11 04 25    Turkish trash and the global supply chain

There is not much doubt about the headline for this year's international news in the return of Donald Trump to the Whitehouse: whilst on the one hand I think I probably do understand him at least as a personality type, on the other it is clearly disturbing to many that he appears to be seeking to overturn a century of Wilsonian internationalism characterising US foreign policy. This ought perhaps not to be viewed as profound as it might seem in that international relations are arguably colder and more hazardous than at any time since the 'Bay of Pigs' with two major conflicts raging in the middle east being enough to stir even a much more stable and predictable figure than Donald Trump to strange and unusual actions: that is without any consideration of other issues such as the endless Chinese drilling around Taiwan (no pun intended). I suppose I do tend to spend more time following the news than most and I think for example it is surprisingly simple assessment of Putin that he is some kind of a college nerd playing at snit's revenge. Donald Trump is arguably some kind of wannabee do gooder who was never quite popular enough for his ego and seems to have some kind of romantic obsession with recreating an idealised version of the US in his youth. I would say he has some trouble facing up to the inadequacies of oversimplified conventional causal explanations for salient social problems; it is rather more plain that he has some kind of obsession with the idea that a liberal establishment is to blame for everything. Many of course cannot simply get their heads around the fact that some problems are simply a fact of life for which there is no realistic remedy like the fact it gets cold in winter and that whilst the pleasant world of the Ivy League is real for some there is another darker side to the ebullient American character as there is in every society.

I think I must have met quite a few such characters over the years even in the comparatively parochial world of east-suffolk and the sort of motivation and impetus he propounds seems rather synonymous with the kind of societal frustration expressed in a 2004 film I watched some few years ago now called 'The Village' in which traumatised contemporary crime victims create the illusion of an idealised early 19th century for their children. In pursuing his agenda at home and abroad, it remains to be seen, in seeking to emphasise presidential authority as a tool how much of his antics will prove to be bluster and what their consequences might be. He seems to be making plenty of enemies at home as well as abroad and some of the Muskrat's pronouncements are bad enough to alienate all sorts of people who want to see effective and well reasoned government.

Within the US it had to be observed, at least from without, that the Democrats either belatedly or ill advisedly changing horses so late in the presidential campaign was never going to augur well for their chances of orchestrating a second consecutive presidency. It seems a shame that this presidential election has arguably exposed a polarisation of opposing visions of society within the US which tends to coalesce into conflicting notions of the US as an extension of anglo-saxon and north western European cultures, and the US as a refuge for the huddled masses of every nation in which respect it seemed that a vision of an almost open border was one policy area that lost many key votes to Trump and the GOP. I thought it a rather amusing comment, in respect of the fact that so much of the campaign had ended up focused on President Biden's increasing feebleness as compared to question marks about Trump's character and personality, that someone had reckoned they "would ruther have a coarpse for President than a moral imbecile like Donald Trump." What might seem therefore to be very much of the remark that it is early days yet and it does remain to be seen if some of his actions and statements are more like a sarcastic sort of attempt to change the dynamics, mechanics and dialogue of a perhaps staid and stale liberal establishment that is no doubt less than completely perfect, than a serious attempt to implement cultural and institutional recidivism, in that eg assertions about getting coal fired power stations running again might be interpreted as a perhaps not entirely unjustified swipe at Chinese ignorance of environmental prerequisites.

I thought President Biden's closing address in which he warned of the dangers of increasingly capable AI in the hands of such powerful oligarchal interests highly appropriate and insightful which perhaps rather underlined some argument that physical fitness might not be such an essential quality for legislative office as moral probity. In analysing the actual facts about Trump's attempts to feign to be some sort of a benevolent dictator being clownish and double talking rather than serious about his contrived reactionary sort of buffoonery, it seems apt to point out that whilst most may know that the US judiciary is less independent than that of the UK, this story by Ed Pilkington for the Guardian on 29 09 24 for example details instances of Trumpist appointees overriding the wishes of prosecutors and at least one victim's family in bundling off scapegoats for execution on the basis of highly questionable evidence which as well as casting the returned Potus in a rather more sinister light, also unfortunately tends to signify deep rooted social problems in a divided society. This story by John Varga for the Express about the impact of US withdrawal from charitable work with HIV victims in Africa also rather undermines the suggestion of benevolence about his dictatorial manner. The extent to which the US is a fractious divided society was clearly shown when riots messily sprang up immediately that the federal government sought to address the need for measures to control Covid with the George Floyd affair painfully symbolising the apparent fact that the American social fabric appeared very vulnerable to instability: from the stories I had noted I think there were probably quite a few similar cases.

My sixth sense tells me that some of what is happening now in respect of a cooling of US relations with nations allied throughout living memory is perhaps something like a knock on psychological after effect of 9/11 rather more than something which might seem dictated by more immediately contemporary events. Notwithstanding that Wilsonian internationalism was arguably always something more like an apology from a nation with a unique historical involvement in slavery and genocide than an otherwise causally reasoned policy, many Americans feel, and obviously not without some justification, that they do contribute much toward health and defence in other nations and continents far from US shores, and the debacle of the attempt to cope with the tragic summary deaths of ordinary civilians about their working day along with large numbers of rescue service personnel, has I think perhaps inflicted deeper scars on the friendly extroversion of the American mindset than may easily be appreciated outside the US, even by those who also speak English as a first language.

This story by Rachel Leingang and Nina Lakhani for the Guardian on 19 03 25 about the repression of environmental lobbyists adds much contextual information about the energy debate in examining a judicial system much more atavistic and allied to commercial interests than most European voters would be likely to consider decent. I thought the Democrats stood on better ground in respect of environmental issues than they did on immigration; the degradation of US rivers to the point where half of them yield inedible fish is something which must offend a lot of otherwise conservative opinion. The activist Stephen Donziger in a complementary article of March 28th goes into more detail in explaining that the case is of international legal significance and not just another localised dispute over some fanciful native-american rights.

As far as environmental issues are of global concern and perhaps in particular respect of Trump's at least superficially irresponsible attitude toward attempts to establish and maintain some consensus Mark Ruffalo's article published by the Guardian on 19 03 25 focuses on the particular dangers of Polyfluoroalkyls which have been the subject of much deservedly negative publicity since they became widely used in manufacturing non stick pans and flame retardants and known as forever chemicals owing to their indestructible nature: I believe they have recently been outlawed in the state of Maine.

It is a good article though much of what it relates is arguably old news insofar as the facts are widely known; the problem unfortunately seems to be that established economic interests are too good at lobbying very real problems into a fictional non-existence. This is for instance among a wealth of contextual information that suggests environments acceptable for life on our planet are undergoing an increasingly existential threat to their long term viability: which in turn is why I am increasingly fascinated by the suggestion much of Trump's superficially disingenuous looking rhetoric is some kind of double talking contrarity on the issue. I mean you really have go to be some kind of gurgling mental defective to really believe anything other than that fossil fuel burning and careless dabbling with mass production chemicals has not engendered an environmental crisis of apocalyptic dimensions.

This article posted on the WWF's European website is already twenty years old and it details some of the findings of what was then a new study into toxic accumulations in free range eggs across 17 countries. Whilst the facts it presents are limited it seems an unvoidable conclusion that these were really serious then, in that e.g. among other things every single egg sampled contained traces of at least three flame retardants; the article furthermore explains why eggs, at least home-grown free-range eggs, are bit like like a 'canary in the coalmine' as far as assessments of local biological and environmental health considerations are concerned. As of 2025 the specific fact that the Dutch public health service has actually taken the issue so seriously as to warn people against consuming food they have produced on their own land may at least serve as a wake up call to many whom have succumbed to the suggestion environmentalists are cranks, and that despite the organised legalistic hostility of established interests, the increasing preoccupation of our media with the intrusion of environmental concerns into our daily lives really does signify a problem which is not only real but increasingly an ineffability which must be somehow confronted: there is after all every reason to imagine that Dutch environmental standards are at least approximately typical of ecological conditions across the western half of the continent.

11 04 25

The extent to which nation states have been bamboozled into accepting outrageous lies about plastics manufacturing by petrochemical interests and are failing badly to even acknowledge the waste crisis afflicting national economies is admirably described by Alexander Clapp in a Grauniad article of 18 02 25: the article is an edited paraphrasal of the matter of his book Waste Wars: Dirty Deals, International Rivalries and the Scandalous Afterlife of Rubbish, in which among other things he authoritatively debunks the lie of plastic recyclability as a duplicitous narrative established by the same petrochemical interests. The focus of much recent objective and reputable research leads inevitably to the conclusion that not only can plastic not be genuinely recycled but that attempts to engineer the pretence it can is only making matters worse in that grinding it up for a maximum three time reuse is spreading microplastics at an even more alarming rate: mixing up different plastics also creates fresh toxins the effects of which have hardly yet been studied.

What is of asserting that the only real hope for effective and biologically clean plastics disposal lies in bioengineering micro-organisms to digest it in bulk which is where research and development should be focused.

Turkey has been very much in the news in recent weeks owing to the arrest of the Opposition Leader and Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu having sparked off massive demonstrations all over the country. Mr Clapp's Guardian article focuses on the fact of Turkish economic troubles having apparently gathered such force that recent attempts to address the waste management crisis headed by the first lady Emine Erdogan, have only led to waste accumulation and an epidemic of large scale fly tipping which is having appalling consequences. The article goes into quite some detail in elucidating just how seriously destructive an impact plastic waste can have on agriculture and delicate ecosystems and the particular example of toxic fly tipping described is really quite a sinister spine tingling instance of 'envandalism' of the sort that are becoming all too familiar.