What are you talking about? You think Conservative politicians are good?

Here's the Conservative logic:

You a rich guy who's fucking over your workers by not paying them a living wage? Have a tax break, oh and thanks for the campaign contributions we'll find more tax breaks for you.
Oh look, those workers you aren't paying a living wage to need food stamps, let's cut food stamp funding then we'll be able to give you rich people more tax breaks.
Oh, you are moving those jobs overseas so you can keep more of the profits for yourself? Great idea, more money for you. We'll blame those jobs going overseas on the government and everyone will believe it and not blame the rich guy who moved the job overseas because being rich is good (despite what Jesus whom we pretend to like said) and government is bad.
We'll have the churches turn their backs against the teachings of Jesus and convince millions of Americans that Jesus meant the opposite and they'll vote for us thinking they are doing the Christian thing. Sure one or two people will lose faith and hate Christians [your's truly included, even if He is real, I'd rather be in Hell than be around Him or His people] because of it, but most of the faithful have been taught to accept anything the church says, so they'll all go along with the plan to fuck over the working class so that you rich people can have your great life.
We'll keep building more and more prisons, we'll turn them into profit making centers and incarcerate more people than any other nation for the good of corporate profit.
Let's make a pipeline filled with highly pollutive tar sands that will create 35 permanent full time jobs so that we can export a great deal of that oil. We'll tell people it's about "energy independence"and about all the jobs it'll create for the couple years of it's construction. We'll ignore the fact that upgrading our nations infrastructure would create far more jobs not only in the long term, but significantly more jobs in the short term as well., and that's just upgrading our electrical grid, not counting upgrading our freeways, bridges, dams, railways and the like.
Let's make more and more war, because war profits off killing a bunch of what we'll sell as savages is really good money for the rich.

Both sides have good and bad... well the left have good and bad. The right has people brainwashed into thinking they are doing good and the Lord's work...even though it's 100% opposite of what He taught... I hate myself for having ever voted and arguing for Conservative or even Libertarian "logic".

Japan was supposed to buy us out too at one point, don't get your hopes up.

I am not saying that the US is a great place vs the rest of the world, I am just saying that you don't get the 'utopia' that people claim Norway to be without huge sacrifices by the people and also being a net exporter of natural resources.

Norway has one of the highest tax rates and one of the highest VAT rates in the world. They are net exporters of Oil, Natural Gas, and Seafood, almost all profits of which are nationalized by the government and rerouted into pension funds.

They are one of the highest cost of living places in the world and that is not factoring the taxes, but goods and services. If you take your family out to eat and spend 100 dollars, you are going to pay an additional 25 in just taxes.

The society is conditioned to believe in Jante's Law, so this suits them because everyone is 'equal'. However, with the immigration rates rising from poorer EU countries, there are cracks appearing in the laissez faire attitude. Protests and even a mass atttack have happened once people realized that they are now supporting people that are lower than them.

The point is, you can't simply point to the nordic socialist countries and say "Oh, what a wonderful place, if only everyone was so enlightened!" because it won't work without a specific set of circumstances. Most countries don't have those circumstances and must forge ahead in their own path. Additionally, almost no other country has the unique set of challenges that the US faces due to our position as the supposed world leader. Personally, I've long wished we would back off and let the rest of you all figure out stuff on your own. I think, however, that it wouldn't be long before one or more countries would come bitching to us to fix something.

They have less than half the debt for other reasons, many of which are due to the fact that they have an exportable national resource.

The 3 times wage is an assumption. Norway's average monthly salary is 4,451 Euros, equivalent to 5,056 US dollars. The average US salary is 3,640 US dollars per month. I have no idea where he got his numbers from, but these are factual and not anecdotal.

Their cost of living is ludicrous compared to ours, so you have to factor that in when you compare their slightly higher wages.

Consumer Prices in United States are 36.90% lower than in Norway

Consumer Prices Including Rent in United States are 34.18% lower than in Norway

Rent Prices in United States are 27.12% lower than in Norway

Restaurant Prices in United States are 52.31% lower than in Norway

Groceries Prices in United States are 25.87% lower than in Norway

Local Purchasing Power in United States is 14.29% higher than in Norway

Their system is also inherently unfair if you do not use the 'free' stuff. Don't have kids because you are responsible? Doesn't matter, you are paying for them. Don't get unemployed because you show up to work on time and do your job well, doesn't matter, you are paying for others. We do the same in the US, but it is far below the per capita level they pay.

What they don't get, and what some people here are obviously oblivious to as well, is that NOTHING is free. Someone pays, even if you don't. Their system simply nationalizes almost every single company and forces everyone to pay for everyone else, no matter what they do or how responsible they are. Also, note that they nationalized most companies, because a company in any type of free market system faced with draconian rules and corporate taxes like Norway's will simply cut their losses and offshore their work.

So, their system is only sustainable if the government owns the companies, everyone gives up most of their personal wealth, and they are lucky enough to have oil. Yeah, I am soooooo jealous of them.

@oritteropo

There is a long history of Latin American currency crises which I would refer you to as examples of disorderly collapse. That Tsipras would break most of his electoral promises in his recent 4 month extension agreement should tell you that he knows how catastrophic it would be. You can't quantitatively approximate these kinds of events but qualitatively* (TYPO) the following is likely to occur:

1) Bank run - You saw significant withdrawals even leading up to the meeting with the Troika because of the possibility funding will abruptly stop. A stop to euro lending will see mass outflows with the expectation of bank collapse which will itself likely lead to the collapse of multiple banking institutions.

2) Foreign flows of currencies will dry up - Greek bond yields will spike, in effect no one will lend to the Greek government from overseas. Since like any economy, Greece needs to pay its public sector workers and requires foreign capital for imports, to preserve what it has, it will rapidly convert back to using the Drachma which it can issue and print/create. It is likely the banks will follow in turn and convert deposits to Drachma (another reason why people will withdraw money from banks as soon as they think euro support is over).

3) Drachma collapse - The Drachma will then depreciate rapidly. Again, the expectation of depreciation pretty much causes the depreciation. If people expect their currency to be worth less in the future, they will sell it, causing it to be worth less. Any existing savings accounts remaining will be decimated in value. Wages will fall drastically for everyone. Suddenly the cost of anything that relies on imported products (hint, a lot in any economy, especially Greece) will rise several-fold. This will lead to further job cuts, collapse of industries, which will precipitate further job loss, unemployment, output loss etc etc etc.

The tl;dr version of this is that government funding crises whether caused by debt or currency collapse in the first instance are self reinforcing and the consequences of an unmanaged collapse are all but guaranteed to be much worse than austerity but order. There is some evidence that countries who have a massive collapse and see their currency depreciate are then about to recover faster afterwards (a cheap currency boost exports, tourism etc) but the human toll is much more sudden and much more severe.

As far as IMF estimates being unrealistic, sure. All I'm arguing about is what is likely to happen and which outcome Greeks should prefer.

Sure Syriza has talked about the good kind of reform, but he's also promised the rest of what I talked about. None of which the Troika will let him do if he wants retain their funding. Anyone following this should have known he would not be allowed any of these promises he made in his election. Surely Tsipras himself knew this. It was either posturing/bluster or pure politics. Now the stability of his government is going to depend on how he can manage down his unrealistic expectations.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/alexis-tsipras-athens-lightning-speed-anti-austerity-policies

+ a central bank whose mandate is limited to inflation
+ the lack of a treasury
+ the lack of a harmonized tax system
+ the crippling deficits in democratic control that make it very hard to turn the will of the people into policy
+ etc

The last point is of particular interest if you look at Greece as a shock & awe induced suspension of democracy. Many nations are held in a permanent state of emergency through the war on terror, while Greece's permanent state of emergency was imposed through debt.

Previous governments did what they were told by troika officials, with parliament left aside and judicial decisions left ignored. The return of democracy into some parts of the system caused rather vicious reactions from both the press and European officials. Just look at what Martin Schulz or Jeroen Dijsselbloem said about Syriza officials in the last few days.

Debt is a tool powerful enough to suspend democracy in a heartbeat, even quicker than our famous war on/of terror.

Parliamentary decisions are superceded by transnational treaties and obligations. And if you take the thought one step further, you end up at TTIP/TTP/CETA/TISA. If Greece demonstrates that democratic decisions at a national level still overrule transnational treaties, governments lose a scapegoat for unpopular decisions ("treaty X demands it of us"). Should Syriza manage to end the state of emergency, to return control over the decision back to the elected bodies, it will become infinitely harder to impose draconian or even just highly unpopular measures.

But I digress. Twin Euro blocks (South/North) were part of the discussion, just like parallel currencies in troubled nations. A German exit is still being discussed as well, but I don't think its advocates within Germany thought it through. Switzerland just uncoupled its Swiss Francs from the Euro and it did a real number on their exports. A new DM would appreciate like a Saturn V, instantly shattering German exports. Without a massive increase in wages to compensate through domestic demand, Germany would bleed jobs left, right and center. A fullblown recession.

I'd say it would take very little to stabilise the union, even in its currently flawed configuration. Krugman had a piece this morning, calling one of Syriza's core demands reasonable. And judging by what I have read over the last five years or so, it is. He said Germany would be crazy if they demanded payment on full, no reliefs. And that's where it shows that he cannot follow the media or the political discussions in Germany to any meaningful degree, language barrier and all. Public discussion on economics in Germany stands completely separate from the rest of the world.

Ignorance, stubbornness, cultural bias, a feedback-loop of media and politics, group pressure -- we have everything. And the fact that Germany has been comparatively successful in the face of this crisis makes it practially impossible to pierce this bubble. We're doing fine, our way must be correct, everyone else is wrong.

@RedSky

The need to be kept afloat by European funds is pretty high on the list of things Syriza is keen to do away with. Varoufakis was clear on this pretty early on, at least 2009 as far as I know. They treated it as a problem of liquidity instead of a problem of insolvency, and therefore any funds funnelled into Greece were basically disappearing down a black hole. They are bleeding cash left, right and center, and the continuous flow of credit from Europe doesn't help a bit in its current form.

As of now, they can't pay shit. Any additional credit has to be used to pay back interest on previous credit. Their meagre primary surplus is less than their interest payments. With that in mind, some of the ideas floating around sound rather intriguing, especially given the horrendous failure all the previous agreements have produced. These ideas include: cap interest payment (1.5% of primary surplus), use the rest for investment or humanitarian relief; no payments on debt below 3% growth, 50% of agreed upon payments at 3-6% growth, full payments at 6+% growth.

Yet even those ideas are purely theoretical, because there is no growth in Greece. The celebrated growth in Q3 2014 of 0.7% might very well be a fluke, as Bill Mitchell described here (prices falling faster than incomes). For Greece to be able to have any meaningful growth, they'd require not just a complete reconstruction of its institutions (structural reforms), but also massive investment.

And there's where it breaks down again, since you rightfully pointed out that the Germans in particular won't spend a dime on Greece, especially not with investment in Germany in equally dire shape (shortfall of about a trillion € since 2000).


Which brings me to another point: Germany vs France.

Productivity in both countries was en par in 1999, and productivity in France in 2014 was only slightly below German numbers. "Living within your means" is a very popular phrase in the current discussion, which basically means living in accordance with your productivity.

Subsequently, there should be a similar development of unit labour costs within a monetary union, with growth targets set by the central bank. In our case, that would be just below 2%. Like I've previously said, Greece lived beyond its means in this regard, and significantly so.

But what about France and Germany? The black line marks the target, blue is France, red is Germany. That's beggar-thy-neighbour. That's gaining competetiveness at the cost of your fellow Euro pals. That's suppressing domestic demand in order to push exports.

German reforms killed its domestic market (retail sales stagnant since early '90s) and created an aggregate trade surplus to the tune of 2 trillion Euros. That's 2 trillion Euros of deficit in other countries. And we're looking at an additional 200-210 billion Euros this year. If running trade deficits is bad, so is running trade surpluses.

Ironically, there's even been legislation in Germany since 1967, instructing the government to balance its books in matters of trade (and other areas). They've been in violation of it for 15 years.

With this in mind, everytime a German politician calls for the other countries to run trade surpluses just like Germany, I get furious. Some of them, on the European level, even have the audacity to say that everyone should run trade surpluses, and all it takes to get there is massive wage cuts. That's open lunacy and a failure of basic math. No surplus without deficits, no savings without debt.

And while we're at it, it's not the savings rate in Germany that bothers me. It's the moral superiority that is being ascribed to running surpluses in every way imaginable. Every part of society is expected to have a positive savings rate, because debt is bad. Well, if everyone's saving and nobody's accruing the corresponding debt, you get the current situation where there is no investment whatsoever, a gargantuan shortfall in demand given the national productivity, and a cool 200 billion Euros of debt a year that foreign actors have to rake up so that Germany can have its massive growth of 0.5-1.5% annually.

Finding borrowers for all that cash is getting more difficult by the day. The ECB's QE is basically one big search for new borrowers, since everyone either doesn't want to borrow or cannot borrow anymore.

If Germany wanted to help the Eurozone, they'd start by increasing their ULC vis-á-vis the rest of the countries. Competitiveness should be regulated through the foreign exchange rate, not this parasitic race to the bottom within the zone. Ten years of 4% increase in wages, annually. That ought to be a start.

Additionally, allow the ECB to fund the European Investment Bank directly, instead of this black hole of QE.

Or go one step further and seriously consider Varoufakis' ideas, including the old Keynesian concept of a global surplus recycling mechanism.

But all that is pure fantasy. I don't think a majority of Germans would support either of these measures, not with the overwhelming fear of inflation this society has. Add the continuous demonisation of debt and you get a guarantee that very few countries might be compatible to be in a longtime monetary union with Germany.

@radx

I think the problem with say a 20 year time frame for Greece, is that same lack of trust and political inability to essentially prop up these governments with cash, year on year, for a period of that kind of time frame. I don't see Merkel being able to support this and not get pushed out of government. Functionally money has a time value so in essence, a long time frame is just more money. Rumour is Merkel is considering extending time frames on Greek loans (because most people don't understand that last point) but that will only come with a greater commitment to reform.

As far as collective punishment, it's more an issue that none of the other EU countries are responsible. I wouldn't characterise anything as being forced upon Greece, although I'm sure many feel that way. If they were to leave and reject aid they would be far worse though. The majority of Greece rightly wants to stay in. The Syriza win was about 'dignity' and basically getting better terms. But they won't get it because it would lead to parties in Portugal/Spain emerging and demanding the same thing. Morality doesn't really come in to it, I'm just looking at what's likely and/or possible.

As you mentioned, Germany went through its own period of austerity. It certainly constrained wage growth (which contributed to making its exports particularly competitive and put it in a good position to weather a downturn in the eurozone, when it can export to foreign markets) but I don't believe its inflation rate was vastly off. It was 1-2%, not vastly different to France for example. Either way politically, I don't see the German people being willing to pay these countries out of their troubles in effect.

I certainly agree though that eurozone rules were broken before the euro crisis, e.g. both Germany & France ran budget deficits in excess of agreed terms. Really it came down to the structural weakness of the eurozone's design. You can't have a monetary union (shared currency and central bank policy) without a fiscal union. What they had at best were fiscal guidelines and those weren't followed.

I don't see the eurozone collapsing though. Parties that want to leave are generally still fringe parties (excluding in the UK but it is the least integrated). France doesn't need bailouts, it just lacks growth (due to lack of the reforms Germany went through). The ECB's QE and the loose banking union for bailing out banks that they've developed will mean if Greece collapses these is unlikely to be any serious bank collapses or Lehman moments (or so the theory goes).

I don't really agree at the end with your characterization of a high German savings rate being culpability for inflating bubbles. That fault falls on the lack of domestic bank regulation within the respective countries, the lack of regulation to curb bad lending. In the same way I wouldn't blame China's saving rate for encouraging sub-prime US loans. Cash/liquidity is globally mobile and fungible. It's the responsible of the borrowers and their regulators to ensure they don't dig themselves into a hole. The lenders already stand to lose their investment if the loan goes bad.

Warren is a "Champion" against Corporatism, and yet she supports the Ex-Im Bank that gives $8.3 billion to Boeing and $2.6 billion to GE (Mercatus Scholars on the Export-Import Bank). Because, y'know.. logic and consistency. "The people's" support of Warren is support for all of those entities that make her employment as a politician possible. In other words, "the people's" support of Warren (regardless of her rhetoric or polemical attempts at persuading a disenfranchised Left) is, in fact, support for all of those entities which make her career as a politician possible (i.e., the very corporatist relationships she rails against, while simultaneously supporting with favorable legislation). Despite all the rhetoric, make no mistake that Warren knows exactly where her bread gets buttered.

(While this is fairly basic stuff for most if not all of politics-as-usual, it's just so deliciously blatant with someone like Warren that it's too satisfying to resist pointing out.)

Actually you said it's no where near time to panic. You also said the people of Kiribati are going to be washed away by a tsunami (but it never happened before in all the times they've been hit by tsunami) and not overwhelmed by sea rise (which IS what's happened to them).


You are just wrong about Texas producing more than California, we're number two in cattle production and ....
Food Facts
California has been the number one food and agricultural producer in the United States for more than 50 consecutive years.
More than half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables come from here.
California is the nation's number one dairy state.
California's leading commodity is milk and cream. Grapes are second.
California's leading export crop is almonds.
Nationally, products exclusively grown (99% or more) in California include almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins, clovers, and walnuts.
From 70 to 80% of all ripe olives are grown in California.
California is the nation's leading producer of strawberries, averaging 1.4 billion pounds of strawberries or 83% of the country's total fresh and frozen strawberry production. Approximately 12% of the crop is exported to Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Japan primarily. The value of the California strawberry crop is approximately $700 million with related employment of more than 48,000 people.
California produces 25% of the nation's onions and 43% of the nation's green onions.
and if that's not enough to convince you ...
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/2182/what-percent-of-food-comes-from-california

It is never 1 to 1 guns VS farmers in the situations you are talking about. The food gets stolen, sold, and eaten. It is not stolen and allowed to rot. If production were simple, ie not requiring extra water and fertilizer, everyone who's hungry would farm, and there would be 'bush taca' (wild food) to gather and eat. You can't make a living stealing from subsistence farmers, you go hungry between farms that way.

I call BS, the tech to replace oil and coal and gas exist today. You mentioned one. They are universally agreed on (by energy companies) who have made solar farms, nuclear, wind, etc.

Ahhhh. So now you see why it's time to panic...adaptation of the tech takes time, time that we don't have to waste. If it takes 50 years to stop adding greenhouse gasses, we need to see where that leaves your children's children. Adaptation of new tech is going to happen while we are restricting consumption...it's been that way for decades (see 'car mileage requirements') so it HAS happened in the past, and is happening today...without wars.

If no one panics and no one acts, that's where we'll be if we're lucky. Those figures you linked assume we will stop rising the level of CO2 we add daily and/or keep it below a certain level...an assumption I think is wrong and ignores reality.

Um, well, yeah, 78% less glacier doesn't mean 78% less runoff, it means far more than 78% less, because of glacial dams, evaporation, and upstream use it means probably NO runoff downstream. 22% of the already scarce water won't feed India. Period.
I think those numbers are small, and it's likely that there will be less than 22% of glaciers left in 100 years, but even those numbers leave billions without water or food. That's far worse than any group ever starved by 'men with guns'.

Would have made an ideal cheap export weapon for our then "friends" to use in counter-insurgency.

Low countermeasures, not bulletproofed, one engine---anywhere where the pilots were a relatively cheap commodity, it would have been a useful add on.

Anywhere else, for US Forces, given the cost of training pilots---
Probably not really economical.

If the Army was allowed to have fixed wing aircraft (it's not; that's part of the deal with having the Air Force)---then I bet they'd would have wanted it for a counter-insurgency role, where the other guy had no airplanes and no SAMS/heavy anti aircraft---but that doesn't describe the world of the 1980s and the Fulda Gap very accurately lol

Well... My mom filled out a raffle ticket on my name when i was two, we won a SAAB 96 and traded it for this model, 99. Almost the same color (metallic paint was for US export model...). My family kept it for 25 years, it served us really well. I learned to drive with it and that thing handles like a dream (it has heavy steering but is is so stable and responsive, just wonderful, plus ours had aftermarket short gearbox from police unit and bored cylinders, small tweaks to oomph the torque for caravan use. Finnish police used SAAB for a loong time, it accelerated like a rocket..).

Seeing the inside of that just brings me memories. Mom, Dad, my big brother and me and a full sized double bass, all inside (you can't transport it outside when it's freezing, the thing can explode..). It meant that i had to ride shotgun, seat fully front and back against the front door, head on dashboard. Backseat folded and mom and bro at the back, equally cramped. We used to say that first comes the bass, then the family if they fit in and there is always room in the boot (joke.. ). The day he started to play cello was a blessing and a curse. Have you ever had to live with a person that learns to play cello? It's horrible but i paid him back when i got full blown PA in my room, cabinets from floor to ceiling.. Musicians family is always a bit eccentric and weird..

My dad still has SAAB (fourth one) as they are just amazing to drive, handles winter conditions like nothing and are great for long roadtrips. I just hope i can get him the Citroen CX he has wanted from his teens...

I have yet another story to add about this.

One of my better female pals got in contact with me about 2 months ago by standing outside of where I worked waiting for me to come out.

I walked out of the office and was surprised to see her but she was agitated. She had a CD in her hand that she could not figure out how to load on her computer and said that two men had assaulted her in a Safeway; but had the evidence on the CD's.

I let her know that I would absolutely try and figure this out and that the discs were safe with me, I wasn't going to misplace them, etc etc.

She had gone to the security of Safeway (a third party company inside Safeway) and asked for the tapes of the times but they gave her some sort of strange format - you had to install a really shitty program and then the evidence was just a small window on the screen.

I figured out how to export the videos high resolution & full screen.

Basically, what happened was she was at a Coinstar and totally looking very pretty but these dudes came up behind her and leveraged their stuff towards her and grabbed her ass, twice. Once coming in and leaving.

When they left and did the same thing, this strong woman who I know, flipped out. She ran out after them but a cop was already waiting for one of them.

They had both been stealing shit all day long and garnered the attention of the authorities and the cops were on to them. Probably, very high on drugs.

Later it was found out that one of the dudes raped a child and also ran over a person as a hit and run.

She helped prosecute them in court and had no idea that the black hole went as deep as it did when she pressed charges for basic harassment.

Wow... So many great points here.
And lots missed by others.

@ChaosEngine I like you too. But the next posts after yours explains my point better. @Eukelek got the point correctly.
(The fact you don't eat it, or your local farm doesn't grow GM is telling and hypocritical)

There is a massive difference between selection using natural processes and GENETIC ENGINEERING.
One will only produce offspring that are genetically compatible.
The other is a crap shoot producing mixes of different taxonomy.
For fucks sake when could A FARMER BREED A MOUSE WITH A JELLYFISH, or mix SPIDER GENES WITH GOATS.
That shit is fucked up and only the tip of the iceberg.

You really want MONSANTO creating NEW SPECIES OF PLANT THAT ARE STRONGER THAN THEIR NATURAL COUNTERPARTS AND LACED WITH TOXINS AND PESTICIDES ????
It was Monsanto that developed AGENT ORANGE, and PCB's which THEY ALSO DENIED WAS HARMFUL EVEN THOUGH IT IS MASSIVELY CANCER CAUSING. They buried every study showing it was carcinogenic.


@nock . Yes I'm sure the medical profession has even crazier biology going on. But I would only use that shit IF I WAS GOING TO DIE.
NOBODY NEEDS GMO.
Now the medi-corps are using super viruses as vectors for 'custom' dna treatments.
Considering that the U.S. CDC was just admonished for improper practices contains viruses. How long before there is an incident that is completely synthetic (man-made) and completely irreversible.

@RedSky Sure Africa should grow whatever it needs to survive. But don't expect an export market for gmo.

@Yogi

How can you prove a negative? Studies have consistently found no harm from commercially available GM foods. The one study to the contrary (Séralini, tumours in mice) was found to be fraudulent and retracted.

Even if the effects are not immediate, GM foods have been available since the mid 90s, you would expect after 20 years, for there to be a discernible harmful effect, if there is one.

@billpayer

One of the main benefits GM foods can provide is increased longevity and shelf, which help to reduce wastage.

GM yields in a Mediterranean climate for common western crops are not hugely improved. However, the benefits in harsh conditions to say drought and flood resistance are substantial.

This is particularly why it's so detrimental that the EU has rejected GM foods so universally. Domestic farmers may not see huge benefit, but African producers are forced to use substandard non-GM crops for both domestic and international markets.

This is because GM crops cannot be exported to the EU market and different crop types cannot be effectively segregated. This limits their yields, in turn raises prices in a region of the world with an unsustainable, rapidly growing population and increasingly harsh conditions from climate change driven desertification.

Last time I got close to a woman in a burqah I almost hurled from the smell. We need to export less weapons and more soap.