water supplies to the Crimea. Resecuring this supply after Ukraine cut it off has been one of their main military objectives, and remains one. So, it would be an oddly self destructive to imperil it. It has also been reported, from Ukrainian sources, that Russian troops dug in on the east bank of the Dnieper were taken by surprise by the inundation; which would not be likely if their command were responsible for blowing the dam. More to the point, the Russians were in control of the dam. All they had to do to create a flood would be to open the sluice gates. No need to blow it up, so, why do so?
  2. The Ukrainians blew it up to wash away Russian minefields and defensive positions on the lower lying eastern bank of the river. Their earlier attempts to do so, to cut off the Russian forces on the West Bank before their withdrawal last Autumn, are well publicised. So, whatever the case in this instance, it was something they were prepared to do, it was well within their moral compass, with all the consequences that flow from that. They also appear to have been releasing water from dams higher up the Dnieper in order to keep the flood going; which is odd behaviour by anyone trying to minimise damage.
  3. The dam had been so weakened by the long term effects of the shelling and missile attacks on it that a build up of pressure from a greater volume of water building up behind it in the run up to the breach was too much for it; and both the Russians and Ukrainians have had to improvise a response.

Its hard to see the first option as anything other than the least “likely”, but judge it for yourself.

The media narrative in the UK, however, is not characterised by rational analysis or balanced judgement. The sort of spluttering rage you get from Simon Tisdall in the Observer is more characteristic;. “Of course the Russians did it…Only this malevolent Kremlin regime would wilfully inflict human and environmental havoc on so vast a scale…That’s what they do, these mobsters.” The sound of a man shouting down his own doubts because, as he admits “It’s impossible to prove at this point.” Obviously also a man with no memory of the 4.5 million people killed by the “War on Terror”, nor the far greater environmental destruction in Iraq inflicted by us and our US allies nor, more recently Yemen, thanks partly to the expert training provided by the RAF and RN to their Saudi counterparts; not to mention the after sales service provided by BAE systems making sure that their missiles were accurately targeted.

That’s why the argument on Open Democracy that “it is not enough to just lobby against fossil fuel extraction; we must recognise that the end of Russian imperialism is key to the struggle for climate justice” is so disoriented. It lets the the US and its allies, the world’s dominant imperialism, with the biggest military carbon boot print, completely off the hook to such a degree that it lines up behind its war aims. Anyone who thinks that the route away from the environmental damage caused by this war is via a Ukrainian/NATO victory has lost touch with reality; both in the concrete practical terms of the enormous human and environmental damage that would be required to secure one, and the horrendous consequences for the world of a triumphant retooled US alliance seeking to partition the Russian Federation, take charge of its fossil fuel reserves, really get stuck into oil and gas extraction in the Arctic, and get ready for the war in the South China Sea they’ve been pushing for; with Taiwan as the same sort of sacrificial victim that Ukraine has been.

Taking this stance would also sever links with movements and governments in the Global South; where people who have been on the receiving end of the US imperial system for decades see through its pretensions and fear its ambitions. It would be a disastrous course for the climate movement in the Global North to take. This is particularly in the context of governments like the UK cutting its commitment to global climate finance citing, among other things, “the costs of including help for Ukraine being included in the aid budget.”

Instead of becoming partisans of either side in this war, or any other, whatever our individual views, the climate movement here should stand for an end to the war, oppose militarisation, and campaign to get the global military boot print fully included in the Paris process, with a target to measure, monitor and cut it as fast as possible.

Post script. * The International Atomic Energy Agency has now confirmed that there are no Russian explosives set on the power station.

Ukraine Chief of Intelligence drops the mask on forcible reoccupation of Crimea and partition of Russia

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The 26th May is the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the shelling of Donetsk by Ukrainian forces in 2014. For the Donbass Ukrainians that opposed the new Maidan regime this event marked the point of no return. It followed the burning alive of the anti-maidan protestors in Odessa on May 2nd 2014 and Ukrainian forces trying to storm Mariupol that same week. The shelling has continued daily ever since, including today, killing several people. Yet, listen to the news here and there is silence about that. The casualties caused by a Russian missile strike in Dnipro were reported however, and President Zelensky’s comment that this showed the Russians to be “fighters against everything humane and honest” was not put in the context of what his own forces are doing. An enemy of the United States would be accused of “shelling his own people”.

Nevertheless, most people who support the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, or call for a Russian military withdrawal and restoration of the pre 2014 borders, sincerely assume that this would be a liberation for the people who live in the Donbass and Crimea; and that this is where the war would stop.

This interview with Kyrylo Budanov – the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence (the GRU) – by a journalist who has been making a film supporting the Ukrainian war effort released last week, shows that the Ukrainian high command (and journalists) have no such delusions.

Budanov says a number of interesting things in this interview, some of them revealing, some quite far fetched. He is, after all, an intelligence officer, so he has access to a lot of information; but, as an intelligence officer, a large part of his job is to spin false but instrumentally useful narratives. He is also a firm believer in the notion that if you will something hard enough, it will come to pass and that Ukraine will “win”, despite their succession of grinding defeats since the new year and the terrible cost in lives that is the price of carrying on.

At the same time, he is secure enough in the presumed support of his audience to describe what the sort of victory he wants would look like. In the same way that the Guardian is now so sure of the allegiance of its readers to Ukrainian nationalism that they can reveal that, when collaborating with the Nazis in WW2, they killed around 100,000 Poles, a massacre described as “genocide” by the Polish government as recently as 2016.

In the interview’s final section, about what would happen in Crimea if Ukraine’s war aims were achieved (starting 36:57 minutes in) he is quite blunt that “victory” in the sense of military reoccupation would only be the start of a “difficult” “multi year process” of “reintegrating” territories with a population that is actually hostile and does not want to be reoccupied. Three million people with, as he puts it “a completely different view of the world”*. The interviewer uses the euphemism “three million not very devoted people” and Budanov states that those people with an “altered psyche” who can be “re educated” should be – without specifying what should be done with those that can’t, though “physical elimination” is a phrase he uses elsewhere. This will have to be done with a carrot and a stick, as the two only work together; and with a “firm hand”. This will be “hard work” he says.

Many words can be used to describe this scenario. “Liberation” for those 3 million people is not one of them. If you believe in self determination, you can’t support this.

His comments at the end section about “a new security architecture in the world” are put in context by a section “About the Future of Russia” a little before this (at 32.45 minutes in). In this, the interviewer pulls across a map of the Russian Federation – “your famous map” with the partition borders – that Dick Cheney and Zbigniew Brzezinski originally proposed back in 1991 as a way to manage the “Post Soviet space” most amenably for the US – drawn in in thick blue felt tip lines; remarking that “its been shown a lot”. Not in the media here it hasn’t. It might make people wonder a bit.

This isn’t Budanov’s map, but is similar. If you google US aim to partition Russia and click on images, you get a number of variations.

Budanov uses a number of euphemisms about “unanimous transformation” of Russia and the prospective partition being “conceptual”, and speculates that the more defeats the RF suffers the more it will break up, starting with the Caucasus. His confirmation, when discussing the prospect that “new states” will be imposed on the wreck of the RF that, “Russians are well aware of this” gives a tacit recognition that the Russian security concerns raised in the run up to February 24th were real and existential.

His statement “we don’t need Russia in the form that it exists now”, underlines this and, given where the partition plan originated, cannot be defined as defensive.

*If you want an insight into why the people in Donbass might have a “completely different view of the world” – which Budanov suggests is a result of “propaganda” – consider these personal accounts from the day the Ukrainian army started shelling Donetsk city on May 26th 2014. These are from the Donetsk Anti Fascist site.

Marina Kharkova: “May 25 was the last day of peace in Donetsk, as the family celebrated the birthday of my father, a miner. The mood was anxious, restless and tense because of the general situation, but nothing yet seemed to portend tragedy. On the morning of 26, on my way to work, I heard the sounds of flying planes and distant explosions. Everyone had gathered in the largest office and was listening to an employee who lived near the railway station. She cried and told how Ukrainian planes and helicopters had bombed from the air, how their nine-storey building on Privokzalnoye had been shaking, how women killed by shells were lying directly on the pavement bleeding, how the minibus she was travelling in had hurtled away from the danger zone. She sat in silence, clutching her heads, trying to comprehend. Tanya was given water and sedatives – she was so sick. Then, by inertia, they tried to get on with their business. The rumble outside the window increased, though the office was far away from the airport. Ambulances and cars with militia were whizzing down the street. After three in the afternoon everyone decided to stop their pointless attempts to pretend to be busy and drove home. The understanding of what was happening came at once, although the consciousness was still trying to cling to yesterday’s peaceful day. The 26th of May was the point at which “it will never be the same again”.

EIena Hovhannisyan, a biology teacher: “At that time we kept up with the news from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. We already knew how people had been martyred in Odessa, Mariupol and Krasnoarmeisk. I had forebodings of near disaster. It was already hovering over us, but we did not think how tragic, long, brutal, hopeless the events would be. Sometimes it seemed that it was just a bad dream, that I would wake up and everything would be like before. But no. It is an illusion that the war will not touch you. It will touch everyone, sooner or later. We were simply the first to be in the epicentre. And May 26th I will always remember. The warm, sunny weather and the roar of planes in the sky. From the balcony on the side of the airport black smoke could be seen, you could hear explosions constantly. The first shelling, deaths, destruction, grief and pain. Since that day, there would be no peace in Donetsk for another nine years. But we didn’t know it then. And that day was endless, filled with horror and pain. The phones were literally ringing off the hook – everyone was trying to find out what happened to their loved ones, whether they were alive or not. In the evening my son arrived from work; his office was a couple of blocks from the station. He told about the horror in the city, about the dead woman vendor from the station market, about the very young guy who worked as a valet. He was killed by shrapnel from a missile fired by a Ukrainian helicopter. People were falling, screaming, crying, calling for help. Passers-by tried to save the wounded, car alarms howled. The railway station area in any city is the most crowded place. In Donetsk on Privokzalnoye there are markets, shops, banks, the area was teeming with life. They say helicopters flew so low that you could see the pilots in the cockpit. And these pilots also saw that they hit peaceful people. This was not done by some Hitlerites, but by Ukrainians, with whom we lived in the same country. May 26 was the day that turned everything upside down. There is no and will not be our forgiveness for Ukraine. And there will be no return.

From the diary of a Donetsk woman who wanted to remain anonymous: 26 May 2014, from the balcony, I saw planes firing missiles. My husband, coming home from work, told me about the dead in the station square. At the same time as the airport was being bombed, the fighting moved into the city, on Kievsky Avenue linking the city and the airport. People who had lost their jobs or shelter, relatives or loved ones, went to volunteer for the militia. And every day there were more and more of them, including my acquaintances, as the war gradually touched everyone.

It is difficult to describe the sensations of trying to sleep to the sound of shelling outside your windows. The deafening and resounding explosions are somewhere close by. Your heart sinks each time, because no one knows where the next shell will land. But when you see the dawn, you realize that another night is behind you, all your loved ones are alive today.

In addition to the fighting at the airport and the aerial bombardment with unguided shells, Ukrainian snipers shelled the Putilovsky Bridge. This road was then called the “road of death”: civilian cars with people were burnt and shot, and in the Putilovsky Grove there lay the bodies of both civilians unluckily caught up in the active fighting and the militiamen trying to save people. For several days, the bodies were decomposing in the terrible heat: there was no opportunity to pick them up and bury them.

An ambulance was also shot up on the road to Donetsk airport. Its crew, Artem Kovalevsky, the ambulance driver, paramedic Sergei Kozhukharov and doctor Vladimir Vasilievich, miraculously survived and managed to get out of hell.

They told reporters from the local branch of Komsomolka in Donetsk how they managed to survive when Ukrainian snipers shot even those who had managed to run into the wooded area.

Victoria Sergeyevna, neurologist: I was on duty that day, the hospital was far away from the airport, but we all knew what was going on. In the evening, many people of different ages with strokes or suspected strokes were brought to our department. People’s chronic illnesses were exacerbated by the stress. The statistics of deaths from heart attacks and strokes during the war has increased dramatically compared to the peacetime. And these are also our victims of the war, just as innocent as the victims who died under shelling”.

Nordstream 2 – “the silence shouts in your ear” (Graham Greene)

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

I wrote this yesterday evening after listening to PM. Whatever your views on the Ukraine war, the way the blowing up of Nordstream 2 is being reported is so transparently manipulative that they must know they are doing it. The almost complete silence on Seymour Hersch’s story in particular is almost deafening.

The Ministry of Truth? User:Canley, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

During the discussion with Frank Gardner about the blowing up of the Nordstream pipeline and the current information from Germany that they are investigating a “pro Ukrainian group” for carrying it out, Gardner complained that the Russians were calling for an international investigation that they should be part of. Given that it was their pipeline, that doesn’t seem so odd.

He went on to say that the Russians were considered the main suspects for some time, without clarifying that they were considered to be this by the West, and that this would be -as “false flag” operations go – a spectacular example of cutting off their nose to spite their face given

1) that cutting Germany off from cheap Russian gas has been a strategic objective of the US for some time (and stated as such)

2) that blowing it up helps undermine peace movements in Germany seeking and end to the bloodshed and a deal that could get their cheap gas back (blow up the pipeline, no prospect of gas)

3) thereby removing a significant piece of Russian diplomatic leverage. this is about as plausible as the stories that the Russians were shelling their own troops at the Zaporizhzhiya power station which were repeated – or at best muddied – by your programme too.

Even more striking was that at no point did Gardner, or Evan Davies, refer to the Seymour Hersch story based on leaks from US Special Services that they carried out the attack. Hersch has a long record of getting embarrassing stories for the US bang to rights – from the My Lai massacre to Abu Ghraib. I appreciate that you guys are under heavy manners to keep to the agreed script, but it makes me wonder if Vietnam was happening now, you’d close down the My Lai story too.

Probably…

This is the key sentence in what the BBC write when you complain to them about a News item, so it doesn’t hurt to do it.


We’ll normally include your complaint in our overnight report to producers and management. This will circulate your and all complaints with other reaction we receive today (but with any personal details removed) so it will then be available for the right team to read tomorrow morning.

The Balloon Goes Up!

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Amid all the fuss about the Chinese balloon floating over Montana – we should not forget that the US has 339 military surveillance satellites operating around the world; watching everyone and everything all the time.

They launched four of them in 2020 and, as Space Magazine reported at the time “It’s unclear exactly what the spacecraft will be doing up there.” Though I think we can work it out.

If every other country reacted to that like the US has to this balloon, no future summit would ever be able to take place.

Paranoia about Chinese technology is becoming another theme being pushed hard in the Western Press and on right wing sites. Here’s a headline from one of them. China finds SHOCKING WAY to spy on you – and they’re already in your KITCHEN! (their caps) Of course, if there’s someone from Chinese intelligence who wants to sit in your fridge to note the contents, he or she would have to nudge Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt out of the way first. “Alexa! note down everything I’m saying”.

The US has also been developing balloon surveillance capacity of its own. Last May Politico reported that

Over the past two years, the Pentagon has spent about $3.8 million on balloon projects, and plans to spend $27.1 million in fiscal year 2023 to continue work on multiple efforts, according to budget documents.

And that

For years, DoD has conducted tests using high-altitude balloons and solar-powered drones to collect data, provide ground forces with communication and mitigate satellite problems. The Pentagon is quietly transitioning the balloon projects to the military services to collect data and transmit information to aircraft, POLITICO discovered in DoD budget justification documents.

Projecting just a little perhaps?

Women’s Health in China compared to US and UK

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Photo: Xinhua

Following on from the theme of the Tiny Tipping Points Blog, showing how China is exceeding the US and UK in key aspects of life even while having a far lower level of average wealth, in rankings produced by the 2021 Hologic Global Women’s Health Index

  • China appears at 14th on the list, with an overall score of 63, alongside Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
  • The USA is 23rd, with an overall score of 61, alongside Lithuania, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Belgium, Australia, France and Saudi Arabia.
  • The UK is down at 30th, with an overall score of 60, alongside Poland, Ireland, Slovenia, Kosovo and Kazakhstan.

This survey was carried out by Gallup during 2020 with “66,0000 women and girls (aged 15 and older) in 122 countries and territories and over 140 different languages to assess the multiple dimensions that contribute to women’s health.”

The full report can be read here.

Tiny Tipping Points as China pulls ahead.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Although China has a nominal per capita income of just under a third of the US level in 2022 in PPP terms; since 2020 it has began to overhaul the US as a society in some key respects.

Life expectancy in China now exceeds that of the US by 20 months; at 78.2 years to the American 76.6. This might be dented this year by the current rise in COVID infections, but current indications are that the Zero Covid policy kept the population safe during the most lethal period, so the impact of opening up now will be qualitatively less than it was in the West.

In China, infant mortality has declined to 5 per 100,000, now below the US level of 5.5 and the maternal death rate at birth is now substantially lower, at 16 per 100,000, compared to 24 per 100,000 for the US.

While this is improving but uneven in both countries, the rate of improvement is greater in China.

  • In the worst performing US State, Mississippi, infant mortality declined slightly from 10.1 per 100,000 in 2009 to 8.7 per 100,000 in 2019.
  • While in Louisiana in 2021 the maternal death rate was 58.1 per 100,000 births.
  • This compares unfavourably with Xinjiang, one of China’s least developed and poorest regions, where infant mortality dropped dramatically from 26.58 per 1,000 in 2010 to 6.75 per 1,000 in 2020.
  • At the same time, the maternal death rate more than halved from 43.41 per 100,000 in 2010 to 17.89 per 100,000 in 2020 – less than a third the Louisiana rate.

NB the figure for Louisiana is for 2021, that for Xinjiang is for 2020.

Beneath the brute figures of sheer size of economies – China’s has been larger in PPP terms since 2014 and is likely to be bigger in exchange rate terms by the late 2020’s – China’s largest firms are beginning to outperform those of the USA, with Chinese companies in the Fortune 500 Global list earning $11.71 Trillion last year, compared to $11.34 trillion for the US companies listed. 87 out of the 145 Chinese companies listed are majority, or wholly, state owned.

This is underpinned by increasingly ground breaking scientific research, with the Chinese share of the most cited Scientific papers (top 1%) having grown to 27.2%, surpassing the USA’s 24.9%.

The US model of development, dependent as it is on dominating and exploiting the rest of the planet, producing consumption patterns with an elephantine carbon footprint, is neither a viable path for other countries to follow – because no other country can dominate the way that it does – nor, as we can see above, does it produce the best possible outcomes for its population from the resources it commands. It is already an outmoded model of modernity.

Figures from Dongsheng News

Plenty of money for war. Token gestures for climate.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Faced with a collapsing climate, the most powerful country on the planet is spending colossal sums of money on keeping the war in Ukraine going rather than seeking a peace, while only committing to a tenth of its $11 billion pledge to the Global South for funding to avert climate breakdown.

These figures show a set of priorities that spell disaster for humanity unless reversed.

Figures for military aid to Ukraine here.

Figures for climate funding for global south here.