Background Briefing: September 15, 2020

On By gram

 

The Trump, Netanyahu, UAE and Bahrain Peace Deal is Actually an Arms Deal

We begin with the White House signing ceremony today of the “Abraham Accord”, a so-called peace deal between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain that looks more like an arms deal which will allow the UAE to buy U.S. F-35’s without Israel objecting. As for peace with the Palestinians, that is not on the table and the Palestinians along with the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain were nowhere to be seen in the Oval Office today. Juan Cole a professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan who is the author of the blog informed Comment at JuanCole.com whose latest book is Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires, joins us. We discuss how earlier today on “Fox & Friends” Trump said he wanted to assassinate Syria’s dictator Assad but General Mattis talked him out of it and yesterday he tweeted out a threat against Iran, promising 1,000 times more devastation in retaliation if Iran attacked America. Although Trump has been trying to come off lately as an anti-war leader who wants us out of the Middle East, his comments indicate the opposite, and in keeping with his erratic pronouncements, Trump said during the Oval Office meeting today that “I really believe Iran wants to make a deal.”

 

With the West of Fire, Trump Puts a Global Warming Denier in Charge of the Weather

Then with Trump ignoring global warming and the record heat behind the massive fires across the West suggesting out of thin air that “It’ll start getting cooler”, at the same time appointing a global warming denier in a key role involving the weather at NOAA, we speak with Naomi Oreskes, a professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. The co-author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming and her latest, Why Trust Science?, she joins us to discuss her article at CNN “America’s devastating divorce from science.”

 

Ending Fire Suppression and Learning From the “Good Fires” of Indigenous People

Then finally we speak with Valerie Trouet, a professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona who uses tree rings to study the climate of the past and is the author of Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings. She joins us to discuss what we can learn from the “good fires” of indigenous people and her article at The Guardian “What turned California into a tinderbox? Fire suppression, paradoxically. It’s time to embrace ‘good fires’ and end the misguided policy of fire suppression.”