Dear Friends,
What a week!
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been nominated to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. After a barrage of what I would call false claims about Kennedy, things are turning. Yesterday a Democrat Senator, Cory Booker spoke very favorably about Kennedy's plan to take carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, etc. out of our food and water in a press conference. It appears that the Democrats are starting to accept that they are entering a very different world.
Immediately after the election, there were efforts to initiate widespread demonstrations against the Trump win. I got a text message asking me to attend a zoom meeting about this. It didn't pan out. Only small demonstrations happened.
The Democrats seem to have understood that President Trump will be able to install his choices for the cabinet as recess appointments, even if the Senate does not consent to his nominees, and so perhaps they should hold their powder.
We do have some Democrat leaders and UK's Starmer who are using President Biden's incapacity to launch long-range US and UK-made missiles into Russia, seemingly to incite a larger conflict. Russia has threatened a nuclear response.
Meantime, over the weekend several important cables were cut between the Nordic countries and Germany and Lithuania, and a Chinese ship is said to be the possible perpetrator. Maybe asymmetric or economic warfare will be Russia's response. People in the US seem to think Putin knows that cooler heads will prevail in 60 days and will cut us some slack. Europe is less sanguine.
From the Guardian, a mouthpiece for the CIA, we hear the following:
European ministers discussed Russia’s asymmetric warfare during a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, where the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom accused Russia in a joint statement of “systematically attacking European security architecture”.
Speaking in Washington, the US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said: “Generally, we are incredibly concerned about hybrid warfare conducted by Russia both in Europe and around the world, and its something we have been in close coordination with our European allies and other allies and partners around the world.” Referring to the recent sabotage to two under-sea fibre-optic communication cables in the Baltic Sea, Miller added that Russia would be “held accountable” for further such actions.
Russia may choose to delay a further escalation ahead of the inauguration of Donald Trump, who has threatened to cut aid to Ukraine and broker a peace deal that is strongly expected to favour Russia.
The game of "chicken" that the US and UK embarked on this week is obviously a foolhardy expression of nuclear bravado, decided on by whom? This rash effort, coupled with Biden's declining abilities, could lead to the House embarking on impeachment proceedings to end Biden's presidency. No one thinks this was Biden's idea. It must have been his handlers' idea. Would Kamala Harris be agreeable to playing at nuclear brinksmanship if she briefly became the president?
So as not to end on such a chilling note, perhaps the media are turning, too. Comcast, the parent company for MSNBC (which hosts Rachel Maddow and "Morning Joe" with Mika Brzezinski and her husband and co-host Joe Scarborough) announced it is selling MSNBC and its other cable TV channels. Mika and Joe just went to Mar a Lago to speak to (their former friend) Trump after a 7-year hiatus in which Trump was regularly maligned.
The yearly COP29 meeting on Climate Change is happening now. It sought commitments from wealthy countries to give much more than 100 billion dollars yearly to low and middle income countries for climate remediation efforts. What would it take? How would it be spent? Who knows. Estimates ranged from $1-5 trillion dollars a year. Previously, most of the climate change money has been given to poorer countries as loans, not grants.
From Reuters on Nov. 20 (COP29 ends on the 22nd):
While talks on finance have been slow, those on speeding up efforts to cut climate-damaging emissions are proving as tough.
After agreeing a landmark deal to transition away from fossil fuels in Dubai last year, countries had so far failed to agree on language that would take that work forward in Baku.
OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais used a speech at the summit to say crude oil and natural gas were a gift from God, echoing words of Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, whose opening speech hit out at Western critics of the industry.
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to hold the meeting in a nation where the majority of its GDP comes from oil.
Let's hope next week is calmer and cheerier!
Meryl
