Crimean Tatars

Posted on August 3, 2023 by borderslynn

I am reproducing this article from The Conversation which arrived today in my mailbox:

Ukraine war: why Crimean Tatar fighters are playing an increasing role in resistance to Russian occupation

A resistance group of Crimean Tatars, an ethnic group native to the Russian-occupied peninsula, is now a prominent player in the Ukraine war.

The Atesh (fire) movement has pledged to wage an unending war on the Russian invaders of Ukraine. Founded in September 2022, Atesh seeks to disrupt logistics, sabotage key targets, and stoke discontent against – and within – Russian president Vladimir Putin’s army.

Atesh’s methods are ruthless, as witnessed by the killing of 30 Russian servicemen in hospitals in Simferopol in November 2022. Their methods are also effective. In February 2023, the group claimed that over 4,000 Russian soldiers had already taken an online course (at the ‘Atesh school’) on how to survive the war by sabotaging their own equipment. 

Mustafa Dzhemilev, the Crimean Tatar leader who Russia has barred from Crimea until 2034, recently stated that “Atesh is very deep underground … but they are working inside Crimea … blowing up targets.”

Serhii Kuzan, head of the Kyiv-based thinktank the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, said that: “The idea is for the occupier to always feel the presence of the partisans and for them never to feel safe.” 

Partisans including Atesh are using a variety of methods to undermine the Russians in Crimea and beyond. When Atesh claimed responsibility for “liquidising” the Russian soldiers in the hospitals in Simferopol it warned: “Check the wards, check the morgues … you can check this fact 300 times but it’s the truth”. 

As with so many incidents in this war, and this goes for acts committed by all sides, verifying such claims is an exceedingly difficult task. What we do know is that the partisan forces in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions recently carried out a coordinated sticker and flyer campaign against the so-called Russian world. 

In addition, emulating a tactic adopted in previous conflicts, Ukraine has reportedly dropped leaflets on Russian positions with the message: “Russian soldier, if you don’t want to be a Nazi of the 21st century, then leave our land! Otherwise, the fate of Hitler’s soldiers and a Nuremberg tribunal await you!”

The appeal to the past is seductive for Kyiv as partisan warfare played a major part in winning both the Russian civil war (1917-1923) and what Russia remembers as the “great patriotic war” (1941-1945). 

The comparison of the current Russian army to the Nazi invaders of the second world war completely contradicts Putin’s version of history. The Kremlin chargesthat Ukrainian nationalists collaborated and engaged in mass murder during the Nazi occupation. Russian propaganda claims that the current war is designed to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. 

Who are the Tatars?

Those who know the history of Russia, Ukraine and the Crimean Tatars will not be surprised by the hostility of the latter to the latest manifestation of Muscovite imperialism. Unlike the Slavic Russians, the Crimean Tatars are a Turkic ethnic group native to the Crimean peninsula. 

The Crimean Tatar nation formed over four centuries (c.1200-c.1650) and merged with waves of immigrants. Tsarina Catherine the Great annexed Crimea in 1783 and the Russian Empire subsequently sought to “Russianise” the Crimean Tatars, prior to the revolution of 1917.

Under the rule of Joseph Stalin (1924-1953), the Soviet Union engaged in the active repression of the Crimean Tatars. This led to a number of Tatars cooperating with the Germans following the Nazi invasion of June 1941. 

Stalin accused the Crimean Tatars of treachery and deported the community en masse to the Gulag. Although some Crimean Tatars served with the Axis powers, rather more served in the Red Army. 

This deportation of at least 180,000 persons to central Asia in 1944 was one of the most painful chapters in Tatar history, (remembered as Sürgün (the exile). In the 1960s, research by Tatar activists estimated that approximately 100,000 of these people died (and even Soviet records show that 30,000 Crimean Tatars died less than two years after the deportations). 

Only in September 1967 did the Supreme Soviet – the highest legislative body in the USSR – acknowledge that the charge of treason against the entire Crimean Tatar nation had been “unreasonable”. Thirteen years earlier, the Supreme Soviet had voted to transfer Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. 

This was not that controversial at the time, given that both entities were then constituent parts of the Soviet Union. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 changed all of that.

Most of the Tatars were only allowed to return to Crimea in 1989, under the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Tatars did not receive any compensation for their losses, and their return home prompted tensions with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, many of whom had moved to the peninsula after 1944.

Map of Ukraine showing Crimea
Shutterstock

Once Ukraine became independent in 1991, Tatar leaders claimed that authorities in Kyiv deliberately prevented their people from obtaining government jobs, while secretly allowing “land grabs”. Gradually, however, the common enemy pushed the Crimean Tatars and Ukraine together. 

Crimean Tatars became ardent supporters of the new Ukrainian state, and were sometimes dubbed “the greatest Ukrainians in Crimea”.

In 1897 native Crimean Tatars made up 34.1% of the population of Crimea. Despite the reversal of Stalin’s ethnic cleansing, by 2001 Russians made up 58% of the Crimean population while the indigenous Tatars represented only 12%.

The invasion of Crimea by Russia in 2014 was a disastrous return to the past for the Crimean Tatars. The Russians immediately embarked upon a programme of systematic tyranny. These persecutions persist to this day. 

The Crimean Tatar self-governing assembly, the Mejlis, of which Mustafa Dzhemilev was chair, was banned, as were public references to the Stalinist deportations. After 2014, thousands of Tatars left Russian-occupied Crimea for Ukraine. Tatar activist and politician Ilmi Umerov told the Russian Federal Security Service that “I do not consider Crimea part of the Russian Federation.” He was sent to a psychiatric hospital. 

Demonstrating Ukrainian-Tatar solidarity, in November 2015, the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) passed a motion denouncing the 1944 deportations as “genocide”. (A precedent that encouraged Latvia, Lithuania and Canada to follow suit in 2019.) In 2021 the Verkhovna Rada passed a law which recognised the Crimean Tatars as one of the indigenous peoples of Ukraine. 

As long as the current war continues, and given the significant military contribution of the Crimean Tatars, Kyiv will look ever more favourably on the question of self-determination for the Crimean Tatar nation. 

Ukrainian studies academic Rory Finnin argues that the future of the Crimea is central to any settlement that may follow the current war. Ukraine lost control of Crimea in 2014, but the exertions of the Crimean Tatars in the present conflict are contributing significantly to Kyiv’s ability to avoid defeat by Russia.

You’re receiving this newsletter from The Conversation

Shropshire House (4th Floor) 11-20 Capper Street, LONDON, WC1E 6JA

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Learning from our mistakes

Posted on July 3, 2023 by borderslynn

One thing we hear often said by authorities after a disaster is, ‘let us learn from our mistakes and work to ensure this can never happen again.’

Earthquakes

………a map of the world, with the locations of the biggest earthquakes since 1500 plotted, reveals a puzzle. It is as if humanity took a collective decision to build as many as possible of its biggest cities on or close to fault lines. This illustrates the fatal interplay between the infrequency of disaster and the shortness of human memory. In 2011, those who recalled the 1938 earthquake off Fukushima made for old shelters that proved to be death traps as the much larger tsunamis struck.

Book ‘Doom’, Niall Ferguson
ourworldindata.com

Earthquake Area? Let’s build a dam

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/13-facts-about-the-deadly-vajont-dam-engineering-disaster

Follow the above link and read the analysis of the problem waiting to happen. 2000 people died due to events in the unfolding disaster which could have been avoided.

Though the Italian Vajont Dam actually stayed intact during the disaster, it stands as a testament to how important it is for engineers and geologists to understand the natural environment surrounding a complex structure.

Building structures like dams during a heady period of post-war boom can lead to the opposite of what was intended. 

In Beirut, the Bisri Dam is planned to finally ensure residents can enjoy clean water to their homes. But safety of such a construction is vital.

https://blogs.worldbank.org/arabvoices/solving-water-crisis-beirut

People who live in the area are warning of the dangers in building such a dam, just as the people who lived in the Vajont Dam vicinity did. If the land is unstable, then the dam should not be built there.

The dam lies on a complex and tectonically active area. The presence of fault lines within the region makes the dam additionally dangerous.

https://www.change.org/p/no-to-the-bisri-dam-project-the-lebanese-people-refuse-any-extension-and-demand-it-s-cancellation-and-a-reallocation-of-it-s-funds-for-urgent-needs-in-lebanon

The sight of a completed dam can be so impressive that it can be hailed as a marvel of engineering. But often precious land and homes are consumed by the water as the dam fills, and the water filling the dam may be already polluted, as is the lake which will drain into the Bisri Dam.

Common sense should counter engineering corporates sales pitch before any infrastructure is built.

…..1950s initiative. The collapse of one of the dams built then—the Banqiao Dam—exposed the limits of Sino-Soviet collaboration. In August 1975, Typhoon Nina overwhelmed the dam by dumping a year’s worth of rain (forty-two inches) in twelve hours,97 causing one of the worst disasters in the history of the People’s Republic.98 The breach unleashed the equivalent of a quarter of a million Olympic swimming pools of water, killing tens of thousands in a matter of hours. The secondary death toll from disease and starvation in the devastated area was in excess of 200,000 people.99 The Cassandra figure in this disaster was the hydrologist Chen Xing, who had been purged during the Anti-Rightist Campaign for urging a halt to new dam construction but was now swiftly rehabilitated.100 So horrific was the Banqiao Dam’s failure that it remained a state secret until 1989. This did nothing to diminish the Communist Party’s devotion to damming..

Niall Ferguson, Book ‘Doom’

The Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River in China was warned against decades ago, but it went ahead anyway, since it was to be another ‘triumph of engineering’.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/20/china-three-gorges-dam-highest-level-hydro-electric-floods

Watching this video of 2020 flooding at this location is of epic proportions, as climate change brings with it heavy, continuous rainfall, which the dam was designed to withstand.

….breach of the dam, a controversial and unprecedented feat of engineering along the Yangtze River, would be embarrassing for China, which took 12 years to build the megaproject, displacing millions and submerging swathes of land.

The Three Gorges dam, which can handle inflows of about 98.8m litres a second, is already approaching its capacity. Officials expect water levels in the reservoir, whose dam was built to withstand a water level of 175 metres, to reach 165.5 metres on Saturday. The flooding is predicted to last about five days.

But can we build dams on land with moving tectonic plates, mountains and climate change driven epic weather events?

Finally, the wartime destruction of a ‘sitting duck’ dam is a threat hanging over all infrastructure, but a dam burst is utterly devastating.

rferl.org
Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is This Humanity in the End Game?

Posted on June 30, 2023 by borderslynn

I’m reproducing part of a summary of the Global Peace Index report, recently released.

As we see the 21st century reveals humans are increasingly prone to destruction rather than evolving into a benign and beneficial force for good.

Follow this link to read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/global-conflicts-death-toll-at-highest-in-21st-century/a-66047287

CONFLICTS

GLOBAL ISSUES

Global conflicts: Death toll at highest in 21st century

Ben Knight

06/28/2023June 28, 2023

Conflict deaths are higher than they have ever been this century with over 238,000 people killed in conflicts last year.

Since the 21st century began, war has never cost humanity so much. The number of conflict deaths almost doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year. And war caused a 13% loss of global GDP, according to the Global Peace Index, released on Wednesday by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

The major new survey by the global think tank said that the average level of “global peacefulness” had sunk for the ninth year in a row, with conflict deaths topping the previous global peak reached in 2014 during the Syrian Civil War.

The dramatic increase in death rates was mostly driven by the war in Ukraine, where 83,000 people were killed in the past year, though the bloodiest conflict was in Ethiopia, where 100,000 people lost their lives. 

Internationalized conflict

The Global Peace Index is put together evaluating almost every country in the world according to 23 indicators, broken down into three domains: “Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict,” “Societal Safety and Security,” and “Militarization,” which reflect both social peace (crime statistics, the number of homicides) and a country’s conflicts at home and abroad. Altogether, the average level of “global peacefulness,” as measured by the index, had deteriorated by 0.42%.

The most obvious trend was that conflicts had become more internationalized, according to Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), and one of the authors of the report. Ninety-one of the world’s countries are now involved in some kind of conflict, the GPI found, compared to 58 in 2008. 

“That’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing,” Killelea told DW. “Some might be involved in peacekeeping operations, like ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States]. On the one hand, more countries are getting involved in wars overseas, but you could also say we’re becoming more internationalized in how we’re working together.”

This might be seen as a surprising development, given that Western military intervention has been scaled back in the last decade. The US and NATO have now withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. But, as Killelea pointed out, the US is still involved in conflicts – it is now the biggest supporter of Ukraine. 

The Price of War

One of the starkest findings of the report is the economic cost of war. In total, war and violence cost the world $17.5 trillion last year, or 12.9% of global GDP. For those countries most affected by conflict, the impact is obviously particularly devastating: Ukraine, for instance, spent 63% of its GDP on defense against the Russian invasion.

And the threat of future conflict is also startling: The report calculated that a potential Chinese blockade of Taiwan, for instance, would lead to a drop in global economic output equivalent to double the loss that occurred as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Of course, many arms companies also make money from war, but according to the index, those economic gains are dwarfed by the expense that war and militarization brings. “If I build an aircraft carrier: That might cost me $20 billion to build, and $500 million a year to run the thing,” said Killelea. “The best I can hope for is that I don’t use it. But that money could be used for stimulating business, on the health system, where it would have a far more productive benefit for the economy.” 

Read the full report at:

https://www.economicsandpeace.org/report/global-peace-index-2023

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Last chance saloon

Posted on May 9, 2023 by borderslynn

If you, dear reader, read these blogs, you will know I often quote from books recently published. I am searching for guidance, for hope, for sound planning, that our future generations may live a more fulfilling life than we have had. Below are a few examples of, what I believe to be, sound, implementable, planning to save the planet for we humans to deserve to live upon.

All we can do is learn from history how to build social and political structures that are at least resilient and at best antifragile; how to avoid the descent into self-flagellating chaos that so often characterizes societies overwhelmed by disaster; and how to resist the siren voices who propose totalitarian rule or world government as necessary for the protection of our hapless species and our vulnerable world.

From Doom, Niall Ferguson

I watched a YouTube of Bernie Sanders interview with Frankie Boyle, dated a couple of months ago when he visited the UK. He has clear plans we could follow.

https://youtu.be/7FqXDJkko_I

And social justice and prosperity cannot be achieved if the monetary system only provides access to finance for the already rich, those who own assets. The creation of a socially just monetary system – one that promotes widespread prosperity by acting as servant, not master of society and the economy; a monetary system that enables us all – including the public sector – to do what we can do, and be what we can be. That should be the aim of any progressive movement.

Ann Pettifor, The Production of Money

Let us plan for degrowth.

https://theconversation.com/degrowth-isnt-the-same-as-a-recession-its-an-alternative-to-growing-the-economy-forever-202469

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cast off the Debt Burden

Posted on April 26, 2023 by borderslynn

Being free of debt, whether it be an individual or a nation, is a fantasy. Well, so we have been brainwashed to believe.

In fact we have been:

‘bamboozled’ into allowing a small financial elite to create colossal quantities of private wealth while burdening the world with debt, volatility, crises and rising rates of inequality.

Ann Pettifor, The Production of Money

Even the IMF admitted in a paper published in June, 2016:

the neoliberal agenda – a label used more by critics than by the architects of the policies – rests on two main planks. The first is increased competition – achieved through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets, including financial markets, to foreign competition. The second is a smaller role for the state, achieved through privatization and limits on the ability of governments to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt.

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm

Ann Pettifor tells us that Keynes understood how to protect our economies by avoiding mobile capital which had been encouraged to all our detriment since discarding Keynesian advice. He suggested if we close borders to footloose, international mobile capital, we can avoid the pitfalls all of us know only too well.

Read the definition of capital mobility:

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/capital-mobility

Many high income nations have increased their debt more than developing countries between 2005 and 2015.

Read about countries Statista has revealed to have taken on the burden of high debt by borrowing from China:

https://www.statista.com/chart/29603/chinese-emergency-bailouts/

This shows the more desperate the country, the more likely they are to go to China as a lender of last resort.

Bailout amounts provided by China remained quite low in the 2000s and early 2010s, before shooting up from 2015 onwards, climbing to a total of $100 billion for the two decades. The two most common ways in which these loans work is through a liquidity swap with the Chinese Central Bank – where most of the outstanding balances of around $40 billion were located as of 2021 – or through credit lines from Chinese state-owned banks. Three countries, Venezuela, South Sudan and Ecuador, received prepayments on goods they were to deliver to China.

Financiers in the global financial market make decisions which can cause pain in some part of the world they may not even be familiar with….running our lives from a distance with impunity.

Allowing capital to be fully mobile inhibits the management by government of their own domestic financial market and interest rates if:

lenders in international markets offer higher or lower rates beyond a country’s border, rates that may not be appropriate to economic conditions in-country.

Ann Pettifor, The Production of Money

Governments must be free to analyse their own nation’s financial position and adjust interest rates and policies accordingly to the benefit of its population.

…..mobile capital’s absolute power derives from its ability to move effortlessly across borders and to lend at the highest rate of interest to institutions and individuals that need finance…….the IMF provides protection…

Ann Pettifor, The Production of Money

It is therefore imperative to work toward international cooperation and change the system – but we don’t seem inclined to do that these days, and we see populations suffering immensely as a result.

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Permacrisis: Shipping

Posted on April 13, 2023 by borderslynn

If we want to look at human activity accelerated to the point of destruction, let’s look at the tragedy of the Mediterranean.

https://sciencing.com/animals-mediterranean-sea-8537277.html

Aerial view of a Cosco cargo ship moored between two piers covered with colorful shipping containers.

TRADECHINA

In Greece’s largest port of Piraeus, China is the boss

Kaki Bali

10/30/2022October 30, 2022

Since 2016, the Chinese shipping company Cosco has been the majority stakeholder in the port of Piraeus. This means a foreign power controls Greece’s main port.

In Germany, a heated debate has been raging about the Chinese state shipping company Cosco buying a minority stake in a container terminal at the port of Hamburg.

Greece, however, seems to have no such concerns. Since 2011, under pressure from both the debt crisis and the Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund), the Greek government has sold almost all of the country’s important ports and airports to foreign companies. Athens signed a contract with Cosco in 2016 that has allowed the Chinese company to secure a two-thirds majority stake in the port of Piraeus.

https://www.dw.com/en/greece-in-the-port-of-piraeus-china-is-the-boss/a-63581221

Reliable large infrastructure building projects skills have been developed by Chinese companies. China has also invested in container ports around the world.

https://ports.coscoshipping.com/en/

Shipping has a long history in Greece and famous names associated with it such as the Greek Onassis (born 1906 in Smyrna, Turkey), his father in the cigarette business. His family were victims of the slaughter of Greeks in that area, and he escaped and fled when he was 17.

https://greekreporter.com/2021/09/13/the-catastrophe-of-smyrna-genocide-of-greeks-in-asia-minor-remembered/

His human story is worth reading, spanning the turbulent times of the 1920s until his death in 1975, 2 years after the death of his son two years earlier.

https://www.factinate.com/people/facts-aristotle-onassis/

During his lifetime, shipping was part of a respected industry and the many uses of ships was never considered as a potentially harmful ecological component. He became a shipping magnate by being able to take advantage of the 1930s Depression:

Lucky for him, this was the 1930s—The Great Depression—and everyone was abandoning ship on the shipping business. So, Onassis offered to buy up the vessels from the companies that were—pun intended—going under.

Don’t think that Onassis was actually trying to help anyone: He got the ships for well under half price.

Factinate

Many billionaires have achieved their goals by purchasing industries at silly prices when their value has dropped due to a crisis. They have grown the business and gained worldwide fame as a consequence.

In the UK, Mrs Thatcher sold off Britain’s assets:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/britain-land-margaret-thatcher-built

The world of Money impacts all of us and many of us are left with family histories which show the damaging results of ruthless power. But the earth bears the main toll and we watch it dying before our eyes.

Efforts are being made to provide greener fuels for shipping:

https://www.transportenvironment.org/challenges/ships

But that costs money, and budgets are tight, so instead loopholes are sought and a blind eye turned to the toxic waste dumped in our oceans.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/12/shippings-dirty-secret-how-scrubbers-clean-the-air-while-contaminating-the-sea

We all know about the oil spills, but plastic nurdles are another catastrophic cause of ocean death if they end up in the sea:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/29/nurdles-plastic-pellets-environmental-ocean-spills-toxic-waste-not-classified-hazardous

And don’t forget human waste:

A large cruise ship can produce about 170,000 gallons of sewage on a daily basis. On an average of 0.01 to 0.06 m3 of sewage is produced per person in a day.

The UK proposed barge to house 500 migrants has been refitted to be more sanitary than it was when used in Amsterdam. But have they a sewage filtration system which prevents waste going into the sea at Portland? Let us hope so.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/05/anger-at-plan-to-house-asylum-seekers-on-barge-off-dorset-portland

Container cargo ships can become unstable:

ship capsize is a seafarer’s worst nightmare. These incidents are often due to inadequate ship stability caused by a sudden and unplanned rise in the ship’s Centre of Gravity (CoG). Tragic consequences include injury, death, pollution and total loss of ship and cargo. All ships are exposed to this potential danger but some ship types and trades are much more exposed than others. In particular, containerships and general cargo and multi-purpose ships carrying containers on deck – with a high ship CoG and low residual stability are in the instability high risk category

https://maritime-mutual.com/risk-bulletins/stability-vigilance-containerships-and-cargo-ships-carrying-containers

The greenwashing which goes on to present a responsible industry is upsetting. Just as we all understand factory fishing (I wrote about the harm supertrawlers do years ago, see https://borderslynn.com/2021/02/25/we-will-be-fishless-soon-part-one)

has overwhelmed and destroyed the marine life ecosystems, still demand and supply continues unabated. The shipping industry seems to be expanding, not shrinking.

Last, but not least, the tragedy in the Mediterranean of migrant deaths, fleeing in overcrowded and often leaking boats, desperate for a better life.

See here:

https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Respecting Borders?

Posted on April 11, 2023 by borderslynn

In 2016, Ann Pettifor wrote, in her book The Production of Money, that if we allow the banking system to continue with no progressive changes, then:

The recurring financial crises of the last four decades will roll on relentlessly and lead inevitably to graver social and political upheavals and even war.

And it has continued through the Covid Crisis which began probably late 2019. Now we are in the era of world division and endless war. Our societies are polarised, and our social media, already running negative dominated algorithms, is entering ChatGPT era. The Chat Bot is with us in all our interactions. Bloomberg has introduced new financial tools using ChatGPT. Some are excited by this roll out of Artificial Intelligence; some want to postpone it, some countries have banned it. But the genie is out of the bottle and maybe our banking systems will apply it, and then, where will that lead?

If we have petroyuan as well as petrodollars, what will ChatGPT do on the trading floors?

We are still hurting from the 2007-8 crash:

The US Treasury estimated that 8.8 million jobs were lost in the US alone, and $19 trillion of household wealth was destroyed during the 2007–09 crisis.

Flawed financial global systems just seem to get worse, no matter how hard alternative and sound approaches have been argued historically, the least good plans, such as the catastrophic Chicago Plan, have been adopted. The suffering planet and most of the 7 billion citizens on it have endured dreadful consequences.

Climate Change is worsening day by day, we see the awful results as the daily news plays out. We knew we had to change our behaviours 50 years ago, and build in resilience to our infrastructures, but the money was not directed in that way with the real will required.

Human impact (overfishing) has damaged around 80 percent of our oceans. Our glaciers are disappearing due to our over use of fossil fuels. Most of our freshwater sources are gone, only 2 percent remains. Wonderful people are fighting to protect and conserve what is left, but the money people are not backing their efforts sufficiently. Our every second breath comes thanks to the oxygen delivered from the oceans. The faulty machinations of the money people are snuffing out life faster than it can recover.

Here in the UK, people are striking because of inadequate income to meet rising bills and inflation. Many have not had a sufficient pay rise for at least 10 years, and every pay offer is so trivial as to be nothing more than an insult.

BRIC countries (the developing countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, have become major game players due to their alliance.

Borders between countries may be permeable if dominated by another, or cross border conflicts ensue. Coercion vs cooperation can induce fear or optimism for a better life. Sovereignty may exist for centuries then come under threat.

Taiwan. It has always been ruled independently: first, of course, by the regime of Chiang Kai-shek, who wanted to “recover the mainland.”

https://thediplomat.com/2020/12/has-taiwan-always-been-part-of-china/

Our tribal, warring ancestors had a pattern of fighting and conquering for thousands of years. Historians tell us about Ukraine invasions thousands of years ago:

Different parts of the area that is today Ukraine were invaded and occupied in the 1st millennium BCE by the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians and in the 1st millennium CE by the Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Avars, Khazars, and Magyars (Hungarians). Slavic tribes settled there after the 4th century. Kyiv was the chief town. The Mongol conquest in the mid-13th century decisively ended Kyivan power.

https://www.britannica.com/summary/Ukraine

Now Mongolia is restricted by its border with Russia to one side and China to the other. Its current economic progress is due to its dependence on energy from Russia and supply of vital goods from China. Mongolia retains its sovereignty for now.

We have had a period of trade where ‘globalisation’ has created positives and negatives in trade, but also industrialised systems for container ports, the latest being one built by China in Greece. These ports greatly improve the economy of countries once they are part of the trading system. The high cost of building the ports often leaves the recipient country in debt to the donor country, with obligations.

Globalization refers to the process of expanding your business operations onto a global scale. This can include selling products or services in other countries or setting up offices or factories in other parts of the world. Regionalization is the opposite of globalization – it refers to the process of dividing your business into smaller units that operate within specific geographic regions.

https://www.politicsphere.com/difference-between-globalization-and-regionalization

Christianity and Islam are examples of globalization. Historically, belief systems have been pushed on to militarily beaten populations, until they are assimilated into that belief and trading system.

Usually militaries will provide security for trade.

Globalization and regionalization have led to the removal of certain traditions and cultures in society. This happened when people became a global village, and others distanced themselves from the rest of the world. 

An analysis of our changes in how we trade with one another after Covid and the event when the Suez Canal became blocked is discussed here:

Some analysts and commentators see a wave of deglobalization forging ahead. The Economist predicted on 24 January 2019: “The new world will work differently. Slowbalisation will lead to deeper links within regional blocs. Supply chains in North America, Europe and Asia are sourcing more from closer to home. In Asia and Europe most trade is already intra-regional, and the share has risen since 2011.” And in the Financial Times, Martin Wolf wrote on 10 December 2020: “The plausible future is not that international exchange is going to die. But it is likely to become more regional and more virtual.”

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/regionalization-globalization-future-direction-trade/

We are now in a ferment of change, caught on the back foot, our world infrastructures are not prepared. Amid the instability, attempts are made to firm up trade relations and diplomacy, but such relations are fragile which reflects the dying planet. There is no certainty for the future though treaties are signed based on a vague belief that some of us will survive past 2050.

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Disastrous oil spills that wreck our marine life

Posted on March 30, 2023 by borderslynn

Currently we have an oil spill in the UK. It was 200 barrels which leaked into a beautiful marina which is in Poole, Dorset.

https://youtu.be/JHVi96DrJwY

Then watch the nightmare which is unfolding in the Red Sea.

https://youtu.be/pRp2M47LcuE

We are irresponsible humans, constantly wrecking our world.

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Weaponising interest rates, inducing negativity caused by austerity

Posted on March 25, 2023 by borderslynn

Continuing on from the previous blog, here are some further extracts from ‘The Production of Money’ by Ann Pettifor:

Wielding the weapon of interest, finance capital effectively holds societies, governments and industries, but also the entire ecosystem, to ransom over repayment of its loans. This predicament is particularly tragic given that, in theory, the development of banking and of sound monetary systems should have ended the power of any elite to extract outsized returns from borrowers. Today, just as in earlier pre-banking eras, interest rates remain high in real terms, even in rich countries. However, this is only because these societies, elected governments and industries have conceded such despotic power to finance capital.

In Chapter 4 she tells us how the ‘broken record’ phrase governments trot out is ‘there is no money’. That sword through the heart of civil society is a painful experience we have suffered all our lives, and tells us Austerity will continue.

Ann Pettifor:

We live in turbulent political and financial times, and in a global economy dogged by failure. We survive precariously on a planet warmed by human greenhouse gas emissions and disturbed by a human-induced mass extinction. The financial system is currently volatile, corrupted and widely discredited. Scandals of mis-selling, theft, manipulation and fraud abound. And the cry ‘there is no money’ for projects that society holds dear echoes all around us. We are assured that ‘there is no money’ for care of the elderly, or for the mentally ill, or for social housing. There is no money for the commissioning of operas, plays or other forms of artistic creation. There is no money for public investment in water conservation, renewable energy, flood defences, the retrofitting of old, energy-leaking properties, or other investments designed to protect society from climate change. One of the reasons for this chorus of defeatism is the global overhang of debt, and the conflation by many economists (and indeed the public) of both public and private debt. In this chapter I hope to deal with both the ‘there is no money’ meme, and the differences between public and private debt, and why public debt, at times of weakness, ought not to be a barrier to public investment. ‘The state has no source of money’ At the heart of the politically inept responses to the financial crisis is an ideologically driven and mendacious conviction: that while society can afford to bail out a systemically broken banking system, it cannot afford to finance and address economic failure, youth unemployment, energy insecurity, climate change, poverty and disease. Society, it is argued, ‘has no money’ to finance these challenges, to stimulate recovery or create employment.

Every citizen who hopes to get answers to why we have been struggling like this for so long should sit down and read this book. It is so refreshing, it is like therapy to read it, to scrape the fog away of mixed messages spouted by ‘experts’ and politicians.

Debt is defined as an asset by its owners: creditors and international financiers, including private equity investors. Assets are valuable in themselves – think of the rent extracted from property, from income streams generated by the purchase of a football club, or from companies in the form of dividends, etc. But debt (or a loan) is also an asset and has value as a source of ‘rent’ in the form of interest payments made over time. Finally, debts (for example, a bank’s mortgages) are useful as income-generating collateral for leveraging even more borrowing or debt. Think of phone network providers that have thousands of contracts with users. These contracts represent streams of revenue into the future, and holding these contracts provides the phone network company with the collateral needed against further borrowing.

Too much debt carried by borrowers living in austere times leads to defaults, thus the economy deflates beyond rescue.

The politicians responsible for enforcing austerity policies had not just imposed unnecessary suffering and dislocation on millions of people, their communities and countries. They had not only caused public debt to rise. They, in fact, caused disillusionment with democracy to set in among the unemployed and impoverished in Europe and the US. Austerity and the collusion between politicians and the finance sector opened up political space for right-wing, populist political parties like Donald Trump and the Tea Party in the US, the National Front in France, and Golden Dawn in Greece. These were among the social and political consequences of democratic politicians enacting policies that enrich the few while impoverishing the majority; policies based on the interests of the robber barons and on the flawed theories of ‘defunct’ economists.

To see democracy threatened as a result of financial gambling run by those who think they are amongst the brightest brains in the world, is to despair of present day support for this modus operandi we seem saddled with.

Ann Pettifor reminds us, later in her book, that the rate of interest on money is merely a ‘social construct’. We must remember that; some of us have had our financial lives stubbed out by these ‘constructs’.

High rates of interest do harm to the majority and favour the rentier.

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Designing financial instruments which destroy lives

Posted on March 24, 2023 by borderslynn

Fact: Those with wealth seek to invest in varioùs assets which have the best return.

Sometimes financial instruments have been designed to fill the shortfall in asset availability.

Many of us have suffered after these machinations inevitably turn foul.

Many ideas central to financial mathematics began with betting … The scientists who cracked blackjack and roulette in the 1960s and ’70s eventually moved into finance, tired of the attention from casino security. To them, the divide was superficial. Like the modern teams tackling sports betting, they just saw another market, another set of inefficiencies, and another game to be beaten.

Adam Kucharski, May 2016, ft.com

It seems the gambling addiction practised in the world of finance has been given a divine status which allows detachment and impunity from being seen as it should be, a major harm to life itself.

Ann Pettifor describes the fallout from the 2007-9 financial crisis and mismanagement:

Among the safest assets are US government bonds (US ‘treasuries’) and British government bonds (‘gilts’). Unfortunately the slump of 2007–09 and its aftermath cut government tax revenues dramatically, as firms failed, individuals lost employment and wages fell in real terms. Instead of supporting the heavily indebted private sector by expanding public investment, increasing employment and supporting wages after the crisis, western governments responded to the slump by cutting spending further. This meant that governments stopped borrowing, and the issue of government bonds declined. At about the same time, central banks embarked on quantitative easing and, by purchasing government bonds and placing them on their balance sheets, helped create a shortage of such safe assets. As a consequence, the prices of all assets have risen, including government bonds, and the yields (the return an investor will realize on a bond) have fallen – in some cases to negative levels! Because of these low yields (returns) and this shortage of bonds, capitalists have to park their funds in other assets. The most attractive asset is property: valuable and scarce real estate in, for example, inner London, New York City or Hong Kong. The outcome of low yields on government bonds is the massive inflation of property prices – which in turn has led to a form of ‘social cleansing’ as prices rocket and ordinary Londoners, for example, can no longer afford to purchase property or pay high rents.

Charles R. Morris, in his book ‘The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown’ takes us into 1994 and the dark world of Wall Street activities which:

took low quality mortgages and created the subprime market. These mortgages became structured Bonds called CMO’s (collateralized mortgage obligations). These bonds were then ‘tiered in horizontal slices, or tranches, and portfolio cash flows were preferentially directed to the top tranches. Since the top tranches had first claim on cash flows, they qualified for the highest investment-grade ratings. The bottom tranches absorbed all the initial defaults but paid high yields. The mix of very high-quality, high-rated instruments plus a smaller quantity of high-yield, high-risk paper matched up well with the preference of long-term investors. Wall Street inevitably pushed the tranching technology to an extreme, triggering a serious mortgage-market crash in 1994.

Efforts were made to redesign the mortgage market into Residential Mortgage Backed-securities (RMBS). These became the standard element in most big investor portfolios.

Next came the CMBS (commercial mortgage-backed securities)

pioneered by the federal agency charged with selling off multibillion of commercial mortgages acquired from failed S&Ls…..tailored to their underlying assets….don’t lend themselves to pooling. The solution was to involve the rating agencies in the construction of the pool. Banks would assemble a detailed profile for each property on a projected pool – it’s financials, management, tenant histoŕy, maintenance records and mortgage details. The rating agencies used proprietary models to estimate default risk and actively negotiated the pool structure – rejuggling properties to improve geographic diversity, or insisting on more buildings with long-term, blue-chip tenants. A typical CMBS had five or six tranches…….

This process enabled asset-backed securities (ABS) to “finance equipment, transportation fleets, or anything else investors could value”

In turn this led to commercial banks use of CBOs (collateralized bond obligations) and investment banks ‘experimented with CLOs (collateralized loan obligations) and the generic name for all types of securitized assets was CDOs (collateralized debt obligations).

“For banks, selling assets and liabilities off their balance sheets reduces strain on regulatory capital; for companies, it lowers apparent debt.”

Morris goes on to write most fascinatingly how each step of this process opened the floodgates which led to

The notional value of credit default swaps-that is, the size of portfolios covered by default agreements-grew from $1 trillion in 2001 to $45 trillion by mid-2007.

Lives destroyed:

What Is the Link Between Homeownership and the American Dream?

In many ways, the American Dream is a concept of optimism. It implies equal opportunity and that any individual can aspire to financial stability and even superior wealth—regardless of their background—through hard work, entrepreneurial ventures, or other means. A large component of financial stability and the American Dream is owning your own home. The Great Recession and the ensuing housing collapse in 2008 cast doubt on the so-called “American Dream.” The economic crisis precipitated by the 2020 lockdowns and job losses didn’t help.

The American Dream is now considered out of reach for many groups in American society. This article focuses on how 2008 started to dismantle it.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/062515/how-was-american-dream-impacted-housing-market-collapse-2008.asp

The pain goes on to the present day:

https://metro.co.uk/2012/08/16/infographic-2008-financial-crisis-led-to-closure-of-800000-businesses-538207

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/articles/the2008recession10yearson/2018-04-30

https://www.schroders.com/en/insights/economics/the-global-financial-crisis-10-years-on-six-charts-that-tell-the-story

Posted in anthropocene | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment