Climate Change and Clean Water

 

This coming year 300,000 children will die, not because of climate change, but due to a lack of clean water.

Climate change doesn’t kill 300,000 children annually

Turn on the tap and instantly there is a flow of clean, parasite-free, we take water for granted.

We are so used to our abundant water, many people turn on the tap to brush their teeth and leave the tap running. We water our gardens, wash our cars, brew beer, and play in our swimming pools without acknowledging this easy access to freshwater is a luxury.

In some parts of the world, safe water is not so easy to access.

The figures make for stark reading.

According to the World Health Organisation:

·In 2017 29% of the global population lack easy access to safe, uncontaminated drinking water. Of these 2.2 billion people, 829,000, including 297,000 children under 5, died from diarrhoea alone.

• 785 million people lack even a basic drinking-water service, including 144 million people who are dependent on surface water.
• Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces.
• In the least developed countries, 22% of health care facilities have no water service, 21% no sanitation service, and 22% no waste management service.
• Contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to the transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio. Absent, inadequate, or inappropriately managed water and sanitation services expose individuals to preventable health risks. 

Diarrhoea is mostly preventable and yet we waste billions of dollars every year “fighting” climate change, arguably a fight that has only claimed energy-poor victims. Not a single person has on their death certificate “Cause of Death: Climate Change”.

The demand for more money to fight climate change has risen inexorably to the extent we are projected to spend trillions of dollars on a non-issue, whilst the annual cost of a genuine, fixable issue providing clean, safe water is estimated at $22.6 billion.

I accept recorded temperatures are rising. I don’t accept the mild warming we are experiencing in some parts of the world will be anything but benign.

Our species was born in Africa, only migrating out of Africa around 60,000 years ago when the climate became dryer and colder. We seek warmth, which is unsurprising since we are essentially hairless apes.

My issue with recorded global temperatures being lumped together on an annual basis and presented as a catastrophic road to hell is: I don’t think there is a global average temperature. I’m not even sure if there is a local average temperature. There are local average daytime temperatures and average nighttime temperatures for days, weeks, and possibly months of the year. The concept of a single global average temperature for a whole year seems far-fetched to me.

A global average temperature is a complete red-herring.

Helping the clean water impoverished millions is a relatively cheap and easy task compared with “fighting” climate change, a fight only nature will win.

So why aren’t we doing it?

                       Redge at whatsupwiththat.com

“The Speaker will not be commenting on this private matter. . . ."

Those were the words used by Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, on Sunday, May 29, in regard to an incident near Oakville, CA on the evening of the previous day.

While Mr. Pelosi himself is not an elected or appointed figure in the US government, his arrest for DUI is not a private matter but instead one of the most public of offenses in all states of the US. In fact, should Mr. Pelosi be convicted of the charge for which he has been arrested he won't be allowed entry to Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Malaysia and some Middle Eastern countries.

 

                            businesschronicler.com

 According to news reports, a blood test of the 82-year old Pelosi after the accident that resulted in his arrest showed that his blood alcohol level exceeded the .08 percentage that legally signifies impairment. Arrest for this amount of alcohol in a driver's blood is so important that it has been required in state laws by the federal government in order to secure federal funding for highway construction and maintenance. Special complex equipment has been developed to determine blood alcohol content by examining both the breath and blood of arrested drivers. The results of these tests are used to secure convictions for the charges.

While Mrs. Pelosi or her spokesman (Why would the Speaker of the US House of Representatives need a spokesman?) can decline to comment on any particular situation, using the excuse that it's a "private matter" is preposterous in this situation. A simple "no comment" would be instead be in order.

Millions Awarded To Sexually Abused California Patients

Female patients in California hospitals associated with USC and UCLA have been awarded millions of dollars in damages for sexual abuses over extended periods of time by Dr. James Heap and Dr. George Tyndall, according to this article.

dailybruin.com 

Dr. James Heaps,  Former UCLA obstetrician-gynecologist 

 

buzzfeed.com

George Tyndall, former USC gynecologist 

 

Although a large percentage of the money awarded to the complainants will, of course, go to the legal firms representing them in these matters, there remains a huge sum of money available to the victims.

  “The conduct alleged to have been committed by Heaps is reprehensible and contrary to our values,” UCLA said in a statement. “We are grateful to all those who came forward, and hope this settlement is one step toward providing some level of healing for the plaintiffs involved.”

"Healing". The word denotes a cure for a sickness or the successful treatment of a trauma. Is the award of millions of dollars to women whom have had their breasts fondled or nether regions manipulated by a perv doctor likely to heal whatever psychic or physical damage they've suffered? In terms of the physical these women were subjected to the sort of treatment they might very well have received from a boyfriend or mate. There is no intimation that these women were in worse physical condition after an examination by Heaps or Tyndall than they were before. In fact, those lady gymnasts that were victims of Larry Nassar went on to win world championships. So their damages must be strictly psychic.

If a large monetary award can alleviate the psychic damage caused by a bogus gynecological exam, heal the wound, wouldn't this be applicable to other psychic problems? Couldn't an individual diagnosed with schizophrenia be cured by a large cash payment? A kleptomaniac could conceivably no longer indulge in shoplifting with a big payment. An agoraphobic would be able to happily mingle with the crowd at a Rolling Stones concert after receiving a six-figure treatment. This leads us to the conclusion that, if the victims of Heaps, Nassar, Tyndall and other pervs can possibly be healed by money, then it follows that the entire practice of psychotherapy and psychiatry is unnecessary. Rather than have these mental cases emoting stream of consciousness answers from a couch to a psychiatrist, simply salve them with money.

Of course, treating genuine psychiatric problems with cash probably wouldn't be effective. But in America's money-fixated society money is the answer to all problems. Any issue, from AGW to Covid-19 to mass transportation, involves masses of enpixelated funds. This includes individual females that have been inappropriately touched by perverts with medical licenses.  

 

Don't Even Visit Highland Park, Wayne County, Michigan

This article describes how a Michigan city attempts, successfully, to finance its police department through threats of asset forfeiture. 

 

"Wayne County, where Highland Park is located, has an aggressive asset forfeiture program, particularly for cars. It seized more than 2,600 vehicles between 2017 and 2019, raking in more than $1.2 million in asset forfeiture revenues, according to public records obtained by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market Michigan think tank."

In as much as asset forfeiture seems likely to survive into at least the short term future, it behooves any American that believes in the principles of freedom to stay out of Wayne County, Michigan and refuse to purchase any products manufactured or distributed from that place. 

A parent of a prospective USHL hockey player may want to reconsider sending their boy to the USA Hockey National Team Development Program since it is located in Plymouth, Michigan, a city in Wayne County, Michigan. The Ford Motor Company is a leading employer in Livonia, MI. You might wish to purchase an automobile built somewhere else. The Detroit Metropolitan Airport is located in Romulus, MI. You might wish to think twice about arriving or leaving from that facility or visiting the Detroit area at all. 

When "cancel culture" is meant to affect a particular individual it has a very limited effect. Cancelling an entire county could result in a re-assessment of its asset forfeiture policies.

 

policecararchives.org

Why Classical Greece Went To Pot

    The predicament was the political, economic, and moral bankruptcy of classical Greece prior to the Macedonian conquest. A century of constant war and civil strife had bled the country of men and money; venality and corruption were poisoning public life; hordes of political exiles, reduced to the existence of homeless adventurers, were roaming the countryside; legalized abortion and infanticide were further thinning out the rank of citizens. The history of the fourth century, wrote a modern authority,

is in some of its aspects that of the greatest failure in history. . . . each in his different way tries (by suggesting forms of constitution other than those under which the race had fallen into political decadence) to rescue that Greek world which was so much to him from the political and social disaster to which it is rushing. But the Greek world was past saving.

Plato, Thaetetus, quoted by Th. L. Heath, Greek Astronomy, (London, 1932)

 

The Sleepwalkers, Arthur Koestler, Penguin Arkana, NY, NY, 1989, pg 56.   

The Global Sheriff from rachelmarsden.com

 New evidence is emerging that the US establishment is continuing to exploit the window of opportunity provided by the emotional public reaction to the conflict in Ukraine to further subvert the multilateral world order. Members of the US Senate have revived an old draft bill from 1996 that would give American justice jurisdiction over foreigners who American officials decide to accuse of war crimes in foreign jurisdictions, according to a New York Times report. 

The problem for Washington in dealing with war crimes is that in order to ascertain whether someone has indeed violated the international laws of war, the due process of an actual trial at The Hague is required. But not only has Washington previously passed a law (The Hague Invasion Act) that would authorize the Pentagon to take any action necessary to rescue any American citizens on trial for – or convicted of – alleged atrocities, it doesn’t even officially recognize the authority of the court. 

When court officials moved to investigate the actions of American troops in Afghanistan in 2020, then-President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on court officials. And while those sanctions have since been lifted under President Joe Biden, there’s still no evidence that his administration is interested in demanding that the ICC hold Americans to the same standard to which they demand the rest of the world be held. In the latest example of such hypocrisy, Washington officials have been calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin to answer to The Hague over the conflict in Ukraine.

 No one at this point really has any clue where the line is between ‘conventional’ wartime atrocities and those deemed to be exceptional and punishable. Nor should conclusions be drawn on the basis of trial-by-propaganda. The wheels of justice tend to turn slowly. 

But who has time for that? Certainly not Washington! Who needs slow and messy international law when you can just wake up one day and decide that you’re the new Hague?

 What the US senators are proposing is a kangaroo court of questionable evidentiary legitimacy, given the complexities that time, distance, and the fog of war would introduce into the chain of evidence. Such a process would be imposed on a foreigner targeted with war crime suspicions by the US authorities in the event that they wind up on US soil, according to the NYT report.

 If you’re wondering what that might look like, just ask French citizen Frédéric Pierucci, a former senior manager of France’s multinational Alstom, who was arrested by the FBI at New York’s JFK Airport in 2013, accused by the US of business-related bribery in Indonesia, and sentenced to two years and a half in jail, in the US. Pierucci was a foreigner, working for a foreign company, convicted in 2017 in a Connecticut court over an Indonesian matter. But the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act allows for the long arm of American justice to claim global jurisdiction if any aspect whatsoever of the US financial or monetary system is touched in any way, however minor.

 The case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the Chinese telecommunications multinational’s founder, also highlights the lengths to which the US will go judicially to defend its competitive advantage.

 Arrested by the Canadian authorities on the demand of their American counterparts while in transit at the Vancouver International Airport, the executive – who wasn’t even on American soil – was accused of violating US sanctions against Iran that had nothing to do with Canada. After dragging Canada into a four-year diplomatic quagmire with China while Meng sat under house arrest at her Vancouver home, a deal was struck to release her back to China in exchange for a deferred agreement to prosecute her in the US. It’s not difficult to imagine that, like Pierucci, who was released after Alstom was acquired by General Electric amid record-breaking corruption fines, which ultimately amounted to $772 million, Meng may also have served as a convenient economic hostage to America’s ultimate competitive benefit. 

Athletic competition isn’t immune from judicial exploitation, either. In December 2020, US lawmakers passed the ‘Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act’, which allows the authorities to arrest or even extradite foreign athletes to America to face charges of suspected doping – even if the affected competitions didn’t occur on US soil. “To justify the United States’ broader jurisdiction over global competitions, the House bill invokes the United States’ contribution to the World Anti-Doping Agency,” according to the New York Times. 

Washington has unilaterally tasked itself with globally defining who can do business with whom through its sanctions regimes, who gets convicted of doping, who gets selectively pursued for corruption on the world business stage – and now the US wants to single-handedly define who gets to be labeled a war criminal.

 

Is everyone else on Earth really alright with this? And if not, then where’s the outrage?

 

alchetron.com

Culture and Civilization, Spengler

    The transition from Culture to Civilization was accomplished for the Classical world in the 4th, for the Western in the 19th Century. From these periods onward the great intellectual decisions take place, not as in the days of the Orpheus-movement or the Reformation in the "whole world" where not a hamlet is too small to be unimportant, but in three or four world-cities that have absorbed into themselves the whole content of History, while the old wide landscape of the Culture, become merely provincial, serves only to feed the cities with what remains of its higher mankind.

    World-city and province--the two basic ideas of every civilization--bring up a wholly new form-problem of History, the very problem that we are living through to-day with hardly the remotest conception of its immensity. In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman. This is a very great stride towards the inorganic, towards the end--what does it signify?

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Volume I: Form and Actuality, Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher,NY, page 32. 

Spain Looking At Monthly Paid Menstrual Leave

The Spanish government is considering a program to provide monthly paid leave from work for women with painful menstruation. Other countries that have already implemented similar policies include  Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea and Zambia. 

According to the law office of Christopher Q. Davis:   

Since 1953, women in South Korea have been permitted to take one day off a month due to painful menstruation. Between 2014 and 2015, Former CEO of Asiana Airlines, Kim Soo-cheon, received over 138 employee requests for a day off due to painful menstruation. The former CEO said that he began to get suspicious when large amounts of employees attempted to take off for painful menstruation near the holidays. Kim Soo-cheon asked the women to provide proof of painful menstruation. The South Korean court found that providing this proof infringed upon the individual’s privacy and human rights. The court recently fined the former CEO over $1,800. Other countries that provide menstrual leave are Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Zambia. 

The menstrual leave issue brings up some interesting questions. For instance, the veracity of the person involved. Employees, both male and female, are well-known to make false claims to get time off, funerals, weddings, sickness, care for sick relatives, etc. Does menstrual leave open one more avenue for absence? Furthermore, does a woman with menstrual pain that goes to work jeopardize facets of the employer's business, efficiency and relations with customers and suppliers. Perhaps women suffering from menstrual cramps should not be allowed to work. Many women engage in physical labor in the workplace. Does menstrual pain inhibit their ability to lift, push and carry? In the world of gender equality will men be able to demand similar time off, perhaps in order to care for a mate or relative suffering from menstrual pain, receive paid leave similar to maternity leave? 

Ultimately, one day per month of paid leave from work means that each woman on the payroll will receive an additional two weeks and two days of paid vacation annually. 

The Current Price of Cigarettes

If you haven't been to Ukraine recently you might be interested to know that a pack of Marlboros there would cost you $2.21. There aren't many places cheaper than that, Nigeria allows you to develop lung cancer for only $1.20 a dose. On the other hand, the nicotine habit is much pricier in other countries. In Taiwan a pack of weeds goes for $4.00, the same product costs $6.00 in both Italy and Austria. A chain smoker in Canada must be able to produce $12.29 a pack to feed his habit and Australians cough up $26.18 for 20 Marlboros, over a dollar for each smoke.

Of course, the differing prices across the world aren't due to the cost of producing, marketing and shipping the product or its ratio of supply to demand. It's determined by the individual country's tariff and tax structure. Five of the six most expensive countries for smokers are English-speaking.

 

                                                          the star.com

 

The Great Baby Formula Crisis

How much worse can it get? Gasoline is over $4 a gallon, a T-bone  is going for $11 a bite and now there's no baby formula at any price. Some of the reasons for the bogus breast milk problem are given here and here but the entire situation isn't really explained. 

First, in the entire history of humans on earth, commercially produced baby formula is a fairly recent development. Not so long ago mothers who either couldn't or wouldn't breast feed their babies employed "wet nurses" to supply the toothless little buggers with their milk. Later, even well into the twentieth century in the West, mothers mixed up a substitute product from available ingredients that served as the initial diet for babies that grew up to be healthy, hearty folk that built industrial empires, many of whom are still with us. Two of the most popular infant breast milk substitutes, Similac, first marketed in 1925, and Enfamil, in 1959, have a short history in baby nutrition.

Ultimately, it is the natural role of mothers of all mammalian species (After all, the word mammal refers to an animal in which the female supplies milk to its offspring.) to breast feed their young. The breasts, while an item of attraction to male humans, are primarily mammary glands whose purpose is to produce milk to feed babies. That women would be disinclined to do so seems to be a rejection of their role in preservation of the individual and, in the end, the species itself.

We haven't heard any word from mothers who have been able to breast feed but do not, for whatever reason. Shouldn't they forego the use of FDA approved milk replacement and allow it to be consumed instead by babies whose mothers can't physically supply it? Something like the situation with handicapped parking? Isn't it also time for the FDA to quit enforcing a restricted business model meant to further the financial interests of two or three companies? Commercial baby formulas had been a number one target of shoplifters due to their exorbitant price until retailers began locking them up.

Then there's the fact that even in relatively recent times there have been millions of women with no access to breast milk alternatives of any kind. These include the Inupiat and others of the northern polar regions, many of whom had never had a taste of other milk, people over large expanses of Africa, and practically all of the population of the Pacific islands. Somehow, they have survived and even prospered. 

  

nurtureparenting.com.au

George Kennan Said:

 George Kennan, US State Department figure since 1926 and architect of US policy during the "Cold War", on the eastward expansion of NATO and its effect on Russia:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

“We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [Nato expansion] was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill-informed the whole Senate debate was. I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.

“Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the Nato expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are – but this is just wrong.”

Interview with Thomas L. Friedman, May 2, 1998.

Confiscating Putin's Yacht

Word is going around that an enormous private yacht now in the Italian port of Marina di Carrara near Pisa is the property of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Registered in the Cayman Islands, the Scheherazade, said to be worth $700 million, is set to be confiscated by Italian financial authorities as a part of sanctions against the Russian state and its personnel for their part in the war in Ukraine.

This is an interesting situation. What will eventually become of the Scheherazade? After Putin is deposed, assassinated or eliminated by disease, who will pay the bills of what's certainly one of the world's most opulent playthings? And who will become the new owner? Will it be some European middle manager with a family to entertain? Or a wealthy American business man, not an oligarch but simply a very talented individual? Maybe the Italian government itself will assume ownership and use the boat as a floating relaxation spot for harried diplomats. 

The effect on the current owner, whomever he might actually be, isn't obvious. Will someone who has the financial capability of possessing such a thing genuinely suffer if it is lost?

 

 The Scheherazade               superyachtfan.com

Antony Blinken and Freedom of the Press

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken gave an address to the Conference of the Americas on World Press Freedom Day May 3 that failed to mention Julian Assange, an Australian national currently held prisoner in Britain and fighting extradition to the US on charges of revealing state secrets. He also omitted mention of an FBI raid in the US on a journalist associated with Project Veritas, which specializes in recording verbal admissions that embarrass the powers that be.

Only a few weeks ago United States prosecutors unveiled charges against a Chinese national for an attempt to pressure a former pro-democracy protester out of running for the US congress.

Instead, Blinken criticized the censorship activities of the Chinese and the danger to journalists covering the Russian/Ukrainian war. 

The Chinese response is as might be expected:    China’s embassy in Washington rejected Blinken’s criticism as “an attempt to pressure China with unfounded allegations”, which “exposes the US side’s hegemony, bullying and double standard on media and press freedom”.

Media censorship by government has been and remains an issue throughout the world. It is perhaps less problematical in the US because the Yankee media is, for the most part, an extension of the government itself. In fact, it's notable that many of the most prominent figures in American media are family members of government officials.

California Coyotes At It Again

As the Orange County Register points out,  urban coyotes are continuing their expansion in southern California seaside cities, now terrorizing beach-goers.

 

wallpapersdsc.net

 

This particular incident followed a familiar pattern: law enforcement was summoned, eventually shots were fired, a coyote was killed and another seriously wounded and found later where it was ultimately dispatched. Both underwent DNA analysis to determine if they were involved in the attack and are being tested for rabies. 

The role of the coyote in modern life is controversial in that it's capable of not only attacking children but also pets and farm animals while providing little benefit to man, although they do seem to aid in keeping the rat population in Chicago from overrunning the city.

Once more, there are more issues involved in coyote control than meets the eye. Is it really  wise to have law enforcement officers firing weapons at wild animals in a populated area? Cops frequently put bullets in innocent bystanders even during real criminal events, blasting around at the beach is dangerous. Worse yet is wounding an animal that escapes with the likelihood that it will confront a child or adult minding their own business?

Making the case that all urban coyotes be exterminated probably won't succeed with people that have had no confrontations with them.

Another consideration is this: according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife from 2012 to 2016 there were 50 incidents of coyote bites on humans in southern California.

On the other hand,   The 1992-1994 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey estimated that 333,687 dog bite injuries are treated in emergency departments each year [Weiss 1998]. Health authorities say that dog bites have increased by over 44% in recent years. Of course some biting dogs are dispatched immediately, preventing another incident but that does little to discourage other dogs. Just a few days ago a lady sent to investigate a biting incident by a pack of dogs was killed by those same dogs. Since dogs considerably outnumber coyotes, perhaps we should concentrate on preventing domestic dog bites. 

California coyote update: The DNA of a coyote shot and killed in the vicinity of the Huntington Beach pier matched that of the DNA found on the toddler bitten there on April 28. " the animals are known to harass pets and livestock. Coyotes may continue this behavior even if they are relocated, so those that become a potential threat to humans must be killed, according to Fish and Wildlife officials." 

Ergo, in general, coyotes unfamiliar with the human world aren't much of a worry but those that have experience in the modern environment must be eradicated. It's an accepted fact that omnivores such as bears can "lose their fear of humans" and begin to regard them as food so they gotta go.

 

More Hypocricy In the South Pacific

 

Solomon Islands prime minister  Manasseh Sogavare accuses his Australian counterpart of hysteria and hypocrisy in response to the announcement of some sort of agreement between the Solomons and China, pointing out that he and others in the South Pacific had no input in or knowledge of the AUKUS treaty, the terms of which would inevitably have an effect on them. 

 Celsus Irokwato Talifilu, an adviser to the prime minister of the Malaita Province of the Solomons, an area of the country whose population often expresses  contrary views to those of the capital, is worried that if the Chinese military is permitted to post individuals to Honiara they may be used to suppress criticism of the government and Sogavare and endanger the democracy of the nation made up of six larger islands and over 900 smaller ones.

Manasseh Sogavare                       sibconline.com.sb

Such a thing is indeed possible as it is the goal of all nations and governments to remain in power. History is littered with the ashes of nations that weren't able to defend the positions of their governments. The Sogavare regime must be respected and even obeyed until, following Western standards, it is rejected by the populace through a democratic process.