Ruth's Report: Donald Trump's Georgia case

I am just going to note a video this time. It is a discussion about the Georgia case against former President Donald Trump.

So if he is not going to listen to his lawyers, why is he paying them?

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for Monday:

Monday, September 11, 2023. Iraq's already feeling the effects of climate change and Iraqi leaders join leaders around the world in ignoring this reality.

Starting with Iraq where Mahmoud Abdelwahed (ALJAZEERA) reports on The People's Melody -- a music festival in the KRG.

On events in Kurdistan, IRAQI 24 reports:

Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Monday received United States Ambassador to Iraq Alina L. Romanowski and an accompanying delegation, according to a statement from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

A major focus of the discussion was the Kurdistan Region's constitutional rights and financial entitlements under the federal budget law.

PM Barzani pointed out that there are parties within Iraq that wish to exploit the Kurdistan Region for their own illicit financial gain. The KRG has provided the Iraqi government with its interpretation of the budget law based on constitutional grounds. As the premier further explained, Kurdistan Region civil servants should be paid federally-funded salaries as their counterparts in Iraqi provinces.

Another topic of the meeting was to discuss the recent events in Kirkuk, in which both sides stressed the importance of normalizing the return of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) headquarters and maintaining security in Kirkuk.

It wasn't apparently very important to Alina L. Romanowski since she Tweeted about this:

Yet she couldn't be bothered Tweeting about meeting with Barzani. On the "recent events in Kirkuk," Julian Bechocha (RUDAW) reports:

Iraq’s State Administration Coalition has agreed to send a “leadership committee” from the coalition to the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk a week after unrest between Kurdish, Arab, and Turkmen protesters turned deadly.

Tensions escalated in Kirkuk on September 2 after Arab and Turkmen demonstrators staged a sit-in near the headquarters of the Iraqi military’s Joint Operations Command (JOC), located on the main Kirkuk-Erbil road in what used to be an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), angry that Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani reportedly ordered Iraqi forces to evacuate the headquarters and two other buildings to allow the Erbil-based KDP to return to its offices.

As the city’s disgruntled Kurdish majority staged a counter-protest, Iraqi security forces opened fire and killed at least four Kurdish protesters.

The State Administration Coalition agreed to “form a leadership committee from the coalition to visit Kirkuk province, hold meetings with official and social activists for all components of the province, finding solutions to immediate problems, most notably the issue of the headquarters, and make administrative adjustments in Kirkuk to maintain balance between all its components,” said an early Sunday statement by Sudani’s office.

The meeting was also attended by Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid and Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi, in addition to Sudani.

In other news, RUDAW notes:

Iraq is facing a “human rights emergency” as a result of the effects of climate change on the country, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned on Monday.

Speaking before the United Nations Human Rights Council, Volker Turk, used Iraq as an example of the “environmental horror” the planet is facing as the global climate change crisis worsens.

“In Basra - where 30 years ago, I was told, date palms lined lush canals - drought, searing heat, extreme pollution and fast-depleting supplies of fresh water are creating barren landscapes of rubble and dust,” Turk said.

Iraq is among the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including water and food insecurity, according to the United Nations.

“Last month, in Iraq, the cradle of so many civilizations, I witnessed a small piece of the environmental horror that is our global planetary crisis,” he stated.

The high commissioner in June visited Iraq and the Kurdistan Region where he met officials and discussed human rights issues, including climate change.

“This spiraling damage is a human rights emergency for Iraq - and many other countries,” Turk warned.

He decried the lack of unity among global leadership to tackle climate change, accusing them of instead adopting a “politics of division and distraction” as well as the “politics of indifference, the numbing of our mind and soul” referring to the lack of compassion to the increasing death of migrants.

Climate change will impact the entire planet. Iraq is predicted to be one of the countries impacted hardest and yet nothing is being done to address this.

Over and over, we see that governments are more than willing to ignore the harm of climate change but they're eager to attack those who protest their inaction. Jon Queally (COMMON DREAMS) reports:

Climate campaigners calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies were fired upon with water cannons and physically abused Saturday near The Hague in the Netherlands as the global movement demanding an end to the dominance of the coal, oil, and gas industry continues to call on world leaders to act.

Members of Extinction Rebellion spearheaded the direct action on the A12 Utrechtsebaan highway near the center of the Dutch government. With an estimated 10,000 participants overall, the jovial protesters sat down in the road, bringing traffic to a standstill as they chanted, "The seas are rising and so are we!" even as police vehicles sprayed them with water at high velocity.

The Associated Press reported that the protesters vowed to stay until the Netherlands ends public subsidies for the fossil fuel industry or, if removed by police, to return each day until the financial support is suspended.

"This is much larger than any one of us," one participant, Yolanda de Jager, told the AP. "This concerns the whole world."

Dutch police carted some protesters off in carts while others were beaten with batons or dragged off the roadway:

Earlier this week, a new report detailed how the Dutch government spends nearly $38 billion in taxpayer funds each year to support fossil fuels. The authors of the peer-reviewed report—a joint research effort by SOMO, Oil Change International, and Milieudefensie—argued that such subsidies should be eliminated by 2025 in order to help the nation meet its emission reductions goals and also help fund the necessary transition to renewable energy.

"Phasing out fossil subsidies kills two birds with one stone: it reduces fossil fuel emissions and raises additional revenue needed to accelerate a social and equitable transition," said Audrey Gaughran, director of SOMO, also known as the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations.

OCI director Elizabeth Bast said, "The Netherlands has taken the international stage to promise an end to fossil fuel subsidies multiple times already, but it is failing to live up to its promise."

"While the world is going up in flames, the government continues to add fuel to the fire by propping up the biggest source of the climate crisis, fossil fuels, with billions in subsidies," she added. "With an urgent and fair phase-out plan the Netherlands can deliver on longstanding promises and take the lead within the EU and internationally to ensure other countries follow through."

That was Saturday. REUTERS notes, "Dutch police on Sunday said more than 500 climate activists had been detained on a second consecutive day of protests against government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry." And the same government that refuses to confront climate change, confronted protesters for the third day in a row, "Police in the Netherlands said they were deploying a water cannon to clear a major highway blocked by climate activists for the third straight day on Monday in protests over government subsidies for fossil fuels." Who needs to be locked up? Who needs water cannons trained on them?

Julia Conley (COMMON DREAMS) reports:

Climate scientists across the world have been alarmed over the past three months by fast-spreading wildfires, prolonged and deadly heatwaves, and numerous shattered heat records across the northern hemisphere both in the oceans and on land—and data released Tuesday confirmed that the past three months have been the hottest summer on record, driven by humans' continued emission of heat-trapping gases and compounded by El Niño.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the European Union's climate agency, found that the global average temperature during June, July, and August reached 16.77°C (62.18°F), which was 0.66°C or 1.18°F above the 1991-2020 average.

The previous temperature record was set in 2019 and was 0.29°C (0.5°F) lower than this year's high.

Last month was the hottest August on record "by a large margin," said the World Meteorological Organization, with the average temperature 1.5°C higher than the preindustrial average.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday the world is experiencing the consequences of "our fossil fuel addiction," which "scientists have long warned" would be unleashed if humans continue extracting oil and gas instead of rapidly shifting to renewable energy sources.

"Our planet has just endured a season of simmering—the hottest summer on record. Climate breakdown has begun," said Guterres.

"In the southern hemisphere Antarctic sea ice extent was literally off the charts, and the global sea surface temperature was once again at a new record. It is worth noting that this is happening BEFORE we see the full warming impact of the El Niño event."

C3S released the data as the Eastern United States experienced a "dangerous heatwave," with cities including New York and Washington, D.C. announcing heat advisories.

As the World Weather Attribution (WWA) said earlier this summer, the extreme heat felt across North America and Europe in July—the hottest month ever on record, followed by August—would have been "virtually impossible" without planetary heating and the climate crisis.

Scientists at the WWA also found that the hot, dry conditions that allowed wildfires to spread rapidly in Eastern Canada were made twice as likely by the climate emergency, and independent scientists at Climate Central determined that the current heat forecast in the United Kingdom—with temperatures over 33°C or 91°F expected in London on Saturday—was made five times more likely.

Jeffrey St. Clair (COUNTERPUNCH) notes:

+ Since the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, international banks have provided around $3.2 trillion to the fossil fuel industry to expand operations.

+ A new study published in Energies by Joshua Pearce at the University of Western Ontario, and Richard Parncutt from the University of Graz, still climate change could led to more than one billion deaths in the next century: “If global warming reaches or exceeds two degrees Celsius by 2100…it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century.”

+ The 2023 global temperature peak was around 0.3C higher than 2022.

+ West Antarctica is warming twice as fast as climate models predicted. If it’s ice sheet collapses, it would raise sea levels by several meters.

+ At least five of the nation’s largest property insurers—Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie and Berkshire Hathaway—have told regulators that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change have led them to raise premiums and stop writing coverages for natural disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires, in some regions.

+ From 2003 to 2020 California experienced about 18,000 fires, 380 of them included at least one day when the fire grew by at least 10,000 acres. Climate change increased the likelihood of that explosive growth for most of the fires.

+ In British Columbia, four of the most severe wildfire seasons of the last century occurred in the past 7 years: 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2023.

+ By 2050, more than 5 billion people could face at least a month of extreme heat each year.

+ Africa will need around $277 billion annually to implement “nationally determined contributions” to meet the continent’s 2030 climate goals, according to the Climate Policy Initiative. Currently, however, Africa is receiving only $30 billion a year in climate financing.

+ A couple of months before Hurricane Idalia ravaged the Gulf Coast of Florida, Ron DeSantis rejected $350 million in federal funds meant to help tackle climate change. Then DeSantis refused to meet with Biden as he toured the damage and doled out emergency relief funding from FEMA….

+ When Hurricane Lee intensified into a Category 5 with more than 160 MPH winds, it became the 8th Cat 5 Atlantic storm in the last eight years. Comparing 1970-2000 with 2001-2022, the frequency of Cat 5 storms has tripled.

+ Water levels at Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake in the world, are dropping dramatically after an historic winter heat wave, which has seen Peru smash records for both minimum (87.6) and maximum temperatures (103).

+ Currently, air pollution contributes to around ten million deaths a year. An additional two degrees of global warming will lead to an extra 153 million air pollution-linked deaths this century alone.

+ As reported in ScienceDirect, a series of epidemiological studies concluded that higher wood stove and fireplace usage is associated with a 70% higher incidence of lung cancer.

+ More than 75% of food crops depend on animal pollination, yet air pollution is drastically reducing effective pollination because it degrades the scent of flowers. For example, ozone has degraded honeybees ability to recognize odors by up to 90% from just a few meters away.

+ The reservoir behind China’s Three Gorges Dam shifted so much water it has altered the shape of the planet, extending the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds.

+ From a new report on the benefits of Walkable Cities: “Someone with a 1-hr car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.”

+ Brachycephalic dogs, like pugs, boxers, terriers and bulldogs, will suffer the most from climate change, since their snoutless faces make them more vulnerable to heat and wildfire smoke.

+ Alex Speed: “Coral bleaching presented as adapting to environmental change is like saying diarrhea from cholera is your body adapting to its new gut flora.”

But, again, the hoses are being turned on the protesters. Not the leaders who are do nothing, but on the protesters.

Let's wind down with this from Paul Rudnick.

The following sites updated: