Trust us

 By Nick Anderson

Everyone will share in the wealth

 By Nick Anderson

Give me your corrupt autocrats

 By Ann Telnaes

Forever chemicals in my blood

 

From the BBC

As I walked into the medical clinic for my blood test, all I could think about was how to avoid looking like a wimp on camera. I didn't really contemplate what the test would reveal.

I am not great with needles - but as part of a BBC Panorama investigation into so-called forever chemicals, I was being tested to see what level of them I had in my blood. As a mum with two small children, I also wanted to know whether they may be having an impact on my family.

Forever chemicals, or PFAS (per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances), are a group of about 10,000 chemicals. They have been used for decades, in anything from waterproof clothes, to cookware, electronics and medical equipment.

They are persistent pollutants, meaning they don't degrade easily and instead build up in the environment.

They exist in our homes, our water and in our food.

Scientists have linked a small number of them to serious harms, such as infertility and cancer.

Any level of PFAS above 2ng (nanograms) per millilitre of blood is considered to bring health risks, according to Dr Sabine Donnai, a specialist in preventative healthcare. She has never met anyone without at least some PFAS in their bloodstream.

My result was 9.8ng per millilitre.

Dr Donnai delivered the news very gently - but it still hit me hard.

The forever chemicals in my blood would "most likely" have an impact on my health, she told me.

I also learned that, sadly, my body would have rid itself of some of these chemicals during pregnancy, by passing it on to my babies.

That was the moment this investigation stopped being just work and felt very personal.

"They [PFAS levels] would have been even higher before your pregnancies," Dr Donnai told me.

"You will have passed on to your children for sure."

I was worried, but I also felt angry about how this could have happened without me having any knowledge, and very little control.

I wanted to know more about these substances and the health issues they have been linked to.

PFAS chemicals "don't break down", said Stephanie Metzger from the Royal Society of Chemistry.

"Once they get into our bodies, they stick around and build up little-by-little until they start to interfere with our systems.

"Some PFAS have been linked to thyroid problems, some to kidney and liver cancer, and some have been shown to affect fertility."

As for me, it is "unlikely" I will be able to bring my levels to zero, said Dr Donnai.

"But you can reduce it over the next two or three years with a strategy."

She suggested I increase my fibre intake - either by eating more oats, barley, beans, nuts and seeds, or by taking supplements of gel-forming fibre. Increased fibre in our diet is "the strongest evidence to date that might help", she said.

If I did these things, menstruation would also help reduce my current PFAS levels over time, she added.

She also told me to identify the biggest sources of exposure in my home - replace my non-stick cookware with ceramic, stainless steel or cast iron alternatives, use a water filter and switch to eco-friendly cleaning products which are transparent about being PFAS-free.

Look for PFAS-free make-up and hair products and avoid ingredients with "fluoro" or "PTFE" in the name, she added.

Similar advice was given to mum-to-be Pam Kavanagh, who we visited at home in Berkshire with Dr Federica Amati of Imperial College London.

Pam was eager to know how to reduce the possible household risks of PFAS to her baby - and Dr Amati has studied how babies and children can be affected by forever chemicals.

"When we drink tap water, we are, depending on where you live, at varying levels of exposure to PFAS," Dr Amati said.

Just buying a water filter can help to reduce exposure, she said - whether that is a jug with a filter in it, or a filter installed into the actual sink.

Any non-stick frying pans with scratches on them should be thrown out, Dr Amati advised.

Stainless steel or ceramic pans "are far safer", she said.

Carpets can be treated with PFAS to make them more stain resistant, she added, suggesting that people vacuum their carpets every day.

"Making sure you ventilate the room by opening the windows every single day is a good idea [because] it really collects as house dust," she added

Dr Amati then turned to children's clothing. Pam was left "speechless" to discover that waterproof or stain-resistant clothing can contain PFAS. Manufacturers are under no obligation to disclose this information.

Some children's products are not PFAS-free, despite claiming to be, the BBC learned.

We found PFAS in a children's coat we bought from the Mountain Warehouse website a few months ago, even though the site says that none of its children's products are made with forever chemicals.

If fabrics containing PFAS come into "prolonged contact with human skin" there's the potential the chemicals can be absorbed across the skin, explained Prof Stuart Harrad at the University of Birmingham, who tested the coat for us.

To reduce the risk, opt for untreated fabrics and avoid "waterproof" or "stain-repellent" labels unless they have a PFAS-free certification, said Dr Donnai.

This piece on Wikipedia shows how ubiquitous and how dangerous PFAs are. 

Why don't we ban their manufacture?  Why do you think?  Because of money.  Because of "donations" from companies to politicians.  Because lobbyists stop action.  It's the same with microplastics or nanoplastics.  We know they are deadly.  But we go on producing them.  We know burning fossil fuels is leading to climate catastrophe.  But we allow oil and gas companies to pervert our political system, and even invite their representatives and lobbyists to the COP conferences.  We know that pesticides are leading to insectageddon, yet still we do not act.  Ask yourself why.

Source: Wikipedia

Half the tree of life is going extinct

Light traps have long been used to monitor nocturnal insect numbers. In a photograph of one taken in 1978, about 3,000 species were identified. Photograph: Patrick Greenfield/The Guardian

This is one of the most depressing and dispiriting pieces I've seen in a long time.

From The Guardian.  Lightly edited] 

In front of him was a world seething with life. Every branch of every tree seemed to host its own small metropolis of creatures hunting, flying, crawling, eating. The research facility lay in a patchwork of protected rainforest, dry forest, cloud forest, mangroves and coastline covering an area the size of New York, and astonishingly rich in biodiverse life. Here, the bugs gorged, coating the leaf litter with a thick carpet of droppings.

But the real show was at night: for two hours each evening, the site got power and a 25-watt bulb flickered on above the porch. Out of the forest darkness, a tornado of insects would flock to its glow, spinning and dancing before the light. Lit up, the side of the house would be “absolutely plastered with moths – tens of thousands of them”, Janzen says.

Inspired, he decided to erect a sheet for a light trap with a camera – a common way to document flying insect numbers and diversity. In that first photograph, taken in 1978, the lit-up sheet is so thickly studded with moths that in places the fabric is barely visible, transformed into what looks like densely patterned, crawling wallpaper.

Scientists identified an astonishing 3,000 species from that light trap, and the trajectory of Janzen’s career was transformed, from the study of seeds to a lifetime specialising in the forest’s barely documented populations of caterpillars and moths.

Now 86, Janzen still works in the same research hut in the Guanacaste conservation area, alongside his longtime collaborator, spouse and fellow ecologist, Winnie Hallwachs. But in the forest that surrounds them, something has changed. Trees that once crawled with insects lie uncannily still.

The hum of wild bees has faded, and leaves that should be chewed to the stem hang whole and un-nibbled. It is these glossy, untouched leaves that most spook Janzen and Hallwachs. They are more like a pristine greenhouse than a living ecosystem: a wilderness that has been fumigated and left sterile. Not a forest, but a museum.

Over the decades, Janzen has repeated his light traps, hanging the sheet, watching for what comes. Today, some moths flutter to the glow, but their numbers are far fewer.

“It’s the same sheet, with the same lights, in the same place, looking over the same vegetation. Same time of year, same time of the moon cycle, everything about it is identical,” he says. “There’s just no moths on that sheet.” 

The declines witnessed by Janzen – and described by others around the world – are part of what some ecologists call a “new era” of ecological collapse, where rapid extinctions occur in regions that have little direct contact with people.

Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. International reviews have estimated annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total biomass every year.

Widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers, light and chemical pollution, loss of habitat and the growth of industrial agriculture have all carved into their numbers. Often, these were deaths of proximity: insects are sensitive creatures, and any nearby source of pollution can send their populations crumbling.

But what Janzen and Hallwachs are witnessing is a part of a newer phenomenon: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions of forest. “In the parts of Costa Rica that are heavily hit by pesticides, the insects are completely wiped out,” Hallwachs says.

 “But what we see here in the preserved areas – that as far as we can tell, are free of even these destructive insecticides and pesticides – even here, the insect numbers are going down horrifyingly dramatically,” she says.

Long-term data for insect populations – particularly less charismatic species – is still patchy, but Janzen and Hallwachs join a number of scientists that have recorded huge die-offs of insects in nature reserves around the world.

They include in Germany, where flying insects across 63 insect reserves dropped 75% in less than 30 years; the US, where beetle numbers dropped 83% in 45 years; and Puerto Rico, where insect biomass dropped up to 60-fold since the 1970s. These declines are occurring in ecosystems that are otherwise protected from direct human influence.

When David Wagner stepped out into the US’s southern wilderness this spring, he found landscapes emptied of life. The entomologist has devoted much of his career to documenting the vast diversity of US insect life, particularly rare caterpillars. He traverses the country to find specimens, often on long road trips searching for caterpillars by day and moths by night.

Now, he finds himself coming home empty-handed. “I just got back from Texas, and it was the most unsuccessful trip I’ve ever taken,” he says. “There just wasn’t any insect life to speak of.”

It was not only the insects missing, he says, it was everything. “Everything was crispy, fried; the lizard numbers were down to the lowest numbers I can ever remember. And then the things that eat lizards were not present – I didn’t see a single snake the entire time.”

Wagner recalls when a series of international reviews began hitting headlines in 2019, saying global insect biomass was declining at a rate of 1% a year (although some estimates put it as high as 2.5%).

“We [entomologists] were thinking conservatively,” he says, looking at the data that has emerged in the five years since then.

“I now think that that’s too low. Now I would say that 2% is happening in some areas, and we’re seeing some places threatened by climate change or urbanisation or agriculture get as high as 5% decline per year.” 

Those who doubt there is sufficient species data to prove the “insectageddon” can now track it by proxy, Wagner says: via the sharp declines in birds, lizards and other creatures that depend on them for food.

Scientists in the US, Brazil, Ecuador and Panama have now reported the catastrophic declines of birds in “untouched” regions – including reserves inside millions of hectares of pristine forest. In each case, the worst losses were among insectivorous birds.

At one research centre – falling within a 22,000-hectare (85 sq mile) stretch of intact forest in Panama – scientists comparing current bird numbers with the 1970s found 70% of species had declined, and 88% of these had lost more than half of their population.

In 2019, researchers found that almost a third of US birds – about 3 billion – had disappeared from the skies since the 1970s. The losses, however, were not evenly distributed: those birds that ate insects as their main food had declined by 2.9 billion. Those that didn’t depend on insects had actually gained, increasing by 26 million.

More recent research from the US found a decline in three-quarters of nearly 500 bird species studied – with the steepest downward trend in stronghold areas, where they once thrived.

In Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest, scientists in 2018 mapped how the loss of insects set other dominoes falling: as bugs declined, so too did the populations of lizards, frogs and birds. Their disappearance, they wrote, had triggered “a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest food web”.

 In Costa Rica, Janzen described the fall in numbers of insectivorous birds in the reserve as “cratering”. A colony of about 20 nectar-eating bats have long nested in the dark nooks of Janzen and Hallwachs’ house, but Janzen has noticed the flowers they used to feed from are now failing to bloom.

Hallwachs began to find their small, emaciated bodies lying on the floor. “Over a period of five days, I found three of these bats dead,” she says. Researchers at another site 20 miles away told her they were witnessing the same thing.

 

 Behind the steepening declines, a clear culprit is beginning to emerge: global heating. A tropical forest ecosystem is “a finely tuned Swiss watch”, Hallwachs says – perfectly engineered to sustain a vastly biodiverse system of creatures.

Each element is delicately tuned and interlocks with the rest: the heat, the humidity, the rainfall, the unfolding of leaves, the length of the seasons, the start and stop of the life cycles of insects and animals.

With each incremental turn of one cog, the rest of the system responds. Insects and animals have evolved to time their hibernations and breeding times precisely to small signals from the system: a change in humidity, a lengthening of the light hours of the day, a small rise or fall in temperature.

But now, the system has one gear spinning wildly out of time: the climate.

“When I arrived here in 1963 the dry season was four months. Today, it is six months,” Janzen says. Insects that typically spend four months underground, waiting for the rains, are now forced to try to survive another two months of hot, dry weather. Many are not succeeding. 

Alongside the changing seasons are other shifts, such as in rainfall or humidity. “It’s just a general disruption of all the little cues and synchronies that would be out there,” Janzen says. Across the entire clock of the forest, plants and creatures are falling out of sync. In the background, the temperature is rising.

“The killer – the cause that’s pulling the trigger – is actually water,” says Wagner. For insects, staying hydrated is a unique physiological challenge: rather than lungs, their bodies are riddled with holes, called spiracles, that carry oxygen directly into the tissue.

“They’re all surface area,” says Wagner. “Insects can’t hold water.” Even a brief drought lasting just a few days can wipe out millions of humidity-dependent insects.

 [Read more here.]

Already, alternating droughts, floods and heatwaves are affecting the production of food.  But without insects, there will be no food.  Mankind is too stupid, too greedy, and too ignorant, to stop the processes that are leading to the destruction of the Earth and of ourselves.  We could stop emissions which cause global heating and catastrophic collapses in insect populations.  But we do not.  We could reduce or even stop using pesticides and insecticides.  We do not.  We could stop producing plastics in the quantities we do.  But we don't. 

Meanwhile, it's not just insects which are dying, but also the seas.  

Millionaires, billionaires and large corporations control our politics, and they stop our politicians taking action on global heating, insecticides, and plastics.  

If you think that is too pessimistic a view, consider that Australia's Labor Party has just won a landslide in an election, wiping out the right-wing, anti-climate L/NP coalition.  A key difference between Labor and the L/NP was, supposedly, their different attitudes to climate change.  Yet, as soon as the election was over, it approved a massive expansion in the life of a gas extraction and exporting facility in NW Australia.  The emissions from the extension of this project alone will produce another 6 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases.  Australia's total CO2 emissions in 2023 were 383 million tonnes.  I needn't even discuss the situation in the USA. And even in countries which purport to do something about climate change, fossil fuel subsidies continue.  We're encouraging people to destroy us and our civilisation.

I despair.

United we stand

By Patrick Chapatte 

Trump and Musk have launched a new class war

(Source: The Pros and Cons of Oligarchy)

By George Monbiot at The Guardian.

Seldom in recent history has class war been waged so blatantly. Generally, billionaires and hectomillionaires employ concierges to attack the poor on their behalf. But now, freed from shame and embarrassment, they no longer hide their involvement. In the US, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, will lead the federal assault on the middle and working classes: seeking to slash public spending and the public protections defending people from predatory capital.

He shares responsibility for the Department of Government Efficiency with another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy. They have been recruiting further billionaires to oversee cuts across government. These plutocrats will not be paid. They will wage their class war pro bono, out of the goodness of their hearts.

Musk, with a fortune of more than $400bn (£330bn), has warned: “We have to reduce spending to live within our means.” But he doesn’t mean “we”, he means you. Trump and Musk want to cut the federal budget so they can slash taxes for the ultra-rich. This benighted class needs all the help it can get. Since 2020, the wealth of the 12 richest men in the US has risen by a mere 193%. Collectively, the poor dears now own only $2tn.

Musk’s stated aims may be impossible to realise. When he took the role, he claimed he would cut the $6.75tn in federal spending by $2tn, which is actually more than the entire discretionary budget. But the intention is clear: a contraction whose consequences would be devastating for most Americans. Trump’s election was a response to the cruel failures of neoliberalism, but it will also be their ultimate expression. It was a response to the corruption of the political system by private money. And it will be the system’s ultimate corruption.

If Musk’s programme succeeds, we hardly have to imagine its impacts on human life and the living world, because for the past year a similar plan has been enacted in Argentina. There, Javier Milei has been waging his class war on behalf of international capital. The results include a horrifying surge in poverty; a collapse in the number of people with health insurance, coupled with critical underfunding of the public health system; proliferating hate crimes; a coordinated assault on science and environmental protection; and a free-for-all for the foreign corporations hoping to seize the country’s minerals, land and labour.

In the US, the motherfrackers will be released to do as they please. Trump’s nominated energy secretary, Chris Wright, runs a fracking services company and claims: “There is no climate crisis.” Already, banks and corporations are gleefully tearing up their environmental commitments.

The massive programme of cuts and deregulation that Musk and Ramaswamy seek extends the sadomasochistic politics now ascendant on both sides of the Atlantic. Demagogues have found that it doesn’t matter how much their followers suffer, as long as their designated enemies are suffering more. If you can keep ramping up the pain for scapegoats (primarily immigrants), voters will thank you for it, regardless of their own pain. This is the great discovery of the conflict entrepreneurs, led by Musk himself: what counts in politics is not how well people are doing, but how well they are doing in relation to designated out-groups.

There are plenty of willing executioners. One of the convicted ringleaders of the Southport riots in the UK, which were encouraged by Elon Musk, was described after his sentencing as “a man so consumed with hate and violence that he could find little satisfaction in activities that did not immediately quench his desire for harming others”. MAGA fanatics, whipped up by the frenzy of hatred on X and other pro-Trump media, might gain nothing from Trump’s presidency except the satisfaction of inflicting pain. But this small prize is sufficient to ensure their absolute loyalty. It will induce them to commit any atrocity Trump demands.

Why has the class war been unleashed now, not just in the US, but in much of the rest of the world? Because the democratising, distributive effects of two world wars have worn off. We fondly imagine that the semi-democratic era (exemplified in rich nations by the years 1945–1975) is the normal state of politics. But it was highly atypical, and made possible only by the wars’ erosion of the power of the ruling classes. The default state of centralised societies, to which nations are now reverting, is oligarchy.

In the 20th century, we called this reversion fascism. Fascism possessed some grotesque and peculiar features of its own. It used new tools and modes of organisation. But in key respects it represented a revival of the pre-democratic order: a world in which absolute power was vested in kings and emperors and their courts. We can endlessly debate whether or not Trump and his acolytes are fascists, as if that somehow solves the problem. It is more useful to recognise them as representatives of a much longer tradition, of which fascism was just one iteration. The emperors are back.

Because Trump and Musk are such volatile characters, it’s tempting to imagine that their grip on power will be chaotic and contingent. But the billionaire class will move swiftly to consolidate the oligarchy, and will meet almost no resistance. US institutions, the established media and foreign governments are completely unprepared. Despite copious warnings over many years, they know only how to appease oligarchic power, not how to resist it.

I started using the term “anticipatory compliance” in 2008 to describe the media’s kowtowing to undemocratic forces. The man who coined the phrase, Bruce Dover, explained to me that “an emperor who inspires fear in his followers need not raise a hand against them”. Now, wherever in institutional life we might hope to find resistance, we see obedience, even before Trump has taken power. Almost everyone instinctively accommodates the new dispensation.

In nations that have not yet fully succumbed to oligarchy we need to recognise, and recognise fast, that democratic politics do not emerge spontaneously. Our systems achieve a quasi-democratic character only with an active citizenry, whose engagement is largely defined by protest, and an independent media. But, at the direct behest of capital, governments are criminalising peaceful protest, while many independent media, such as the BBC, shut out dissenting voices.

If governments like the UK’s are to invest in their own survival, they must free their citizens to rebuild democracy, and we must seize every opportunity to do so. There is no demilitarised zone in this class war. We must all decide where we stand.

Indeed.  

How hypercapitalism destroyed Russia

From The Guardian

The central mystery of our time is why, at a moment when the whole political and social system is out of control and in total chaos, no one seems able to imagine any alternative. The economic system is not delivering the good life it once promised, but is instead creating chaos and hardship for millions. Meanwhile, those in charge of the system are profiting massively from that chaos, feeding off the uncertainty. And the political class are in thrall to an economic theory that has become absurd and corrupted.

I’ve just made TraumaZone, a series of films about another time when that was happening. It was in Russia in the 1990s after communism collapsed. Those in charge began an experiment to create an extreme form of capitalism. I made it because I don’t think we in the west understand what the Russians went through: a cataclysm that tore apart the foundations of society.

The films are made using a unique source of material: thousands of hours of raw footage recorded by BBC crews in Russia during that time, much of it never seen before. What makes it so extraordinary is that it records the experiences of Russians at every level of society as their world fell apart: from inside the Kremlin to the frozen mining cities of the Arctic circle, from life in the tiny villages of the vast steppes to the strange wars fought in the mountains and forests of the Caucasus.

As I watched the footage I decided that I shouldn’t use my voice or paste music over it. The material was so strong that I didn’t want to intrude pointlessly, but rather let viewers simply experience what was happening, because it was out of this – the anger, violence, desperation and overwhelming corruption – that Vladimir Putin emerged. But as I made the films, the growing chaos here in Britain [and the USA] made me see parallels. There are of course vast differences between our society and the Russia of 30 years ago, but the more you find out about the extreme economic experiment there, and what is happening here now with the present government, the more you see that they both share very similar roots that have nothing to do with either capitalism or communism.

The clue lies in the man who imposed the “shock therapy” experiment on Russia. Called Yegor Gaidar, he was at the heart of the communist establishment. His grandfather was the most famous writer of children’s books in the Soviet Union, and Gaidar had married the daughter of one of the Strugatsky brothers, science-fiction writers who wrote the novel the film Stalker was based on. This economist who would become acting prime minister set out to create a perfect capitalist system in Russia. He had to do it fast, he said, to stop communism from ever returning. Overnight, he removed all controls over prices, while the government gave up on any attempt to manage the system. The aim, said Gaidar, was to create a new zone of perfect freedom in which, despite initial pain, the system would find its own natural equilibrium.

But if you look closer, you will see that his plan had little to do with freedom. It was in fact an odd, machine-like vision of the world driven by pseudoscientific ideas. Gaidar believed that by unleashing “free market forces” on an extreme scale, they would act as “market stimuli” that would then automatically lead people into “rational” patterns of behaviour. In reality, it was a simplified engineering system where human beings would be reshaped, turned into the right kinds of beings to make the new system work. In that way, it was like a reverse image of the Soviet plan. It was still a way of controlling behaviour through levers, but just a different way.

And it didn’t work. It led to total chaos.

Both the right and the left see [Friedrich von Hayek] as the man who masterminded the return of the free market, what is called “neoliberalism”. But I think Hayek, who was a powerful influence on Gaidar, was actually far stranger than that.

Hayek believed that economics was the key to the future of the world because it would stop governments trying to imagine new kinds of societies. He wrote a book called The Road to Serfdom, saying that in the new age of the mass, it was impossible to impose a vision of the future on to millions of people without leading to horror – like fascism and communism had. Instead, Hayek had an epic vision in which millions of people would together create a stable social system through the signals they send each other. At the heart of that was the pricing system. Governments should pull back and not control prices – and instead allow a “spontaneous order” without central control. The people, not politicians, would create the new society together as “economic actors”.

Up to that point, economics had been important in government, but only as a tool to help manage the societies politicians wanted to build. But in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher came to power, she began an experiment that brought economic logic into the very heart of the political system. The problem was that it almost immediately went haywire. It not only created massive inflation but was one of the main reasons for the de-industrialisation of British society. As her senior advisers admitted, Thatcher very quickly gave up on the experiment and turned instead to the banks to lend people money. And a wave of cheap money and debt covered up the problems until the financial crash of 2008.

In reality, the grand ideas of Gaidar and Hayek had very little to do with ideas of the free market. They were actually rooted in old dreams born in the 19th century that science and rational systems could be used on a grand scale to replace politics, because that would avoid the human messiness and uncertainties that continually push politics off course. In fact, the system Gaidar set out to replace – the Soviet plan – was also rooted in those pseudo-scientific dreams. It had little to do with communism.

In the 1930s, in the Soviet Union under Stalin, the old ideology fell away and was replaced by a giant experiment. Human beings became simplified into components in a system that could be managed in a rational way with predictable outcomes. Those ideas also flourished in America in the 1930s. A mass movement called “technocracy” rose up. Hundreds of men and women, dressed “rationally” in grey outfits, travelled through the US calling for what they called a “Technate”, a new kind of society that would be run rationally by engineers. One of their leading members was Elon Musk’s grandfather.

But all these movements were really the product of a weird overreach of science attempting to grab and colonise the political realm. And in reality, those experiments always failed. Whether in the Soviet Union, or in 1980s Britain, or under Gaidar’s shock therapy, and now with [Elon Musk], it never creates a rational system. It actually creates the opposite: a system that becomes increasingly unequal and open to exploitation by a small elite. And there are no political levers to stop them.

In Russia, the films show moments that capture the terrifying speed with which the chasm between rich and poor opened up. Thousands couldn’t even afford food or pay for heating while the health service collapsed around them. Bewildered shoppers are told “there are no potatoes in Moscow”, while the new elite re-stage elaborate 18th-century balls in old palaces outside St Petersburg.

We see the ruthless self-interest of managers and gangsters as they discover more and more ways to loot the failing state, with machines in the oligarchs’ “banks” endlessly counting millions of rouble notes before they are moved into offshore zones. And no one in the political system could stop them. At the heart of all this was an increasingly drunken president Yeltsin who sat in the Kremlin staring at the wall saying to his bodyguard: “They are stealing Russia.”

And in Britain, quantitative easing and the extreme rise in asset prices and property it brought about are as destructive to the lives of millions of ordinary people as were the oligarchs in Russia in the 1990s. The kind of freedom that this sort of technate offers is always very limited: people are just components in a system, free to do what they want, but only within the narrow logic of the iron cage of pseudoscientific economics. A world where they dance, but only in those chains.

At this time of economic chaos, it feels imperative to reassess what both the west and Russia actually went through in the past 50 years. Perhaps it was neither communism nor the free market that failed, but the Technate. We should clear away the pseudoscience of economics that has politicians trapped in a death grip – and look again at both capitalism and communism for the human values and aspirations they contain. And from that could come real alternative visions of the future. 

[Lightly edited]

Neo-liberalism destroyed Russian society, and led to the rise of Putin, who brought "order".   Gorbachev hoped that communist Russia would be turned into a social democracy on Scandinavian lines.  Instead it became an oligarchy with vast inequality, and a steady growth in tyranny.  In the USA, a similar process has taken place, driven by far-right theorists and politicians.  Oligarchy is becoming the norm there too.  And Elon Musk wants to export this toxic system to the rest of the world.

The problem with unfettered capitalism is that it inevitably gets more and more extreme, and more and more dangerous for democracy.   It's like a top spinning out of control.  And one day it falls over.  

Billionaires might reflect on how the increasing inequality of the late 19th century led inexorably to Communism and Nazism, and how the post-war consensus produced high growth, low inequality, and prosperity for all. 

And the Left might reflect that the only way it is going to get back into power is to ditch neo-liberalism and increase equality and the prosperity of the working class.  Raise the minimum wage, build housing for the poor, make sure everybody gets a good education which allows them and society to get more prosperous over time.  In America, do something about the evils of health insurance.  

Deregulation

 By Nick Anderson

We care about the price of eggs

 By Matt Davies

Exposing Trump and Defeating the Authoritarian Loop

From Meidas Plus 

I’ve coined the term “authoritarian loop” to refer to how people will support authoritarians against their own self-interest because they (1) are conditioned by the authoritarian to feel worthless and expendable, and (2) are told that the suffering they feel, which is caused by the authoritarian, is actually caused by “the enemy” or the “other.” Let me describe this in more detail and then tell you how we combat it with Trump.

Take a look at this map from the 2024 election.

 

This may as well be the chasm between North Korea and South Korea. Oklahoma is the only state where every district voted for Trump, and Massachusetts is the only state where every district voted for Harris. Yet, Massachusetts leads the country in quality of life and in almost every category of wealth, health, and education, while Oklahoma, on the other hand, is last or almost last in those same categories.

So why do people in states like Oklahoma consistently vote against their own interests and keep electing people who are causing their suffering? Why do people in places like Texas elect those who can’t even keep the electricity on and who vacation during mass casualty events?

It’s the authoritarian loop.

The people in these states have been conditioned to believe that their pain and suffering are caused by an “enemy within” and not their actual subjugator: their corrupt MAGA leadership.

In red states, “governance” is actually shorthand for trolling or “owning the libs.” It’s not focused on improving lives.

The same way people in North Korea have been conditioned to be in a perpetual war against their neighbors in the South—who they are told live in subhuman conditions—the language used by Trump and MAGA about liberals, Democrats, and Democratic states is virtually identical.

Democrats are not just another political party. To the modern-day MAGA GOP, Democrats are actually “the enemy within.” They are “scum.” They are “vermin.” This audacious dehumanization is repeated on a loop—an authoritarian loop—every single day on Fox, on right-wing media, and now on X (formerly Twitter).

Dehumanizing the “other” while the dictator and oligarchy reap the riches from exploiting the uneducated is the toolbox of the authoritarian. Make people feel they are worthy of only breadcrumbs, and if by the grace of God you throw them half a loaf of bread, they will rejoice in you as their savior. Saddam Hussein built himself palaces while his people lived in slums. Trump has Mar-a-Lago, while Trump-appointed judges strike down overtime pay for millions of workers. It’s sad, but this is the paradigm through which we must view things now.

My friend David Pepper was prescient when, several years ago, he wrote about how red states were becoming laboratories of autocracy. He was exactly right. They were cooking up and stewing the formula for the “authoritarian loop” to be used on a national level. The final ingredient was billionaires fully embracing their role as authoritarian-style oligarchs.

So what do we do about it? How do we stop it? Is it too late?

First, as of the writing of this post, it is not too late. Yes, we’ve crossed the Rubicon, and America has elected an overtly authoritarian regime that has announced its main goal is inflicting hardship and retribution. But we are not so far past the Rubicon that these devastating, self-inflicted wounds cannot be healed and fixed. I fear that if we give up now and our resistance is non-existent or weak, then things may become unfixable. The good news is there is still time.

Until Trump shuts down the media—or tries to shut down us, which he will attempt—everything Trump and his oligarchs do must be reported on and amplified by citizen journalists every minute of every day.

Every promise Trump breaks must be amplified by citizen journalists. Relentlessly.

For example, I did a video today showing that the stock market was down because of Trump, and now economists say there is a 75% chance of a recession under Trump. Make this a major story.

Trump said he would stop wars as soon as he was elected, even before he stepped foot in office. He has failed to do so. Report it.

Every factory layoff, every anti-worker labor decision, and every time the deficit balloons—report on it. Trump will become defensive, erratic, and spiral. Stop over-intellectualizing things. Use basic, clear language, and repeat it over and over: Trump hates workers. Trump hates workers. Trump hates workers.

Trump’s entire life has been about scamming people. Now he’s captured America in perhaps the biggest scam in world history. For Trump’s other scams (albeit on a smaller scale), his victims eventually woke up and recognized they were played.

If we can be relentless advocates of truth and if we do not submit, there is an opportunity in two years and in four years to take America out of the authoritarian loop. That’s the crossroads we find ourselves at. We will either be forever defined as a Trump idiocracy, or we will be defined as a nation that persevered and reclaimed its soul and democracy.

It’s not too late.

Join us and consider subscribing now.

I've been pointing out for several years that all the culture wars fomented by the Right have little to do with genuine values and animosities.  They are distractions designed to draw attention away from the real goal, which is to siphon up wealth from the poor and the middle class into the coffers of the ultra rich.  Any Party which openly states that that's its policy will of course not be elected.  So they pretend to care about the "battlers", while distracting hoi polloi with baubles and fake "enemies".  We should not engage with this.

In 41 US states, the 1% have lower tax rates than the poor

From CommonDreams

Nearly every state and local tax system in the U.S. is fueling the nation's inequality crisis by forcing lower- and middle-class families to contribute a larger share of their incomes in tax than their rich counterparts, according to a new study published Tuesday.

Titled Who Pays?, the analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) examines in detail the tax systems of all 50 U.S. states, including the rates paid by different income segments.

In 41 states, ITEP found, the richest 1% are taxed at a lower rate than any other income group. Forty-six states tax the top 1% at a lower rate than middle-income families.

"When you ask people what they think a fair tax code looks like, almost nobody says we should have the richest pay the least," said ITEP research director Carl Davis. "And yet when we look around the country, the vast majority of states have tax systems that do just that."

"There's an alarming gap here between what the public wants and what state lawmakers have delivered," Davis added.

In recent years, dozens of states across the U.S. have launched what the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently called a "tax-cutting spree," permanently slashing tax rates for corporations and the wealthy during a pandemic that saw billionaire wealth skyrocket and company profits soar.

A report released last week, as Common Dreams reported, showed ultra-rich Americans are currently sitting on $8.5 trillion in untaxed assets.

According to ITEP's new study, tax systems in just six states—California, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont—and the District of Columbia are progressive, helping to reduce the chasm between rich taxpayers and other residents.

Massachusetts, which has one of the more equitable tax systems in the nation, collected $1.5 billion in revenue last year thanks to its recently enacted millionaires tax, a measure that improved the state's ranking by 10 spots in ITEP's Tax Inequality Index. Minnesota has also ramped up its taxes on the rich over the past several years while expanding benefits for lower-income families, ITEP's study observes.

But the full picture of U.S. state and local systems is grim. In 44 states, tax laws "worsen income inequality by making incomes more unequal after collecting state and local taxes," ITEP found.

Florida has the most regressive tax code in the U.S., with the richest 1% paying a mere 2.7% tax rate while the poorest 20% pay 13.2%.

Florida is among the U.S. states that don't have personal income taxes, which forces them to rely on consumption and property taxes that are "nearly always regressive," ITEP notes in the new analysis.

"Eight of the 10 most regressive tax systems—Florida, Washington, Tennessee, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana—rely heavily on regressive sales and excise taxes," the study says. "As a group, these eight states derive 52% of their tax revenue from these taxes, compared to the national average of 34%."

Aidan Davis, ITEP's state policy director, said that "we've seen a lot of states shift their tax systems to become even more regressive in recent years by enacting deep tax cuts for the wealthiest."

The report points to Kentucky's adoption of a flat tax and repeated corporate tax cuts, which "delivered the largest windfall to families in the upper part of the income scale and have been paid for in part through new or higher sales and excise taxes on a long list of items such as car repairs, parking, moving services, bowling, gym memberships, tobacco, vaping, pet care, and ride-share rides."

Davis said that "we know it doesn't have to be like this," arguing there is a "clear path forward for flipping upside-down tax systems and we’ve seen a handful of states come pretty close to pulling it off."

"The regressive state tax laws we see today are a policy choice," said Davis, "and it's clear there are better choices available to lawmakers."

We need a wealth tax.

Politicians will sell out the planet to the dirtiest bidders

From The Guardian

To understand this moment, we have to recognise that there is an existential struggle on both sides. While environmental scientists and activists fight for the very survival of the habitable planet, the fossil fuel, meat and internal combustion industries are fighting for their economic survival. Either they are regulated out of existence or human society across much of the world will fail. We cannot all win: either these industries survive or we do. But we can all lose, because, eventually, they will go down with the rest of us.

But “eventually” counts for nothing in their spreadsheets and annual reports. “Eventually” has no effect on share prices and dividends. “Eventually” has little traction in a four- or five-year political cycle. So, as the evidence of climate breakdown becomes undeniable to all but the most deluded, the pollutocrats must fight as never before. There was once a widespread belief (which some of us cautioned against) that governments would step up when – and only when – disaster struck. But it is precisely because disaster has struck, visibly and undeniably, that they are stepping down.


To buy himself a few more months of political survival, Rishi Sunak, representing a party that has recently taken £3.5m from major polluters and climate deniers, is threatening the welfare of the human species. He has switched, over the past fortnight, from doing a grand total of nothing to prevent climate chaos to actively sabotaging both the climate programmes he inherited and the efforts of other public bodies.

How can you tell when a politician is doing the work of the oil and gas companies? When they start promoting carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS has been the magic fix for climate breakdown promised by successive UK governments for 20 years – and never delivered. Most of the very few projects brought to fruition around the world have been abject failures.

The sole purpose of CCS is to justify the granting of more oil and gas licences, on the grounds that one day someone might be able to capture and bury the CO2 they produce. It’s no coincidence that Sunak announced both policies – more licences and CCS – in the same statement. It would be wrong to say the technology doesn’t work. It works precisely as intended, even if it never materialises: it is a highly successful method of buying more time for the fossil fuel industry.

But the worst thing Sunak has done is something few people have noticed. Underpinning the UK’s climate programme, weak and contradictory as it has always been, was the carbon market. The promise of successive governments, in and out of the EU, was that, by putting a price on carbon pollution, they would ensure that industries had no option but to switch to greener technologies. A further promise by the Conservatives was that, after Brexit, there would be no decline in environmental standards. But Sunak’s government has quietly been flooding the UK market with pollution permits, triggering a collapse in the price of carbon. While the carbon price in the EU emissions trading scheme stands at €88 (£75) a tonne, in the UK it has fallen to £47.

In the US, Donald Trump’s team plans to go much further. A programme devised for him by fossil fuel-funded junktanks intends to rip down just about every effective law and agency protecting the living world. If he gets in again, it seems as if he doesn’t intend to leave.

Sunak, Trump and others know what they are doing. They cannot be unaware of the heat domes and fires, the sea surface temperature anomalies and the shocking news from Antarctica. Their economic and security advisers must have briefed them about the likely civilisational risks presented by the closing of the human climate niche. In response, they double down on their support for the forces causing this destruction.

People seem mystified by this apparent perversity. But it’s a clear manifestation of the pollution paradox, which I see as essential to understanding modern politics. The most damaging companies have the greatest incentive to invest money in politics (by making donations to political parties, funding lobbyists and junktanks, hiring troll farms and microtargeters and all the other overt or covert techniques). So politics, in our money-driven system, comes to be dominated by the most damaging companies.

Sunak, Trump and many others like them are not just desperate politicians who will try anything to retain or regain power (though they are that). Nor are they simply representatives of capital. They are representatives of the dirtiest, most destructive varieties of capital, the varieties engaged in a war against humanity. In the conflict between the two existential crises, they know which side they’re on.

‘More oil and gas licences are justified on the grounds that one day someone might be able to capture and bury the CO2 they produce.’ Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Culture wars

This is of course the whole point of "culture wars".   When the Right waxes indignant about how trans/gays/women/Blacks have "too many rights" and about how they are a threat to "Western civilisation", it's to distract us from the ever-increasing inequality in our societies.

Skin thickness

 By Michael de Adder

Meanwhile at Twitter

By de Adder 

Free speech

By Michael de Adder 

Plot idea

Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.

Attack of the Wall Street Snowflakes

NY Stock Exchange by Jeenah Moon for the New York Times

From Paul Krugman at The New York Times

Given all the recent focus on health policy, you might think that the medical-industrial complex would be heavily involved in the Democratic primary race, going all-out to block Elizabeth Warren. And a coalition of drug companies, insurers and hospitals is indeed running ads attacking “Medicare for all.”

But the health industry’s political role has been relatively muted so far. Partly this may reflect realism: Even if Warren becomes president, the chances of getting Medicare for all through Congress are small. It may also reflect the surprising openness of doctors to reform. While the American Medical Association still officially opposes single-payer, at a recent meeting, 47 percent of the delegates voted to drop that opposition.

No, the really intense backlash against Warren and progressive Democrats in general is coming from Wall Street. And while that opposition partly reflects self-interest, Wall Street’s Warren hatred has a level of virulence, sometimes crossing into hysteria, that goes beyond normal political calculation.

What’s behind that virulence?

First, let’s talk about the rational reasons Wall Street is worried about Warren. She is, of course, calling for major tax increases on the very wealthy, those with wealth exceeding $50 million, and the financial industry is strongly represented in that elite club. And since raising taxes on the wealthy is highly popular, it’s an idea a progressive president might actually be able to turn into real policy.

Warren is also a big believer in stricter financial regulation; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was highly effective until the Trump administration set about gutting it, was her brainchild.

So if you are a Wall Street billionaire, rational self-interest might well induce you to oppose Warren. Rationality does not, however, explain why a money manager like Leon Cooperman — who just two years ago settled a suit over insider trading for $5 million, although without admitting wrongdoing — would circulate an embarrassing, self-pitying open letter denouncing Warren for her failure to appreciate all the wonderful things billionaires like him do for society.

Nor does it explain why Cliff Asness, another money manager, would fly into a rage at Warren adviser Gabriel Zucman for using the term “revenue maximizing” — a standard piece of economic jargon — describing it as “disgustingly immoral.”

In any case, the point is that Wall Street billionaires, even more than billionaires in general, seem to be snowflakes, emotionally unable to handle criticism.

I’m not sure why that should be the case, but it may be that in their hearts they suspect that the critics have a point.

What, after all, does modern finance actually do for the economy? Unlike the robber barons of yore, today’s Wall Street tycoons don’t build anything tangible. They don’t even direct money to the people who actually are building the industries of the future. The vast expansion of credit in America after around 1980 basically involved a surge in consumer debt rather than new money for business investment.  [Contrast that with what Elon Musk is doing]

Moreover, there is growing evidence that when the financial sector gets too big it actually acts as a drag on the economy — and America is well past that point.

Now, human nature being what it is, people who secretly wonder whether they really deserve their wealth get especially angry when others express these doubts publicly. So it’s not surprising that people who couldn’t handle Obama’s mild, polite criticism are completely losing it over Warren.

[Read more here]

Living on Mars -- I

Mars lander over Valles Marineris by William Black

It's a common belief that millionaires and billionaires will, after they've ruined the Earth, migrate to Mars.  There are a few tiny problems with that.

1. Mars has an average surface temperature of -60 C.  Earth's average is 15 C.  Mars is as cold as the Antarctic highlands, and Antarctica at sea level averages just -10 C.  This is because Mars is further from the sun, and it has no atmosphere to speak of.  Earth's atmosphere  acts as a blanket, helping retain the radiant heat from the sun. Without it, the average temperature on Earth would be -18 C.
2. Mars's air pressure is 6 millibars.  Earth's averages just over 1013 mb at sea level.  At the summit of Mt Everest, the air pressure is 337 mb.  Even 15 kms (50,000 feet) up, the air pressure on Earth is 111 mb, 18 times higher than on Mars, and 10 times higher than the air pressure in Mars's deepest impact crater, Hellas Planitia, or Valles Marineris, the 4000 km long, 7 kms deep crack in Mars's crust just south of the equator.
3. The very thin atmosphere consists 95% of CO₂, which is unbreathable by man and animals, but might suit some plants—if plants could survive the low air pressure and freezing temperatures. If you went outside you would have to wear a space suit and carry oxygen.
4. Mars is bombarded with deadly radiation.  First, because there is hardly any atmosphere, the sun's ultra-violet rays are unimpeded.  On Earth the atmosphere filters out most of the UV which falls on Earth.  And even then we can get sunburnt and get skin cancers.  Mars's overall UV flux is comparable to the Earth's because of CO₂ and dust but UVC and UVB are much stronger and also biologically much more damaging.  
5. Mars has no magnetic field, unlike the Earth.   The Earth's magnetic field protects us against cosmic rays from outer space and the solar wind from the sun.  They're not really 'rays' at all, but very high speed particles, usually hydrogen ions.  Because they are ions, they have an electric charge, and so are deflected past Earth by our magnetic field.  That doesn't happen on Mars.  The planet's surface is bombarded by cosmic rays.
6. The 'soil' on Mars, AKA  regolith (which means 'blanket stone' in Ancient Greek), is full of toxic chemicals such as perchlorates which make life, including microbial life, difficult to impossible. 
7. Except regolith isn't 'soil'.  Soil on Earth is a complex living entity, with bacteria, fungi, insects, worms, and organic material all sharply differentiating it from regolith.  To make the first soil on Mars, we will probly have to bring a soil from Earth, protect it from cosmic rays during transit, then gradually add organic matter and de-toxed regolith to the original soil until the new material turns into soil.  Compost and human waste will be incredibly valuable on Mars, for decades after first settlement.
8. Mars has gravity only 40% as strong as Earth's.  No one knows whether humans can survive in low gravity environments.  Long-term weightlessness produces muscle atrophy, bone loss, anaemia, heart weakness, and changes in the immune system.  Mars's gravity may be enough to prevent these problems.  Or it may not.  We won't know until we've been there and stayed there.

So, not a paradise for the 1%.  Maybe they should just try and improve things here on Earth so that they won't have to migrate to Mars?

In my next post I'll talk about ways to deal with some of these problems. [See Living on Mars -II]