Is Johnson seriously green?

 http://aberavonneathlibdems.blogspot.com/2020/11/johnson-plan-for-green-industrial.html refers.

Do not forget that Johnson's predecessors cancelled the electrification of main-line railways which would have reducd our dependence on polluting diesel and sold off the Green Investment Bank - both Liberal Democrat initiatives. Johnson himself wants to overrule the Senedd's concern for the environment by building a new stretch of the M4 over the Gwent levels, a scheme which would encouage more motor traffic.

Some have suggested that the apparent change of heart is down to Carrie Symonds, Johnaon's partner who appears to be exercising more control in 10 Downing Street. I incline to the more cynical view that this is just greenwash in advance of the Glasgow COP26 conference and will disappear as soon as green issues are no longer in the headlines.

Interruption

 Posting will be intermittent until early December because of building work at my home.

Margam fatalities: Railways inspectorate report damns Network Rail

 The Railways Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) has issued a report which blames Network Rail for a decade of failure to apply obvious safety measures which led up to the deaths of two track maintenance workers near Margam last year.

Iran continues to enrich uranium beyond treaty limit

It was reported last month that Iran now had ten times the nuclear stockpile allowed under a 2015 treaty. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, was agreed by Iran with the US, Germany, France, the UK, China and Russia. Until President Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the JCPOA and reimposed sanctions, Iran passed all inspections by the IAEA. Al-jazeera is now reporting that Iran has twelve times that agrred stockpile according to the IAEA.

President Biden is expected to re-join the JCPOA, but will no doubt set the condition that the excess enriched uranium is disposed of before freeing the world banking system to deal with Iran again. I have previously suggested that the new President also opens talks with the Islamic Republic about its support for Shi'ite militias abroad, including that which is a party to the civil war in Yemen. But people are starving in Iran, so some relief is necessary immediately Biden takes office.

Germany, 1945 on

 It is good to see a series about World War Two that deals with the aftermath for not only the people of Germany but also the liberating forces. In the case of the Soviet forces, the nature of that "liberation" promises to be exposed by BBC 4's Berlin 1945.

It will be a necessary corrective to the jingoism of so much of the continuing programming of WWII footage - I see there is yet another "how we won the war" programme on Channel 5 tonight. However, we have yet to see a series on how Germany dragged herself out of Nazi subjugation and the wreckage of war to become one of the world's most liberal societies and also one of world's five leading economies. 

US authorities tougher on financial criminals ... somewhat

 ICIJ (the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) reported last week that .

Late last month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a landmark settlement with banking giant Goldman Sachs over its participation in a massive bribery scheme that syphoned hundreds of millions from Malaysian public coffers. As a part of a deal with prosecutors, the Wall Street firm agreed to pay nearly $3 billion to authorities in multiple countries, and agreed to have its Malaysian subsidiary plead guilty in a Brooklyn court to conspiring to violate U.S. bribery laws. The fine, the largest ever under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act followed the indictment of two Goldman executives who U.S. authorities alleged pushed the bribery ring. The scandal focused on a multi-billion dollar fund known as 1MDB, which was ostensibly devoted to developing the Malaysian economy. Instead, billions were illicitly syphoned from the fund, often via offshore accounts, to wealthy elites, politicians and Goldman bankers. Some of the looted money is suspected to have financed the film production of “Wolf of Wall Street,” the Hollywood feature starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

While the writer refers to prosecutorial timidity, it is notable that the US authorities have gone further than the UK financial invigilators have over our scandals of the last decade.

Biden/Harris day one

 The presidential team-elect has already signalled that protecting fellow-Americans from SARS/CoV-2 is top of their agenda for 21st January 2021 and their team has already started to be assembled. There are many other reversals of Trump policy expected. He will start to reverse the tax cuts introduced by Trump, though it will need all Biden's networking skills to get this through Congress.  He will almost certainly remove the restrictions on incomers from mostly Muslim nations. 

Slightly more concerning from the international point of view is the manifesto pledge to force federal agencies to buy only US-sourced goods and services. That will be more than made up for by returning to the World Health Organisation and the Paris agreement on climate change. 

Return to the negotiation table with Iran may take longer. Although Iran kept her side of the uranium enrichment bargain, and was independently certified as having done so in spite of Trump's fake reports to the contrary, there must be concern about the Islamic Republic's continuing subsidy of terrorist organisations abroad. One would hope that Biden will accompany the olive branch with conditions.

But there is one other urgent job to repair the damage from Trump: restore confidence in international trade. The World Trade Organisation is in stasis as a result of Trump's refusal to cooperate on the international stage. As the New York Times reported last year:

Over the past two years, Washington has blocked the W.T.O. from appointing new members to a crucial panel that hears appeals in trade disputes. Only three members are left on the seven-member body, the minimum needed to hear a case, and two members’ terms expire on Tuesday. With the administration blocking any new replacements, there will be no official resolution for many international trade disputes

This is of particular concern to the UK as the Johnson government lets the EU trade negotiations wither, throwing us back on WTO trading terms in 2021. It is essential that a WTO disputes procedure is in place. However, we are not the only nation affected and in the absence of a strong international body, it is clearly the weakest who will suffer. Surely Biden and Harris will not want that on their conscience, however concerned they are about US employment.

Yemen's ancient clay city under threat

 Climate change has another victim in the form of devastating floods which threaten an ancient city, including what is said to be the world's oldest skyscraper. 

Why, the person in the street asks, should funds be directed at saving buildings when what is needed is to save lives in the humanitarian disaster which is Yemen today? The answer is that we can, and should, do both. The needless proxy war, fuelled by weaponry and ammunition from the UK among others, should be brought to an end in order for reconstruction - social and physical - to begin.