Dr. Makere Stewart-Harawira @[email protected]
33K posts
@MakereSH
Professor, University of Alberta, intersecting Indigenous epistemologies, water, climate change and the wellbeing of species.
“The time has come to put aside national ambitions and look for an international ambition of survival,” Sir David Attenborough told 60 Minutes in 2020. He turns 100 today. Attenborough warns that if world leaders don’t change, “It’s going to sink us in the end."
Battle lines drawn on #NZ’s #conservation estate with Govt introducing legislation which would enable up to half of it to be eligible for sale. No doubt this would open more areas up for destructive activity like mining. This approach must be stopped stuff.co.nz/politics/36097…
This is British values - Robert Fisk is a real reporter and he’s spot on here …..
JUST IN: The entire petrochemical arc of the Persian Gulf is on fire, offline, or suspended. Count the countries. Iran: 85 percent of petrochemical production destroyed by Israeli strikes on Asaluyeh and Mahshahr. Qatar: two LNG trains and 17 percent of export capacity offline for three to five years after Iranian missiles hit Ras Laffan. UAE: Borouge polyolefin plant suspended, Habshan gas complex shut with 80 percent of domestic gas supply offline, Asab degassing station burning since March 29th, Bu Hasa oil field hit. Saudi Arabia: fires at Jubail Industrial City after Iranian missiles struck the SABIC petrochemical hub, one of the largest integrated chemical complexes on earth. Kuwait: airport fuel tanks ablaze, two power and desalination units offline, Oil Ministry facilities hit, 15 American servicemembers injured at Ali Al Salem air base. Bahrain: GPIC petrochemical units attacked, BAPCO storage tank fire. Six countries. One war. Every major energy producer on the Persian Gulf has taken damage. The global numbers are now quantifiable. C&EN reports 12 percent of global ethylene capacity is offline. The Dow CEO told Fortune that approximately 20 percent of global petrochemical capacity is blocked by the Hormuz closure and strikes combined. The Middle East operates 193 petrochemical complexes supplying 22 percent of global output. The GCC alone accounts for 12 percent, or 150 million tonnes per year. Asia’s naphtha feedstock supply has been throttled by 7 to 8 million tonnes. S&P Global estimates 10 to 11 million tonnes of paraxylene production lost. These are not projections. They are current measurements of capacity that is not producing. The war did not discriminate. Israel struck Iran’s plants to deny IRGC revenue and missile chemistry. Iran struck Gulf plants to impose symmetric pain on the countries hosting American forces and benefiting from the scarcity premium. The UAE’s damage came from the debris of its own successful interceptions falling onto the facilities the interceptors were protecting. Kuwait’s power and desalination plants were hit by Iranian drones while 15 American troops at Ali Al Salem took shrapnel from another. Saudi Arabia’s Jubail, which produces methanol, ethylene glycol, and fertiliser feedstocks for global markets, burned overnight. The fires in Bahrain’s BAPCO storage were extinguished. The fires in Jubail had not been when this was written. The molecule does not care about the flag over the facility. Polyethylene from Borouge and polyethylene from Asaluyeh and polyethylene from Jubail all serve the same Asian markets. All three sources are now offline or suspended. The syringe wrapper in Dhaka, the water pipe in Jakarta, the food container in Manila, the fertiliser pellet in Lahore, all of them originate in the Persian Gulf’s petrochemical arc, and the arc is dark from Asaluyeh to Jubail to Ras Laffan to Ruwais to Shuaiba. Hegseth said the most recent overnight strikes on Iran are the largest since day one. Tomorrow will be bigger. Iran’s response has been to hit every Gulf nation hosting American assets or profiting from the war. The reciprocal destruction is not collateral. It is doctrine. Israel degrades Iran’s chemistry. Iran degrades the Gulf’s processing. Both sides lose capacity. Asia loses supply. And the 12 to 20 percent of global petrochemical output that is now offline will not return until the war ends, the mines are cleared, the heat exchangers are manufactured, and the utilities are rebuilt. That timeline is not weeks. It is years. And Tuesday is today. Europe markets might open in to a bloodbath. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
For people who say it couldn't be predicted that the Iran war would be this consequential for the global economy, watch this 2012 video of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski 👇 He predicts what did in fact happen: "[Iran] can hurt us a lot... Can you imagine what the consequences would be for us if [...] Iraq was massively destabilized, if Bahrain was set on fire, if the North-Eastern oil fields in Saudi Arabia were attacked... The consequences, the costs would be cumulative... The global economy would be affected so we're playing with fire here." All of this happened. Which goes to show that the US government has been acutely aware for decades of how globally destructive a war on Iran would be for all of us (including on America itself and on its Gulf allies): when Trump says that “nobody” expected Iran to retaliate by targeting US allies in the region (reuters.com/world/middle-e…), it's a bold-faced lie. So the real question is rather: if you know something will set the world on fire, and you do it anyway, and the consequences unfold exactly as predicted - at what point does the rest of the world stop looking at Washington as a fireman and start reckoning with the fact that they're dealing with an arsonist? Source video: youtube.com/watch?v=VjbZ4V…
