We are at war...

My statement that "we are at war" yesterday in this blog may shock.

But wiser people than I foresaw the present situation.

Malcolm Fraser, former conservative prime minister of Australia, 1975-1983, set out the history that led to the mess in Ukraine in 2014 in this article in The Guardian.

Malcolm Fraser lacked audience: his former party dismayed at his drift from his former anti-Soviet passion, the other side unable to see other than the Malcolm they hated because he brought down Gough in the end of 1975. All that of course meant he was not listened to, was 'wrong' before being read. Malcolm lamented to me that he no longer had a party to vote for.

Stephen Cohen, eminent elder statesman of Russian studies in the United States, in 2014 set out possible Ukraine futures in this article in The Nation. He included these remarks:

§ Yet another risk factor is that the new Cold War lacks the mutually restraining rules that developed during the forty-year Cold War, especially after the Cuban missile crisis. Indeed, highly charged suspicions, resentments, misconceptions and misinformation both in Washington and Moscow today may make such mutual restraints even more difficult. The same is true of the surreal demonization of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin—a kind of personal vilification without any real precedent in the past, at least after Stalin’s death. (Henry Kissinger has pointed out that the “demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” I think it is worse: an abdication of real analysis and rational policy-making.)

§ Finally, the new Cold War may be more perilous because, also unlike its forty-year-long predecessor, there is no effective American opposition—not in the administration, Congress, the establishment media, universities, think tanks or the general public.

Opposition to the western ferocity now in Ukraine is muted because of simplistic human rights thinking on the left, notably in Green parties; plus entrenched hostility towards Russia. 

We ignore the evidence of history. It was especially the attitude of the British in negotiations for a USSR-UK-France treaty in 1939 that made World War II a reality. With collapse of the tripartite talks, Stalin turned to Germany and signed a nonaggression pact that enabled the carve-up of Poland and the invasion of France by Germany. [link] [link] [link]

Germany turned against the USSR in 1941 with an attack on Russia and countries in between. In World War II somewhere between 100 and 300 million people died, the greatest numbers of them civilians. There is general acceptance of Russian deaths over 20 million. I recall conversation with a senior officer in the Australian department of external affairs in the 1960s who dismissed such numbers of Russians as nothing but Soviet propaganda. Here are some numbers. What distinguishes the Holocaust within this overall much larger numbers was the extermination of classes of people: Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, prisoners of war, more. But we need to see beyond the Holocaust.

Failures of diplomacy are pinned up for scoffing. Failures in war are so often eulogised. But far from anything Australia might eulogise, it's important to remember, as we follow the American grand strategic plan to take down Russia, that there is relevant history.

Since 1700, there have been four attempts to take down Russia.

Karl (Charles) XII of Sweden, a young king and supposedly a military genius, won lesser angagements against Russia but aiming for Moscow in 1709 lost much of his army, lost his Swedish empire and saw the rise of the Russian empire under Peter the Great.

Napoleon, definitely a military genius, in marching on Moscow, achieving a success in battle at Borodino outside Moscow. He then occupied a Moscow that had been abandoned and deliberately burned. His forces were decimated in retreat.

Hitler, a strategic genius better known for his tyranny and evil, needed the east for resources. His march on Moscow led to the unravelling of his empire, complicated by fighting on two fronts: against Stalin in the east, Eisenhower in the west, with British support.

And now we have two-front Biden. Taking on Xi and Putin at the same time.

We support Biden because, well, those others are bad guys, we know that. Though our economy is sustained by businesses trading with China, and Coles and Woolworths sell frozen fish, Alaskan Pollock, caught in Russia, exported through China. And of course our petroleum purchases, mainly via refineries in other countries, include Russian oil. 

... and we can't face thinking about war.

Endlessness

 The screen is black at the beginning of this 

Watch the film on SBS if you are in Australia. 

A Swedish perspective on life. 

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On a midsummer evening in 1979 I sat in the garden of Frank Barnaby's home in Stockholm. He was the much respected Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI. I asked earnest questions about the nuclear strategic balance and Swedish neutrality. "Our situation is quite simple" he said, "many missiles will land short, on us."

We are at war and it may soon be nuclear war.

We are in a far more dangerous situation than the Cold War, or either of two world wars.

Australia is embedded in the US IndoPacific command and the US is advancing steadily in provoking war with China, for the purpose of preventing China from challenging US economic supremacy. Australia has given $225 million to NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine and we voice our official endorsement and involvement with certitude. But there is no effort by Australian government and mainstream media to discuss this perilous situation… just dog-yapping for more. The reluctance of Albanese and his government to address this sensibly is encouragement for the United States to continue to act contrary to its interests, to the planet’s interests, to our interests.

The Pentagon Papers and the Afghanistan Papers made clear that in the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars we were lied to… and more serious than that, commanders didn’t know what they were doing, or how they could achieve unclear objectives. 

There is no reason to imagine that the high command of the Ukraine war is doing better than that. In the IndoPacific there is a perilous downhill run of intensifying commitment to war over Taiwan, which Taiwan does not want. In both theatres ‘strategic ambiguity’ has come to mean mumbled aggressive remarks by the US president and sometimes correcting remarks by lesser officials. The cartoon handsome United States Secretary of State, working with Biden for decades, has been consistent in his advocacy of war in Afghanistan, Iraq and more. 

But now we are in a war with Russia, potential war with China.

Through the Cold War, a doctrine of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ inhibited war directly between the US and the USSR. In this mind frame, nuclear forces maintained at a high level, deliverable by diverse means, meant that if one side carried out a nuclear ‘first strike’, the other side would nonetheless retain a ‘second strike capability’ to retaliate with sufficient ‘prompt megadeaths’ to deter either side from first strike. This balance did not deter the US and USSR from proxy wars throughout the developing world, discussed, planned and engaged in as though there were no real people there. 

The strategic nuclear forces of the Cold War are still there, added to be those now of China, India, Pakistan, and Israel. In the strange world of the last three decades of US projection of unipolar power, there has been obfuscation of the existence and purpose of the nuclear forces, a blur added to by Trump’s tossing aside of remaining arms control agreements and arrangements. And now we have loose minds (including the new UK prime minister) on ‘our side’ discussing the feasibility of using nuclear weapons; Putin in reply reminding NATO of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces … and western ninnies, government and media, rushing to shout ooh bad man bad man, like school bullies stood up to.

What we have now, happening now, is a direct war between Russia and NATO/US in Ukraine. It has ceased to be a proxy war, other than in western propaganda, just as since April, it has not been about saving Ukraine. This situation has arisen from the casting aside of assurances given by the US and NATO three decades ago to Russia that NATO would not extend east beyond Germany. We have had the cute assertion that all those countries between Germany and Russia just wanted to join NATO and the EU; who could say no? There have been attempts to achieve arms control and neutrality barriers, brushed aside. Nothing has impeded the relentless military march towards Russia. After a US engineered coup in Ukraine in 2014, efforts to accommodate the substantial ethnic and cultural proportion of the Ukraine population, in the east, were abandoned in favour of war. War dribbling on for years, then shifting to a dramatic level this year after multiple Russian warnings. 

Ukraine forces have suffered terrible losses. They are bolstered by some foreign volunteer forces, also suffering terrible losses. So have the Russians but their population and resources far outrun those of Ukraine. Increasingly Ukraine relies on US, AUKUS, and NATO heavy and smart weapons. There is precision targeting of civilians in Donbass using weapons of types including artillery from Australia. You may argue that civilians have been killed by the Russian side, but my ethics don’t work just by comparing with the boy down the street. There are non-Ukraine, that is NATO, experts involved in the field with Ukraine forces, helping them use NATO weapons, everything Ukraine previously had being of Soviet design. The US maintains a diversity of intelligence systems to inform the war in prompt real time. This includes surveillance aircraft over Romania and the Black Sea and satellite systems of which Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, has been a part from the 1960s. We are party to this war at that level as well as in provision of weapons. I doubt advanced weapons were not handed over by Australia without experts in their use being added.

Russia has now begun calling up its military reserves on an orderly basis. Voting has begun in referenda in eastern Ukraine on whether to join the Russian federation. Russia expects the results of these referenda to lead to accession of these culturally Russian territories to Russia. Defence of them will then be defence of the Russian Federation. Attack on them will be regarded as attack on Russia. 

Screenshot from Colonel Cassad.
To see how fraudulent this photo allegedly is, read Euronews.

In the time since Boris Johnson visited Kyiv in early April, followed by the US secretaries of state and defense, their explicit demand of Ukraine has been to persist in war and refuse peace settlement, with the objective no longer of defending Ukraine but of shredding Russia. Ukraine is already shredded and the war has scarce begun.

It is worth remembering that the US invasion of Iraq, to which we were party, was based on dishonourable argument, was illegal and was embarked upon with no plans for managing the country after invasion. Afghanistan was invaded and mauled for two decades and is dragged lower into ungovernability and human horror by American sanctions. Both those countries are now largely ungovernable. The RAAF has maintained an Airbus A330 modified refuelling aircraft in the middle east for a decade now, to support offensive aircraft carrying on illegal wars in Syria and Yemen. It’s all just a mad tumble of destruction, bearing out Clausewitz’s observation that the policy instrument of war, once taken up, tends to drive out policy and pursue its own ends. 

Social destruction extends beyond Ukraine, throughout Europe, beyond energy issues, into destruction of corporations and financial systems, as well as everyday life. Australia will not be saved from global economic and social forces by ignoring war, feeding on propaganda, or our physical distance.  

More news slices: some Asian sources

Australian mainstream media is generally lacking in coverage of Asia, with occasional fly-in-fly-out-shock-horror or dependence on Reuters or AUKUSWORLD news sources. This isn’t consistent with any claim to be an advanced member of our region. We can however turn to local newspapers in the region. 

Now also published by John Menadue.

Indonesia: I subscribe to the Jakarta Post, at very modest cost. As well as important local news, including Indonesia’s efforts in the international arena, there is international news and a diversity of commentaries.It’s a reminder that Indonesia was a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, and important reading in the run-up to the G20 meeting in Bali November 16-17.

Singapore: the Straits Times is a Singapore owned newspaper of record established in 1845. As one would expect of an international city state its reporting is weighty. But so is its paywall.

Also in Singapore, CNA is broadly comparable to ABC Australia as owned by the national broadcast agency Mediacorp. But CNA tends to report economic, social, and political matters more calmly than the ABC these days, not drifted as the ABC is into ideologically narrow corners and niggling nagging hunts for whinge and whine. 

Westwards from Singapore

Bangladesh: Bangladesh Beyond has nice coverage also of matters beyond Bangladesh, “speaking for the people” and for example giving this coverage of the Russian Foreign Minister at the last ASEAN meeting. No information like this in Australia. Our hunt is for information, not reinforcement of narrow attitudes. The cinematographer Namzul Hoque Nayeem provides social insights into a country we mainly know for its flooding (regarding the latter see this little film by Nayeem).

India: Times of India is a newspaper of record, the third largest circulation newspaper in India and the largest circulation English language newspaper in the world, first published in 1838… As members of the Fairfax family might say, they must be doing something right. Owned by an Indian family.

The Hindu, with offices all over India, has its head office in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The Hindu Weekly Review was the only Asian newspaper on sale in Sydney in the early 1960s. 

Sri Lanka: I do not know the newspapers, perhaps start here.

Pakistan: Another nation full of news. Dawn, the biggest selling English language paper in Pakistan was established by Jinnah in 1941 as the mouthpiece of the Moslem League, in the processes leading to independence from the British Raj. 

If you want a history of the Raj leading up to Nehru and Jinnah, the partition of India and everything else, indeed if you want to pass exams in India or have a window into Indian views of the world, you must watch the extraordinary videos of Amit Sengupta. 

Inside Afghanistan there are two national news organisations readily accessible, privately owned. Tolo and Pajwok. Tolo is owned by an Australian Afghan businessman who was given startup money by the US government and Murdoch.

It’s obvious, but not often done: to think about Iran, look at the Tehran Times, perhaps walk through this gigantic shopping mall in Tehran... and imagine it without sanctions. Note that the deputy head of sanctions policy in the Biden Administration Richard Nephew, former architect of Iran sanctions under Obama, published a book on sanctions in 2017, emphasising pain and resolve and hurting ordinary people. 

Northwards from Singapore

Malaysia:  perhaps start with the Malay Mail. I visit from time to time.

Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam: I have no expertise.

Philippines: The Manila Times: this 'About Us' column is a basic history of the Philippines from the time of the frustrated independence movement and American acquisition of the Philippines, as a result of the Spanish American War, a war stirred up by Randolph Hearst and his newspapers for President Teddy Roosevelt. 

Writing by Filipinos, see Nick Joaquin, and Franky Jose. Those national tributes are austere. Find their books online. Where Nick was a literary champion, Franky was a champion of the poor and with a chuckle spent a lot of time writing satire about the Marcoses. 

Taiwan: Taipei Times. 

Also resident in Taiwan is the author of the indispensible Asianometry, on tech issues and more, in Asia and beyond. I am happily a patron of Asianometry via patreon.com.

Hong Kong: Sadly we lost the Far Eastern Economic Review. We do still have the South China Morning Post, I find it important to subscribe. A search of the Menadue blog shows Hong Kong mentioned so many time, an intersection of so many notions. I mentioned some important contributors in this essay. 

China mainland: I offered comment and recommendations in my earlier list here.

Japan: A world of many newspapers, a country of great complexity which we see vaguely. The Yomiuri has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world. Wikipedia offers perspective. 

English language editions include Mainichi, Asahi, Yomiuri (but Yomiuri is invisible without subscription) and Japan Times, the English language newspaper of Japan. 

South Korea: The Korea Times or Yonhap will give you mainstream. The Hankyoreh offers a perspective towards the left, perspective reflecting the street demonstrations that brought President Moon Jae-in to power in 2017. http://english.hani.co.kr/ offers thoughtful views on Asia issues.

A Korean political science journal in 2017 published a paper of mine comparing issues facing Moon in 2017 with those faced by Whitlam in 1972. It is a great tragedy for Australia in Asia that President Moon’s single term entitlement ended just before Prime Minister Albanese was elected and so Albanese learned about Korea from President Yoon Suk-yeol not from the social justice advocate Moon. Yoon was been described to me by a Korean friend as Morrison-dark. 

North Korea: Do have a look from time to time at the Pyongyang Times. When a country has been locked in the broom cupboard of Asia for an impossibly long time, it deserves some effort at understanding rather than the conventional derision.

On Korean and Japanese matters look for the determinedly independent writings of Gavan McCormack, now emeritus professor at ANU. His writings in the Menadue blog are here. Find Gavan also at my favourite bookshop BetterWorldBooks, which with each sale of mainly second hand and ex-library books gives funds to literacy programs. At the moment betterworldbooks has a special section of books banned by various education authorities in the US. Some nice reads!

Mongolia: Let us not forget the UB Post. Even a single dip into distant news reveals people there.  

…And, omitted from my earlier list, there are different people on the niqnaq blog, hosted by Rowan Berkeley, an Englishperson, who publishes material from ‘radical’ sources round the world. Heavy reading recently with Ukraine war coverage and the middle east, some from dissident voices, also Russian voices, also reporting on Belt and Road, SCO and BRICS. The Military Summary posted to Niqnag has a Belarus author and is well informed. Altogether a necessary balance. 

The world is in a very dangerous place

Whenever I contemplate writing it's been said. 

As Arthur Tange used to state loudly to people "Can't you smell the burning?" 

The ABC is off tripping again this morning, simply captive to Ukraine sources, seemingly unaware of other perspectives, denying the importance in any strategic thought of knowing the other side.

Caitlin nails it

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-us-empire-is-accelerating-toward

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/idiots-are-just-discovering-that

The situation is very serious. Since 1700 three people have tried to take Moscow: Karl XII who lost his Swedish empire, Napoleon who lost his, Hitler who lost his... and now NATOAUKUS, in which we are mindlessly participant, while imagining doing over China at the same time. 

The US budget year begins with 830 billion for defence, 600 billion for nuclear refurbishment. Not news in Australia. 

On Karl [or Charles] this for perspective in these neoCarolingian days:

from Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

Charlemagne sought a European empire but more modest aims, basically to assert France over Germany.

The other sides of news. A feast of different reading.

John Menadue has drawn attention to how our views of the world are dominated by ‘white man’s media’. This is a listing of other sources of news and commentary, by people of all kinds. I leave it to the reader to assess the quality of these sources, particularly by going to the ‘About’ section of web sites where possible. There is nothing more important than informed perspective, for which it is necessary to step outside the grip of corporate western media.

To the list, beginning with two courageous women:

Eva Bartlett, Canadian journalist, has covered middle east affairs for many years. Her reporting of the ‘other side’ in the Ukraine war has earned her inclusion in the assassination list of Myrotvorets, based in Ukraine, branch in McLean Virginia. There are a lot of people on the Myrotvorets list, with photographs on their website. Some are young. 

Caitlin Johnstone is from Melbourne Australia and writes jointly with her American husband, living in the US. By turns philosophical, poetic, sometimes long essays, sometimes pithy observations, Ms Johnstone is unknowingly mentor to me in ferocity and courage.

Robert Scheer’s scheerpost  is host to various writers, notably Chris Hedges. You can also research such people by online search and especially in Wikipedia. 

Consortium News is a long-established US aggregator of alternative views and news. Again, research contributors. 

Tom Englehardt’s TomDispatch is a smaller, personal forum of integrity… in my opinion. With a background in Asian studies he has been associated with…

The Nation,  founded by slavery Abolitionists in 1865, it has been concerned about workers’ rights for a long time. 

Patrick Lawrence has a history of writing for such august and departed publications as the Far Eastern Economic Review and New York Herald Tribune. His independent writing is at The Scrum at Substack. Often also published at Consortium News and Scheerpost.

Max Blumenthal is another strongly independent journalist, publishing The Grayzone.  His entry at wikipedia has been poisoned by enemies. Wikipedia can of course be edited by anyone. Read it all, make your own judgements. 

The Intercept was founded by Glenn Greenwald and others at a time when they were dealing with the trove of information leaked by Edward Snowden. Greenwald now publishes at Substack and, living in Brazil with his husband, has been deeply involved with democracy issues in Brazil.

Electronic Intifada carries Palestinian views. This was the first Palestinian intifada. Intifada is a word of importance for a longer time in the history of the Arab world. 

In researching Palestine, it is important also to look at the BDS Movement. 

To turn further away from the US, Moon of Alabama is a blog by an American in Germany. The name of the blog is from a song by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill, more popularly known as a song of David Bowie. As with most of the sources above, this blog is currently preoccupied with alternative perspectives on the deranging war in Ukraine. 

If you are troubled by people reporting ‘the other side’ on Ukraine, bear in mind that political opposition is banned and in some cases imprisoned in Ukraine, non-government media abolished, and the security police are essentially the Ukraine element of the former Soviet KGB, with as many people as the FBI for a population much smaller than the USA. Ukraine ranks low on the Transparency Index.  The extent of dependence of mainstream media on Ukraine government utterances and briefings is of concern. We need to see reality. You can see how the mainstream distorted view can influence senior political leaders as here organised by a former secretary general of NATO, including Kevin Rudd in a group calling for military alliance with Ukraine, including by Australia. A far cry from the arms control and peace oriented Budapest Memorandum. No reporting of this in Australian media…

… but reported in the interesting Trotskyite WSWS. 

The Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research accurately describes itself as an international institute guided by popular movements and organisations. It publishes longer and more reflective essays, mainly about Asia, Africa, and Latin America. On 15 September, today as I write, concern about the causes of decline in the UN’s Human Development Index.

There are  24 hour news services from Turkey, India, Qatar, Latin America and China, on YouTube, among others.

On China, Australian media are deeply poisoned by several propaganda campaigns. For primary source material use especially the phone/tablet app of the State Council, and the China Daily. The China Daily was first set up by the government’s Peoples Daily with senior staff trained in English language broadsheet production at The Age in Melbourne, assisted by funding from the Australia China Council, in 1980, at a time when the council was chaired by Professor Geoffrey Blainey. See also the more lively official publication Global Times. This Chinese defence force publication is also very informative. You have nothing to lose but naive ignorance. When Murdoch journalists scathingly dismiss the China Daily as a government publication, I have to wonder what and whom those journalists serve.

For balance, consider ASPI. ASPI is notionally part of the Australian defence department, but with funding also from the US government and arms industry. There is a perverse cycle of anti-China writing from ASPI being taken up by Republican members of the US congress, so ASPI gets US congressional endorsement and ASPI papers get status as approved by the US congress. Determinedly investigating ASPI claims is Jaq James, in Canberra, also published in John Menadue’s blog.

The foundational writing poisoning the Australian relationship with China was by John Garnaut in 2017, precipitating the array of attacks on connections with China, including by state governments and the McCarthyist rules of universities for disclosure of China connections. There is little interest in Christian Sorace’s  intelligent rebuttal of John Garnaut. 

Meanwhile another great prop to freedom of navigation from Australia through the South China Sea is not the absurd and ill-fated submarine project but yet another joint venture between Rio Tinto and China. 

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In calling this blog entry "the other side of news" there is just an affectionate nod to Aki Kaurismaki's The other side of hope. 

Ukraine war situation 13 September

 The situation on the evening of 13 September Ukraine time seems to have been as follows. The first map is a western sources map of the front. Red occupied by Russia, grey recovered by Ukraine 

This second is a google map on which I have obtained driving directions from Kharkiv to Enerhodar, the town at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. 400km, so you have scale… and a sense of the task for Ukraine in hurrying the Kharkiv forces with armour and heavy weapons, to a next probable offensive.  

At the southern end of that route, around the eastern end of the lake, is the sole route kept open by the two sides for citizens… and used by the IAEA team visiting the ZNPP. 

The Ukraine rapid recent advance in the grey area east of Kharkiv has led to a consolidated front line now along the (shallow, fairly dry) Oskil river running north from near Izyum. Izyum was hitherto a substantial Russian base, lost. There is now a notionally stable front line with reinforcements of regular and heavily equipped Russian troops facing Ukraine forces. While it may be the case, as claimed, that the Russians had enough warning to encourage some civilians to withdraw east and north into Russia, there was a gross failure, strategic, tactical, psychological on the part of the Russian command leaving Luhansk territorial forces with poverty of tactical intelligence, antitank weapons and mines. 

There is now rapid movement of Ukraine main forces from that front southward to a new front and potential offensive in the area west of Donetsk and south of the city of Zaporizhzhia (well back from the front, in Ukraine held territory, unlike the part of the Zaporizhzhia region in which the ZNPP is located). To slow this movement the Russians cut power supply to the railway network and more, across Ukraine, necessitating movement on local roads. Pro-Russian commentators say that half the Ukrainian uniform wearing forces in the Kharkiv offensive were from NATO countries, together with NATO weapons. They say that from this point the Russians will attack more widely, as with US forces destroying Iraq power systems in 24 hours. 

The new front area is long. Ukraine might strike towards Donetsk, or towards Mariupol on the Azov sea coast, or towards Enerhodar. With the main objective likely to be splitting the Russian occupation. There are strategic rail lines that cross at Chernihivka (black circle)

The empty space north of that rail centre might not be seriously defended. For Ukraine forces to take that centre they would need a lot of fuel, not just sufficient to get there but also if necessary to retreat without loss of major new weapon systems. Ukraine will know that the Russians may let them try to cross open country (see next map) to get to the rail line at Chernihivka. They know they will face Russian strength if they get there. 

Just to the east of this, Russian forces are continuing the arduous business of grinding forward slowly in Donetsk region. They have much invested in holding their ground. 

With continuing rocket attacks near the ZNPP from Ukraine forces the power plant has been shut down. A small number of IAEA people remain there. 

At the Kherson front there seem to be some scouting ventures, but problems on the Ukraine side from the previous disastrous adventure sending inexperienced troops across open flat country, facing heavy defensive weapons. Morale must be rotten with thousands dead and survivors donating blood for their comrades. For the Russians there is a major problem in Kherson with the bridges behind them, over the Dnieper River, destroyed by Ukraine. Part of the new Third Corps of the Russian army has been brought in this direction through Crimea. Kherson is an ancient town of the Cossacks who from this region in 1300 or so refused to submit to serfdom under the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Eventually taking Kyiv. Tiny origins of a Ukraine state, far in the future, under the USSR. Wandering borders…

 

Water as an issue, intersecting even with the most advanced technology

This is from an email I wrote recently.
====

This water subject has been much on my mind, X..... 

Not only in the usual benevolent western sense of concern for example about my friend Vince who seeks to maintain his IT business and his farm in a Uganda town near the DRC border, not only more abstractly with the Uganda government with a wave of South Sudanese refugees being allocated land, while rains have failed in the last couple of seasons, but also in the heartland of new tech. Thus it's a problem reaching into advanced-world heartlands. Associated with all the forest fires. A vicious circle: see this from Nature yesterday on the impact of Australian fires on global CO2 and the ozone hole: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02782-w   Expect more such assessments from more recent northern hemisphere fires.

The long historical record is of civilisations being battered to death mainly by climate changes. It's not really just a new normal. Except in grand disastrous cycle. We diddle with the periphery: compare thinking of Boris haha going to Ukraine when in a pickle... with the reality of Boris going to Ukraine as the sharp end of AUKUS discouragement of Ukraine from concluding a peace with Russia, stamped on when peace was possible in early April, Boris's first visit. 

At the centre of American dreams of recovery of omnipotence is the trade war with China and at the centre of that is the American desire to hustle-muscle Japan, ROK, and Taiwan into CHIP4, 

https://techwireasia.com/2022/07/chip-4-alliance-will-south-korea-pick-the-us-or-remain-an-ally-to-china/

a subsidiary of 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/08/09/fact-sheet-chips-and-science-act-will-lower-costs-create-jobs-strengthen-supply-chains-and-counter-china/

There are four constraining factors: knowledge, production equipment, people... and water. A friend was telling us a story the other day (binding all these things together in about 1960) of how his mate's dad gave his son a transistor radio for his birthday, in its leather case, perhaps ten transistors... and showing it to his mates in the backyard, the dog grabbed it by the leather strap and ran into a pond with it and it never worked again. 

The current generation iPhone has an A15 processor, with 15 billion transistors at something like 150 million transistors per square millimeter. The single small chip has a 'system on a chip' that does everything in the device. We are approaching limits of "Moore's law" but not the limits of absurd human demand for 'more'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

It takes artificial intelligence to do the design of these top chips/microprocessors. Enter EDA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automation

No one country or corporation has all the EDA software skills.: the people-ability to write the software to get the AI to do the jobs. 

Now the US has moved to apply sanctions to anyone who wants to share EDA with China:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/08/18/1058116/eda-software-us-china-chip-war/

This post-Trump pro-Biden absurdism is as modern as punishment by chopping hand off.

The world's leading chip 'fab' (manufacturing facility/fabrication plant, contrast 'fabless' a company such as Apple that designs chips but does not manufacture them), is TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Parents in Taiwan dream of their children working for TSMC. 

Fabs require the world's cleanest water in large quantity. In moist-tropics Taiwan, drought has had TSMC trucking in water for some time.

In August 2020, in response to Trump pressure on Taiwan, TSMC announced that it would build a fab in Arizona. The next day, the Trump Administration chopped off a leg of TSMC by imposing sanctions on a lot of the trade in semiconductors etc with the PRC. Over 40% of Taiwan's exports go the PRC, some fresh produce but mainly advanced tech things.

In post-Pelosi August 2022, the Governor of Arizona visited Taiwan and announced that all was fine with the Arizona TSMC project. TSMC then said the governor hadn't visited them but they had talked on the phone (just a bit better than Pelosi going to Taiwan to tout democracy and not meeting the national assembly opposition... which favours reunification). 

In the past week, the US government, in response to years-long drought in the American southwest, has chopped Arizona's allocation of water from the Colorado river by 20%. (California's allocation unchanged—reduced water for Los Angeles and hinterland would destroy numbers for the Democratic Party.). Since the 1970s there has been a dramatic internal migration to the American Sunbelt, including Arizona. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Belt

The great, disastrous destroyer of water resources, suburban grass, increased there exponentially, but we don't talk about that, don't frighten the voters. In August 2022 the capital of one sunbelt state, Jackson Mississippi, ran out of drinking water. 

Intel, in response to TSMC's Arizona plans, announced that it too would build a new fab in Arizona. (I suppose of the people one might say, with metaphorical resonance, "let them drink Coke".)

There is a spike, inspired by all the Taiwan-TSMC news, in discussion of the cultural/lifestyle issues for Americans working for TSMC. There are relatively-OK US law provisions for high level professionals (perhaps) to be stolen out of CHIP4 and China. However, an estimated 3500 production-level staff may need to be imported, with no law to cover that. 

So... abundant shouting, print the money (necessary given the current bucket approach to US federal spending, also as Japan and China are reducing their holdings of US Treasury paper), grab-the-fab simple-mindedness, howl about China. 

But shortages of wisdom, people.... and water. 

ADDENDUM 11 SEPTEMBER.  Screenshot of part of today's chatty weekly roundup email from the South China Morning Post... a newspaper Murdoch bought, could not command, dumped. Note particularly the last little para.

Hello Turbulence, we'd better make ourselves comfortable... I hope you brought the lunch. 

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On Sat, 3 Sept 2022 at 03:10, ....gmail.com> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: OECD What’s New <OECDwhatisnew@newsletter.oecd.org>
Date: Fri, 2 Sept 2022, 17:15
Subject: Are water crises the new normal?
To: <d....>

Latest facts on water: quantity - quality - risks and disasters - valuation and pricing - governance View this email online Building a water-smart society Water-related disasters – floods, droughts, storms – account for the majority of disasters taking lives, and are estimated to cost more than USD 500 billion in damages annually. Over the next 30 years, the number of people at risk from water-related disasters is projected to rise to 20% of the world’s population as the climate changes. But managing the rise of water-related disasters is only the tip of the iceberg. Explore the toolkit for water policies Pressures on freshwater resources are mounting Water stress levels, 2020 or latest available year Freshwater abstractions as percentage of total renewable resources The OECD projects that by 2050, global water demand will rise by 55% and 40% of the world’s population will likely be living in severely water-stressed river basins. Many areas of the world are already experiencing moderate to high levels of water stress, meaning demand for good quality water is exceeding supply.  Among other things, freshwater availability is affected by water abstractions (from lakes, rivers and underground sources), with over-abstraction leading to low river flows, depleted groundwater, and desertification. In the coming decades, groundwater depletion in particular may become the greatest threat to agriculture and urban water supplies in several regions.  While agriculture is expected to be impacted by future water stress, it is also a major contributor to water stress, accounting for more than 70% of freshwater abstractions. The sector therefore has a major role to play in mitigating future risks, notably though improving the efficiency of resource management and reducing negative impacts on water quality.  But well-designed allocation regimes are needed across sectors to ensure water is allocated where it can create the most value economically, socially and environmentally. See our work on water Listen to the podcast Aquatic pollution is a pervasive environmental issue From plastics to agricultural run-off, OECD countries still face important water quality challenges – despite decades of regulation and investment to reduce water pollution. Plastics have been accumulating in the aquatic environment since the 1950s, and it is estimated that some 140 Mt of plastics have found their way into the aquatic environment globally, of which 78% in freshwater systems.  Globally, agriculture’s impact on water quality – from nutrients, soil sediments and pesticides – has either not improved or has deteriorated over the past decade, notably linked to large irrigation schemes.  And micro-pollutants – such as medicines, cosmetics, cleaning agents, biocide residues and micro-plastics from textile products and vehicle tyres – have become an emerging concern in many countries. They have been detected at concentrations significantly higher than expected, with extremely uncertain risks to human and environmental health. Read more on pharmaceutical residues See our work on plastics Water disasters and risks threaten food production Crop and livestock production loss per disaster type, 2008-18 Least developed countries (LDCs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMDCs) Agriculture is the sector most affected by droughts, and droughts are the single greatest cause of agricultural production losses. Over 34% of crop and livestock production losses in LDCs and LMDCs are due to drought, costing the sector USD 37 billion overall between 2008 and 2018.  During this period, drought caused the largest crop and livestock production losses in Africa (over USD 14 billion), and in Latin American and the Caribbean (USD 13 billion), which also suffered from severe storms (USD 6 billion). Asia also suffered equally huge losses due to floods (USD 11 billion) and storms (USD 10 billion). Agriculture is expected to face increasing water risks in the future which will undermine the productivity of rain-fed and irrigated crops, as well as livestock activities in certain countries and regions.  Known as water risk hotspots, Northeast China, Northwest India and the Southwest United States are projected to be among the most severely affected regions, with the potential to further impact markets, trade and broader food security.   Read more about building agriculture resilience The world is not on track to meet its water goals   Country progress on SDG 6  2021, selected countries With 2.1 billion people lacking access to safe water services and over 4.4 billion without access to safe sanitation, the world is not on track to meet its global commitments on water. And the situation will likely worsen due to rapid population growth, urbanisation and increasing pressure from agriculture, industry, the energy sector, and climate change. Most OECD countries already provide access to drinking water and sanitation services to virtually all their residents (targets 6.1 and 6.2) but 1 in 10 is far from reaching water quality and waste management targets (targets 6.3).  Some OECD countries have lost over 10% of their surface water since the mid-1980s due to drought and wasteful irrigation methods. While water-use efficiency (target 6.4) has seen significant improvements in the past two decades, the pace of progress is only sufficient to reach 2030 targets in a few countries. Finally, 7 in 10 OECD countries are far from achieving target 6.6 on the protection of aquatic ecosystems. Learn more about SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation Valuing water is key to solving water challenges Valuing water is one tool that can be used to protect the human right to water while acknowledging that water provides an economic benefit that should have a cost. But it is also a politically charged issue with numerous economic implications. Pricing mechanisms provide important signals and incentives for water-wise decisions, as well as a vital means for providing revenue streams.  Yet tariffs are still too often fixed at a level well below what is needed to recover the costs of operations and maintenance. Moreover, to achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030, current investment will need to increase threefold to about USD 1.7 trillion in order to cope with emerging challenges. Since pricing instruments may disproportionately affect vulnerable people, mechanisms will need to be established such that affordability constraints are taken into account through redistribution and prioritisation of water uses. Read more about financing a water secure future OECD © 2022, All rights reserved. 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