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Donnerstag, 7. November 2024

Denial, Anger and Trump

Anyone taking notice of the state of our world sees that it is dying. For illustration visit the daily summary of Climate and economy, the Arctic News-Blog or Eliot-Jacobson's Climate Casino – Watching the World Go Bye.

In a similar way the undisputed American hegemony since 1945 seems to go the way of all empires as described by Sir John Glubb Pascha in his short and brilliant essay The Fate of Empires (1976): This way leads from pioneers and conquests to power and safety which then facilitates production and commerce and leads to affluence, luxury, influx of foreigners, dissent, defensiveness, walls, decadence and frivolity. Sir John predicted an US decay already in 1976. 

Sir John Glubb Pascha with soldiers of the Arab legion in Ramallah 1946

Its true that the US meanwhile succeeded to squeeze out some ephemeral energy independence by fracking, but this will not last. And China with its long term view and the help of his many autocratic allies builds now a competing empire, gobbling up all the resources it can reach. The involvement of North Korean troops in the Ukraine war would not have happende without the explicit consent of China. In Ukraine we have a war by proxy between the West and the Eastern powers. For Europe without Trump this war will not be sustainable.  

To summarise we have a dying US-empire in a dying world. 

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross landmark work "On death and dying" described the reactions of patients with fatal disease. I know all these reactions from my work as a physician, their order may be changed or they may be combined, but basically the description holds true:  

  • The first reaction is often denial.
  • If denial does not work anymore it is followed by anger and aggression against fate and against the people wo bring the bad message. As a physician its important not to take this personally. 
  • Then comes the phase of bargaining, of attempted flight into miraculous solutions, may it be herbal medicine or the consultation of charlatans.
  • If unsuccessful this is followed by depression.
  • In the best case the process ends in peaceful acceptance.
A dying world and a dying empire will probably induce similar reactions. We had a lot of the two first phases: 40 years of denial of the climate catastrophe and a lot of anger against Greta Thunberg and other messengers.

Comes the phase of bargaining where patients will believe anyone pretending to have solutions, even charlatans: In case this is Donald Trump while California is burning.

From this we can predict, that depression will follow. What form could it take? The world economy is a dead man keeping walking under the weight of a 300 trillion debt by creating even more debt in the optimistic belief that all this will finally work out. Depression will put an end to optimism and this will lead to a global economic crisis. This will be a crisis of belief, which even Trump, the orange Jesus will be unable to solve.    



 


 

 

Dienstag, 17. September 2019

The fragility of human rights and of climate justice

(Translation of "Die Fragilität von Menschenrechten und Klimagerechtigkeit" first appeared on  Journal21 am 15.9.2019, updated 27.4.2020)


I share the longing of all who are committed to human rights and to climate justice together with Greenpeace, Fastenopfer, Bread for All, Climate Strikers and the Swiss Green Party, which has inscribed climate justice on its flag before last autumns election. 

By demanding human rights and climate justice you confirm to yourself and others that you are a good person - perhaps sometimes this might be the only reason for these demands and this is acceptable. But if these demands were an unrealistic pious wish? Could it be possible that you are deceiving yourself? And if you put them before the electorate could you then perhaps be cheating on voters? (But then false promises have always been the core business of politicians).

Of course, human rights are anyway demanded from various sides: Politicians traveling to China, who want to assure their clientele how everything is so human at home (This is not talked about on trips to the USA).
Major powers like to talk about democracy and human rights in order to justify resource wars and attempts at regime-overthrow which regularly leave the attacked countries ruined. It is doubtful for example that the violent elimination of Gadaffi in Libya has had any positive effect.
Last but not least, human rights for the Left and Greens serve as a justification for asylum and climate justice, even if the sneakers they wear were produced under inhumane conditions (I also wear sneakers).
It would undoubtedly be wonderful if human rights were attached to every human being, in a way nose and ears are attached to them. But they are not. Human rights are a construct of modern times and enlightenment - possibly inspired by contact with so called "primitive" societies -  and their first proclamation in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence begins:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."

The phrase "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." clearly shows that this is an opinion or a belief, rather than an objectively verifiable fact, such as the fact that the human being has nose and ears. A more modern formulation was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. In 1966, the so-called civil pact on civil and political rights was added, as well as the social pact on economic and sociocultural rights. All together form the international charter of human rights.
These ideas did not become widely accepted until the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in Europe and North America, where the affluence created by colonial exploitation, use of fossil fuels, and industrialization became so great that it became more convenient for the ruling elite to grant modest prosperity and the appearance of rights to the lower classes in order to avoid tiresome conflicts.
The Islamic version of human rights from 1990 is intended to be introduced globally according to its preamble: It gives precedence to the Sharia, women have no equal rights, and nonmuslims are discriminated against. Among 1,8 billion Muslims almost no voices were heard against these postulates. 
Outside Europe and North America, there is usually no affluence, but scarcity; and then almost inevitably power is seized by a clique, which looks after its own interests, often takes on the role of the former colonial powers, and suppresses the rest of the population. Therefore, for more than 80 per cent of the world's population, human rights are just a wishful dream or a lie. Even in the US they are only partially respected (Guantanamo, killings by drones without trial, discrimination against the black population by the police and judicial system). 
In tyrannies the suppression mechanisms are always the same: the inner circle of power bases itself on profiteers and together they  control state power, e.g. police and army, which are also awarded privileges. Democracy, opposition and independent judiciaries are undermined, and thinking people are silenced. The necessary brutality and terror is often performed by a specialised repressive apparatus (Gestapo, KGB, SAVAK). Even science is not secure if it gets in the way of the power monopoly: the Pope against Galileo, Hitler against Einstein, Stalin with Lysenko against genetics.
This suppression takes place behind a user interface, which may look different in each case, but cannot hide the fact that the underlying mechanism is always the same. The costume may be religious (Iran, Saudi Arabia, pseudo-religious Marxism), or nationalist-military (China, Egypt), or both (Russia). The detailed description and classification of these facades does not seem very relevant, since they are only rationalizations and confabulations.
In case of shortage even progressive states are threatened by relapses into the rule of cliques, such as was the case in Germany during the economic crisis after the crash of 1929. Also the United States since Trump show initial symptoms: impoverishment of the middle class, distortion of democracy by gerrymandering and obstruction of suffrage, closeness to generals, pressurizing or gagging of secret services, the judiciary and climate sciences, flirtations with a temporally unlimited time in office, so that even Republicans recently expressed concern about a totalitarian development. The facade in the USA is nationalist-religious as in Russia, which probably explains some mutual sympathies.
In the context of the climate catastrophe, there is much talk about human rights and climate justice. But with further warming drought, scarcity and famine will spread throughout the world. Johan Rockström, Director at the Potsdam Climate Research Institute, says that with four degrees of global warming, earth may not be able to feed eight billion people, maybe not even half of that.
The inevitable consequence will be distribution battles and massacres even in so-called developed countries. That’s us. 
Then only the law of the jungle remains, and if nothing is left, also the emperor has lost his rights. A survivor of the Warsaw ghetto told me that, of course, one kills fellow inmates for the last piece of bread. At the same time, the climate catastrophe will also slowly burn plant and animal life, so claiming higher rights for the human race will become illusory anyway. 
Whoever seriously thinks that the 1.5 degree goal, human rights and climate justice are more than wishful thinking is deceiving himself and perhaps others. Above all, he proves that he has not understood anything of the seriousness of our predicament.