Facing difficult midterm voting and Republican threats driven significantly by Donald Trump, the US president has made one of his sharpest political rebukes of overzealous opponents, asking the country to get rid of enemies within before they become something worse.

American elections had used to be about economic numbers, or government programmes or policies that preferred one group more than the other, or rebuilding a “failed” structure at most. It had been usually all about who could make America great again or greater or the greatest. Rivals did not accuse each other of being democracy’s biggest threat.

But in a speech in Philadelphia on Thursday, Joe Biden made a rare move by strongly suggesting that voters would have to make an existential choice. Voting Democratic and you support democracy, but anything shorter than that you will endanger not just America, but also the political system that forms the foundations of much of the world.

Republicans’ blind faith in Trump would only lead to chaos and possibly violence, he said. This section of the population “lives not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies,” he said. “…As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault.”

Pro-Trump forces “are determined to take this country backwards,” he claimed. “Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy. No right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. … They promote authoritarian leaders. They fanned the flames of political violence.”

It wasn’t meant to brand all Republican-Americans pro-anarchy, but the line Biden has drawn so far is not crystal clear and can only get blurrier when elections draw nearer. Bad as it is, national divide in America can get worse yet, as political rivalry will make good Republicans and bad Republicans virtually inseparable.

September 1, 2022: Record-breaking rainfalls are the prime suspect, and although the man-made climate crisis is thought to be a primary reason behind that, the devastating scale of flooding in Pakistan could have decreased in richer countries.

Vulnerability and defencelessness of poor citizens are among the chief factors in the lethal manner of the flood disaster, which has killed more than 1,000 people and affected tens of millions of people.

Truth is that Pakistan is responsible for less than 1 percent of the world’s planet-warming gases, yet it is the world’s eighth most vulnerable to the climate crisis. Pakistan’s glacial melt had reportedly increased by 23 per cent over the previous decade. Alarmed environmentalists and scientists called that the fastest rate in the world.

The developed part of the world agreed more than a decade ago to transfer at least $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing nations like Pakistan to ease their reliance on _ and help their transitions away from _ fossil fuels. That promise reportedly has yet to be fulfilled.

Now rich countries are talking about “aids”, which may not be entirely correct if we think about it. The word suggests generosity and charity instead of guilt or responsibility. For all climate rhetoric we hear everyday, “compensation” and “we are sincerely and unequivocally sorry” are actually the hardest words. At the climate talks in Glasgow, the United States, which, historically at least, accounted for the most greenhouse gas emissions in the world, was one of several advanced nations that showed opposition to obligatory payments for “loss and damages” in destruction in poor countries.

Source: Thai Public Broadcasting Service (Thai PBS)