https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFFGAXdTHUk
Saturday, September 4, 2021
Syrian air defenses ‘shoot down’ Israeli missiles over Damascus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxx2wi84bpE
Russian and Chinese leaders criticize politicization of the coronavirus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu6BoRU9OY
Climate denial? Flat Earth? What’s the difference?
August 30th, 2021,
by Tim Radford
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/climate-denial-flat-earth-whats-the-difference/
People who deny that climate change is happening have something in common with people who believe in a flat Earth.
LONDON, 30 August, 2021 − Dover, a town in the county of Kent in the United Kingdom, was during the 1960s rich in eccentrics: one of them was Mr Samuel Shenton, founder and secretary of the International Flat Earth Research Society.
He was regarded with affection and merriment by local and even national newspaper reporters, and so was solemnly consulted during the US Apollo programme, the race to the moon. In 1965 he refused to believe that a photograph of the curvature of the Earth, taken by astronauts on a Gemini mission, proved that the planet was a sphere. Or that it was moving in space at 30kms a second.
“If we were going at such a tremendous speed through space you wouldn’t be able to get out of your house,” he told a Guardian colleague, “and you’d see the effects on the clouds and the waterways.”
Reportedly at his death his society had no more than 100 members. Then it crossed the Atlantic, and something started to happen.
Shared rejection
By 2018, Lee McIntyre, a researcher at Boston University in Massachusetts, could attend a Flat Earth International Conference in Denver, Colorado and use it as a starting point for an enjoyable and even mildly sympathetic new book called How to Talk to a Science Denier (MIT Press, $24.95).
The event became his template for a study of that stubborn phenomenon known as science denial, the outright refusal to accept data, experimental evidence or patient explanation of findings that you have already decided to reject.
In the course of this reporter’s lifetime, such conspicuous refusals have included the link between smoking and cancer and other health conditions; the connection between HIV infection and illness and death from Aids; the value of vaccination as a protection against disease; and most conspicuously, the connection between human exploitation of fossil fuels and the swelling climate crisis.
And although each act of denial begins from an apparently different starting point, the machinery of resistance − that determination not to be persuaded − shares five common factors.
“You cannot change someone’s beliefs against their will, nor can you usually get them to admit there is something they don’t already know”
One is a refusal to accept aspects of the evidence that do not suit your beliefs, but seize upon those that might seem to. This is called cherry-picking: you just believe the bits you like and ignore the rest.
The second factor is a commitment to the notion of massive conspiracy: a global conspiracy if need be, to declare that Covid-19 isn’t a real disease; or alternatively that it is spread by radiation from 5G radio masts; or that all the world’s science academies, almost all the world’s meteorologists and even governments, are in some monstrous plot to pretend that the climate is changing dangerously, when it isn’t, or if it is, it’s because of natural causes.
The third factor is the denunciation of real experts and the reliance on self-appointed experts. The fourth factor almost always involves logical error (we have an example above from Mr Shenton). And the last and − the deniers seem to think − the most clinching tactic is to say: “But you cannot deliver 100% proof.”
In the chapters that follow, McIntyre explores the different forms that denial takes: he talks to coal-miners in Pennsylvania about climate change; he talks to activists and campaigners about the rejection of genetic engineering as a technique for improving crops; to people who reject vaccination as a protection against disease, and to climate deniers. In all cases, he identifies evidence of the five techniques deployed to resist argument.
Selective acceptance
However, not all forms of rejection are quite as uncompromising as faith in Flat Earth. His miners know about climate change, and yes, know the costs too, but they’re miners. Mining coal is what they do.
Those against genetically-modified crops may turn out to be more concerned about economics, or choice, or the growth of corporate power. People can be vaccine-hesitant (“Is it safe? How do you know?”) rather than flat-out deniers. In each case there are separate issues underlying the unease.
Greek astronomers worked out more than 2,000 years ago that they lived on an orb; to believe the Earth is a stationary disc supported on pillars, Flat Earthers must reject the physics, astronomy and radiation science of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Einstein, while at the same time using cellphones and the Internet, products of that science.
Climate deniers have the slightly more tricky challenge of acknowledging the value of science except when it’s climate science.
Oil money
Each group believes in a massive, worldwide conspiracy to deceive. Two Flat Earthers told McIntyre that the conspiracy to foist the globalist view of the planet was the work of “the Adversary”, the Devil himself.
Climate deniers have the slightly harder task of persuading themselves that climate scientists − Chinese, British, American, Australian, Brazilian or from anywhere in the world − are all conspiring to issue a false message confected for some kind of pecuniary gain or political motive, or for the sake of a hoax, which is a bit more complicated.
There is another compounding factor addressed by this book: the big oil companies decided in 1998 to actually systematically challenge the science, with of course big money: altogether almost a billion dollars a year now flows into an organised climate change counter-movement.
In the US, climate science, like the Covid-19 pandemic itself, has become a party political issue. Nobody gets rich by denying that the Earth is round. Quite a few already very rich people will be yet richer because concerted global action on the climate emergency has been delayed, by systematic cherry-picking, conspiracy theorising, a small army of fake experts and some wilfully illogical reasoning. A very large number are likely to become miserably and even catastrophically poorer.
Winning ways
Meanwhile, how do you talk to a science denier? McIntyre’s suggested approach involves patience, courtesy, a willingness to listen, and to address the denier’s arguments directly.
“You cannot change someone’s beliefs against their will, nor can you usually get them to admit there is something they don’t already know. Harder still might be to get them to change their values or identity.
“But there is no easier path to take when dealing with science deniers. We must try to make them understand … But first we have to go out there, face-to-face, and begin to talk to them.”
Unknown waters ahead puzzle marine modellers
September 3rd, 2021,
by Tim Radford
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/unknown-waters-ahead-puzzle-marine-modellers/
Climate change will alter the blue planet on an almost global scale. Marine life will change in the unknown waters ahead.
LONDON, 3 September, 2021 − By the close of this century, the world’s mariners may be sailing over unknown waters. Up to 95% of the ocean surface climates that Charles Darwin voyaged in the Beagle in the 19th century, and that became part of the global battleground during the wars of the 20th century, will have vanished.
And some − perhaps most − of these climates will be of a kind that have no precedent in human history, or prehistory.
Quite how sharply those familiar waters will disappear depends on what happens to global greenhouse emissions. But at the rates at which humans have been burning fossil fuels so far, somewhere between 35% and almost all the sea surface conditions will have changed, and so will the marine ecosystems that depend upon those conditions.
What happens to the algae and plankton, the pelagic fish and the predators that hunt them, is increasingly difficult to guess: another study has just concluded that even after more than a century of oceanography and marine biological research, humans still don’t know enough about how ocean ecosystems work to be able to be sure of the future.
US researchers write in the journal Scientific Reports that they looked at measurements that define marine surface climate: water temperature, the concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide that defines its pH value on the acid-alkaline chemical spectrum, and the water’s saturation with aragonite, a form of dissolved calcium carbonate, washed over the aeons by the rivers into the sea.
Telling comparisons
Put simply, as greenhouse gas emissions rise, so the oceans become both warmer and more acidic, and the saturation level of aragonite falls. And as this level falls, corals and other marine creatures find it harder to turn sea water into the shell structures that protect them.
The researchers report that they modelled the ocean climates for the years 1795 to 1834 − the years of Coleridge’s poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and of the British Royal Navy’s command of the high seas − and for the years 1963 to 2004, the years of the aircraft carrier and supertanker.
Then they compared their findings with what ocean surfaces will look like if carbon emissions peak in 2050, or − this is sometimes called the “business-as-usual” scenario − in 2100.
Under the first scenario, 35.6% of sea surface climates familiar for the last two centuries may have disappeared. Under the second, 95% will have gone, to be replaced by what the authors call ”novel climates.” And, they say in the constrained syntax of academic language, “the degree of global climate novelty at a location may … indicate how stressful novel conditions will be for all species.
“In contrast, the degree of global climate disappearance for a location may represent how hard it might be for species who are well-adapted to climate at that location to find a similar climate in the future.”
“Attempting to summarise the vast complexity of the global marine ecosystem in a handful of equations is enormously difficult”
That the marine world is changing is no surprise: scientists have reported again and again that once-valuable species are migrating, or growing smaller, or dwindling in number.
As temperatures rise, oxygen levels drop, leaving some species gasping. As breeding grounds warm, spawning becomes problematic. So researchers can see what is already happening. It’s much harder to guess what the oceans will be like decades from now.
And in a timely study in the journal Progress in Oceanography, a team from Australia, the US, Canada and Europe issues a similar warning: humans are about to voyage into unknown waters.
Global heating is already driving what they call “significant changes in the structure of marine ecosystems” worldwide. That is, the tiny creatures on which bigger fish ultimately depend will change. And that could be bad news for the millions of people who live by the sea, and seafood.
But, they warn, it is becoming difficult to calculate how the denizens of the deep, and the citizens of the shallows, will respond to ocean climate shifts. There is a lot more research to be done, and some complex mathematical challenges ahead.
Food supplies lessen
“We know the impact of climate change on both water temperature and primary production will alter marine ecosystems in fundamental ways. Fish and other marine animals will burn more energy in warmer waters, leaving less scope for growth and reproduction.
“At the same time, in regions where primary production from phytoplankton decreases there will be less food, which will drive marine biomass down further,” said Ryan Heneghan of Queensland University of Technology in Australia, who led the study.
“Between now and 2100, the change in global marine animal biomass across our models varied between a 30% decline and a small increase of 5%. Across all the models, there were biomass declines across most of the world’s oceans, but the models disagreed on where, why and by how much marine biomass would decline under climate change,” he said.
“Attempting to summarise the vast complexity of the global marine ecosystem in a handful of equations is enormously difficult, and global marine ecosystem modelling is a relatively new field of research; our oldest models are just over 10 years old, whereas the climate modelling community were developing their first models over 40 years ago. There is a lot of work to do.”
How the Australian Labor Party spearheaded the ramming of anti-democratic electoral laws through parliament
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/03/elec-s03.html
Mike Head
11 hours ago
Labor Party parliamentarians played the leading role, working hand-in-hand with the Liberal-National Coalition government ministers, in rushing anti-democratic electoral bills through Australia’s parliament last week in just over 24 hours.
Anthony Albanese addresses ALP conference (Source: YouTube)
Labor and the Coalition—the two main parties of capitalist rule—hold the overwhelming majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, so they collaborated to push the bills through in record time.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has launched a campaign throughout the working class against the laws. The corporate and political establishment is seeking to suppress the rising opposition to its “reopening” drive as the COVID-19 pandemic resurges, threatening thousands of working-class lives, including those of children.
Nothing comparable to last week’s scenes in parliament has been seen since November 2005, when Labor, as well as the Greens, helped the Howard Coalition government recall the Senate to pass sweeping police-state “terrorism” legislation in just 36 hours. That unanimous stand was based on Howard’s dubious claim, never substantiated, that his government had received “specific intelligence” about a terrorist threat.
Labor’s role in spearheading the passage of the latest bills is revealing. It reflects the nervousness in ruling circles that the resistance of workers, students and parents to the premature return to classrooms and workplaces could erupt out of the control of the increasingly discredited and detested Coalition government.
Hence the need to shore up Labor’s vote, as well as the Coalition’s, by barring access to elections for alternative parties. That includes the SEP, the only one advancing the necessity for workers to mobilise on the basis of a socialist perspective to protect lives and eradicate COVID-19.
As the SEP explained in its statement yesterday, “Defeat bipartisan Australian drive to de-register political parties!” the laws set out to strip party registration from every party not currently represented in parliament. With a federal election looming, the legislation compels parties to provide details of 1,500 members—trebling the previous requirement—within just three months, all in the middle of widespread lockdowns.
Without registered party status, election candidates cannot identify their political affiliations on ballot papers. They must be listed without any party name, or as “independents.”
That not only denies the essential right of political parties to campaign and communicate their views in elections. It robs voters of the ability to cast conscious political votes.
One of the bills specifically seeks to block support for the socialist program advocated by the SEP. It bans parties from using the names “socialist” or “communist” (as well as “labor,” “liberal and “green”) if another registered party has already claimed that label, no matter how falsely.
Another provision restricts voting rights by cutting pre-poll voting to a maximum of 12 days before elections. This undercuts the ability of many working-class voters to cast ballots—more than 40 percent of the electorate voted pre-poll or by post at the last election in 2019.
The introduction and passage of these bills have been buried throughout the corporate media. There is clear concern in the ruling class that support is collapsing for the long-time parties of capitalist rule, and the public must be kept in the dark about the efforts to prop them up.
Last week’s token two-hour “debates” in each house of parliament demonstrated that Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Coalition government is relying on Labor to prosecute the attack on democratic rights.
Labor MPs were the most aggressive exponents of the bills. Milton Dick, who holds the seat of Oxley in western Brisbane, denounced “people whingeing and whining about this change—so-called believers in freedom and democracy.”
Dick also provided a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes operation between the government and Labor to produce the bills. He said Labor’s shadow minister for electoral matters Senator Don Farrell had worked “incredibly hard” with Morrison’s right-hand man, Assistant Minister Ben Morton, “to ensure that we do work in a bipartisan way.”
Both Dick and Morton declared, without explanation, that some “minor parties” already met the new 1,500-member threshold. They referred to the Animal Justice Party, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Sustainable Australia and the Liberal Democratic Party. These are all pro-capitalist parties, regarded as useful safety valves to divert the disaffection back into the parliamentary arena.
Labor speakers claimed that the bills would prevent billionaires such as mining magnate Clive Palmer registering parties without real members. But like the other parties with seats in parliament, Palmer’s United Australia Party is exempt from the membership requirement, having just recruited far-right Coalition defector Craig Kelly.
The truth is that all the parliamentary parties would have difficulty nominating 1,500 members, unless they could count MPs, staffers, trade union officials and other office holders. They are bureaucratic shells, dominated by branch-stacking conducted by narrowly-based factional powerbrokers.
Labor and the Coalition were intent on seeking to deregister as many parties as possible. They summarily rejected amendments by Kelly and another right-wing figure, Senator Jacqui Lambie, to lower the membership requirement rule to 1,000, and make it apply to only new parties applying for registration, not those already registered.
Another Labor spokesman, shadow minister Andrew Giles, gave voice to the concerns within the capitalist establishment that alternative parties can gain wider support by standing in federal elections. He said a registered party could “build a profile and name recognition” by having its name on ballot papers.
Giles provided an insight into the profoundly anti-democratic outlook that permeates the ruling class. He declared that such ballot recognition was a “privilege” and “significant benefit,” not a basic democratic right. It was an “advantage” that came with “responsibilities” to uphold the parliamentary order.
Likewise, Giles agreed with his Coalition colleagues that registered parties had to hand over membership lists in order to demonstrate a “genuine base of community support.” That denies the function of elections themselves, which are meant to determine levels of political support.
In an attempt to distance her party from the anti-democratic move, Greens Senator Larissa Waters spoke and voted against the bills in Senate. In the House of Representatives, however, Greens leader Adam Bandt notably remained silent.
Waters said the de-registration measures were an “attack on our democracy.” But the Greens supported the previous 500-member rule, which was an anti-democratic provision introduced under the Hawke Labor government in 1984, requiring party registration for the first time.
Combined with state funding for the parliamentary parties, the 1984 laws were themselves a bid to shore up the parliamentary establishment, for which popular support was already crumbling because of growing social inequality and declining working and living conditions.
The party registration scheme was a pre-emptive strike against working-class unrest. The Hawke government’s corporatist Prices and Incomes Accords with the trade unions paved the way for a decades-long assault on workers’ jobs and conditions provoking widespread disaffection and opposition among workers.
The 1984 legislation proved unsuccessful in bolstering the parliamentary order, however. The share of votes going to Labor and the Coalition has continued to fall, down to 75 percent in 2019. This reflects the deepening hostility to their bipartisan pro-business program.
The SEP has always opposed the party registration laws, which also compel parties to hand over the details of their members. That opens them up to surveillance and harassment, and violates the principle of secret ballots, which are meant to provide voters with privacy regarding their political affiliations.
The SEP calls for a concerted campaign to demand the repeal of the latest laws and all restrictions on the democratic right of parties and individuals to stand in elections. At the same time, we appeal to every one of our supporters and readers: apply to become an electoral member of the SEP to help us retain our registration and defeat this attack.
To discuss and take forward this fight, we urge readers to contact the SEP:
Website: http://www.sep.org.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialistEqualityPartyAustralia/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sep_australia
Labor and the Coalition—the two main parties of capitalist rule—hold the overwhelming majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, so they collaborated to push the bills through in record time.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has launched a campaign throughout the working class against the laws. The corporate and political establishment is seeking to suppress the rising opposition to its “reopening” drive as the COVID-19 pandemic resurges, threatening thousands of working-class lives, including those of children.
Nothing comparable to last week’s scenes in parliament has been seen since November 2005, when Labor, as well as the Greens, helped the Howard Coalition government recall the Senate to pass sweeping police-state “terrorism” legislation in just 36 hours. That unanimous stand was based on Howard’s dubious claim, never substantiated, that his government had received “specific intelligence” about a terrorist threat.
Labor’s role in spearheading the passage of the latest bills is revealing. It reflects the nervousness in ruling circles that the resistance of workers, students and parents to the premature return to classrooms and workplaces could erupt out of the control of the increasingly discredited and detested Coalition government.
Hence the need to shore up Labor’s vote, as well as the Coalition’s, by barring access to elections for alternative parties. That includes the SEP, the only one advancing the necessity for workers to mobilise on the basis of a socialist perspective to protect lives and eradicate COVID-19.
As the SEP explained in its statement yesterday, “Defeat bipartisan Australian drive to de-register political parties!” the laws set out to strip party registration from every party not currently represented in parliament. With a federal election looming, the legislation compels parties to provide details of 1,500 members—trebling the previous requirement—within just three months, all in the middle of widespread lockdowns.
Without registered party status, election candidates cannot identify their political affiliations on ballot papers. They must be listed without any party name, or as “independents.”
That not only denies the essential right of political parties to campaign and communicate their views in elections. It robs voters of the ability to cast conscious political votes.
One of the bills specifically seeks to block support for the socialist program advocated by the SEP. It bans parties from using the names “socialist” or “communist” (as well as “labor,” “liberal and “green”) if another registered party has already claimed that label, no matter how falsely.
Another provision restricts voting rights by cutting pre-poll voting to a maximum of 12 days before elections. This undercuts the ability of many working-class voters to cast ballots—more than 40 percent of the electorate voted pre-poll or by post at the last election in 2019.
The introduction and passage of these bills have been buried throughout the corporate media. There is clear concern in the ruling class that support is collapsing for the long-time parties of capitalist rule, and the public must be kept in the dark about the efforts to prop them up.
Last week’s token two-hour “debates” in each house of parliament demonstrated that Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Coalition government is relying on Labor to prosecute the attack on democratic rights.
Labor MPs were the most aggressive exponents of the bills. Milton Dick, who holds the seat of Oxley in western Brisbane, denounced “people whingeing and whining about this change—so-called believers in freedom and democracy.”
Dick also provided a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes operation between the government and Labor to produce the bills. He said Labor’s shadow minister for electoral matters Senator Don Farrell had worked “incredibly hard” with Morrison’s right-hand man, Assistant Minister Ben Morton, “to ensure that we do work in a bipartisan way.”
Both Dick and Morton declared, without explanation, that some “minor parties” already met the new 1,500-member threshold. They referred to the Animal Justice Party, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Sustainable Australia and the Liberal Democratic Party. These are all pro-capitalist parties, regarded as useful safety valves to divert the disaffection back into the parliamentary arena.
Labor speakers claimed that the bills would prevent billionaires such as mining magnate Clive Palmer registering parties without real members. But like the other parties with seats in parliament, Palmer’s United Australia Party is exempt from the membership requirement, having just recruited far-right Coalition defector Craig Kelly.
The truth is that all the parliamentary parties would have difficulty nominating 1,500 members, unless they could count MPs, staffers, trade union officials and other office holders. They are bureaucratic shells, dominated by branch-stacking conducted by narrowly-based factional powerbrokers.
Labor and the Coalition were intent on seeking to deregister as many parties as possible. They summarily rejected amendments by Kelly and another right-wing figure, Senator Jacqui Lambie, to lower the membership requirement rule to 1,000, and make it apply to only new parties applying for registration, not those already registered.
Another Labor spokesman, shadow minister Andrew Giles, gave voice to the concerns within the capitalist establishment that alternative parties can gain wider support by standing in federal elections. He said a registered party could “build a profile and name recognition” by having its name on ballot papers.
Giles provided an insight into the profoundly anti-democratic outlook that permeates the ruling class. He declared that such ballot recognition was a “privilege” and “significant benefit,” not a basic democratic right. It was an “advantage” that came with “responsibilities” to uphold the parliamentary order.
Likewise, Giles agreed with his Coalition colleagues that registered parties had to hand over membership lists in order to demonstrate a “genuine base of community support.” That denies the function of elections themselves, which are meant to determine levels of political support.
In an attempt to distance her party from the anti-democratic move, Greens Senator Larissa Waters spoke and voted against the bills in Senate. In the House of Representatives, however, Greens leader Adam Bandt notably remained silent.
Waters said the de-registration measures were an “attack on our democracy.” But the Greens supported the previous 500-member rule, which was an anti-democratic provision introduced under the Hawke Labor government in 1984, requiring party registration for the first time.
Combined with state funding for the parliamentary parties, the 1984 laws were themselves a bid to shore up the parliamentary establishment, for which popular support was already crumbling because of growing social inequality and declining working and living conditions.
The party registration scheme was a pre-emptive strike against working-class unrest. The Hawke government’s corporatist Prices and Incomes Accords with the trade unions paved the way for a decades-long assault on workers’ jobs and conditions provoking widespread disaffection and opposition among workers.
The 1984 legislation proved unsuccessful in bolstering the parliamentary order, however. The share of votes going to Labor and the Coalition has continued to fall, down to 75 percent in 2019. This reflects the deepening hostility to their bipartisan pro-business program.
The SEP has always opposed the party registration laws, which also compel parties to hand over the details of their members. That opens them up to surveillance and harassment, and violates the principle of secret ballots, which are meant to provide voters with privacy regarding their political affiliations.
The SEP calls for a concerted campaign to demand the repeal of the latest laws and all restrictions on the democratic right of parties and individuals to stand in elections. At the same time, we appeal to every one of our supporters and readers: apply to become an electoral member of the SEP to help us retain our registration and defeat this attack.
To discuss and take forward this fight, we urge readers to contact the SEP:
Website: http://www.sep.org.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialistEqualityPartyAustralia/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sep_australia
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