Ecology the Economy and Global Pollution

 

There are so many arguments where it is apparent that much of the ecology demands are in direct conflict of interest with the state of the economy. Of course it does not need to be this way or even an actual issue for the Western and post-industrial world. Technological advancements have even led to coal powered plants in the advanced world putting out next to nothing in emissions into the atmosphere compared to those same plants forty or fifty years ago. We can excuse many of the youthful ecology warriors as they did not live when smog was an actual problem and those days where one really needed that gas mask they are so anxious to claim will be necessary at today’s standards. There were days where visibility in Los Angeles was limited to half a block and days when a temperature inversion turned Denver, Colorado into a city under an orange bowl of trapped air. There were any numbers of times when the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire and Lake Erie could not support fish. All of these were the real ecological tragedies of the past and where we are today carries no measure of comparison. The air and water quality today is a taste of what we considered would be heaven on earth back in the fifties, sixties, seventies and early eighties though much had been gained by the mid-eighties. One cannot imagine what it was like in those rough and tumble days when the ecology movement started and great and close to unbelievable gains have been accomplished.

 

What was it like back in those dirty and horrific days, you ask. Well, allow us to try and explain. Air quality was very much like Beijing, Karachi or New Delhi and rivers were close to the conditions of the Ganges, Yellow and Buriganga Rivers (see images below). The greatest ecological problems facing humankind today are not the cities and rivers in much of the United States or Europe as much as they are in the developing world, particularly China, India and other nations almost always exempted from United Nations and other ecological requirements. Giving the worst polluting nations a pass on meeting standards and instead demonizing and requiring ever more difficult and approaching impossible standards of the advanced nations is ignoring the real problems that are damaging health and the state of the world. The United States and Europe could cut their air and water pollution by fifty percent or even seventy-five percent and it would not come close to improving world air and water quality as it would require the developing world to improve their air and water quality by a mere five to ten percent. Cleaning up the air and water in the developing world, especially the rising industrial nations like China and India could make huge strides. It is not as if what is being asked is all that impossible or even difficult to achieve as the science and industrial know-how already exist and much of it is off the shelf and install and you are good to go. If the financial burden was demanded almost exclusively from the developed world it would be an investment which would indirectly and directly affect the quality of life in the post-industrial world as the air and water of these developing nations does have an influence on the air and water quality worldwide. If the cost of installing and manufacturing the necessary pollution control systems for many of the industries which have been shifted from the developed world to the developing world, in some cases simply to avoid the ever more stringent pollution demands and requirements which the post-industrial world had challenged their industries to meet, there could readily be made improvements leading to decreasing pollution in these parts of the world easily attaining halving their pollution which would be a giant stride and would exceed any possible reductions quantitatively than anything possible in the rest of the advanced world. As stated, the required technology already exists and would simply require production and installation which in many cases would simply be an add-on system to already existing power plants and industrial facilities. One example would be the carbon scrubbers for coal fired electrical generation facilities which could cut CO2 easily by fifty percent and the costs would not be exorbitant making such one easy place to begin. Water filtration systems placed between factories and rivers could make a huge difference and finally using more advanced systems and procedures for handling recycling and sorting of trash could not only benefit air and water quality but also lead to reduced costs on the society into the future with the gains in health being just one benefit which should be an aim for all humankind.

 

Examples of Worst Air and Water Pollution Today

 

The problem is one of numbers which is easily explained. Any pollution standards have thus far been coming from the United Nations and related NGOs and other agencies. Many of these have their leadership and decision making committees predominantly made up from the member nations. The United Nations lists the developed (post-industrial) nations as being North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. They list the developing nations as Africa, Central and South Americas plus Mexico, Caribbean, Asia (excluding Japan), Oceania excluding Australia and New Zealand. Of the nearly two-hundred nations in the United Nations there are approximately one-hundred-forty developing nations with only fifty-five post-industrial nations. It does not require a degree in higher mathematics to understand why almost all pollution requirements are placed on the fifty-five post-industrial nations while the one-hundred-forty developing nations are excluded from any and all pollution reduction or restrictive requirements. Until the developing world takes responsibility for the health and safety of their own citizens, this lopsided insanity of improving air quality and reducing water pollution in the post-industrial world manages to improve the measureable levels of pollution in the world by, at an estimated best case scenario, a mere five percent at the most generous of measurements, the most rudimentary and basic pollution controls put into use by the developing world would drop world pollution levels at near the exact same percentage as these nations would improve their air and water quality.

 

Let us assume the developing world installed the most rudimentary pollution controls equivalent to those installed by 1980 in the post-industrial world, with financial and production assistance from the post-industrial nations where the only investment these developing nations would provide was the manpower to install these devices and assure their working order, the world pollution levels would be reduced by approaching, if not exceeding, fifty percent. That is correct what you read, cut pollution worldwide in half or better. Imagine what a relief on the planet and that ever over-blown strawman of climate change. If the propaganda which claims that cutting pollution by fifty percent could save the planet, and then demand that the post-industrial world meet that challenge when their total pollution consists of less than ten percent of world pollution makes it impossible to clean the planet while granting the nations with the highest pollution contributions a complete pass, it makes no sense. If the United Nations Climate Control Agencies really want to protect the planet and truly reduce pollution levels, they will need to swallow hard and demand some accountability by those very same nations who exempt themselves despite contributing over ninety percent of the problem. It is not that they do not realize their double standard cheating makes cutting pollution impossible as they are adding to world pollution at many times the entire production of pollution in the post-industrial world’s yearly output monthly. Let us repeat that for clarity. The developing world’s monthly increase of pollution outweighs the entire pollution of the post-industrial world for the whole year. That is comparing increases against total output, a concept which is hard to get one’s arms around. Should the developing world simply hold the line on their levels of pollution, it would do over ten times the saving than if the post-industrial world somehow curtailed their entire pollution yearly output. That puts the entire problem into an easy context. Does the world think it could demand that the developing world at least improve the systems they are installing daily and have their pollution output reduced by a marginal amount which could do so much without even touching their precious systems already in place? Do you think you could be capable of doing that, please?

 

There has been a series of Olympics in recent years held in Beijing in 2008, London in 2012, and the current Olympics in Rio de Janeiro; all summer games where air and water quality and safety of athletes and tourists is more challenging as people will be outside in and around the Olympic Park making security a definite challenge. Air quality and especially water quality were particularly poor in both Rio de Janeiro and Beijing. In the Beijing Olympics China found it necessary to actually suspend all manufacturing and limited electricity usage for two weeks before the games and still the air quality, though better than normal for the city, left something to be desired. London, was a city with a history in the early days of the industrial revolution for having no direct sunlight hitting the streets and windows tinted with coal dust and smoke permeating into homes and stores interfering with every activity and worsening the health of all within its metropolitan area. The modern day London is literally a walk in the park with clear skies, clean water and no foul aromas as in London’s past. London could be used as a model for places such as Beijing and Rio de Janeiro as well as the rest of the emerging world. The modern nations could encourage such a cleaning up of the air and water of these emerging cities by providing even previously used and now retired scrubbers, reverse osmosis units and other technologies demanding only that the receiving country provide workers to install and trained in managing and upkeep and the entire world would benefit. Unfortunately there are too many who make their living complaining and this would place many of the ecology fanatics out of work and having to find something constructive to make their living; though we are sure they could find a new cause to make their living complaining and never lifting a finger to remedy the situation.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

It is Time to End the Arab Occupation

 

Yesterday we posted an article filled with unassailable set of original ownership of the lands of Israel, the lands between the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River and down the East Bank belong to the Israelites who built their homelands after spending forty years in the dessert such that those who doubted Hashem died out allowing a new and newly energized and reinvigorated People ready to do as numerous others Peoples would also do much later in history, struck out their claim to a strip of land to call their own. Thus the Israelite Nation would be born established with near her current borders, though the current borders are smaller now than back in somewhere around 1000 to 1250 BCE. Somewhat later in history Greece was cut from the Aegean Islands, Italy from the remnants of the Roman Empire on the peninsula centered on Rome, the Franks, the Celts all much later in history. Then there were the United States in 1776 CE, Germany in 1871 CE, China unified around 210 BCE, India around 550 BCE and out from under British colonial rule in 1947, one year before Israel also broke from under British colonial rule from the Mandate, starting near 925 CE continuing gaining other nationalities of the isles through the 1920s but so many doubt the Jewish claims to Israel. Israel was known as Judea for centuries from where the name Jew was derived. The name Palestine was derived from the name the Roman Empire imprinted on the lands in order to destroy the Israelite, the Jewish claim to the lands and their plot appears to still have traction.

 

There is no more validity to the name Palestine than there is West Bank which is actually parts of Judea and most of Samaria but Jordan also was attempting to erase the Jewish sounding names so as to weaken the Jewish claims. The proof that their claims are largely bogus is their referencing the Israeli Capital’s name as Jerusalem and not al-Quds, the name imposed on the Jewish Capital City to erase its history just as Istanbul erased the history of Constantinople. The main difference is that Jerusalem is in Jewish hands and thus they do not have solid claims to change its name though it would not surprise me if textbooks in Europe soon refer to Jerusalem as al-Quds as Europe sinks slowly from a Judeo-Christian culture to an Islamic culture at which point every shred of Western ethics and equal rights for all peoples will be replaced by Sharia and the inequality as imposed by Islam where women are lesser beings, non-Muslims must have scorn heaped upon them and the courts decide cases on the basis of which side is Muslim allowing their truth to outweigh reality and deciding Islam on Islam trials by position in the society over the truth. Civility in Europe is about to die a horrid death and what is required to prevent this catastrophe is entirely missing in the European Union (EU) rule as the EU is nothing more than a group of vengeful bureaucrats who would sell their birthright if the price were right.

 

Imagine if Israel had renamed the Sinai Peninsula Western Israel and claimed that it belonged to Israel and they evicted Egyptians from their homes, businesses, farms and other properties demanding the flee or be shot and them place Israelis in these homes, businesses and other properties, what would be the reaction of the world bodies? There would be an outrage unequalled in all of history with the possible exception of the Romans renaming Judea calling it Syria Palaestina. Yet when Jordan took control of areas which belonged to Israel and were called Judea and Samaria and Jordan forcibly removed every Jews, destroyed every Synagogue, every Jewish house of worship, and erased every vestige of Jewish history and ownership renaming streets, villages, cities and anything else which had a Hebrew or ancient name attaching them to Jewish history there was not even the slightest protest outside the Jewish communities and even then largely the Israeli voices. The world walked off ignoring everything simply claiming that Jordan had won these lands fair and square in a war and the Jews needed to suck it up and live with it. That was the tone of things in 1948.

 

Jump forward nineteen years to 1967 and Jordan once again joined in a war against Israel joining Syria and Egypt and with support from other Arab nations and Israel liberated these same stolen lands and the world went insane. They demanded that Israel return every inch of land, not on paper, but in every ounce of spirit. They now are calling for the last lands to be returned this time to a group of criminal savage terror loving hateful people steeped in sixty years of propagandas demanding they murder Israelis and that appears often to be their main occupation. They want the Arabs called Palestinians, so they can claim they were the Romans or even some aboriginal tribe which resided here when and Cro-Magnon prehistoric humanoids ruled the lands through brutal conquest where it truly was survival of the strongest and most violent. Looking at much of their modern activities and one might be persuaded to believe they are directly related to these prehistoric humanoids. The idea is to invent a nation and allow them to perform any and all forms of terrorism, but only against the Jews and Israel, and as long as they leave the rest of the world alone, who cares, its only that troublesome people we desire to be rid of. So what if much of modern life comes as a direct result of their contributions over the centuries, we can survive without the Jew. That is the tenor of the discussion though such is never said publically, well, almost never. Then there was the little open microphone incident where French President Sarkozy and United States President Obama which drove us to fashion a fun picture of some potential future event involving the three soon thereafter (see below). The open microphone revealed this little gem which went like this in the the conversation between Sarkozy and Obama during the G-20 conference in Cannes in 2011 where the following was overheard,

 

French President Sarkozy said: “Netanyahu, I can’t stand him. He’s a liar.”
United States President Obama snapped back, “You are sick of him, but I have to work with him every day.”

 

 

There have been other such incidents where a conversation was overheard by the wrong party or microphones which were supposed to be off were live or even cases where reporters knew the person controlling the translation microphones did not like a particular person the reporter really desired something juicy so he arranged for a microphone to remain live unknown to the target. All’s fair in politics, or so it would seem. Another incident took place at a fancy dress party in Britain where Daniel Bernard in 2001 overheard as an interested third party at this posh London event as French Ambassador to the United Kingdom was heard to state,

 

“All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel. Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?”

 

We could probably spend hours looking up slips of the tongue where different leaders of Western nations, ambassadors and other various politicians and officials stated their true feelings towards Israel but this should be sufficient as some choice examples.

 

The plain reality is that the land was occupied for nineteen years by Jordan who illegally transferred Jordanian citizens into the areas they illegally held both willingly and unwillingly which makes a great many of those people currently residing in what is falsely referred to as the West Bank illegal residents who should rightfully be returned to Jordan. Further, Jordan offered and almost every last resident took citizenship of Jordan which, as they were never Israeli citizens, all of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria Jordanian citizens no matter how many times Jordan claimed they rescinded all of their citizenships. That was just another way that the Arabs were allowed to illegally force situation onto Israel which were not of her making. The end result is there are, if the numbers provided are anywhere near valid, approaching six or seven million Arabs who have no country and are thus considered to be Israeli outcasts. We are simply waiting for that number to double using it to cover all the refugees flooding into Europe such that when Europe, if they should, refuse these refugees and demand they return to their origins they will all be assigned Israeli cities to claim as their original homes which they lost at some preassigned time in the past and demand that Israel give them their five hundred hectares, a plow and an ox.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Real Reason for the European Union

 

Brexit is a great thing no matter what those experts on the left and right and in between are telling us. The entire political establishment is furious over the British vote against a unifying of Europe which eventually was to surrender to a unified world order. But that was not the reason the European Union was originally founded and nobody wants to talk about the real reasons behind the European Union (EU).

 

To figure out the real reasoning that formed the EU one needs to go back to the original concept and who were the nations pushing the hardest for an EU and who originally opposed it. The origins of the EU were formed and fashioned between Paris and Berlin, the two main engines to fuel the original EU. Britain was the original opposition and this was to be expected. What the EU was to be was the manner for Germany to finally conquer all of Europe this time instead of militarily to simply take over economically. The Euro was and remains most closely aligned with the German economy. It has little if anything to do with the more agrarian economies and was completely ignored until it became so dire that nobody could endure it any longer as the economic collapses of Spain and Greece and the near collapse of Italy and others signaled the depth the problem had reached. The EU did not take into its planning to any degree the needs of the former Soviet bloc Warsaw Pact nations when they entered the EU in near desperate need of massive infusions of funds to rebuild an infrastructure which was crumbling. Eventually some funding was made available and it was impressed as to how much Germany was sacrificing on their behalf. The assistance to Greece was another expression of German sacrifice and investment. Everything in the EU revolves around German economic power and its influence.

 

The EU really should have been named the Franco-Germanic Economic Empire. This has proven to be the preferred actions for the economic regulators in Brussels which ruled autocratically and approved actions unconscionable by any elected body elsewhere in the world. They overturned laws passed by elected parliaments and approved by the people but opposed by the controllers of this unelected hive mind of bureaucrats who decided they knew what was best more than the elected officials of member governments. The EU controlled trade relations and refused to allow member nations to make any trade deals or negotiate for mutual tariff relief with nations outside the EU. One example which will soon become very evident is now Britain will soon make deals with China, India, Brazil and others where they arrange to conduct free trade agreements, something Britain was barred from doing as a member of the EU because that would not be fair to other nations in the EU. This begs the question of why there was never an effort to have a free trade agreement between China and the EU. The reason is that Germany desired to have the advantage of free trade while blocking any competing nation entry into the German trade block which members of the EU were forced into by the bureaucrats who knew who paid their salaries and supported the main functions of the EU and would do anything and everything demanded to protect German trade relations and to increase the German trade advantage in Europe. With the Euro pegged to the German economy it further gave an advantage to German goods and services as the money used for trade was pegged to their goods and others who may have not quite matched German production paid the price.

 

It is kind of interesting that the EU headquarters was a stone’s throw from both Paris and Berlin, sitting in Brussels, Belgium which is sandwiched between Germany and France and has a history with both. That most nations in the EU were fully vested was in a manner their surrender to the economic drivers of the EU. The fact that the British also were a powerful economic nation, that their acceptance of the EU was conditional, and they kept their currency, the Pound Sterling, independent from the Euro and always available should things turn badly for the EU and Euro crash in value, Britain could fall back on their natural currency to continue to trade and deal with the rest of the world. That fall back will facilitate their departure making it all the easier. Still there are a number of hurdles which could still prevent Brexit from becoming a reality despite the vote by the people. The entire idea could still be presented to the parliament and they could decide that remaining in the EU is the wiser course and the Prime Minister, either Cameron or whoever replaces him after the elections could agree with the Parliament and that would be the end of Brexit so to speak. There is an even bet that the leaving of the EU could be brought before the Parliament as there are many politicians willing to oppose the popular vote and risk their, or enhance depending on their region and its electorate, seat in the coming elections.

 

Pound Sterling

 

One can bet that the many areas of Britain will vote their next election along the line of for or against Brexit and that Brexit will be the defining item in the minds of the people. The representatives of the London area and other major metropolises where the voters favored remaining in the EU will elect their parliament members accordingly. The more rural and suburban areas, where the people are somewhat more self-reliant, will vote for representatives who support independence from the EU, as they voted quite overwhelmingly, to the great surprise of almost every pollster and many of those predicting the failure of the Brexit proposition, to politely depart the EU. We are glad we supported Brexit for our British friends as we almost always will fall on the side of independence from bureaucratic dictatorial bodies, a.k.a. the European Union. Our best wishes to the British and we hope that others find their way clear of the overreaching arms of the Brussels Bureaucracy. Perhaps Brussels Bureaucracy, or the Double B, should have been the proper name for the EU as BB is even more simple an abbreviation and rolls off the tongue so much easier. Try it, BB or EU, EU sounds too close to something yucky, you know, ‘ew’ as an expression to an awful smell, rhymes with PU. Britain will hopefully be back dependent solely on the Pound Sterling and will soon arrange free trade with the China, Brazil, India and even United States, after President Obama exits office as he does not particularly like Britain as proven when he discarded the bust of Winston Churchill back to Britain as President Obama believes that the man who saved the world from Hitler was a despicable human being. If the British are seeking an honored place for that particular sculpture, we would love to give it a place of honor and show it off to our many British friends here in our little corner of the world. E-mail us if you are interested as we would be honored to have such a prized possession. To be able to say that we are hosting the bust of Winston Churchill that President Obama so ingloriously returned to Britain as a slap in the face and insult would make us prouder than a peacock in full plumage.

 

Beyond the Cusp