Good morning 99percenters!
Morning news dump and music by Del McCoury

How Neocons Banished Realism

In a widely remarked upon article for the online version of Foreign Policy last week, Harvard’s Stephen Walt asked a very good question. Why, Walt asked, are elite outlets like the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times “allergic to realist views, given that realists have been (mostly) right about some very important issues, and the columnists they publish have often been wrong?”

Walt then went on to do something pundits are generally loath to do: he admitted that he’d didn’t really know the answer. This is not to say that I do, but I think Walt’s question is worth exploring.

Why indeed? My own hunch is that we realists are a source of discomfit for the Beltway armchair warrior class not so much because we have been right about every major U.S. foreign policy question since the invasion of Iraq, but because we dare to question the premise which undergirds the twin orthodoxies of neoconservatism and liberal interventionism.

ISIS: US-Saudi Plague Reaches Indonesia?
ISIS attacks conveniently mesh with Washington's growing frustration with Jakarta and its expanding ties with China.

Coordinated bombings and mass shootings struck Indonesia's capital of Jakarta on Thursday leaving several dead and many more wounded. The pattern matched that of attacks carried out last year in Paris, France, where known terrorists Western intelligence agencies were tracking, some for years, were somehow allowed to mobilize large caches of weapons in Belgium and execute their coordinated mass murder with virtually no effort to stop them ahead of the attacks.

The so-called "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" quickly claimed responsibility for the attack and the Western media has begun stoking fears that the terrorist organization has now spread to Southeast Asia.

G.I. Jihadis: Wherever US Foreign Policy is in Trouble, ISIS is There... 

A pattern is beginning to develop. Wherever the US wants to put its military, ISIS shows up and conveniently justifies it. And whenever the US is having a problem persuading a foreign government to do what Washington desires, ISIS shows up. In fact, pretty much everywhere US foreign policy is in trouble, ISIS and similarly state-sponsored terrorism seems to show up and save the day.

Fill Up Your Gas Tank — and Support Repression, Tyrants, Wars, Terrorism and Atrocities
Fool’s Gold -- The Link Between Natural Resources and Violence

No matter how bad a tyrannical regime is, chances are that there is a western government or corporation just waiting to do business with it. That has to stop, says professor and author Leif Wenar in conversation with WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman.

Only by turning off the spigot that supplies us with energy — but fuels repression where it is pumped out of the ground — can we effect meaningful change.

The amazing wealth being displayed by oil billionaires across the globe has caused many people to equate abundant natural resources with prosperity. However, more often than not, these treasures have benefited only a few while causing hardships for everybody else. And there’s worse.

There seems to be a direct and long-standing historical nexus between those nations that have in-demand natural resources — such as oil, diamonds or precious metals — and corrupt, brutal and inept rule.

Ultra-Rich 'Philanthrocapitalist' Class Undermining Global Democracy: Report
As foundations and wealthy individuals funnel money into global development, what "solutions" are they pursuing?

From Warren Buffett to Bill Gates, it is no secret that the ultra-rich philanthropist class has an over-sized influence in shaping global politics and policies.

And a study (pdf) just out from the Global Policy Forum, an international watchdog group, makes the case that powerful philanthropic foundations—under the control of wealthy individuals—are actively undermining governments and inappropriately setting the agenda for international bodies like the United Nations.

The top 27 largest foundations together possess assets of over $360 billion, notes the study, authored by Jens Martens and Karolin Seitz. Nineteen of those foundations are based in the United States and, across the board, they are expanding their influence over the global south. And in so doing, they are undermining democracy and local sovereignty.

Climate Change Disaster Top Threat to Economy in 2016

A catastrophe caused by climate change is seen as the biggest potential threat to the global economy in 2016, according to a survey of 750 experts conducted by the World Economic Forum.

The annual assessment of risks conducted by the WEF before its annual meeting in Davos on January 20-23 showed that global warming had catapulted its way to the top of the list of concerns.

A failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation was seen as likely to have a bigger impact than the spread of weapons of mass destruction, water crises, mass involuntary migration and a severe energy price shock — the first time in the 11 years of the Global Risks report that the environment has been in first place.

The report, prepared by the WEF in collaboration with risk specialists Marsh & McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, comes a month after the deal signed in Paris to reduce carbon emissions. The WEF said evidence was mounting that inter-connections between risks were becoming stronger. It cited links between climate change and involuntary migration or international security, noting that these often had “major and unpredictable impacts.”

Jane Goodall: Power of Corporations Is Destroying World’s Rainforests

Jane Goodall is one of the world’s leading voices on climate change and environmental conservation. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! had the chance to catch up with Goodall at the Paris climate summit last month.

A renowned primatologist, best known for her groundbreaking work with chimpanzees and baboons, Goodall was at the summit to talk about saving the rainforest as a way to mitigate climate change. She shared with Goodman her thoughts on climate denial among the GOP presidential candidates, particularly Donald Trump. She offered some of her insights into why the world’s rainforests are being destroyed at an unprecedented rate, why she chose to be a vegetarian and ways in which we can all reduce our impact on the Earth.

Watch the Democracy Now! interview here:

A Scourge Returns: Black Lung in Appalachia

Once a month, a group of men in t-shirts, jeans, and baseball caps gather around a long table at the New River Health Clinic. The clinic, a small, one-story yellow clapboard building, is located in the tiny town of Scarbro, nestled in the bituminous hills of southern West Virginia. The members of the Fayette County Black Lung Association greet each other by name while they pour bitter black coffee into small Styrofoam cups.

Amidst the chatter and the coffee are the coughs. Some of the men hack loudly, others more quietly. All of them have advanced black lung, a disease they acquired working in the local mines. Although roughly 22% of underground miners smoke,[1] compared with about 18% of U.S. adults in general,[2] none of these men do. They gather not just as a support group but also to help one another complete the stacks of paperwork necessary to apply for government-mandated benefits for black lung and navigate the tortuous appeals process.

Aside from the group's leader, a bespectacled septuagenarian named Joe Massie, all the other members are in their 50s or early 60s. That's relatively young for someone with advanced black lung, and other workers are getting sick even earlier. These miners, who have gotten so sick so fast, are on the forefront of a wave of new black lung cases that are sweeping through Appalachia.

Giant Calving Icebergs May Slow the Pace of Climate Change

LONDON—British scientists have identified the monsters that fertilise the Southern [or Antarctic] Ocean and help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Giant icebergs drifting northwards could be responsible for storing up to a fifth of all the carbon that sinks into the south polar waters.

Geographers at the University of Sheffield report in Nature Geoscience journal that they analysed 175 satellite images of ocean colour—an indicator of phytoplankton activity.

They learned that each huge iceberg, as it breaks off the ice shelf and begins to float away, also begins to cascade iron and other vital mineral nutrients in its melting waters. This is enough to stimulate ferocious plankton productivity for up to a month in its wake.

The latest threat to the rainforests: A Peruvian highway could displace the Amazon’s last uncontacted tribes
Under international pressure, Peru has declared a new national park in Sierra del Divisor. There's just one catch

LIMA, Peru — Peru has been basking in kudos from officially declaring a vast new national park in the remote Amazonian wilderness known as Sierra del Divisor.

President Ollanta Humala traveled there over the weekend to unveil the park — nearly 5,500 square miles of stunning tropical rainforest, home to numerous threatened species, including jaguars and various kinds of monkey.

He was under international pressure to protect the area from illegal logging, the cultivation of coca — the key ingredient in cocaine — and the construction of clandestine roads.

Humala even claimed the park will “help us purify the air of the world.”

Eating the Fossil Fuel Elephant, One Bite at a Time

During the December 2015 global protests over the feeble results of the Paris climate conference, more than 500 of us Portland environmentalists donned woollies, overcoats and hats, raised our umbrellas and marched across the Tilikum - the newest bridge in Portland. The disheartened were later cheered up by 350.org's successful environmental achievements in 2015, as shared by the organization's executive director May Boeve. We are eating the fossil fuel "elephant" one bite at a time. As she wrote us:

• We showed that we are greater than tar sands.

• We made fracking a contentious political issue in Brazil.

• We shut down one of the biggest coal mines in Europe.

• We pushed California to divest the United States' second-largest pension fund from coal.

• We called out one of the richest, most powerful corporationson the planet.

• We mobilized against "free trade" agreements that consolidatecorporate power.

• We raised the bar on fossil fuel divestment commitments - to $3.4 trillion (and counting).

• We stopped the Keystone XL pipeline.

• We helped make the Paris Climate Agreement happen.

We Portlanders also had victories such as the sensational spectacle on the St. Johns Bridge in September: Hundreds of kayakers and 13 Greenpeace danglers blocked a Shell icebreaker headed for Alaska's Chukchi Sea to help that gargantuan Dutch corporation drill for fossil fuels.

Patrick Henry’s Liberty and Obama’s Climate Action

Mainstream acceptable heroes now and lasting long into the future have in common perfect understanding of what should be done, fraudulent pretenses of doing it, and calculating weakness as the true driver of their actions.

Exhibit one from nearby here in Virginia: Patrick Henry. Like Jesus, his story was written up third-hand decades later, with him gone from the earth. While his speeches usually warned of the need to keep the Native Americans on the run and the slaves in slavery (yes, that was part of what the revolution was for and what the Second Amendment was for), we’ve been handed down a hearsay composite memory of a speech without any such unpleasantries.

In this speech, Henry cries for war, and even in this age of recognizing the barbarous idiocy of choosing war, popular “progressive” history books depict Patrick Henry not as a war monger but as a fortune teller who simply looked into the future and recognized the “necessity” of starting a war earlier than did mere mortals — or, for that matter, the Canadians who still haven’t done it.