The geopolitics on this are fascinating and complicated. Traditional allies at odds in certain aspects, while enemies are in agreement in others.

Just find geopolitics really interesting. *promote for those who might feel the same.

Countries like Israel, due to its geolocation/geopolitical climate, it's a desalination powerhouse. California can do the same. But a balanced approach (environmental harm vs. human necessity vs. commercial viability) is hard to achieve:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-rejects-plan-desalination-plant-2022-05-13/

Hope that California can gets its act together quick enough w/ more water recycling plants:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/worlds-largest-water-recycling-plant-located-in-orange-county-getting-major-expansion/ar-AAYLkXL

Some real & fair regulation & enforcement, with violators getting punished helps (HA!).

If you haven't seen it , this doc may interest you.

"Ukraine on Fire"

Across its eastern border is Russia and to its west-Europe. For centuries, it has been at the center of a tug-of-war between powers seeking to control its rich lands and access to the Black Sea. 2014's Maidan Massacre triggered a bloody uprising that ousted president Viktor Yanukovych and painted Russia as the perpetrator by Western media. But was it? "Ukraine on Fire" by Igor Lopatonok provides a historical perspective for the deep divisions in the region which lead to the 2004 Orange Revolution, 2014 uprisings, and the violent overthrow of democratically elected Yanukovych. Covered by Western media as a people's revolution, it was in fact a coup d'état scripted and staged by nationalist groups and the U.S. State Department. Investigative journalist Robert Parry reveals how U.S.-funded political NGOs and media companies have emerged since the 80s replacing the CIA in promoting America's geopolitical agenda abroad.

Can watch here if interested https://youtu.be/fCWBRg6_VsM

It's an offensive against Jewish people around the world that anti-Zionist somehow came to equal anti-Semitic. You can be against a political policies of a nation without being against the citizens who people her.

As a side note, it never ceases to amaze me that a literal century later, we're still paying for the sins of World War 1.

(I mention WW1 specifically because of the Balfour Declaration, which laid the seeds for the founding of modern-day Israel. It was signed during the Great War in order to influence Jews to rally to the Allies against the Central Powers, and other geopolitical reasons around the Suez Canal.)

I don't get this line of argument, America has been propping up the Saudi regime since the 50's and they are the worlds leading sponsor of global terror.

America has been too reliant on the CIA to achieve it's geopolitical goals, and all they know how to do is spread fear and paranoia followed by screwing countries over with hired goons. It always ends badly. I'm just glad Trump is taking a different approach here.

I don't support our pulling out of the Paris Accord. I think it was the wrong thing to do. And I don't mind GDP growth for other nations, even China. What I do mind is the notion that the world's greatest polluter can increase its amount of Co2 emitted and still be touted as successfully contributing to reduced Co2 emissions worldwide.

"Telling China to limit their total CO2 emission to pre 2005 values is like telling a teenager in the middle of puberty to limit their food consumption to the same amount as when they were 9 years old. It's just not an option."

Who's telling China to do that? I only suggested that China's pledge to reduce their Co2 emissions to 60-65% of their 2005 levels as a ratio of GDP isn't all that it's made out to be. Your analogy is faulty because food consumption is necessary for life, but spending billions on destroying coral reefs while making artificial islands in the South China Sea is not. The CCP certainly has the funds necessary to effect a bigger, better and faster transition to green energy. Put another way, I believe that China has the potential to benefit both their people through economic growth and simultaneously do more in combating global climate change. I simply don't trust their current government to do it. I've been living in China now for over 19 years...and one thing that strikes me is the prevalence of appearance over substance. Perhaps you simply give them more credence in the latter, while my own perception seems to verify the former.

"But their total emissions is still increasing! This is just a farce and they're doing nothing!"

The second half of your statement is a strawman. They are doing something, just not enough, imho. And China's emissions have yet to plateau, therefore it's not an achievement yet.

"Now you may say "China's not putting funds towards green energy!" Well, that's also not true. China already surpassed the US, in spending on renewable energy. In fact, China spent $103 billion on renewable energy in 2015, far more than the US, which only spent $44 billion. Also, they will continue to pour enormous amounts of resources into renewable energy, far more than any other country."

This is also misleading. What I'm suggesting is that China could do more. It's certainly a matter of opinion on whether the Chinese government is properly funding green initiatives. For example, both your article and the amounts you cite ignore the fact that those numbers include Chinese government loans, tax credits, and R&D for Chinese manufacturers of solar panels...both for domestic use AND especially for export. The government has invested heavily into making solar panels a "strategic industry" for the nation. Their cheaper manufacturing methods, while polluting the land and rivers with polysilicon and cadmium, have created a glut of cheap panels...with a majority of the panels they manufacture being exported to Japan, the US and Europe. It's also forced many "cleaner" manufacturers of solar panels in the US and Europe out of business. China continues to overproduce these panels, and thus have "installed" much of the excess as a show of green energy "leadership." But what you don't hear about much is curtailment, that is the fact that huge percentages of this green energy never makes its way to the grid. It's lost, wasted...and yet we're supposed to give them credit for it? So...while you appear to want to give them full credit for their forward-looking investments, I will continue to look deeper and keep a skeptical eye on a government that has certainly earned our skepticism.

""But China is building more coal plants!" Well that's not really true either. China just scrapped over 100 coal power projects with a combined power capacity of 100 GW . Instead, the aforementioned investments will add over 130GW in renewable energy. Overall, Chinese coal consumption may have already peaked back in in 2013."

Well, yes, it really is true. China announcing the scrapping of 103 coal power projects on January 14th this year was a step in the right direction, and certainly very well timed politically. But you're assuming that that's the entirety of what China has recently completed, is currently building, and even plans to build. If you look past that sensationalist story, you'll see that they continue to add coal power at an accelerating pace. As to China's coal consumption already having peaked...lol...well, if you think they'd never underreport and then quietly revise their numbers upwards a couple of years later, then you should more carefully review the literature.

"So in the world of reality, how is China doing in terms of combating global warming? It's doing a decent job. So no "@Diogenes", China is NOT the single biggest factor in our future success/failure, because it is already on track to meeting its targets."

Well, your own link states:

"We rate China’s Paris agreement - as we did its 2020 targets - “medium.” The “medium“ rating indicates that China’s targets are at the last ambitious end of what would be a fair contribution. This means they are not consistent with limiting warming to below 2°C, let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit, unless other countries make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort."

And if the greatest emitter of Co2 isn't the biggest factor, then what is? I'm not saying that China bears all the responsibility or even blame. I'm far more upset with my own country and government. But to suggest that China adding the most Co2 of any nation on earth (almost double what the US emits) isn't the largest single factor that influences AGW...I'm having trouble processing your rationale for saying so. Even if we don't question if they're on track to meet their targets, they'll still be the largest emitter of Co2...unless India somehow catches up to them.

To restate my position:
The US shouldn't have withdrawn from Paris.
China is not a global leader in fighting climate change.
To combat climate change, every nation needs to pull together.
China is not "pulling" at their weight, which means that other nations must take up more of the slack.
Surging forward, while "developed" nations stagnate will weaken the CCP's enemies...and make no mistake, they view most of us as their enemies.
The former is part of the CCP's long-term strategy for challenging the current geopolitical status quo.
I believe that the Chinese Communist Party is expending massive amounts of resources abroad and militarily, when the bulk of those funds would better serve their own people, environment and combating the global crisis of climate change.

there's something incredibly disgusting about videos like this. all the effort, knowledge, technology, suffering, and geopolitics needed to make this item and then some twat with access to too much money destroys it for youtube views.

Jesus fucking christ, how did this abortion ever get green lit?

Way to completely and utterly miss the point of a franchise.

What's next? The next Raid to be a slow-paced, dialogue heavy introspection into the nuances of Indonesian geopolitics?
Does the drummer in Whiplash 2 join a metal band?

Every single thing about this is just stupid, from the soundtrack* to the lame attempt to give Chris Pine Kirks haircut. Fuck, I haven't even mentioned anything about the direction or the story yet.

@CrushBug, don't take this personally, but if there was a way to unpromote or anti-quality I would use every single point I earned on this abomination.

Look, if you want to make an awesome action movie in space with a kick arse soundtrack, great! Sign me the fuck up for that one. In fact, I watched it last year, it was called Guardians of the Galaxy and I loved it.

But that's not what Star Trek is about. Why would you even bother spending money on the licence? It's not that you can't even make a great Trek movie with decent action beats (First Contact nailed both), but Star Trek is supposed to be a tiny bit more thoughtful.

Fuck everything about this.


* I love the Beastie Boys and Sabotage is a great song, but it fits Star Trek about as well as smooth jazz would fit the next Avengers.

As I said in that thread, I don't see an incentive for the US to intervene. This isn't the Cold War battle over spheres of influence, neither does oil have the same geopolitical relevance. Despite the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya, none has led to a spike in oil prices? Instead it's fallen precipitously. Why, because the US being the swing shale oil producer has capped world prices.

Meanwhile I listed the reasons for Russia to intervene, none of which you have challenged or refuted. TOWs have by all accounts been supplied by the Saudis. I don't think Russia is attempting to destabilize Syria, but they do wish to prop up Assad. Bombing has conveniently been primarily of non-ISIS rebels since they challenge the regime more directly than ISIS which is being bombed already.

Syria includes a litany of rebel groups some as radical as ISIS. From what I have read it is suspected that both the Syrian army and al-Nusra/ISIS used various chemical weapons. The Syrian army has undoubtedly dropped barrel bombs, weapons designed to create indiscriminate collateral damage to civilians just like chemical weapons, it is entirely consistent that they would have also tried using chemical weapons which is practical terms are no less likely to be deadly to civilians or likely to incite terror. There are by all accounts >5,000 different rebel groups in Syria. That you would ascribe them all as wanting chaos would suggest you've been fed a narrative.

A Cold War MAD mindset makes little sense today. Russian bombing of western Europe in some kind of hypothetical retaliation against the US makes no sense in this day and age. In any case it was scrapped because of Putin's paranoia.

This situation is sad and ironic.

The area known as Judea was renamed Palestine during the time of Roman emperor Hadrian.
The residents of Judea/Palestine were forced to convert from Judaism to Christianity around 400 ad by the Romans, and later in the 700's ad were forced to convert to Islam.
They never left. They just changed religions. The children of the Jews of the new testament, are the Palestinians of today (now practicing Islam).

Many years passed, the Eastern Roman empire resided over much of the area, ruled out of Turkey, and the region was more or less all-right. Along the way it changed names to the Ottoman empire.

After WW1, the Ottoman empire shrank dramatically, and renamed itself to simply Turkey. However it still held some lands that were not actually Turkish (eg. ~Syria), and was still a mini-empire.
Around this general time period, Palestine became a British colony.

During WW2, there were many displaced Europeans of Jewish faith that had nowhere to go.
(*Britain didn't want them either, most places didn't. Anti-Semitism was rather common at the time. Even the Nazi eugenics policy wasn't much criticized at the time. re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Supporters_and_critics. Actually, the Nazi's strong association with anti-semitism + all the anti-Nazi propaganda during WW2, helped cure a lot of anti-semitism in Europe.).
In the late 1940's Britain split occupied Palestine into smaller-Palestine+Israel, and assisted in relocating WW2 displaced Europeans of Jewish faith to Israel. Which at face value made sense, because "the bible says Jews are from Judea". However the area from which was established Israel was more or less ~devoid of followers of the Jewish faith in the 1940's.
And that's the irony! The British creation of Israel involved taking land from Palestinians (i.e. The children of the original Jews of Judea), and giving it to Europeans of Jewish faith (foreign immigrants).

That then resulted in middle-eastern resentment and backlash over western invasion/occupation/seisure-of-land. This resentment against immigrating European Jews caused 'Jews at large' to be discriminated against throughout the middle-east, and that in turn led to a migration wave of regional-Jews from the surrounding areas into Israel.
This resulted in a concentration of Jewish-faithed immigrants of European and middle-eastern ethnicity, all in Israel - further displacing the original residents.

Basically, in the end, the original people of Judea were kicked out of their homes and their lands given to immigrants... and they really resent it. While in the mean time the immigrants acclaim to have a god given right to be there because there is some old paper that says that people of their faith are from the area.

Ta-da.

Britain could have just sent Europeans of Jewish faith to Palestine, and made it an integrated nation.
But nope, they had to displace people and create a bunch more problems.
Gee, thanks Britain.
I pretty much face-palm when I hear "this conflict is thousands of years old" (when it's only been ~66 years).


Note :
I make the distinction between ethnically Jewish and religiously Jewish.
I use the phrase "Europeans of Jewish faith" to clarify that these were displaced Europeans, who may have had an ancestor or two way way way up the family tree that was from Judea - but were otherwise European and of Jewish faith - who may have lived in an area with little mingling with outsiders, and hence a visually distinct appearance (i.e. what made it possible to make visual caricatures of their people, such as : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eternal_Jew_%281940_film%29)
You can also play semantics with "what is ethnically Jewish, when the ethnicity is labelled after the faith", etc.

There's also the geopolitical aspect. Israel is the only "Western" nation in the middle-east. Given that the area is globally significant in terms of resources, that makes Israel a critically important ally. So the rhetoric will always lean.

Personally, I wonder if the things that European Jews suffered during WW2, didn't create some mental/emotional baggage that today plays itself out with how they treat Palestinians. Sort of a "I don't care about your suffering, because I've been through worse" kind of situation.

However, I understand how Israel does not want an open integrated society with Palestinians. The Jewish population is rather small, and in an integrated society they would be such a small proportion that they would essentially be bred out of existence within a few generations. For those who wish to preserve their culture, that's 'kind of a big deal'.

-scheherazade

No need to take it so personal its just every country doing what is in their geopolitical interest, what else would they be doing?

Again and again, your repeated statements reflect only your assumptions of my motivations based on the written words. If you'd like to know who and what I am you have but to inquire. I'll let you in on a little secret if you'd like a clue:

These are the absolute best of times to be alive in on planet now. If you want my opinion of the manner in which you and others of similar ilk conduct themselves on this site and others concerning a dissenting opinion or alternatives to run-of-the-mill editorials concerning world affairs anchored in parroting party-line opinions, you may crawl up my ass to find the answers for yourself.

As for anarchy well, you may look to geopolitics as reflected in the current paradigm, and perhaps you'll see that us common-folk haven't really got a clue of the debauch enjoyed by those involved in that sort of inhumanity.

Clear, but I considered it unnecessary. Until the majority of alternative media starts speaking clearly as to the source of the disinformation disease that has created the world we live in, no news is real news.

Until the veil is lifted to expose the criminality of world governments and the families and complicit lackeys responsible for the amalgamation of power into a single world governing body all the endless banter over particular recent political and economic events without reaching farther back historically, for me negates all reasonable context for what's happening now.

It's the powers behind the puppets and pawns who need to have their shit scrutinized and reported upon, until they have nowhere to hide.

Follow the goddamn money, the entire collection of the world's ill's reside in monopolistic control by assholes, of the worldwide financial system.

Banks, insurance companies, lawyers, doctors, all work well when there is a healthy atmosphere of fear and dread, THIS is the only real power geopolitical manipulators have.

The world's fear they have and continue to instill. They do it by manipulating economies, enforcing laws with soldiers, and through complex and not-so-complex, continual distraction and disinformation.

Like Herbert said, "Fear is the mind-killer."

For those like me who was kinda confused about what this was about:

(from YouTube)
In this video, two boys simplify the debate to a true value statement. They both received $10.00 from their grandfather. One bought an F-35, the other got 3 F-18's with everything needed to maintain it, and keep them flying.

This contentious debate in geopolitical circles is focused around joint strike fighter choices. Does a country procure the F-35 or the F-18 Super Hornet? The F-35 is an impressive new fighter, designed to meet the needs of all branches of the military. The challenge is in order to meet everyone's needs, you have to make compromises. For example, once loaded with weapons, the F-35 begins to lose it's stealth abilities. Is it really invisible to radar and how much foil area did they have to give up to maneuverability?

In the end we realize... it's really not that complicated.