Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF2021) Dec 3-12 - Hybrid Live/Online

There are lots of details here that make it difficult to  report this clearly and painlessly.  And there are various loose ends that need to get mentioned somehow.  I've been working on this for close to a week now.  My approach is to do this on several levels of detail.  Sort of a USA Today synopsis, then maybe a Daily News type overview, and then a trip into the basement where you can see all the moving parts.  I'm hoping that will allow people with different attention spans and different levels of interest to get the gist, if not the grist, of what happened.

There's now an AIFF page where ticket holders and members can log in.  But it doesn't say how to get tickets or become a member. 

OK, I put in the email address I used last year and it got me to a page where I could buy passes. If you didn't get a pass last year, you might try clicking the forgot button and see if it will get you in. There's a household pass (which I bought) for $150 and what I guess is an individual pass for $100.  Both say for online viewing only, not for in person events.  

Then I was able to go back to that page (above) and sign in and get to the AIFF page 

And I've also gone to the Facebook page.  (Wear a mask there)  Just to wet your appetite, I found the list of the features.  Features are longer films (generally over 50-60 minutes).  Documentaries are non-fiction and Narrative are fiction.  

The FEATURE FILMS you can watch at the festival in December are:

DOCUMENTARY FEATURES

80.000 Schnitzel • Hannah Schweier • Germany

A Sexplanation • Alex Liu • USA

Captive • Mellissa Fung • Canada

From the Hood to the Holler • Pat McGee • USA

I'm Wanita • Matthew Walker • Australia

Newtok • Andrew Burton & Michael Kirby Smith • USA

Not About Me Documentary • Kelly Milner • Canada

On These Grounds • Garrett Zevgetis • USA

Out Loud • Gail Willumsen • USA

Run Raven Run • Michael Rainin • USA

Scrum • Thomas Morgan • USA

The Art of Sin • Ibrahim Mursal • Norway

The form • Filip Flatau • France

NARRATIVE FEATURES

18½ • Dan Mirvish • USA

Americanish Film • Iman Zawahry • USA

Atlas • Niccolò Castelli • Switzerland

Christmas Freak The Movie • Sean Brown • USA

Culpa • Ulrike Grote • Germany

Everything in The End • Mylissa Fitzsimmons• Iceland/USA

Landlocked • Tim Hall (Timothy Hall) • USA

Lune • Aviva Armour-Ostroff & @Arturo Perez Torres • Canada

Tall Tales • Attila Szász • Hungary

The Wanderers • Hwang Lee • Korea

We're All In This Together • Katie Boland • Canada

Just looking through the list I see two familiar names:

Dan Mirvish - 18 1/2 - had a film - Between Us - in the 2013 festival.  He didn't come to the festival but I interviewed him via Skype and ended up with a rather long (for me) 17 minute video which you can see below.  In 2017 he came to the festival and did a stimulating workshop.

 

 

Another film - Tall Tales - is by Attila Szász, who has had two gorgeous films in prior festivals.  The Ambassador to Bern in 2014 and Demimonde.   both won the top prize for Narrative Features.  Below is the Skype interview I did with Szász in 2014.  I'm looking forward to the new film.

 

This is much more fun and much easier than the Redistricting Board.  

What Are The Ten Longest Borders Between Countries?

I found this information because I was curious about how long the US-]Mixico border was.

First you have to guess the countries that have really long borders.  

Take some time.  Get a piece of paper and a pen.  Or open a document and type.

The map is to help jog your memories.  Hint:  Asia has most of the top ten.

 

Flying Over Andes between Chile and Argentina

India-Pakistan Border near Amritsar

The Information Below comes from worldatlas.com.  

10. Mexico-US - 3,155 km/1960 miles

9.  Pakistan- India - 3,190 km/1982 miles

8.  Brazil -Bolivia - 3403 km/2114 miles

7.  Mongolia-Russia - 3,452 km/2145 miles

6.  China - Russia - 4,133km/2568 miles

5.  Bangladesh- India  -4,142km/2474 miles

4.  China - Mongolia  - 4,630km/2877 miles

3.  Argentina - Chile - 6,691km/4157 miles

2.  Kazakhastan - Russia - 7,644km/4750

1. Canada - United States - 8,893/5526  (This length is achieved by including the Alaska-Canada border.)

Crossing Into US From Canada at Abbotsford, BC

Who lost America?

 Wikipedia tells us that 

"Dawn is the largest and oldest English-language newspaper in Pakistan and the country's newspaper of record.[3]"

A Pakistani friend of mine sent me a link to this Dawn piece - Who Lost America? - today .  I don't think there is anything too startling in here for people who pay attention and have opened their minds to the views of people of different cultures.  Here's a brief bio of the author from the Middle East Institute:

Touqir Hussain is a former senior diplomat from Pakistan who has served as Ambassador to Brazil, Spain, and Japan. He also held senior positions in the Pakistani Foreign Office, including that of Additional Foreign Secretary, heading the bureaus of the Middle East and of the Americas and Europe. From 1996 to 1998, he was the Diplomatic Adviser to the Prime Minister. Additionally, he was a Senior Fellow at the US Institute of Peace in 2004–2005, and subsequently has been a Research Fellow at the George Washington University and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and the University of Virginia. Currently, he is Senior Pakistan Visiting Fellow at SAIS besides teaching at Georgetown.

Here are several excerpts:

"At its heart, the loss is of democracy at home and hegemony abroad. For much of its history, American democracy has been led by elites. The system helped America’s rise as a great power but worked only when the elites were committed to public service, and the United States led the world. But much has changed. Both the domestic and international orders have been under challenge. And America has been courting failure at home and abroad. There can be no more apt expression of this failure than the shame and infamy of the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and the desperate scenes of chaos during evacuation at Kabul airport."

"The historical experience of Americans had made them self-centred and often overbearing and thus unable to understand the cultural and political substance of other societies. No wonder America failed in every war that it started, especially following the history-making changes that had taken place since the end of the Cold War, the rise of globalisation and 9/11. "

"The failing elite-led system has now merged with mass politics that is causing its own set of problems. It has enhanced the influence of money and media on politics. As money and politics began chasing each other, it gave a new opportunity and role to the mushrooming 24/7 cable television to be a broker between special interests, politics and the public. The commercially motivated media, joined by social media now, interpreted the world around people, and made choices for them, even choosing their politics. And often it did so by misinforming the public."

"America long lost the status of the indispensable power, but for all its moral failure, political dysfunction and perceived ‘decline’ it was still a consequential power. Even that America is lost now."

The whole piece is here. 

This is a man who, presumably, watched from a colony as Great Britain gave up its empire.   It's a perspective most American neither know nor understand.  

 

Video About China's Contribution To Saving Wetlands Along International Flyways Of Migratory Birds [Updated]

[UPDATE:  Here's a link to a great site about birding and other wildlife in Beijing and beyond:  https://birdingbeijing.com.]

When I taught a masters of public administration class in Beijing in 2004, I paid close attention to the birds I saw.  We had a fifth floor walk up apartment in the faculty housing on campus and so we had a treetop view from our apartment.  The most prominent bird at the time was an azure magpie.  

But I was surprised to learn that most of my students were unaware of the birds on campus.  They simply didn't see them on campus.  They were surprised that there were birds and that their American professor was interested in them.  

I searched bookstores for birding guides.  I identified birds by taking pictures and sending them to a birder friend in Anchorage who sent them to her birder friend in Japan who would identify the birds and then I could google them to confirm.  

Eventually a student took me to the biggest bookstore in Beijing - about five stories - and we found a birding book published by, I think, the World Wildlife Association.  I'd even look straight up and sometimes see flocks of birds way, way up high above Beijing.  

So when Emily retweeted this video, I was excited.  The Chinese government has stopped reclamation projects along the Yellow Sea where migratory birds stop on their migration path.  

This post is for my students in Beijing. Ben (Frank), I hope you'll pass the video along to your old classmates.  

There is a variety of people speaking here - from China, from Cornell University, from New Zealand, and from Anchorage.  

Thanks to all these folks for making this happen.  (This video is dated May 23, 2021)

This Is So Cool - Radio.Garden Offers You Easy Access To Any Radio Station In The World

David Pogue (@Pogue)  tweeted a link too Radio.garden.  You get to a page. Click open and 

you then  get the world, literally.  Each green dot is a radio station.  And when you zoom in you get

told the location and many more local green dots.  Put the circle on the dot you want and start 

listening.  I'm listening to music from Kerala on the southern tip of India right now.  

Have fun.  And if there's something happening in some distant (from you - remember you are also in a distant part of the world from others) part of the world, you can quickly tune in to local or nearby stations to get the new direct.  Many capitals, at least, have an English language station.

Want A Break From The US Election? Why Not Brush Up On China's President Xi?

 This LA Times article offers a Cliff Notes review of President Xi Jinping and China's role in the world.  Since Trump has sucked all the oxygen out of the media, we haven't paid enough attention.  This article shouldn't take more than ten minutes.  

Unlike reading more tweets about Tuesday, you'll finish this feeling like you've learned something important to know.

In China's Shadow:  The Rise of Emperor Xi, Prosperity, power and political devotion merge.

There's biography:

"When Xi speaks about his coming of age, he points to Liangjiahe. “Northern Shaanxi gave me a belief. You could say it set the path for the rest of my life,” Xi said in a 2004 interview with the People’s Daily.

He started out lazy and weak in the village, but by the end of seven years, he had experienced hard labor and developed a taste for the pickled vegetables of peasants. It is a folklore reminiscent of Mao’s claims of seeking liberation for the oppressed underclass. But whereas Mao incited grass-roots movements and armed struggle, Xi’s approach to power eschews mass mobilization.

Policy: 

“ Xi’s ambitions abroad have been just as grand. He has expanded China’s global power through multibillion-dollar development projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative and by gaining more influence in institutions like the United Nations. He has capitalized on a United States that has turned isolationist under President Trump, dispatching China’s corporations, diplomats and spies everywhere from Nairobi, Kenya, to Brussels in what is becoming a new world order.

Xi often says that this era is one of “great change unseen in a hundred years,” namely that the world’s top superpower is in decline, and that this is China’s moment to rise. “Systemic advantages are a nation’s greatest advantages, and systemic competition is the most fundamental competition between nations,” Xi was recently quoted saying in the People’s Daily.

That determination to prove the Chinese system superior has driven impressive moves toward combating poverty and pollution, making this nation of 1.4 billion people a dominant force in high-tech industries and allowing it to contain the coronavirus outbreak — even as much of the world blames China for allowing the disease to spread.”

And criticism:

"Xi’s militant nationalism has also provoked backlash. The Chinese military has carried out aggressive maneuvers in the South China Sea and rattled Taiwan by sending fighter planes into its airspace. Chinese troops have had deadly clashes in recent months with Indian soldiers along a disputed border. Xi’s reorganized security forces have increased arbitrary detention of foreigners including citizens of the U.S., Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Belize, Turkey and Kazakhstan.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that unfavorable views of China have reached historical highs in 14 advanced world economies, with a median of 78% of respondents saying they have “no confidence” in Xi’s handling of world affairs — though the ratings on Trump are even worse.

Ironically, a popular nickname for Xi on the Chinese internet is the “ accelerator in chief ,” meaning that his aggressive approach to “stability” has caused more domestic and international conflict and is speeding his government toward self-demise. Criticism has risen even from fellow princelings: Cai Xia, the granddaughter of a revolutionary leader who taught at the central party school for four decades, was recorded calling Xi a “mafia boss” this year.

“He has turned 90 million party members into slaves, tools to be used for his personal advantage,” Cai said."

Why The Emirates and Bahrain Are Recognizing Israel? Seth Abramson Outlines Red Sea Meeting in 2015 To Coopt Trump

Today it was announced that Israel and Bahrain have agreed to diplomatic ties.  This follows a similar recent arrangement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.  

I'm sure these deals are happening now, shortly before the election to spruce up Trump's diplomatic victories.  But Seth Abramson has outline a well documented story of how Trump  is being played by those countries rather than Trump arranging these deals.  

So here are a few quotes from Seth Abramson's book, Proof of Conspiracy which begins with this chapter summary:

"In late 2015, after Donald Trump has formally announced his candidacy for president, a geopolitical conspiracy emerges overseas whose key participants are the leaders of Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt.  These six men decide that Trump is the antidote to their ills:  for Russia, U.S sanctions;  for Israel, the lack of Arab allies;  for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt, perceived threats emanating from Iran.  The conspirators commit themselves to doing what is necessary to ensure that Trump is elected.  Trump's presidential campaign is aware of and benefits from this conspiracy both before and after the 2016 election." (p. 1)

Here's a bit more from page 2:

The story of the Red Sea Conspiracy begins with a man named George Nader.  As reported by Hearst in the Middle East Eye, toward the end of 2015 Nader - then an adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zaey al-Nahyan (know as "MBZ") - convened, with his patron's permission, a summit of some of the Middle East's most powerful leaders.4  Gathered on a boat in the Red Sea in the fall of 2015 were Mohammed bin Salman (known as "MBS:), deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who would shortly become the heir apparent to the throne of the Saudi Kingdom;  MBZ himself, by 2015 the de facto ruler of the Unite Arab Emirates;  Abdel Fattah el Sisi, the president of Egypt;  Prince Salman bin Hamad, the crown prince of Bahrain; and King abdullah II of Jordan.  Nader, the improbable maestro of these rulers' clandestine get-together, intended the plan he posed to the men to include the nation of Libya, but no representative from that nation attended the gathering.5 (p.2) 

The intent of MBZ and MBS according to Abramson (and all the claims he makes are well footnoted with reports from various public sources) is to rearrange the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) by replacing Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar with Egypt, Jordan, and Libya,  This would eliminate its association with the Persian Gulf and

"remaking it as, instead, an alliance constituting 'an elite regional group of six countries, which would supplant  [the GCC and] . . .form the nucleus of [a coalition of] pro-U.S. and pro-Israeli states' in the Middle East.9" (p.3) 

 The intent is a Middle East force that would support the US and be a force against the influence of Turkey and Iran.  Libya and Jordan do not end up in this group.

The chapter, in fact the book, goes on to fill in lots of the details of how this took place and how the Trump administration was involved.  

"According to an opinion piece in the Washington Post, 'If you're the Saudis, the nice thing about Trump is that he lacks any subtlety whatsoever, so you don't have to wonder how to approach him.  He has said explicitly that the way to win his favor is to give him money.  He has established means for you do do so - buying Trump properties and staying in Trump hotels.' 39 (p.8)

"...Trump's financial history with the nations of the Red Sea Conspiracy, as well as the two nations the conspirators seek to improve relations with, Israel and Russia, is long and illustrious.  Trump has properties or other assets in two former Soviet republics, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, and Egypt;  he therefore maintains financial ties to three of the four nations involved in the conspiracy and one that stands to directly benefit from its successes."41 (p.9)

Abrahams suggests this is a strong reason for Trump's resistance to releasing his income taxes.  

Part of chapter one is a biography of George Nader - who organized the "Red Sea Summit" and was a key witness in the Mueller investigation and was arrested in 2018 on child pornography charges and was convicted in 2020.

At the end of the chapter Abramson outlines the goals of the 

"Red Sea Conspiracy, variously referred to by its participants and in the media as the 'grand bargain' or the 'Middle East Marshall Plan."

The hope was to a) elect Trump who would then  b) drop sanctions against Russia who would then c) withdraw support for Iran and Syria.  Abramson then lists the post-bargain expectations:

1. Isolate US allies Turkey and Qatar (where news media Al Jazeera is based) from the US
2. Get US assistance against Iran and help Saudi Arabia and UAE become nuclear powers
3. Get US and Russia to do massive infrastructure development in Middle East and deflect from Israeli-Palestinian debate
4. Establish pro-Israeli, pro-US military alignments with Sunni Arabs 
5. Suppression of pro-democracy forces in and out of the US in the face of growing autocracy in Israel and US Arab allies - Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt

Lots of Trump's policies and actions - ignoring the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, scuttling the Iran nuclear deal, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, the obsequious treatment of Putin, pulling out of Syria - are all consistent with this narrative.  

I have no connection with Abramson other than following him on Twitter and having read the first two books in his Proof series:  Proof of Collusion and Proof of Conspiracy.  Both were like in-depth Cliff-Notes on all the scandals surrounding the Trump presidency.  Detailed descriptions of the characters whose names - like George Nader - show up briefly in the headlines then are quickly forgotten as new names replace theirs.  The books also detail the complicated stories of connections and money that the news media only skim the surface of and most Americans are too distracted to study enough to comprehend.  

I would also note that Proof of Conspiracy has so many endnotes that the publisher left them out of the book and set up a website where readers can get to them.  Without the footnotes the book is 569 pages.  So, I've left the endnotes in the quotations and you can look them up at the link.

I wasn't planning on this post, but with both United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announcing diplomatic relations with Israel less than two months before the election, it seems important that Americans understand that Trump is the pawn here, not the chess master.  

I'd also note that Abramson's third book in the series, Proof of Corruption, just came out this week.  

Government Censorship And Persistent Journalists

Governments suppressing stories that make them look bad are not new.  When my son taught in China he mentioned one day that the Chinese have a better sense of the news than Americans because the Chinese KNOW that what they read is not true.  Here's a story from the Washington Post about writer John Hersey going to Hiroshima in 1946 to tell the, up to then, suppressed story of the human suffering caused by the atomic bomb.  

The U.S. hid Hiroshima’s human suffering. Then John Hersey went to Japan.

"Hersey and [his editor] Shawn suspected that the U.S. government’s wartime propaganda machine had covered up the human suffering of the atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago this month. Pictures from Japan showed destroyed buildings and decimated neighborhoods, but little was known about the human toll, especially from radiation.

The U.S. government controlled access to the bomb sites. The War Department quietly asked American news outlets to limit information about nuclear aspects of the attacks. When reports of widespread suffering from radiation began to emerge from international journalists and Japanese officials, the American government downplayed it all as propaganda. One general even told Congress that dying from radiation was, in fact, “a very pleasant way to die.”

It was time, Hersey and Shawn decided, to find out the truth."

 Hersey lived in China until he was ten (The Call is his novel about a missionary family in China) and I suspect that helped him see the world from a different perspective than most other American journalists of his time.  

Today our president stymies journalism by lies, by walking out when the questions are too exacting, through misinformation, and just by creating so many incidents that the press has trouble sorting the important from the unimportant.  

The key story, I'm my mind is the Senate.  Reporters should be holding Republican Senators accountable for their abdication of their responsibility to hold the president accountable.  They should be as much of the news as the president is.  

"Musk then wrote: 'We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.'”

 A friend alerted me to this article in Counterpunch. It begins like this:

"On July 24, 2020, Tesla’s Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that a second U.S. “government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people.” Someone responded to Musk soon after, “You know what wasn’t in the best interest of people? The U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.” Musk then wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

Musk refers here to the coup against President Evo Morales Ayma, who was removed illegally from his office in November 2019. Morales had just won an election for a term that was to have begun in January 2020. Even if there was a challenge against that election, Morales’ term should rightfully have continued through November and December of 2019. Instead, the Bolivian military, at the behest of Bolivia’s far right and the United States government, threatened Morales; Morales went into exile in Mexico and is now in Argentina."

With all the crap going in within our borders I was only vaguely aware of the Bolivian coup, and not of the details.  Billionaires who are smart and ambitious think they know what is best for the world.  I guess the 2020 version of the General Motors old slogan is What's good for Elon Musk is good for the country.*  

But it looks like we're still in the US imperialism era that saw us bring Pinochet to Chile and the Iran/Contra deal in Central America.  But how could that be a surprise given that Elliott Abrams, who was convicted of lying to Congress (and then pardoned by the 'good' Bush) over the Iran Contra affair is Ambassador to Venezuela and now also the envoy to Iran.

US citizens - this is all being done in our name.  Though if we don't vote hard in November, we won't live in a democracy much longer and so won't be responsible any more.  

*Actually, Wikipedia says that Charles Wilson, the head of General Motors, in Senate confirmation hearings to be Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense, actually said it the other way around.  

"Wilson's nomination sparked a controversy that erupted during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, based on his large stockholdings in General Motors. Reluctant to sell the stock, valued at the time at more than $2.5 million (or about $24 million in 2018), Wilson agreed to do so under committee pressure. During the hearings, when asked if he could make a decision as Secretary of Defense that would be adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively. But he added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." That statement has frequently been misquoted as "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." Although Wilson tried for years to correct the misquote, he was reported, at the time of his retirement in 1957, to have accepted the popular impression." [Emphasis added]

I'd note that Truth or Fiction says the Musk tweet was true and shows a copy of the Tweet.  I found the original Musk tweet about the stimulus and the tweet that raised the Bolivian coup.  There are lots of comments but I couldn't find the one from Musk saying "We will coup whoever we want"  but there is one that has been removed followed by a Musk tweet saying they get lithium from Australia.  

Living In A Pandemic Is A Little Like Living Abroad

When you live in a different country you have to adjust to different ways of doing things.  I don't mean a two week vacation and staying in hotels, I mean spending a much longer period, say a year or more in a different culture.  Learning the local language and living and working with people of that country.  Of course, some of these issues arise on a shorter visit, like how do you get food?  How does the money relate to your home currency?  

Since March, we had to start to figure out what restaurants and stores were open and how to get food safely.  It didn't take too long to find restaurants that delivered or how to order groceries online for delivery or pickup.  But shopping on the grocery apps is a lot different from pushing a cart through the store.    

How are the rules different from where you came from?  We're still working on this.  Masks?  Well, sure of course.  But where are masks enforced?  Biking, I tend to be the only one who has a mask ready to pull up when someone is approaching.  And some people forget to keep their distance.   For those still flying, there are all sorts of changes.  What about money?  Do you want to exchange cash?  And I've never washed my hands this much.  

Finding compatible friends is another tricky thing.  How strict are your family and friends about masks and distancing and attending events?  Which friends might expose you to the virus?  There's the awkward discussions as you start discovering which of your friends practice the same level of safety that you do.  And your friends can surprise you by taking more risks or being much more careful than you expected.  

After the first month or so the initial shock wears off a bit, but what you thought you knew may change and you have to adjust.  What good are masks?  Well it appears the early advice was intended to keep people from buying masks that medical workers needed, and no one really knew enough to know if they also protected the wearer or just those around the wearer.  The way health experts are learning about the virus - how it travels, who it impacts, how to treat it - that's what happens to expats living abroad.  Some things you learn are helpful, some things you learn turn out to be wrong.  

Language hasn't been an issue.  More like going to another (in my case) English speaking country.  Some words have different meanings, others are new ones you need to learn, but most of the basics are the same.  

One of the most important benefits of living abroad is the perspective you get as you compare what you're experiencing to what things were like back home.  At first there's a tendency to find the differences annoying, but after a while, you start to see that back home doesn't always do things as well as you thought.  The forced changes make you appreciate what the new country has that you don't have back home, or you learn that some things are actually easier, or people friendlier, or have more leisure than people back home.  

In the US, the worst president ever happened to be in office when the pandemic arrived and that made things far worse than they had to be.  The lies and misinformation, as time passed, made the pandemic worse and I believe the pandemic should get credit for the crowds who have been out protesting for Black Lives.  Many people had been stuck at home for a month when George Floyd was killed, and many were out of work or out of school, so they had the time to demonstrate and the need to get out and voice their frustration.  

So people are also discovering that government services like public health, need to be based on scientists and the politicians have to defer to the experts.  We're seeing in the US what happens when the federal government fails miserably.  For hundreds of thousands of people, that lesson will come too late, because they have been extremely ill or have buried loved ones. Or were buried.  How many will learn that there is a big difference between the politicians and the career civil servants?  

In the field of public administration we often say that no one notices government until things go wrong.  Those things that government provides, that people take for granted, tend to be invisible until the system is broken - public health, for instance.  Experts tend to agree that public health projects like clean water systems and sanitary sewage systems have saved far more lives than all the miracle drugs and glitzy modern surgeries.   

The failure of the Trump administration to see the danger and take appropriate action has proven that point.  People have begun to appreciate the expertise of public health officials and the importance of basing decisions on science rather than perceived political impacts.  

But bad government has also been exposed by George Floyd's death - on top of all the other blacks killed by police and shared on social media.  In this case the pandemic has also helped white US see the problems with police that people of color have known all along. 

One thing that's different between the pandemic and travel abroad, is that when you are living in other cultures you generally have a good idea of how long the adventure will be.  Not so with this pandemic.  At first people were saying the pandemic would be a couple of months, but now it's clearly going to continue well into next year.  So we'll have plenty of time to ponder what parts of normal we want to return to and what new normals we want to create.

Another big difference is that when you live abroad, you experience all the newness and the mental adjustments as an individual.   When you get back your family and friends have no clue that your head has changed dramatically.  For vets this is often a very traumatic experience.  People don't get it and often they can't or won't try to explain it.   

This pandemic is something people are experiencing simultaneously around the world.  We're all going through this.  I'm hoping that that will make it easier to start making 'normal' more equitable, more sustainable,  kinder, and livable.    

The Geography Of The Assassination of General Soleimani

I was hoping to post pictures of flowers or something like that today.  Australia is burning because we can't give up our luxuries to fight climate change.  But we are in a huge crisis of our president's making. We are focused on possible war with Iran.  (No I don't think it will be anything like a conventional war.  It will be a 21st Century guerrilla war, with lots of cyber terrorism.)

So let's just look at something simple - geography.  

Distance from Tehran to Baghdad.

For those with vision issues, and whose computers can't read text in images, Tehran is 433 miles from Baghdad.

Here's a map from StatsAmerica of all of the US within 425 miles of Washington DC. to get a sense of how far 432 miles is.

Distance from Iranian border to Bagdad.

Baghdad is 209 Km = 129 miles from the Iranian border


Distance from Washington DC to Bagdad.

DC is 10,009* km (or 6,219 miles) from Baghdad.
*different sites show slightly different distances.

Imagine if an avowed enemy of our country had troops within 130 miles of our border.  How would the US react?  (I'd note that when Castro took over in Cuba  (90 miles from the US border) he came to the US and ultimately both had issues with each other. And the US imposed an embargo on Cuba.  But when the Soviets put missiles in Cuba, we risked a nuclear war confronting Soviet ships coming to Cuba.)

If we only consider geography, it is clear that Iran has a much larger vested interest in what happens in Iraq than the US does.  Imagine if any country assassinated a top US official in while he was in Toronto or Acapulco. I was told the other night by an Iranian/American who had just returned that a special position had been created for Soleimani that made him, in essence, second in command.  Reuters says he reported only to the Supreme Commander.  CNBC quotes defense policy expert Roman Schweizer, 

"This is the equivalent of Iran killing the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and then taking credit for it."

The US came to be when a relatively small, rag-tag army, used some conventional and some essentially guerrilla warfare to defeat the greatest power in the world at that time.  Eventually the US took over that position.  In Vietnam we discovered that guerrilla soldiers, fighting for their own land, could defeat the world's most powerful conventional military.  And that's the way General Soleimani advanced what he saw as Iranian interests.  He killed a lot of Americans as well as civilians that way.  But the president has taken an action now that demonstrates his belief that  killing enemies is not wrong.

We couldn't win in Vietnam.  We haven't been able to win (whatever that might mean) in Afghanistan.  We can't win in Iraq.  What would it even mean to 'win' against Iran, 6,000 miles away?  Against people defending their homeland? Ask Iraq War vets in the United States how it felt to battle in a foreign land where they didn't speak the language or know the terrain.

The geography is telling.

Cartographic Literacy - And The Bible On Abortion

A couple of links that might be of interest.  Both are examples, in their own way, of how people's understanding is influenced by how facts are presented.  

1. In one case it's about representations of the earth and the construct of poverty.  
2. In the other case it's about representations of a book - The Bible - and what it says about abortion.  

1.  Kenneth Field's So You Want To Make A Map? at Medium walks us through making a map, step by step.  The example map shows the world

Despite maps being one of the oldest media of communication, he tells us that people aren't that literate in reading them.

But cartography isn’t innate in our ability to communicate graphically. There’s a language, a syntax, and a grammar. It takes a little knowledge and some practice to know what works and how to make a map work well to mediate the message to the reader. In this article, I’m going to go through some of the choices you’re presented with in designing a thematic map (a map of a theme of data) and how they can help or hinder how people interpret it. It’s worth remembering that most people have no idea about how to understand the way in which the map and the choices made in making it affect their perception of it. You design the map to avoid as many of these potential pitfalls as possible by being a smarter mapmaker.

He walks us through a series of maps, each showing different ways to illustrate different ways to visually get points across better, explaining the changes step by step.


These are just two screenshots of different ways to indicate poverty levels.

And one more map just to whet your appetite for the others.

2.  The Bible Tells Us When A Fetus Becomes A Living Being

It begins:

"Many people think that a human being is created at the time of conception but this belief is not supported by the bible. The fact that a living sperm penetrates a living ovum resulting in the formation of a living fetus does not mean that the fetus is a living human being. According to the bible, a fetus is not a living person with a soul until after drawing its first breath."

It then goes on to cited a number of passages in the bible that show that today's far right religious proclamations of abortion as murder are contradicted by a close reading of the bible.  Examples such as:

"In Exodus 21:22 it states that if a man causes a woman to have a miscarriage, he shall be fined; however, if the woman dies then he will be put to death. It should be apparent from this that the aborted fetus is not considered a living human being since the resulting punishment for the abortion is nothing more than a fine;   it is not classified by the bible as a capital offense."

Intergoernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) Report

Amidst all the serious issues the Trump administration is causing, the really big issue facing everyone is global warming.  But the IPCC report that just came out is not a page turner for most people.  I challenge Netscape, Disney, Prime, and all the other producers of blockbusters to take on the issues of climate change that in a way that is both entertaining and educational.  In the meantime. . .

This is NOT easy stuff to understand.  But people should know this report was done (it's the continuation of work from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, agreed on by basically most every country except Trumpia. (This Mother Jones article gives more nuance)

It looks like the Press Release is the most understandable part of the report, and it's still work to get through.  Here's some key excerpts.

“One of the key messages that comes out very strongly from this report is that we are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes,” said Panmao Zhai, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I.
For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2oC.
“Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5oC or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II.
Limiting global warming would also give people and ecosystems more room to adapt and remain below relevant risk thresholds, added Pörtner. The report also examines pathways available to limit warming to 1.5oC, what it would take to achieve them and what the consequences could be.

From what I can tell, the report  is basically is comparing what will happen under the goals of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5˚C or to 2.5˚C, the feasibility of both these goals, and the impacts on the earth and life for each.

I tried to skim the main headings of the summary of findings, but they are pretty dense reading, so I've picked the list of terms listed at the end.  If people learn these terms, that would be a good start.  Then they look at the parts of the report.

Box SPM 1: Core Concepts Central to this Special Report
Global mean surface temperature (GMST): Estimated global average of near-surface air temperatures over land and sea-ice, and sea surface temperatures over ice-free ocean regions, with changes normally expressed as departures from a value over a specified reference period.
When estimating changes in GMST, near-surface air temperature over both land and oceans are also used.19{1.2.1.1}
Pre-industrial: The multi-century period prior to the onset of large-scale industrial activity around 1750. The reference period 1850–1900 is used to approximate pre-industrial GMST. {1.2.1.2}
Global warming: The estimated increase in GMST averaged over a 30-year period, or the 30-year period centered on a particular year or decade, expressed relative to pre-industrial levels unless otherwise specified. For 30-year periods that span past and future years, the current multi-decadal warming trend is assumed to continue. {1.2.1}
Net zero CO2 emissions: Net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are achieved when anthropogenic CO2 emissions are balanced globally by anthropogenic CO2 removals over a specified period.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR): Anthropogenic activities removing CO2 from the atmosphere and durably storing it in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products. It includes existing and potential anthropogenic enhancement of biological or geochemical sinks and direct air capture and storage, but excludes natural CO2 uptake not directly caused by human activities.
Total carbon budget: Estimated cumulative net global anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the preindustrial period to the time that anthropogenic CO2 emissions reach net zero that would result, at some probability, in limiting global warming to a given level, accounting for the impact of other anthropogenic emissions. {2.2.2}
Remaining carbon budget: Estimated cumulative net global anthropogenic CO2 emissions from a given start date to the time that anthropogenic CO2 emissions reach net zero that would result, at some probability, in limiting global warming to a given level, accounting for the impact of other anthropogenic emissions. {2.2.2}
Temperature overshoot: The temporary exceedance of a specified level of global warming.
Emission pathways: In this Summary for Policymakers, the modelled trajectories of global anthropogenic emissions over the 21st century are termed emission pathways. Emission pathways are classified by their temperature trajectory over the 21st century: pathways giving at least 50% probability based on current knowledge of limiting global warming to below 1.5°C are classified as ‘no overshoot’; those limiting warming to below 1.6°C and returning to 1.5°C by 2100 are classified as ‘1.5°C limited-overshoot’; while those exceeding 1.6°C but still returning to 1.5°C by 2100 are classified as ‘higher-overshoot’.

Impacts: Effects of climate change on human and natural systems. Impacts can have beneficial or adverse outcomes for livelihoods, health and well-being, ecosystems and species, services, infrastructure, and economic, social and cultural assets.
Risk: The potential for adverse consequences from a climate-related hazard for human and
natural systems, resulting from the interactions between the hazard and the vulnerability and exposure of the affected system. Risk integrates the likelihood of exposure to a hazard and the magnitude of its impact. Risk also can describe the potential for adverse consequences of adaptation or mitigation responses to climate change.
Climate-resilient development pathways (CRDPs): Trajectories that strengthen sustainable development at multiple scales and efforts to eradicate poverty through equitable societal and systems transitions and transformations while reducing the threat of climate change through ambitious mitigation, adaptation, and climate resilience.

Economist Dr. Adele Morris' Compelling Talk On Why Price On Carbon Is Best Way To Slow Down Climate Change

This month's Citizen Climate Lobby meeting was this morning.  Groups from all over the US (representing 85% of all Congressional districts) and many countries beyond the US borders met in a conference video call to catch up on this month's actions and to hear, economist,  Dr. Adele Morris talk about her research on implementing a carbon fee.

The introduction to Adele Morris starts about 3:12.  It's worth starting there so you know who she is and why she's worth listening to.  She begins about 4:57.




The basic point is explaining

"why economists are so unanimous in supporting a price on carbon whether through a tax on carbon or a cap and trade program.  I happen to favor a carbon tax approach for a variety of reasons.  But the point is very clear, and this is a huge consensus in my profession, that is that it's the most cost-effective way.  If you have a cost on carbon, you're incentivizing all the lowest cost ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and you're doing it in a heart beat.  Like as soon as you have a price on the carbon content of fossil fuels, that instantly changes the incentives for which power plants are going to operate more and which sources of energy are going to be more cost effective.  It gives a boost to renewables relative to their fossil competitors.  It's just the absolutely most competitive way to create a wide range of incentives across the economy."

It's much easier to just play the video and hear her clearly explain this.  She's impressive!

She goes on to briefly talk about the eleven essential questions for how to implement a price on carbon.  I've taken these from her Brookings Institute webpages:

"Click on a question below to jump to its discussion: 
1. What is the name of the carbon pricing policy? 
2. What greenhouse gas (GHG) sources and gases does the policy cover? 
3. What’s the initial price and how does it change over time? 
4. Who pays the carbon charge? 
5. Who collects the revenue? 
6. What happens to the revenue? 
7. Does it change other Federal climate and energy policies, and if so how? 
8. Does it constrain state-level policies? 
9. Does it allow offsets (alternatives to paying a fee)? 
10. Does it give credits or rebates for certain activities? 
11. Does it include measures to reduce effects on U.S. competitiveness and emissions leakage? "

If this is all new info for you, you've got some serious catching up to do.

Being a member of  Citizens' Climate Lobby over the years has convinced me beyond a doubt, about Morris message:  that the most efficient, effective, and practical, and politically feasible step in slowing down climate change is a carbon fee.  

And why does this matter?  Because if climate change doesn't get slowed down, terrorism, cancer, traffic, privacy, the Supreme Court, and every other issue people are concerned about won't really matter.  We're already feeling the consequences of climate change in the loss of sea ice, in hotter summers, in fiercer storms.  All these changes will intensify and have huge impacts on human life, on what crops grow where, on the availability of water.  People will either die or move.  That movement will cause huge disruptions in agricultural output and everything else.  We are already seeing the destabilizing effects of immigration in Europe and in North America.

There is no more important issue facing human beings.

You can find out more about Citizens Climate Lobby - the most effective and efficient group I've ever seen - here.

I'd note the Anchorage group meets the second Saturday at 8:30am at UAA's Rasmuson Hall 220.  (Yes, it's early, but it's an international group video call.  And then you have plenty time left to do all your Saturday activities.)

You can find your nearest local chapter here.  There's at least one in every state and most US territories.  And in over 40 other countries.