Donald Trump and maga Republicans wrecking America's reputation in Europe anti-American sentiment rising

I just got back from Europe. Anti-American sentiment is on the rise
Opinion essay echo published in the Los Angeles Times by Robin Abcarian.

It was midday just before Easter in Paris. 

My niece and I walked past the city’s famous opera house, where tourists were relaxing on the wide steps. French soldiers armed with assault rifles strolled around, a comforting sight given the warnings about Iran-backed sleeper cells and potential retaliatory attacks. 

A busker with a guitar and a microphone entertained the crowd with a Coldplay cover.

Between songs, he asked, “Anyone here speak English?” Unbelievably, not a single hand went up.

The busker shrugged, turned both thumbs down in the universal gesture of disapproval, and said, “America, eh?” I felt him.

A couple of days after I got home, I saw a social media post that reminded me of that moment. “Honestly,” wrote @_thatambitiousgirl, “I don’t know how anyone could even feel comfortable traveling as an American outside of the U.S. right now.”

Anti-American sentiment is on the rise, and it sucks being from a country whose presidents do things like threaten to end a “whole civilization,” invade Middle Eastern countries based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, or insert themselves into pointless conflicts in faraway lands. 

In college, I had friends who sewed Canadian flags onto their backpacks because they didn’t want to be associated with America’s misadventures in Southeast Asia.

Polls show that half of Europeans view Donald Trump, who has threatened to withdraw from NATO, as an enemy rather than an ally. He has managed the neat trick of telling our allies they are useless while castigating them for not rushing to help with his poorly planned and illegal war on Iran. “This is not our war,” the German defense minister said pointedly last month. “We have not started it.”


Quite simply, with the assent of the Republican Party, Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the world order as we’ve known it in our lifetimes, while also managing to make life harder for Americans at home.

“We’re worse off in every way, and officially a global pariah,” said the New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on Facebook this week. “Awesome. Love that.”

Anyway, I was glad to see that someone I know, the novelist Erin Zhurkin, responded thoughtfully to @_that ambitiousgirl’s Instagram post.

Donald Trump is a Republican wrecking ball

Been an American abroad for 20 years now,” wrote Zhurkin, whose Russian-born American husband is an executive with Renault. “Six countries so far. People are in general curious and grateful that I can see my country from all sides….I try to represent the heart of the US, which I believe is about being open to all people and finding commonalities rather than differences.”

This, truly, is the heart of the matter.

 In the fall of 1967, my family moved from Northridge to France, where my father had a year-long Fulbright teaching scholarship at the University of Pau. Before we got on the airplane, my mother sat the four of her rambunctious kids down.

“It’s very important that you not be ‘Ugly Americans,’ ” she told us. We were too young to have read the classic 1958 novel she was referring to, but we understood that we were to be curious and respectful and maybe not yell, as we unfortunately did, “Yuck, this is NOT a hot dog,” during our first meal in Paris.

One winter evening in Pau, my parents took us to an anti-war demonstration, as they had done many times in Los Angeles. The locals we marched with were chanting something we couldn’t quite make out. It sounded to our American ears like “Yohn-kee go ohm.” We figured it out pretty quickly, and frankly, it was unsettling.

Zhurkin had a similar experience in Moscow, in the early 1990s, at a kiosk near Red Square. “An older Russian lady looked at me, and in a thick Russian accent said, ‘Yankee, go home,’ ” Zhurkin told me by phone from Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she and her family had moved in September from Seoul. “It opened up this whole feeling inside of me that there is something about my country that may not be as wonderful as it seems. It was a huge, perspective-breaking moment for me.”

Years later, Zhurkin was living in Paris. Trump had just been elected to his first term.

“I could not get into a taxi without someone asking me why I would let this happen, as if it was all me,” Zhurkin said. “They’d say, ‘I can’t believe you Americans are so stupide.’ I was like, ‘Look, I didn’t vote for him.’” Still, she said, “I feel like I am apologizing all the time.”

By the time President Joe Biden was elected in 2020, Zhurkin said, her family had moved to Ireland, where the vibe was much more “Thank God you guys got your act together.”

Maybe in the not-too-distant future, we will again. And then we can start to put this long national hideous nightmare behind us.

Bluesky: @rabcarian
Threads: @rabcarian

Ukraine President Zelensky is dealing with American diplomats who are "playing games" reports Spiegel news in Germany

Echo report published in NewsNation by Andreas Rinke, Gabriel Stargardter and Dominique Vidalon:

BERLIN Germany (Reuters) – The French President and German Chancellor have voiced skepticism over the direction that U.S. efforts to negotiate a peace between Ukraine and Russia are taking, German magazine Spiegel cited a transcript of a confidential call as showing.

• France, Germany express skepticism over US plan
• The report is from Germany's largest news magazine
• French and German officials won't comment

In a report on Thursday, December 4, 2026, Spiegel said that in the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders, France’s Emmanuel Macron warned that the United States could insist that Ukraine makes territorial concessions to Russia without guarantees to prevent future Russian aggression.

“There is a chance that the U.S. will betray Ukraine on territory without clarity on security guarantees,” he said, according to the magazine.

In the call that took place on Monday, December 1, 2025, Germany’s Friedrich Merz warned

Zelenskiy that U.S. negotiators are “playing games” and that he should be “very careful” over the next few days, the Spiegel report said.

Berlin declined to comment, while the French President’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The President did not express himself in these words,” Spiegel quoted the Élysée as saying.

SignalGate opinion letters: "US national security might have been compromised and Trump’s strongman shtick surely was"

Eccho opinion letters published in The New York Times:

SignalGate

To the Editor of The New York Times:  The egregious disclosure of classified information regarding the U.S. military strike in Yemen against Houthi rebels to Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, via an commercial unauthorized group chat warrants an immediate investigation. The public and Congress need to know how such an unthinkable national security breach involving the highest-level administration officials, including the vice president and the secretary of defense, could have occurred.

The overriding question that needs to be answered is whether this breakdown is a one-off event, or reflective of a more systemic laxity within the administration. The latter would be in keeping with President Trump’s history of mishandling classified documents.

At a minimum, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, should resign.

From Mark Godes in Chelsea, Massachusetts

To the Editor: The real harm of the intelligence breach in the group chat about the military operations in Yemen is in the content of the conversation itself. To a foreign adversary, this thread represents what could be considered the holy grail of intelligence. China, Russia and Iran now have direct insight into how defense and intelligence officials strategize and make decisions, revealing vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

This breach compromises national security in ways that could have long-lasting consequences. It is a serious lapse in safeguarding sensitive information. The C.I.A. spends thousands of hours of research in trying to ascertain exactly this type of behavior in the leaders of our adversaries.

This incident should serve as a clear wake-up call that the people currently running our intelligence and defense communities are wholly incompetent and should be replaced with professionals.

From Brian L. Tell in Palm Springs, California.

To the Editor: There is plenty of blame being aimed at the Trump administration officials who used a commercial text platform to discuss the nation’s planned military actions in Yemen. 

They should all be held accountable.

However, there is another group equally responsible for this dangerous lack of professionalism: the senators who confirmed individuals so clearly unqualified for their positions. 

Rather than insisting that Trump nominate experienced, competent candidates, the Republicans on Capitol Hill capitulated to pressure, putting a team of underprepared individuals in critical government roles. Unfortunately, this may not be the last on-the-job security breach we see from this group. I hope I am wrong.

From Anne Krick in Warrenville, Illinois

To the Editor:  The bungling of a text chat hosted by Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, that included Marco Rubio, the secretary of state; the defense secretary Pete Hegseth; and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, clearly demonstrates that Elon Musk’s “government efficiency” efforts are focused on the wrong aspect of government. Instead of laying off thousands of dedicated hard-working government agency employees, he and his army of ax men should be examining the incompetence and inefficiency at the highest levels of government — in the form of the president’s appointees. The level of incompetence and inefficiency should keep them busy for quite a while.

From Ken Lefkowitz in Medford, New Jersey

To the Editor: If Trump truly were a strong leader, he would demand the resignations of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, for their involvement in the Signal affair. This move would demonstrate an unwavering commitment to the security of the nation and zero tolerance for incompetence and bad behavior among his senior leadership team. But instead the president has exposed his inherent weakness by responding with his usual denial, name-calling and bluster.

Our national security might have been compromised. Trump’s strongman shtick surely was.

From Steve Nelson in Williamstown, Massachusetts

To the Editor:  Well, it didn’t take long for the wheels to start coming off the Trump administration’s clown car. Will this be enough for the supine Republican Congress to finally begin putting country over self?  And then there is the incompetent defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, calling Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of  The Atlantic, a “so-called journalist.” This so-called journalist had more integrity and concern for our country than the Republicans who were on the security breached Signal group chat!

From:  MacKenzie Allen in St.-Clement-Rancoudray, France

Thank you President Bidne for visiting the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France where World War One veterans are interred

Echo news reported by Chris Megerian and Zeke Miller

BELLEAU, France (AP) — President Joe Biden closed out his trip to France by paying his respects at an American military cemetery that Donald Trump notably skipped* visiting when he was president, hoping his final stop Sunday will draw the stakes of the November election in stark relief.

Before returning to the United States, Biden honored America’s war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery about an hour outside Paris. He placed a wreath at the cemetery chapel before an expanse of white headstones marking the final resting place of more than 2,200 U.S. soldiers who fought in World War I.

It was a solemn end to five days in which Trump was an unspoken yet unavoidable presence. On the surface, the trip marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and celebrated the alliance between the United States and France. But during an election year when Trump has called into question fundamental understandings about America’s global role, Biden has embraced his Republican predecessor — and would-be successor — as a latent foil.

With headstones lying in a sweeping curve, the 42.5-acre Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, sits at the foot of Belleau Wood. The cemetery contains the graves of 2,289 war dead, most of whom fought in the vicinity and in the Marne Valley in the summer of 1918. The memorial chapel sits on a hillside, decorated with sculptured and stained-glass details of wartime personnel, equipment and insignia. Inscribed on its interior wall are 1,060 names of the missing. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified. In 1940, during World War II the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery chapel was damaged due to heavy fighting in the vicinity. All damage was repaired except for one shell hole in the chapel, left as a reminder of what took place.

Belleau Wood adjoins the cemetery and contains many vestiges of World War I. A monument at the flagpole commemorates the valor of the U.S. Marines who captured much of this ground in 1918.

Presiddnt Biden capped off a five-day trip to France paying his respects with a wreath-laying at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial before returning to Washington. 

President Biden spent much of the trip to France honoring American veterans – but the subtext of Sunday’s expedition is also aimed at Trump, who scrapped his 2018, journey to the World War I memorial and later faced criticism for denigrating US veterans.

*In 2018, Trump, at the time, was in Paris to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I with other world leaders, blamed weather and safety issues for eschewing the cemetery visit. The president’s Marine One helicopter cannot fly in low cloud cover, a decision that is made by military and security officials. But there did not appear to be a backup plan, and Trump did not make any statements of regret over not being able to visit the cemetery.

CNN later reported that Trump referred to the fallen US service members at Aisne-Marne in crude and derogatory terms. A former senior Trump administration official, who declined to be named, confirmed reporting from The Atlantic magazine, which cited sources who said Trump rejected the idea of a cemetery visit and proceeded to refer to the fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.”

President Biden in Normandy France is an example of how professional leadership matters.

Washington Post Editorial Opinion: Today’s western alliance needs the spirit of the Boys of Pointe du Hoc.*

President Biden visits the Pointe du Hoc monument in Normandy, France (Vucci/AP)

On June 6, 1944 — D-Day — 225 U.S. Army Rangers set out to scale the strategically vital cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, overlooking the beaches of Normandy, in France. Their mission was to neutralize Nazi artillery that threatened to thwart the Western Allies’ invasion of Europe. Only 90 were still able to bear arms after two days of fighting. When President Ronald Reagan spoke at the site on the 40th anniversary of the Allied invasion, 62 “Boys of Pointe du Hoc” sat in the audience. But by the 80th anniversary, which fell on Thursday, not one of the heroes who clawed their way up that precipice remained alive.

President Biden summoned “the echoes of their voices” during a moving visit to the cliffs on Friday: “Does anyone doubt that they would want America to stand up against [Vladimir] Putin’s aggression?” the president asked. “Does anyone believe these Rangers would want America to go it alone? … Does anyone doubt they wouldn’t move heaven and earth to vanquish hateful ideologies of today?”

They were rhetorical questions, but with them Mr. Biden got at the truth that today’s “America First” movement — like its disgraced predecessor from the years before World War II — has found a receptive audience for isolationism. 

History has validated that the invasion of France might never have been necessary had the United States and its Allies from World War I not tried to appease Adolf Hitler. 

Who would have thought so many Americans would seem to forget, or reject, this costly lesson today, much less that they would support former president Donald Trump, even as he raises the discredited banner of “America First”?

Formed after World War II as a bulwark against future totalitarian attempts to dominate Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself tested today by a revanchist, autocratic Russia. Mr. Putin’s best weapons in the war he launched against Ukraine might be historical amnesia and myopia. 

He’s counting on the United States to grow weary of its global commitments and abdicate them. 

Mr. Biden has staked his legacy on proving Mr. Putin wrong — and showed it by welcoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the D-Day commemorations. “Isolationism was not the answer 80 years ago, and it is not the answer today,” the U.S. president said. “The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave. … The Allied forces of D-Day did their duty. Now, the question for us is: In our hour of trial, will we do ours?”

The 2024 election will help answer this question. Mr. Trump threatened to pull out of NATO as president and declared recently that he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” against member states that don’t spend enough on defense. He has made clear that, if he wins, he will force Ukraine to accept a negotiated settlement with Russia that requires ceding territory. Mr. Trump represents appeasement in our time. 

Notably, he campaigned in Phoenix on the D-Day anniversary with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a leading neo-isolationist who has made a cause of abandoning Ukraine and is being vetted by Mr. Trump as a potential running mate. (Maine Writer- meanwhile, the audience were literally collapsing in the extreme heat- Extreme heat sends 11 to hospital at Arizona Trump rally.)

Mr. Biden didn’t name Trump in France — and didn’t need to. 

His message was clear enough. What he could have said, but didn’t, is that a U.S. retreat today would be doubly unforgivable given that protecting American values and interests does not require anywhere near the level of sacrifice made by those who stormed the beaches of Normandy. It does, however, require understanding the national interest, putting it above self-interest — and electing leaders willing to do the same.

Moments like the D-Day commemoration remind us that Mr. Biden’s seniority confers valuable perspective. He was not a World War II veteran but grew up surrounded by them, in an America made possible by their sacrifices — and in that sense, he personifies the country’s lasting connection to the spirit of that age. Certainly, the worldview expressed in his words at Pointe du Hoc on Friday does not carry an expiration date.

*Meanwhile, while President Trump was an example of American exceptionalism in France, the Trumpzi rally attendees in Phoenix were victims of the extreme hot temperatures.  Obviously, the Trump campaign was unable to afford to pay for an air-conditioned venue.

COVID- Macabre mathematics: Continuous flow of patients as numbers of mortalities grow

Worldwide spread of the Coronavirus is macabre mathematics.

PARIS (Associated Press) — During their daily morning round of the intensive care unit, hospital staffers and medical students pause outside room No. 10, abruptly emptied of the patient who lost his nearly month-long battle against COVID-19 the previous evening.

The man died at 6:12 p.m., the medic leading the briefing tells the group. There is a short hush. And then they walk on.

Even for ICU workers for whom death is a constant — and never more so than this year — witnessing the loss of a fellow human being to the virus can be a churn of emotions.

COVID infections spread and continue - Bitter experience helps French ICUs crest latest virus wave. Report echo by John Leicester published in the Associated Press.

ROUEN, France (AP) — Slowly suffocating in a French intensive care ward, Patrick Aricique feared he would die from his diseased lungs that felt “completely burned from the inside, burned like the cathedral in Paris,” as tired doctors and nurses labored day and night to keep gravely ill COVID-19 patients like him alive.

A married couple in the same ICU died within hours of each other as Aricique, feeling as fragile as “a soap bubble ready to pop,” also wrestled the coronavirus. The 67-year-old retired building contractor credits a divine hand for his survival. “I saw archangels, I saw little cherubs,” he said. “It was like communicating with the afterlife".

On his side were French medical professionals who, forged on the bitter experiences of previous infection waves, now fight relentlessly to keep patients awake and off mechanical ventilators, if at all possible. They treated Aricique with nasal tubes and a mask that bathed his heaving lungs in a constant flow of oxygen. That spared him the discomfort of a thick ventilation tube deep down his throat and heavy sedation from which patients often fear — sometimes, rightly so — that they will never awake.

While mechanical ventilation is unavoidable for some patients, it’s a step taken less systematically now than at the start of the pandemic. Dr. Philippe Gouin, who heads the ICU ward where Aricique underwent treatment for severe COVID-19, said, “We know that every tube we insert is going to bring its share of complications, extensions in stay, and sometimes morbidity.”

About 15% to 20% of his intubated patients don’t survive, he said.

“It’s a milestone that weighs on survival,” Gouin said. ”We know that we will lose a certain number of patients who we won’t be able to help negotiate this corner.”

Third wave of coronavirus, a variant of the infectious COVID19 virus, is infecting France.

The shift to less-invasive breathing treatments also is helping French ICUs stave off collapse under a renewed crush of coronavirus cases. Super-charged by a more contagious virus variant that first ravaged neighboring Britain, the third infection wave in France has pushed the country’s COVID-19-related death toll past 100,000 people. Hospitals across the country are grappling again with the macabre mathematics of making space for thousands of critically sick patients.

“We have a continuous flow of cases,” said Dr. Philippe Montravers, an ICU chief at Bichat Hospital in Paris, which is again shoe-horning patients into makeshift critical care units. “Each of these cases are absolutely terrible stories — for the families, for the patients themselves, of course, for the physicians in charge, for the nurses.”

Sedated patients kept alive with mechanical ventilation often occupy their ICU beds for several weeks, even months, and the physical and mental trauma of their ordeals can take months more to heal. But 13 days after he was admitted for ICU care in the Normandy cathedral city of Rouen, Aricique was sufficiently recovered for another critically ill patient to take his place.

A non-invasive nasal ventilation system dispensing thousands of liters (hundreds of gallons) of life-sustaining oxygen every hour got him through the worst of his infection, until he was well enough for the flow to be reduced to a trickle and to sit upright, his New Testament bible at his side. Tucking into a small lunch of omelette and red cabbage to start rebuilding his strength, Aricique said he felt resurrected. A nurse freed him from drips that had been plugged into arms, binning the tubes like entrails.

Making rounds with junior doctors and nurses in tow, Dr. Dorothee Carpentier allowed herself a mini-celebration as she swept past Aricique’s room, having declared him fit for discharge. The patient in the adjacent room also could leave, she decided. She described the imminent departures as “little victories” for the full 20-bed ward, a temporary set-up in what was previously a surgical unit and is now entirely converted for C0VID-19 care.

“I imagine they’ll be filled again by the morning,” Carpentier said of the two vacated beds. “The tough thing about this third wave is that there is no stop button. We don’t know when it will start to slow.”

Further down the corridor, a 69-year-old woman placed face-down on her stomach was struggling with the effort of breathing with an oxygenation mask and getting dangerously close to the point where doctors would decide to anesthetize and intubate her. Nurse Gregory Bombard recruited the woman’s visiting daughter-in-law in an effort to stave off that next step, impressing on her the importance of sticking with the mask.

“Morale is so important, and she has to turn this corner,” Bombard said. “We do what we can. They have to make the effort to win, too, otherwise they will lose.”

“Do what you can,” the nurse told the daughter-in-law..

The relative later emerged from the patient’s room misty-eyed and shaken.

“It’s really tough to see her like this,” she said. “She is letting herself go.”

In another room, Gouin gently pleaded with a 55-year-old market stall operator who complained that his oxygenation mask made him feel claustrophobic.

“You have to play the game,” the doctor insisted. “My goal is that we don’t get to the point where we have to put you to sleep.”

The patient concurred. “I don’t want to be intubated, be in a coma, not knowing when you are going to wake up,” he said.

Intubations can be traumatic for everyone involved. A patient who sobbed when he was put to sleep remained sedated in the ICU nearly two weeks later.

“You could see he was terrified,” Bombard recalled. “It was awful.”
___
Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Stop global warming! Climate change is baking the earth - Emergency!

I never thought I'd see the Australian rainforest burning. What will it take for us to wake up to the climate crisis? Joëlle Gergis

This is playing out much faster than many scientists ever imagined...

"Right now there are about 80 fires in Queensland and a further 60 blazes raging through the Australian state of New South Wales..."

These days as a climate scientist, the line of separation between the research I do in my professional life and the events unfolding in the world at large is growing ever thinner.

The extreme events that our community has been talking about for decades are now becoming part of our lived experience, season after season, year after year across the entire planet. What we are seeing play out now is much faster than many of us ever imagined.

Barely a week after sweltering through an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author meeting, discussing the UN group’s sixth global climate assessment report during an unseasonable European heatwave, it’s been surreal to return home to find much of Australia’s eastern seaboard engulfed in an unprecedented bush fires crisis. In spring.

Right now there are about 80 fires in Queensland and a further 60 blazes raging through New South Wales. The maps show the east coast terrifyingly lit up like a grotesque Christmas tree. Many of these fires are burning out of control as the relentlessly gusty winds ground the firefighting aircraft needed to bring the blazes under control.

Australia’s second-warmest January to August on record has baked the landscape dry, turning usually wet rain forests into fuel under catastrophic bush fires conditions.

All of this comes off the back of summer of 2018-2019, which was Australia’s warmest on record. Extraordinarily, we broke the previous 2012-2013 record by a margin of almost 1C (33.8F), with 206 new records set across the country in 2018-2019.

The heat was particularly extreme in NSW (New South Wales), where monthly mean temperatures in January were 5.86°C (42.54F) above average, making it the state’s hottest January on record by more than 2°C (35.6F).

Just to be crystal clear: these record-breaking conditions are all signals of the warming trend we have been experiencing in Australia since the start of the Bureau of Meteorology’s records in 1910. Nine of Australia’s 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, and that long-term trend shows no sign of turning around any time soon.

As a scientist, what I find particularly disturbing about the current conditions is that world heritage rainforest areas such as the Lamington national park in the Gold Coast hinterland are now burning.

This region of eastern Australia is part of the Gondwana rain forests of Australia, which contains the largest remaining stands of subtropical rain forest in the world, and the most significant areas of warm temperate rain forest in the country.

These usually moss-drenched forests are packed with the oldest elements of the world’s ferns, and primitive plant families dating back to the Jurassic era, some 200m to 145m years ago.

It is shocking to see such extreme and widespread fire weather conditions so early in the spring. In fact, this year the bush fire season actually started in winter, two months earlier than normal. Most alarmingly, some of these fires are occurring in subtropical and coastal areas that don’t usually burn.

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise, given about 98% of NSW and 65% of Queensland is currently drought affected. Many regional towns like Stanthorpe are coming close to running out of water, having to resort to trucking in supplies to avoid water shortages. And now, even more water is needed to fight the blazes bearing down on regions already struggling with severe drought conditions.

Although these remarkable rain forests have clung on since the age of the dinosaurs, searing heat and lower rainfall is starting to see these wet areas dry out for longer periods of the year, increasing bush fire risk in these precious ecosystems.

It has been hard to watch the news coverage of these exceptionally rare rainforests burning. Just like the dying off of 50% of the Great Barrier Reef, the potential loss of these areas is something I never thought I would witness in my lifetime.

The world has justifiably been grieving the recent accelerated destruction of the Amazon, but fewer Australians appreciate our own ecological disaster unfolding on our doorstep.

The Gondwana rain forests of Australia are evolutionary relics that have immeasurable conservation value to the global community. If rapid climate change destabilizes the cool and wet conditions needed for these ancient rain forests to survive, they may be lost to humanity forever.

Extreme events over decades are now are becoming a part of our lived experience, season after season, year after year across the entire planet.’ Photograph: Regi Varghese/EPA

Although there are natural seasonal fluctuations in the Indian and Southern Ocean that are influencing the dry and windy conditions we are currently experiencing, all of Australia’s weather and climate variability is now occurring in a world that is 1°C warmer than it was since pre-industrial times.

The human fingerprint on Australian temperatures has been clearly detected since 1950. This means that all natural variability is now being modified by human influences on the climate system, leading to changes in observed climate variability and extremes.

Since the 1970s, there has been an increase in extreme fire weather, and a longer fire season, across large parts of the country.

Under the world’s business-as-usual emissions scenario we are currently on, Australia’s average temperature will typically increase 4°C by the end of the century. To be blunt, the catastrophic fire weather conditions we are experiencing now will become increasingly common as the planet continues to warm.

It’s clear to me that the extreme events we are experiencing right now in Australia and all over the world, are a sign of things to come. Events that were considered extreme in today’s climate will become average in the future as records continue to be broken and the “new normal” emerges.

What we expect to see in our future climate is playing out right now, not decades in the future. As we begin to drift away from the safe shores of historical variability, the only certainty is that life in the “new normal” will be outside the range of human experience.

All of this begs the obvious question: what will it take for Australians to wake up to the climate crisis we now face?

The harsh reality is that this event is likely to be forgotten once the fires are finally out and the media interest has moved on.

Despite being one of the worst bush fires in Australian history, alarmingly, the Victorian Black Saturday bush fires of 2009, which killed 173 people, destroyed around 2,000 homes and incinerated millions of plants and animals, didn’t serve as a wake-up call.

The deeper we sink into denial, the more we commit ourselves to a reality where our children learn about environmental icons such as the Great Barrier Reef and our magnificent rain forests through history books, instead of being able to experience their wonder for themselves.

Choosing to turn away from this moment to act will be the ultimate betrayal of future generations.

Dr Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer based at the Australian National University. She is a lead author of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report, and an expert adviser to the Climate Council.  (As the crisis escalates…)

Nearly 1,500 deaths linked to French heat waves:  CNN- A pair of heat waves in France are linked to the deaths of 1,435 people in the summer of 2019, by the country's health ministry.
Two bouts of record-setting heat hit France and other parts of Europe from June 24 to July 7, and July 21 to July 27, 2019. 

In fact, the French Health Ministry said in a news release that the death rate during the two heat waves was 9.1% percent higher than usual. France and much of Europe saw record-breaking temperatures this summer. France recorded its highest-ever recorded temperature -- 45.9 degrees Celsius (114.6 Fahrenheit !) -- on June 28 in the southern town of Gallargues-le-Montueux, according to the French national weather service.

What to do when Donald Trump orders you out of China? (Oh paaaaleeze!)

Excerpts from the Bonner Report! Bonner and Partners

"Herewith a confession: We have an office in Beijing. And we have been ordered by the president to pack up and leave. What to do? Stay tuned…"~ Bill Bonner 

Chosen One

The chosen one Church of the Donald!

Writing from Poitou, France (Bonner) ~ POTUS (aka tRump!) told the world that he is the “chosen one” to deal with the China issue (whatever the issue is…), and then he tweeted a proclamation…

Henceforth, American businesses are “ordered” to withdraw from China, and they shall have no truck with the Middle Kingdom, unless and until, of course, their lobbyists pay off the appropriate Deep State fixer.

Then, over the weekend, Mr. Trump let fly that he had regrets about his China trade war.

The press corps was shocked; this was the first time Mr. Trump showed a hint of doubt or reflection.

But a White House press secretary quickly clarified that the president regrets not having hit the Chinese harder!
Divine Right

One of the remarkable features of modern American democracy is that a president may win with the support of only about a third of adults… but then he feels entitled to tell the other two thirds what to do.

Back in the days of kings and queens, a monarch justified his power by claiming a “divine right” – given to him by God.

Donald Trump "the chosen one" syndrome

Now, he asserts a more profane source of power, a majority vote.

On the evidence, the chosen ones of democracy are no better leaders than the accidents of birth that gave us the Sun King (Louis XIV) or Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria.

Venezuela elected its nutty government; Argentina’s recent election led to an immediate 50% drop in stock prices. Hitler won 44% of the popular vote in 1932. (Trump got 46% in 2016.)

It was a genetic lottery that gave us King Charles VI of France, who refused to bathe and believed he was made of glass, and Ferdinand I of Austria, who reportedly never opened his mouth except to ask for dumplings.

But the ballot box gave us George Dubya Bush; in apparent revenge for an attack on New York, he started a $5 trillion war against a country that had nothing to do with it.
Murderous Mischief

As far as we know, the voters have never rejected a candidate because he was too stupid, too ignorant, or too malevolent.

Instead, they are like turkeys voting to make Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Nor does there seem to be any limit to the zany and murderous mischief a leader will get up to.

Stalin personally approved the lists of thousands who would be rounded up and sent to the gulags.

And now, Trump subcontracts the work of keeping 500,000 people on the “sanctioned” list, where – without the benefit of formal charges or their day in court – they are cut off from travel, credit, and commerce.

More Fake Money

This brings us to the latest escalation of the trade war with China.

Mr. Trump’s main reelection selling point is the economy. People think it is doing well. And to maintain that illusion, Mr. Trump needs to put more fake money into the system.

How?

Another tax cut? There is no way Nancy Pelosi’s House is going to agree to another tax cut before the election. The Democrats want the economy to be sour in 2020… not robust.

Big infrastructure projects? Again, the Democrats will do nothing to boost the economy before the election. They will hope to win in 2020 and then roll out their own boondoggles.

Rate cuts? Yes, rate cuts can put some silicone in the sagging flesh of an aging bull market, but member banks and speculators can already borrow at or near the inflation rate. A few basis points lower is not going to make much difference to the economy.

Also, Federal Reserve Chief Jay Powell is beginning to show some backbone.

Again last week, the president blamed stock market volatility on the Fed. But Powell fired back that the trade war was the cause.
Mock Battle

No tax cut, no big boondoggles, not much from the Fed… What does that leave?

The China trade war!
This is a battle Trump needs to win. And wait… what’s this? This morning, Mr. Trump says trade talks will resume! Stocks are going back up!

Who could have seen that coming?

So, we stick with our prediction: Trump will not go Full Retard. Instead, he will settle up with the Chinese before the 2020 election.

A further prediction: That won’t stop a recession or a crash on Wall Street.

Regards,



Bill

P.S. Herewith a confession: We have an office in Beijing. And we have been ordered by the president to pack up and leave. What to do? Stay tuned…

President Macron ~ say whaaaa? En Anglais!

Love the humorist Andy Borowitz!  He points out that President Macron of France can speak French and English!

Satire from The Borowitz ReportAmericans Startled by Spectacle of President Who Can Speak English! En Anglais, s'il vous plait!

President Emmanuel Macron of France visited Washington DC on April 24-25, 2018.

French Tri-Couleurs ~ Red, White and Blue drapeau

WASHINGTON, DC- (The Borowitz Report) An echo from The New Yorker—Americans who were watching television on Wednesday morning witnessed the startling spectacle of an English-speaking President, viewers have confirmed.

En anglais! Bravo!

All of the major cable news networks interrupted their regularly scheduled programs to cover the phenomenon, as a man who was identified as “President” spoke in complete, grammatically correct English sentences with no visible sign of strain or discomfort.

Just minutes into the telecast, thousands of viewers called the networks to inquire if they were witnessing a hoax.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Carol Foyler, a viewer in Akron, Ohio, said. “It had to be special effects or something.”

While the spectacle might have appeared jarring to many, cable news insiders reported that the networks had in fact aired several hundred speeches by an English-speaking President between the years 2009 and 2017.

Crises in Europe - international intelligence possibly caught off guard

Another international crises with a coup d'etat in Turkey today, on Friday  This follows the horrible news about a terrorist attack in Niece France where, tragically, at lest 84 innocent poeple were killed by a truck loaded with explosives on Bastille Day, when families were celebrating the holiday.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey now victim of a military coup d'etat

Of course, many unknown facts remain to be revealed about both incidents, the fact is, these breakdowns in French and Turkish security, are troublesome because international intelligence is obviously unable to keep up with the changing world order.

In my opinion, the root cause of these intelligence failures must have something to do with our international inability to fund cohesive and coordinated intelligence operations. Obviously communicatons channelsbetween intelligence communities are non-existant or there would be some kind of response to these tragedies other than words of condolence.

Perhaps funding for intelligence operations like the Central Intelligence Agency are problematic especially because the US Congress will not relieve the impact of the stupid budget sequester.

Likewise, while the US is deeply engaged in war, ever since the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq and the failed Operation Iraqi Freedom, the US Congess has never declared war.  In fact, if Congress did the right thing, the war would be declared and funding for the military with intelligence operations would have to be funded. Of course, this means increases in taxes and lifting the budget sequester.

Turkey's crises is now "America's crises" because so much of our nation's offensive against terrorism in Syria and the war in Iraq depends on base operations in Turkey.

"So, now what?"  So many unknowns.

Obviously, joining the uninformed and lacking facts, my hope is for the US Congress to support our international intelligence community and the American military, to affirm that our political and anti-terrorist efforts are supported around the world.

It's urgent for our international intelligence communities to remain viligent and to communicate responsibly. They must respond cohesively to growing instability and terrorism with the funding needed to do their essential jobs.

What Putin knows about evil ISIS and how will he help to destroy them?

Although the French government announced the destruction of an evil ISIS training camp in Syria, the intelligence for this successful air attack had to have been received from highly reliable sources. I suggest this air strike was given a path to success because Russia was fully complicit in allowing it to happen. In other words, Russia's President Putin, obviously, allowed evil ISIS to conduct training in Syria, but then, he decided to destroy it.  

France did the job.

In fact, Putin admitted in an excellent 60 Minutes interview, with Charlie Rose, that his government knows everything about what's going on in the Ukraine because of his network of informants. Well, in my opinion, Putin's "network" of informants extends beyond the Ukraine. It's evident Russia knows all about what's going on in Syria, as well as in the Ukraine and other countries, too.  

It's difficult to believe this successful ISIS destruction would've happened without Russia's knowledge and, supposedly, support.

PARIS — Six French jet fighters targeted and destroyed an Islamic State training camp in eastern Syria, President Francois Hollande said Sunday, making good on a promise to go after the group that the president has said is planning attacks against several countries, including France.

The airstrikes were the first in Syria by France as it expands its mission against IS.

“The camp was totally destroyed,” Hollande said Sunday after arriving at the United Nations, before the start of a major development summit and the U.N. General Assembly bringing together world leaders.

“We’re sure there were no casualties” among civilians, he added.

The French president’s office announced the strikes, without details, in a statement hours earlier.

“Our nation will strike each time our national security is at stake,” the statement said.

Hollande told reporters the strikes on the training camp, and others to come, were aimed at “protecting our territory, cutting short terrorist actions, acting in legitimate defense.”

Hollande said more strikes “could take place in the coming weeks if necessary.” The targets were identified in earlier French reconnaissance flights and with information provided by the U.S.-led coalition.

JACQUES BRINON/AP
French President Francois Hollande ordered an airstrike against Islamic State militants Sunday morning as national defense. (What nation or team of informants led to this specific strike?)

France has carried out 215 airstrikes against ISIS extremists in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition since last year, the Defense Ministry said earlier this month. 

But it previously held back on engaging in Syria, citing concern over playing into Assad’s hand and the need for such action to be covered by international law. (Putin has no respect for international law.)

Officials now evoke “legitimate defense” as spelled out in the U.N. Charter to support strikes in Syria.

France has already been attacked by extremists claiming ties to ISIS. Hollande, who has ruled out sending ground troops into Syria, has cited “proof” of plans for attacks on France and the growing danger to Syrian civilians, with a large chunk of the population fleeing in a massive exodus.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France was going after ISIS “sanctuaries where those who want to hit France are trained.”

The goal of the strikes is to “slow, break, stop if possible the penetration of Daesh,” Gen. Vincent Desportes said on the iTele TV station, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

During the Charlie Rose interview, Vladimir Putin used charm to try to disarm the questions he didn't particularly like, but it didn't work. Although Putin spoke knowledgeably during the interview, he also didn't tell us anything we don't already know. 

To end, Putin knows a lot about what's going on in Syria with President Assad and evil ISIS. When Putin decides it's time for Assad to go, the evil Syrian dictator will be gone. Assad, who's disastrous leadership has been responsible for the evacuation of half of his nation's population, will eventually wind up with a mysterious illness, or some other unforeseen mishap.

When Putin appeared on 60 Minutes, he was showing the world that he is in charge of what's going on in Syria. If America wants ISIS destroyed, then Putin is likely the evil dictator to do the job by calling on his network of intelligence.  

Quite likely, it's not coincidental to have Putin appear on 60 Minutes, the day before his scheduled speech at the United Nations in New York City, on Monday September 28, while France announced the destruction of an ISIS training camp in Syria.  

Heroism against terrorism

"By their courage, they saved lives," President François Hollande said. "They gave us an example of what is possible to do in these kinds of situations."

PARIS — President François Hollande of France on Monday awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest award, to three Americans and a Briton for their role in stopping a gunman on a high-speed train traveling to Paris from Amsterdam on Friday.

The three Americans — Airman First Class Spencer Stone, 23; Alek Skarlatos, 22, a specialist in the Oregon National Guard; and their friend Anthony Sadler, 23 — received the honor in the gilded halls of the Élysée Palace, where they were joined by Chris Norman, 62, a British consultant.

“One need only know that Ayoub El Khazzani was in possession of 300 rounds of ammunition and firearms to understand what we narrowly avoided, a tragedy, a massacre,” Mr. Hollande said at the ceremony, referring to the Moroccan suspect in the attack, who is in police custody but denies plans to stage a terrorist attack.

Although the world of terrorism has proven nearly impossible to confront on any coordinated international level, the response by heroes who "see something-do something" may be another way of changing the dynamic of this ferociously heinous violence.

As Americans remember how heroes on Flight 96 took charge of terorist hyjackers on September 11, there have been multiple other occasions when alert citizens have averted impending disasters.  

In France, a team of responders who were on a high speed train from Paris to Amsterdam, subdued a heavily armed Muslim man who has now claimed he was only going to rob the train. Really? A lone Muslim wanted to rob a train?  Well, thankfully, he won't rob anymore lives in his delusional frenzies because he was prevented from using his arsenal of weapons because of citizen heroes.

France has already honored these heroic responders with the Legion of Honor Medal.

France honors 3 Americans, Briton for stopping train attack
By Faith Karimi and Nic Robertson, CNN

(CNN)They grew up together, fought off an attacker together and accepted a nation's honor together.

Three days after they pounced and subdued a gunman aboard a packed train, American childhood friends Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos got the Legion of Honor -- France's highest recognition. Fellow British passenger Chris Norman, who helped tackle the gunman, also received the award during Monday's ceremony at the Élysée Palace.

Americans are becoming more agressive in our ability to "see something-say something-do something", by becoming hyper vigilant to the threat of terorist attacks. We're also brave, in that we haven't deterred any activities due to threats of terrorism.

In fact, Americans are probably, unknowingly,  a "citizens" army, because it's likely many heroes have prevented carnage, as a result of our increased awareness.

Although the heroes who subdued the gunman on the high speed European train are rightly honored by the French, their actions are also a warning to other terrorists who lurk in the nefarious shadows. Citizens have role models of heroism, and they will take whatever actions are necessary to prevent terrorism from consuming our world.