No comment although I have them.

[Mark Kohut]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/15/biden-unveils-plan-to-address-climate-change-risks-to-economy.html?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=Main&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1634288526

On Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 12:09 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> You accuse me of overgeneralizing, but you are countering with far less
> substantial generalities based on anecdotal tidbits and pokey puppies. Of
> course when traffic accross the globe is massively interrupted by a
> pandemic killing millions there are slightly fewer emissions.  Hardly
> evidence of a deliberate change in direction.More like evidence of dangers
> long predicted about our disruption of ecosystems.
>
>  I’m not sure you really want  me to supply facts to support my  general
> ideas. Still here are a few facts:
>
> BBC :  227 environmental activists were killed around the world in 2020,
> the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from
> Global Witness said
>
> OCT 14 2021The Guardian:The worldwide energy crisis
> <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/12/global-energy-crisis-how-key-countries-are-responding>
> has reignited demand for oil, posing a threat to the world’s climate
> ambitions and the global economic recovery from Covid-19, according to the
> International Energy Agency.(demand for coal also rose)
>
> Guardian today :  In a footnote to the 6th mass extinction, one fifth of
> European bird species are slipping toward extincton.
>
> IEA  Despite the decline in 2020, global energy-related CO2 emissions
> remained at 31.5 Gt, which contributed to CO2 reaching its highest ever
> average annual concentration in the atmosphere of 412.5 parts per million
> in 2020
> <https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2742/Despite-pandemic-shutdowns-carbon-dioxide-and-methane-surged-in-2020>
> – around 50% higher than when the industrial revolution began.
>
> Guess what Mark. C02 dissipates very slowly and so over a decade is
> effectively cumulative.
>
> CNN: Intense blazes, including fires in hotspots in the Mediterranean,
> North America and Siberia, let off more than 2.7 billion metric tons of
> carbon over the summer, with July and August both breaking monthly records
> for emissions from fires. More than half of July's emissions could be put
> down to fires in North America and Siberia. They are still burning in
> November and have twice set off our smoke alarms in Vermont this
> year. (There are still fires in the Amazon too.)
>
> The oceans continue to deoxgenate and grow more acidic and to absorb the
> bulk of heat.marine ecologists have described ocean warming,
> acidification and oxygen loss as a “deadly trio,” because when they have
> occurred together in the past, mass extinctions of animal and plant life
> have followed.[5]As Rachel Carson wrote years ago, “for the globe as a
> whole, the ocean is the great regulator, the great stabilizer of
> temperatures…. Without the ocean, our world would be visited by unthinkably
> harsh extremes of temperature.”[7]    The present rate of ocean
> acidification is a hundred times faster than any natural change in at least
> 55 million years. If it continues, ocean acidity will reach three times the
> pre-industrial level by the end of this century.
>
> Methane has begun to emerge from seawater and the permafrost on a large
> scale. This has been predicted as a potential tipping point.
>
> Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since
> 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of
> wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
>
> National Geo: A new study suggests that 40 percent of *insect* species
> are in decline, a sobering finding that has jarred researchers worldwide.
>
> Plastic shit is killing living things and continues to grow  in volume
> every year.
>
>
>
> The global arms
> <https://cnn.com/2019/06/20/world/uk-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-gbr-intl/index.html> industry
> continues to grow with total sales up 4.6% last year, according to data
> from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
> <https://cnn.com/2018/12/10/europe/russia-arms-production-scli-intl/index.html>released
> Monday.
>
>
>
> On Oct 14, 2021, at 12:45 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The imagined majority is simple: all the millions of people getting by and
> trying to avoid doing any of the evil you generalize to.
>
> Wars depend on taxes and votes from ordinary people. Peace and
> environmental leaders chosen by these people are few. Fossil fuel use is
> driven by ordinary  embedded  human behaviors that fit into our economic
> model; no malevolence is required. Reliance on fossil fuel is everywhere
> and it is our most universal addiction rivaled by throwing the toxic
> materials we use “away”, wherever the hell that is. There are many good
> people and many want peace and eco sanity. But as Pynchon explores in depth
> in GR, civilization has become a machine and the idea that it has any human
> values or other forms of intelligent control is likely delusional.   The
> good news is that this machine is breaking itself in its war with nature. I
> like humans and hope they survive, evolve, make life simpler, friendlier
> and more appreciative of the other sentient beings.
>
>
>  And, as I wrote, your "truths' are always true as baldly and badly stated
> until one tackles them granularly. Co2 emissions world-wide (!) and by the
> US went noticeably down in 2020,--over 6%--- and although back, are not
> expected to reach 2019 levels and maybe ever again.
>
> "Threats" by the US are down from the last admin. And, once again, all
> nations always have and always will make them as China and N Korea and
> others are. ...I also don't know what many other things you refer to are
> about...
> Pipelines by the US are down although Russia is bragging about theirs; so
> we are back to the unarguable bad shit Iraq War and the false claim,
> repeated again as before, that it was 'barely' covered in the US press, as
> if you would know and you are still wrong about that and is another
> internal contradiction when you go on about how wrong and evil was the NYT
> coverage of it.....  History more ancient than Herodotus now,so to speak.
>
>  It is not only climate activism that has* far surpassed* Iraq War
> protests-
>
> According to Huffpost (2018)  and others  the  largest global protest in
> history was the 2002 Iraq war protest estimated at 6-11 million  Nothing
> else has really come close , but , regardless of the numbers, you only make
> my point because none of these worthwhile demonstrations of public will has
> dramatically changed policy though they do point, along with statistics
> about several issues, to a vast discrepancy between what people want and
> what politicians and the military and corporate interests do. The protests
> also give voice to articulate and thoughtful people who often sound mire
> vibrant and intelligent than leaders of either major party.
>
> ts--I got this fact from Professor Jelanie Cobb; also the Black Lives
> Matter protests were BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS, the largest
> protests in *world history *by folks who could not benefit by it,
> literally and narrowly speaking, white and other non-black races protesting
> world-wide for more change and more justice for people treated differntly
> than them because of how they looked. Much larger than abolition in this
> and any country. What does one call selfless protesting and why is it
> stronger than ever?
>
> By, why go on, your engine of constant injustice everywhere is
> railroading thinking, to keep the metaphor, you railroad thoughts and
> observations into your overgeneralizations.
>
> Take your mangled sentences home to your pokey puppy. I’m sure he will
> understand even if no one else can.
>
>
> Speaking of arms, do you know the most killing weapon of the last 50-60
> years?
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 11:17 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>>  I don't have that clear a take on some imagined world majority  and I
>> wish I could sincerely agree but at this point I stand with Greta,  what we
>> hear from so called leaders is blah blah, blah, and what we see is growing
>> arms sales , continued growth in C02 emissions, threats  and violent
>> blockades by the US,  mass survellance, publishers being tortured for
>> publishing the same thing as the NY Times,  pipelines and a revived nuclear
>> arms program.  I could go on but what is the point.
>>    It’s true that there are many, many people who want change and they
>> gladden my heart as they do yours. They are not yet organized as an
>> effective agent of change though most do what they can. In the lead up to
>> the second Iraq war the world saw the biggest anti-war demonstration in
>> human history and the biggest global demonstration ever, rivaled only by
>> climate crisis activism. It did not stop the war and was barely covered in
>> the US press.
>>
>> On Oct 14, 2021, at 10:00 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I will assert as baldly as your assertions that the majority of the
>> people in the Pokey Little Puppy's Whole
>> Wide World are acting and imagining outside of this blanket condemnation:
>>  "imagine solutions than are not reliant on war, poisons and ecological
>> rape."
>>
>> Many businesses, many countries, with whatever else they are also doing,
>> are acting FINALLY against this 'reliance".
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 9:51 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>
>>> The historic creation of Israel is a subject that has already led to
>>> many many books and articles.  I have read quite a few of those books. What
>>> I said is what I said, and I wasn’t trying to ccomplish whatever you or
>>> mathew c think I should have been. But without a doubt the so-called
>>> creation of Israel has involved decades of assult on the Palestinians who
>>> lived there before the Jewish settlers came. It was as much an act of
>>> destruction and theft in my view as an act of creation. In the same way the
>>> “creation” of the US required a destructive assault on indiginous people.
>>> Israel seems to me to follow the biblical paradigm of Zionism layed out in
>>> the legends of Joshua and later David. I think that is clear enough and
>>> quite defensible as a proposition.
>>>
>>>  As far as I can tell most countries are acts of imagination  and
>>> violence based on tilling and armies, they are a product of the paradigm of
>>> war . National borders and rules are usually a lot more arbitrary than
>>> natural human self organizing and require leaders imposing taxes  through
>>> violence. Since the advent of mass production and fossil fuels we have a
>>> new paradigm that combines the economic predations of investment capitalism
>>> with the military power or imperial alliances. This is quickly destroying
>>> the biospheric stability of the planet.  Our imaginations could be put to
>>> better use. We are not bound to follow our path of self destruction by
>>> anything other than unwillingness to face the problems  and imagine
>>> solutions than are not reliant on war, poisons and ecological rape.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > On Oct 14, 2021, at 7:49 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Joseph,
>>> >
>>> > Without distinctions, your generalities about all countries everywhere
>>> and when are always correct.
>>> > Yet say nothing substantive about the creation of Israel--or any other
>>> country for that matter.
>>> > And do little (or nothing) for discussion of all your Historic evils
>>> but show us a nice, beautifully-expressed personal credo--open to all: "the
>>> heart of this holy path is to choose life, to love the great mystery of
>>> being wih all the heart and all the mind and the very kernel of life we
>>> have been given, and to treat others as we wish to be treated.”
>>> Guess what. That is not a personal credo, Those are ideas from Judaism(
>>> The Torah and Maimonedes) which I appreciate and try to honor in my life.
>>> >
>>> > Mark
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 12:21 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net
>>> <mailto:brook7 at sover.net>> wrote:
>>> > Annihilation is a loaded word. It sounds cruel and violent. Truthfully
>>> though, a name or concept or form of government can be eliminated or
>>> replaced without destroying human lives or poisoning the earth. Nations and
>>> religions have changed and died before with little or even benign
>>> consequences. And those nations  that survived and rose to become “great
>>> powers" have a pretty shitty track record to justify themselves. Imagine
>>> all the people living life in peace.
>>> > I don’t know exactly what Thomberi ( sounds a made up name) is
>>> intending, whether tongue in cheek or weirdly sincere, but I think matthew
>>> c is wildly sentimentalizing how Israel came into being. As to what is to
>>> be done. It is a question for all of us, not just Israel. Settler
>>> colonialism and its cruelties are embedded in most of the world. Western
>>> civilization as configured has desertified vast parts of the globe, moved
>>> sane indiginous cultures into bantustans and is rapidly destroying the
>>> diverse species upon which life as we know it exists, rapidly moving us
>>> toward waves of mass destruction . As for me, yes i really am ready to hand
>>> over my land and the very concept of property to the tribal peoples of
>>> north america. Would they want this mess, our mini-flags, banks and
>>> fracking machines? I don’t know, but I could not be more serious about my
>>> acre of workspace , fruit trees, asparagus, maple trees, and stone walls.
>>> My whole life is about the effort to move myself and others toward an
>>> ecologically sustainable life, and the biggest impediment to change is the
>>> settler colonialist warfare that continues from the ancient to the modern
>>> world, that turns from warlordism to nationalism  to imperial warfare. What
>>> Israel and the US and China and Russia and Brazil and Canada and so many
>>> rapacious military dictatorships are expressing in this shared planet  is
>>> varying forms of  sociopathic madness organized by  self destructive
>>> dreams, egomania, and imaginary polities that have ravaged our common sense
>>> as animals, our friendliness as neighbors, our ability to choose life above
>>> what they have too offer. And what do they have to offer as their
>>> civilization crumbles? Comfortable places to watch the world burn, endless
>>> entertaining air conditioned shitpiles, debt,  fat people eating big juicy
>>> hamburgers and an all too violent and real global annihilation, James Bond
>>> may or may not have lost his dick, but he stil has a license to kill.
>>> >
>>> >  Zionism is the same disease as the master race, manifest destiny,
>>> salafism, pax romana, capitalism, militarism. Its origins can be read by
>>> anyone. Joshua crosses into “ the promised land” to kill the sinful
>>> Canaanites or make them into slaves to the chosen people.”Blessed is he who
>>> dashes thy little ones against a stone”. This fable has become the script
>>> for modern day Israel, just as some version of this script has written so
>>> much human history. It will script global suicide if we let it. If we
>>> cannot prevent it.
>>> >
>>> > Zionism was never the remarkable part of Judaism, the heart of this
>>> holy path is to choose life, to love the great mystery of being wih all the
>>> heart and all the mind and the very kernel of life we have been given, and
>>> to treat others as we wish to be treated.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > > On Oct 13, 2021, at 4:14 PM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:mccissell at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > > Mach,
>>> > >
>>> > > So let me see. You seem to propose the annihilation of Israel, a
>>> country
>>> > > created whole cloth from ideas, dreams, stories and more by carving
>>> out a
>>> > > space for that community that had formed a nation but lacked a state.
>>> > >
>>> > > Ok. Two things (that I'll say) occur to me: What do you propose for
>>> the
>>> > > people? Do you have some... solution for them as well? Would it be
>>> the same
>>> > > for Arabic and Jewish citizens? What would it entail?
>>> > >
>>> > > Next: If you (and others that share your view) are the descendent of
>>> > > Europeans living in the Americas (or some other previously
>>> > > colonized place), I suppose you are also ready to 'undo' your county
>>> and
>>> > > hand over your land to the indigenous communities. Or are you
>>> writing from
>>> > > somewhere else, in which case we might talk about that place.
>>> > >
>>> > > Criticizing the trespasses of any country or government is one
>>> thing, but
>>> > > calling for its abolition is something else. The actions of the
>>> Israeli
>>> > > government have often been reprehensible or even criminal, but that
>>> does
>>> > > not justify your language, which would certainly find applause and
>>> echoes
>>> > > in a certain rising current in not only US political discourse but
>>> more
>>> > > widely.
>>> > >
>>> > > I'm responding not because I think your mind is likely to be changed
>>> but
>>> > > because I want you and others to know that in this open forum you
>>> will find
>>> > > voices that do not apathetically ignore your statements.
>>> > >
>>> > > Ne Obliviscaris
>>> > > Matthew Cissell
>>> > >
>>> > > On Wed, Oct 13, 2021 at 4:33 PM Mach Thomberi <
>>> machthomberi at gmail.com <mailto:machthomberi at gmail.com>>
>>> > > wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > >> No we wouldn't want that would we.  Deprive Israel water and
>>> medicine.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> What would be marvelous.  Would be removing Israel from the map.
>>> Cut it
>>> > >> out and dispense it into the ether.
>>> > >>
>>> > >> Then do likewise of our collective memory of Israel.
>>> > >> On Oct 13, 2021 9:23 AM, "Joseph Tracy" <brook7 at sover.net <mailto:
>>> brook7 at sover.net>> wrote:
>>> > >>
>>> > >>> I would not go so far as to cut Israelis off from medicine or
>>> clean water
>>> > >>> as they have done to Gaza, but a cultural boycott is potentially a
>>> way to
>>> > >>> bring the debate into a more public sphere. We need equally to
>>> confront
>>> > >>> what so many in the western press and politics  have done on this
>>> issue.
>>> > >>> They  have supported  the insane idea that anyone who publicly
>>> > >> criticizes
>>> > >>> Israel’s abuse of Palestinians is doing so out of  anti-semitism.
>>> They
>>> > >> are
>>> > >>> labeled  anti-semitic even if they are Jews whose parents and
>>> relatives
>>> > >>> survived or died  in Nazi concentration camps.
>>> > >>>  Sally Rooney said she would be honored to have her book
>>> translated to
>>> > >>> Hebrew but will not work with a publisher who does not distance
>>> > >> themselves
>>> > >>> from Israel’s aparteid treatment of Palestinians.
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>> On Oct 11, 2021, at 3:44 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:fqmorris at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> > >>>>
>>> > >>>> Why no comment?  This is a place for opinion.  As for me, I say
>>> > >> Bravo!  I
>>> > >>>> think Israel deserves full apartheid treatment right now.  And
>>> too many
>>> > >>>> people are afraid to say so.   There!  I said it.
>>> > >>>>
>>> > >>>> David Morris
>>> > >>>>
>>> > >>>> On Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 3:25 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>>
>>> > >> wrote:
>>> > >>>>
>>> > >>>>>
>>> > >>>>> https://forward.com/opinion/476513/why-wont-sally-rooney- <
>>> https://forward.com/opinion/476513/why-wont-sally-rooney->
>>> > >>> allow-her-latest-novel-to-be-translated-into-hebrew/
>>> > >>>>> --
>>> > >>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <
>>> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
>>> > >>>>>
>>> > >>>> --
>>> > >>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <
>>> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
>>> > >>>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >>> --
>>> > >>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <
>>> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
>>> > >>>
>>> > >> --
>>> > >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <
>>> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
>>> > >>
>>> > > --
>>> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <
>>> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l <
>>> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>