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by John Feffer the burning Amazon rainforest. (Shutterstock)
in the U.S., UK, and Brazil are laying bare their nihilistic roots
and full
destructive potential...
...proved once again that the United
States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil would be better off with no
leaders rather than the dubious characters that currently pretend to
govern these countries.
They are only interested in doing as much damage as
they can before they are ultimately dragged out of office.
He has promised to sever the UK's relationship with the
European Union by October 31 even if it means doing so without a
deal that would mitigate the pain of separation.
A No-Deal Brexit would make for a blood-curdling horror film. Just slap a Ghostface mask on the British prime minister, give him a knife to cut the umbilicus with Europe, and voila:
Johnson's latest tactic to get what he wants is to suspend Parliament for five weeks this fall to limit debate on alternatives to his doomsday option.
He hopes to make it impossible for
parliament to pass even emergency legislation banning a no-deal Brexit. Believe it or not, the British system allows for such
maneuvers - so Queen Elizabeth had to give her blessing to the
suspension.
Not so in the UK, where even conservatives are up in arms over Johnson's silent coup. After the prime minister's announcement of the suspension, the government's whip in the House of Lords resigned, as did the head of the Scottish Conservative Party.
Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major, meanwhile, has pilloried Johnson and joined a legal challenge to the suspension.
This week, Johnson lost his one-vote majority in parliament when Conservative member Philip Lee defected to the Liberal Democrats even as the prime minister was addressing the chamber.
Most parliamentary members, including quite a few Conservatives, oppose a no-deal exit.
No matter:
After losing a vote that will allow parliament to introduce legislation to delay Brexit, Johnson expelled 21 dissidents, including a number of former ministers and one grandson of Winston Churchill.
Now Johnson is talking about holding a snap election in mid-October.
The Conservatives are comfortably outpolling Labor, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens. However, if all the Remain forces unite against Johnson, they could eke out a victory.
But Johnson could also promise an election for October 14 and then, surprise, postpone it until after Halloween, making Brexit a 'fait accompli'.
Johnson once said,
Determined to do the wrong thing even though he knows it's wrong, Johnson is steering the United Kingdom straight into an iceberg.
Nigel Farage is his chief navigator, and the rest of the country is clustered on the bow, bracing for impact.
With a second referendum, wiser heads could wrest control of the helm and prevent disaster, but Johnson is doing everything he can to fast-track Brexit on the principle that it doesn't matter where you're going as long as you get there fast.
Bolsonaro Fans the Flames
Idiocy loves company...
Jair Bolsonaro styles himself the Trump of the tropics. The comparison is apt. Some future poet, in describing the inferno of the present, will stuff Trump, Bolsonaro, and Johnson feet first into the mouth of Satan in the ninth circle.
Having stoked the fires of climate change, Bolsonaro will richly deserve such an afterlife.
As The Economist points out, Bolsonaro as a candidate…
As a result of Bolsonaro's hands-off policy, deforestation in the Amazon has been out of control this year.
Emboldened by their president's actions, Brazilian farmers organized a "fire day" to clear land for planting.
The number of fires in the Amazon nearly doubled this year over the same period last year.
It's not as if the world wasn't warned. Time magazine put the burning Amazon on its cover exactly 30 years ago!
The impact this time around is straight-forward. The Amazon is a huge carbon sink. Burn it up and global warming will accelerate. There will also be irreversible loss of biodiversity.
And the upside? More soybeans, which Brazil can sell to China because the latter is no longer buying the harvests of U.S. farmers.
Oh, and more profits into the pockets of Bolsonaro's friends in the industries that are paving the paradise of the Amazon and putting up a parking lot.
Trump Trashes the Planet
Donald Trump is a moth that can't stop itself from flying directly at the flame of fame (or, more accurately, the inferno of infamy...).
He could stay off Twitter, but instead his tweets piss off one group of voters after another. He could stay away from the press, but his lies, gaffes, and personal attacks are amplified throughout the media universe.
Arguably, this is a strategy to solidify the base and reinforce Trump's reputation as an anti-establishment gadfly.
But there's no political strategy behind his trade war with China and his impulsive threats last month to further escalate tariffs on Chinese goods. The sectoral damage to his base worries his political advisors:
Worse would be a more general economic recession brought on by this needless trade war, which would doom the president's reelection chances.
Yes, the U.S. economy is due for a "correction," particularly because of Trump's tax cuts and over-the-top spending.
But if Trump played it safe, he could have probably postponed the recession until after the 2020 election. Instead, he's doing everything he can to ensure that it makes landfall smack dab during the presidential race.
Trump isn't just self-destructive. He continued over the last couple weeks to destroy U.S. alliances, most recently by expressing interest in buying Greenland from Denmark.
Greenland? Really...?!
Perhaps Trump was making an indirect acknowledgement of the effects of climate change, attempting a land grab up north to secure a spot for Ivanka and Jared's summer palace.
Meanwhile, Trump is powering full speed ahead toward climate apocalypse. The administration's latest move is to remove restrictions on methane emissions, a more potent contributor to global warming than carbon dioxide. The effort is designed to reduce costs for oil and gas companies.
But guess what?
Even some of the top energy companies are opposed to Trump's move.
After all, Exxon, BP, and others are trying to position natural gas as part of the solution to climate change, and the Trump administration is busy undermining this argument.
The methane restrictions that Trump is trying to unravel, date back to the Obama administration.
But the current administration wants to tear up much older agreements as well. The Clinton administration protected Alaska's Tongass National Forest from logging and mining.
But Trump wants to open up this 16.7 million-acre sanctuary to the usual suspects in the extractive industries. This is no small land parcel.
It represents half the world's temperate rainforest.
Yes, all three will eventually flame out.
But not before they've scorched the earth clean...
An environmentalist told journalist Alan Weisman before the 2016 elections that she was considering voting for Trump.
The philosophy of "things have to get worse before they get better" has sometimes worked out in the past.
But that's the past...
Unless we stop him, we'll be rooting around in the post-Trump ashes in vain for the pieces. The house will be gone. And there will be nothing we can salvage to rebuild it...
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