Sunday Roundup - March 23, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at Ukraine and Crimea, the new Cosmos series, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and the  collapse of industrial civilization.

Ukraine
The US and Russia traded sanctions on Thursday and the EU is mulling additional sanctions against Russia. The new sanctions have been prompted by the Crimean vote to leave Ukraine and Russia's subsequent annexation of it.   Le Monde Diplomatique gives some background on the protests that led to the ouster of the Moscow-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych and discusses the aftermath.  "Who were the protesters and what were their goals?...The protest movement emerged in November last year, after Yanukovych suspended negotiations on a free trade agreement with the European Union."  The pro-Western protesters were soon joined by "several nationalist groups... and... ultra-radical, non-democratic movements without European sympathies...Dormant during the Soviet era, the nationalist movement reappeared after independence in 1991, when the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) was formed. Until the early 2000s, the SNPU was a marginal, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist organization."  Then the SNPU changed significantly. "It shed its fascist trappings ...in 2004, renaming itself Svoboda (freedom) and abandoning its neo-Nazi badge, the Wolfsangel (wolf hook), in favour of a more neutral symbol."  Svoboda's nationalist and anti-system stance won it 10% of the vote in 2012.  Svoboda wants to end Russian influence in the Ukraine.  Its strong nationalist stance translates into a foreign policy that wishes "to see Ukraine join NATO, rearm with nuclear weapons and leave all post-Soviet cooperative organisations."  Another opposition group gaining in popularity after the street clashes is Pravy Sektor, which supports "none of the opposition parties, especially not Svoboda, disappointed by its 'appeals for calm and negotiation with the authorities.' ... Svoboda’s success over the past few years and the presence of neo-fascist groups such as Pravy Sektor in Independence Square are signs of a crisis in Ukrainian society...Though Independence Square will go down in history as an extraordinary example of collective and popular action, the political outcome is as yet unclear. Ukraine is in need of a new force that truly serves the people and transcends its many social and political divides."

Map of Ukraine with Crimean Peninsula highlighted (adapted from ESL-in-Canada's website)

Crimea
Crimea has a Russian-ethnic population and they voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in a referendum last Sunday.  Western nations have declared the referendum and annexation illegal.  Juan Cole at Informed Comment agrees but notes that "Crimea had been Russian territory since the late 18th century and was only attached to Ukraine by Khrushchev in the 1950s, at a time when Russia and Ukraine were part of the same country. Whatever the status of Sunday’s referendum, it seems likely that if Crimeans could vote fairly and freely, a majority would probably accede to Russia."  Cole notes that "Russia’s annexation of Crimea is among the few significant territorial acquisitions since the end of World War II by one country from another, more or less by force. The only clear parallel... is the Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territories in 1967."  Cole concludes that Israel's steps in occupying the Palestinian territories "are more egregious than Russia’s incorporation of Crimea. No local populations in any of those areas would vote to accede to Israel....Unlike with Mr. Putin, the US has not imposed sanctions on Israel for its territorial aggrandizement, and instead has de facto supported it."

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
If you enjoy good science, you need to watch the new Cosmos series on Fox and National Geographic TV. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is an updated re-imagining of Carl Sagan's 1980 series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.  Hard to believe that the original Cosmos aired more than 30 years ago.  Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts the new series, which began Sunday, March 9. "According to National Geographic, it was the largest global rollout of a TV series ever, appearing on 220 channels in 181 countries and 45 languages."  Mother Jones discusses Tyson's Inquiring Minds podcast and notes the contrast between him and Carl Sagan in debating the anti-science (or bad science) forces.  "Carl Sagan himself often took strong stands on science-based political issues of the day. He clashed with the Reagan administration over arms control and the 'Star Wars' program, and the debate over his ideas about 'nuclear winter' served as a kind of preview of the current battle over global warming. 'Carl Sagan would debate people on all manner of issues,' said Tyson.'And I don't have the time or the energy or the interest in doing so. As an educator, I'd rather just get people thinking straight in the first place, so I don't have to then debate them later on.'...In other words, Tyson's view appears to be that in an age rife with science denial, Cosmos rises above that fray by instilling in us wonder about the nature of the cosmos and our quest to understand it. And given the breathtaking quality and stunningly wide distribution of the show, there's much to say for that approach. " 

Image is from NatGeoTV.com

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks
"Right wing Israeli officials ....expressed rage [last weekend] at US Secretary of State John Kerry for saying that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should “drop” his demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state."  Both the Arab League and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have "rejected Netanyahu’s diction. It is a red line for them. Insisting on it will mean no agreement."  To agree to Netanyahu's statement would jeopardize the Palestinian right of return.  In a March 12 speech, Abbas explained that "his commitment to the negotiations was time-bound, for a nine-month period, while Kerry tried to hammer out an agreement, especially on security and borders."  Abbas laid out the Palestinian position in the negotiations - East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, complete Israeli withdrawal from "the West Bank or from territories equivalent to the extent of the West Bank as it existed in 1967", and compensation and a right of return for Palestinians displaced in 1948 and 1967.  "This speech may help explain why President Obama told PM Netanyahu that the US can’t protect Israel if there is no agreement. Mahmoud Abbas has not put going to the International Criminal Court off the agenda, he just postponed it for nine months. The nine months is expiring. If the Kerry negotiations crash and burn, pressure will build on Abbas and other Palestine officials to go to the ICC." [Informed Comment, March 16]

Industrial Civilization's Collapse?
The Guardian's Earth Insight blog on March 14 had this ominous lead: "A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution."  Examining the collapse of civilizations through history, the project identified "the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy." These factors can result in civilizational collapse when they result in the aforementioned resource exploitation and wealth maldistribution.  "Modelling a range of different scenarios, [lead researcher Safa] Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions 'closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid.'... However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation."  They write: "Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."




Links
You can watch full episodes of Cosmos here.

Sunday September 15 Round-Up: Voyager 1 Has Left the Building

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the mainstream US media.  Today's subject is NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially leaving the solar system for interstellar space - the first man-made object to do so.  Sources include NASA, La Repubblica, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel.

 

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech - Artist's conception of Voyager 1 entering interstellar space.

 

 

This is an historic moment.  Mankind, or at least one of man's creations, has officially reached interstellar space.  Recent data analysis shows that the event - Voyager 1 leaving the heliosphere, that region of space dominated by the sun, actually occurred about a year ago on August 25, 2012.  Launched in the late summer of 1977, the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft have traversed the solar system, adding immensely to our knowledge - especially of the outer planets.  They are our "Hello World!" to the universe, carrying gold LP's with information about humanity to the stars.

[NASA, Sep. 12, 2013]
Referring to the article published Thursday in the journal Science, NASA reports: "New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident." Interstellar space is dominated by the plasma, or ionized gas, that was ejected by the death of nearby giant stars millions of years ago.  The environment inside our solar bubble is dominated by the plasma exhausted by our sun, known as the solar wind.  Voyager project scientist Ed Stone notes: "The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking -- 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are."  The joy in this accomplishment is evident in the words of NASA's John Grunsfeld: "Voyager has boldly gone where no probe has gone before, marking one of the most significant technological achievements in the annals of the history of science, and adding a new chapter in human scientific dreams and endeavors...Perhaps some future deep space explorers will catch up with Voyager, our first interstellar envoy, and reflect on how this intrepid spacecraft helped enable their journey.”

[Der Spiegel, Sept 12]
Before launching into a discussion of the challenges of the technical data analysis, our playful friends at Der Spiegel ask: "What do the rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry, the exceptional pianist Glenn Gould and ...Austrian politician Kurt Waldheim [have] in common? They along with other people have been  immortalized on records and have been racing through space away from earth at approximately 60,000 kilometers per hour for 36 years on board two very special spacecraft....The so-called Golden Records aboard the "Voyager" twin probes are meant as messages to alien life forms - even if it would be unlikely that they will ever play."  Hmmm...somewhat pessimistic, aren't they?

[Le Monde, September 12]
Le Monde notes that although the expected life of the Voyager probes was originally estimated to be five years, the probes are still functioning and transmitting data to Earth. "The data collected by the probes make this the most successful scientific exploratory mission of the solar system in space history."  Voyagers 1 and 2 are really only at the start of what could turn out to be a very long journey.  "Scientists believe Voyager 1 and 2...will be in the vicinity of other stars and about two light years (one light year is equivalent to 9461 billion kilometers) from the Sun [in] forty thousand years... 'Nothing can stop the run of  the Voyager 1 spacecraft, it will continue its journey for a very long time, probably billions of years', predicts astrophysicist Marc Swisdal.

[La Repubblica, (TV), Sept 13]
Repubblica TV has a nice video presentation (in English) on the historic milestone, including the transmitted sounds of interstellar space.  They also note the assist given by the Sun with the data analysis that finally confirmed the event.  "The confirmation came through a 'help' just arrived from the Sun, responsible for a giant eruption in the direction of the area where the probe is traveling.  The vibrations of the plasma around Voyager, generated by the expulsion of solar particles..." were consistent with models of what would happen as the spacecraft entered interstellar space.


Voyager's "Pale Blue Dot"

[Photo is from the Cornell University website.]

Above is a re-oriented version of the famous image of "the pale blue dot" photographed in 1990 by Voyager 1 from beyond the orbit of Neptune, some 3.7 billion miles away.  The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan. [Wikipedia]  Two years before he died, in his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Sagan wrote: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar', every 'supreme leader', every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

 

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