| COMMENT
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Blue Profile
By Odilon Redon, 1893
©Anne Baring
June 18th, 2008
Three things distress me today. The first is the proud announcement that last year Britain was the biggest exporter of arms in the world today, with a share of global arms exports larger even than the US. Over the last five years the US has been the biggest exporter with $63 billion and Britain second with $53 billion. How can a nation take pride in this statistic? Commercially it may make sense and provide jobs but what of the soul of our nation? Saudi Arabia is apparently the largest buyer of arms.Secondly, despite the results of the Irish referendum which should legally have killed the Lisbon Treaty, the House of Lords yesterday passed the ratification of it which the Conservatives tried to delay until the autumn. Step by step we are moving towards a centralised totalitarian state in Europe, out of touch with the people, intent on setting up its own army, its own Foreign Office with ambassadors to many countries, all at the people's expense and without the countries that form part of the EU being able to vote on these isssues or to prevent this juggernaut from rolling own to its own self-appointed destination. I find it extraordinary that barely 50 years after the defeat of Germany and then the collapse of the Soviet Union, another incipient tyranny is arising controlled by an unaccountable political elite that shows no signs of new enlightened thinking but follows in the same tracks as before, once again seeking to build a military empire. Louis Flannery, a lawyer writing to the Sunday Times comments: "This document is impossible to comprehend, a masterpiece of obfuscation and a blueprint for a superstate." He continues, "The rest of Europe can indeed thank the Irish. Our constitution required a plebiscite. For the sake of the others denied the right to vote, and in the face of thinly veiled threats from conniving commission representatives, many of whom are seemingly intent on carrying on regardless, the Irish held firm."
Thirdly, turning in another direction, to the Middle East, Paul Rogers has again written a percipient article on the Open Democracy website, dated June 17th, a large extract of which I include here. Without access to his articles, I would have no idea from the general press of what was being planned in relation to Iraq and Iran nor that America has so many bases in Iraq and holds $50 billion of Iraqi money (highlighted). http://www.opendemocracy.net
"The choice of a strike against Iran in the last months of George W Bush's period in office would be momentous from a military point of view, but it would also have wider and longer-lasting political implications in the region and in the United States itself. The neocon calculation is that America's overwhelming air-power superiority would at least inflict serious damage on Iran's economy; in addition it would bind its successor administration - whether led by John McCain or Barack Obama - into a conflict whose agenda and dynamics the architects of the "long war" would continue to shape...
A crucial and as yet unknown aspect of a decision to attack Iran would be its effect on the US's position within Iraq. Washington is seeking, amid Iraq's still very uncertain security environment, to establish a long-term military and political presence in the country; to that end it opened negotiations with Nouri al-Maliki's government in Baghdad on 8 March 2008 over a long-term security agreement that will both extend and legitimise its control.
The agreement is required because the United Nations-mandated operation which provides the legal foundation for US forces to operate in Iraq ends in December 2008. It would be possible in principle for Washington to seek a one-year extension through the UN Security Council, which would allow the negotiations to be undertaken by the next administration; but the dominant view inside the White House is that the political timetable makes an early decision essential (see Kyle Crichton, "Iraq Closeup: Who Decides When U.S. Troops Leave?", New York Times, 11 June 2008).
What is being demanded is a relationship that would allow US military forces quite remarkable freedom of action, possibly for as long as ninety-nine years (see Patrick Cockburn, "Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control", Independent, 5 June 2008). They would maintain a major contingent at sites such as the massive Balad air-base north of Baghdad, and fifty-eight other sites would be earmarked for US use.
Thus, a very long-term and substantial presence is being envisaged. Since the original occupation began in March 2003, the Bush administration has consistently claimed that there were no plans for permanent bases (notwithstanding a notable leak to this effect in the New York Times within three weeks of the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime). That reported a plan for four major military bases: two of them close to the northern and southern oilfields, one near Baghdad and another towards the Syrian border, in the potentially oil-rich region of the western desert (see "Permanent occupation", 24 April 2003). Even now, the Bush administration may eschew the term "permanent", but with a decades-long occupation in prospect that is a matter of semantics.
The American personnel operating under the planned agreement would have the right to carry out military operations without Iraqi government approval (including the arrest of Iraqis), yet they would be immune from prosecution by the Iraqi authorities. This is particularly controversial within Iraq because those covered by the agreement would include some tens of thousands of private-security contractors - including staff of the Blackwater company, employees of which were involved in the killing of seventeen Iraqis in 2007, an incident that has not prevented Blackwater from having its contract with the Pentagon renewed (Benjamin Morgan, "Immunity for private guards in Iraq a sticking point: US", AFP, 10 June 2008).
The United States would also maintain control of Iraqi airspace, including air-to-air refuelling rights. This means that the US air force might even be able to undertake military attacks outside Iraq - such as action against Iran.
Washington maintains "status-of-forces" agreements with more than eighty countries around the world (its close ally Britain among them); but, just as the United States's embassy in Baghdad is the biggest such building in the world, so the agreement planned with Iraq is the most comprehensive of its kind...
There are indications that as Iraqi opposition to the agreement grows, it may precipitate a political crisis in Baghdad (see Charles Recknagel, "Iraq: Debate Flares Over U.S. Security Pact", RFE/RL, 12 June 2008). But in face of this, the United States retains two major advantages. The first is that the current Iraqi government is heavily dependent on the security provided by the US forces. The Iraq police and military forces may slowly be increasing their capabilities, but they are far from being able to protect the government; Nouri al-Maliki's administration knows this only too well, whatever the political bluster now coming out of Baghdad.The second US advantage is more subtle. It draws on the rigorous sanctions imposed in the 1990s on the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and associated policy arrangements. At that time, Iraq was designated a threat to international order under Chapter 7 of the United Nations charter - a technicality which has not been revoked. One result is that around $50 billion of Iraqi money is held (under the terms of the UN mandate) by the Federal Reserve bank in New York, pending multiple legal cases against Iraq in US courts (see Patrick Cockburn, "US issues threat to Iraq's $50 billion foreign reserves in military deal", Independent, 6 June 2008).
These reserves - increasing markedly in value in line with the steep rise in world oil prices - are not directly available for court settlements, but neither are they under the control of or useable by the Iraqis themselves. The funds may be technically independent of the US treasury, but in fact the US has the power to prevent any initiative to restore them to effective Iraqi ownership. This became clear in 2007 when (according to Iraqi sources) the Iraqi authorities made an attempt to diversify some of the holdings in the reserve out of dollars because of the depreciation of that currency; this was blocked by the US treasurer as it would damage international confidence in the dollar.
The US's military, political and financial influence over Iraq is thus already very great; the George W Bush administration believes that it would expand even further if the UN mandate comes to an end. It is using this financial dimension - essentially of "possession being nine-tenths of the law" - to pressure the Iraqis into acceptance of the agreement now under negotiation.
The intention is to conclude the status-of-forces deal by the end of July 2008. This is a tight schedule for the US, and there are serious obstacles to be overcome; but Washington is determined - even at the cost of some compromise - to secure a comprehensive agreement. Much will be made of any concessions to the Iraqis, but this will not change the reality that the Bush administration seeks to ensure a large, all-embracing and long-term dominance of the Iraqi security environment (see Patrick Cockburn, "The reality is that Iraqi authority would be nominal", Independent, 12 June 2008).
The calculation is plain: with all that oil in Iraq and its immediate vicinity, it would be nonsense - whatever the Democratic contender, Barack Obama, might promise - to walk away. A number of columns in this series have argued that that was never the intention of those who scripted the Iraq war (see, for example, "It's the oil, stupid", 24 March 2005). Nothing has changed there. But an attack on Iran would write a perilous new chapter."
May 26th, 2008
The Labour government is reeling after its defeat in the Crewe/Nantwich By-election. What Labour politicians can't seem to grasp is that the people don't give a damn about what happens to their party. What they want is competent, effective government and what they have been offered is so incompetent, so unfit for purpose, so abysmally lacking in common sense, that the sooner they are gone the better and good riddance. It is not Gordon Brown who is the problem. It is the mentality of the whole Labour Party which suffers from hubris and serves itself instead of the country. It has utterly failed to grasp the basic principles of good government, the first of which is honesty and integrity. One of its main areas of failure is education. It now proposes a ridiculous curriculum for the under-fives which any parent or teacher with a grain of experience and common sense would reject. One wonders at the immature mentality of the people who think up such a curriculum.
Last night I watched a documentary presented by Leonardo DiCaprio called The 11th Hour. It was a brilliant presentation of the reasons for the potential collapse of the planet's ecosystem and the lack of public awareness of how the biosphere works. The main cause of our present predicament is our failure as a species to grasp the fact that we are a part of the planetary biosphere and cannot continue to act as if we had been given dominion over it.The fundamental misunderstanding which underpins both science and technology as well as the huge industrial expansion since the Industrial Revolution is that we are separate from Nature. We are living on borrowed time, treating Nature as if her resources (of oil and coal) were there specifically for our benefit. When these run out, as they must, we will be faced with the problem of how to feed an enormously swollen population (9.5 billion by 2050). Governments simply have not grasped the enormity of the threat or what urgently needs to be done to counter it in the way of developing renewable energy technologies instead of oil and coal dependent ones. They go on talking about the threat from Muslim extremists which will pale in comparison with the threat to the biosphere caused by our ignorance and stupidity.May 22nd, 2008
I feel very concerned that with regard to the Embryology and Fertilisation Bill. By manipulating Labour MP's, the government has managed to retain the abortion limit at 24 weeks. Also it has effectively removed the right of the child to have a father as well as a mother, thereby diminishing the importance of the father in the creation and upbringing of a child. I would like to have seen the abortion limit reduced at the very least to 22 weeks because I think it is wrong to destroy (essentially to murder) a fully formed embryo that can have the chance of survival even at 22 weeks. I found a letter by Professor John Haldane ( St. Andrews University), in the Daily Telegraph yesterday which succinctly summarises the guidelines which should have been applied in this debate but weren't. He says, "The prior obligation is to do no harm, and only when that injunction is met should one turn to promoting benefits...Today, controversies surround embryology, but the issue of the priority of avoiding harm over promoting benefits needs to be kept in mind quite generally, or else we shall find ourselves willing to sacrifice any vulnerable groups for the sake of human improvement." And this is precisely what is happening in this case where the rights of the child are sacrificed to the supposed rights of women.May 22nd, 2008
I found an interesting article by Li Datong on the Open Democracy website on how China has been undermined by its hard-line response to unrest in Tibet and surprised and offended by the protests in many countries over the Olympic Torch. I quote the end paragraphs:
"The tragedy in Sichuan has made headlines across the world. An intense effort of search and rescue is underway in very difficult terrain. The Chinese government is acutely aware of the need to perform this task efficiently. But now that it is more exposed than ever to the scrutiny of its own people as well as foreign media, the mechanisms of control and persuasion it is used to operating by are newly vulnerable. The problem of trust is just below - and occasionally emerges above - the surface. The tensions between hard and soft power are on display.So when will the Chinese government finally wise up? The answer is simple - when it does things by the law. When it unconditionally guarantees the rights of citizens set down in the constitution, and cracks down on those who break the law. The Chinese government needs to understand that in response to the western media, an independent and free Chinese press would be much more credible than a government spokesperson. The truth lies not in one voice, but slowly becomes apparent amidst a diverse range of voices. An understanding of this underlies the effective deployment of soft power.
Whatever happens, the Beijing Olympics will provide many lessons for the Chinese leadership. If they still have the ability to learn, China's leaders will be able to turn this would-be triumphal year's early humiliation into a force for change.
May 19th, 2008
It looks as if the Junta may allow in help from eastern countries to bring in food, water, tents and medical help for the desperate survivors of the Burmese typhoon, more than two million of whom can only wait and hope.May 13th, 2008
A terrible earthquake struck Sichuan province yesterday, killing tens of thousands including thousands of school children. The Chinese government, unlike the Burmese Junta, has made truly heroic efforts to pour as much aid into the area as possible, including soldiers, doctors and specialist digging and First Aid teams but it is feared that few will have survived the devasting impact of the quake. This second tragedy coming so soon after the Burmese typhoon is as shocking in its demonstration of nature's power to destroy but is at least mitigated by the empathic response of the Chinese government and by that of the Chinese people, many of whom are now travelling to the area, bringing food, water, clothing and anything that they think would help.May 12th, 2008
Rosemary Righter, deputy editor of the Times, has reported in an article today that Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister and founder of the charity Médecins Sans Frontières, has called on the Security Council to insist on humanitarian access to Burma. He invokes two principles, she says, the "right to intervene" in catastrophic situations, accepted by the General Assembly in the 1990's; and the "responsibility to protect" victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This advance in international law was, she says, unanimously endorsed by all UN member states at the UN's 60th anniversary summit in 2005. "This is an idea whose time has come, and Burma's agony is a test of the UN's moral and political authority." But, she continues, China, Russia, South Africa and even Indonesia (which suffered a similar calamity following the tsunami of 2004) are opposing France. To its shame, the British government is also demurring, saying that the responsibility to protect was devised for terrible crimes, not terrible disasters, even though the growing disaster of death by famine and disease is preventable and the failure on the part of the Junta to act is a crime. Kouchner is insisting that France will distribute the 1500 tonnes of aid on board the Mistral to the victims regardless of the Junta's opposition. Would that these other recalcitrant countries would have the guts and the compassion to follow his lead.May 11th, 2008
It looks as if Obama may be leading in the race for the Democratic nomination. So much hangs on his becoming President - both for America and the world. He is young enough, intelligent enough, confident enough and, I hope, strong enough, to change the mind-set referred to below which continues to create conflict, suffering and the perpetuation of the confrontational mythology which has inflicted infinite harm on relations between people, races and religions.May 10th, 2008
The catastrophe in Burma continues with no sign of the Burmese government taking adequate steps to help the afflicted people of the Delta. I would have thought this was one situation where the sovereign rights of a nation could be overruled by the need to save the lives of a million or more people in dire need. What about an armada of medium sized vessels from India and Thailand carrying in supplies up through the different inlets in the Delta? Or heliocopters dropping supplies? I doubt whether Burmese aircraft or ships would dare to attack these. The generous response to the suffering on the part of millions of donors as well as governments shows that the plight of people in these dreadful disasters is becoming the concern of all people everywhere . This is something new and is very moving to observe.
It is so tragically clear in this situation that the patriarchal mind-set and its need for control is far from dead. Whether one takes the example of the Burmese Junta, the Chinese obduracy over Tibet or the case of the patriarchal father Fritzl in Austria, keeping his daughter imprisoned for twenty-four years and fathering seven children with her, the paranoid need for control and the pathology that goes with it is the salient feature common to all three situations. Beneath all three lies a pathological degree of anxiety which gives rise to the need for absolute control.March 17th, 2008
Tibet is foremost in my mind today. The Chinese may risk the boycott of the Olympics if they do not handle this situation with the greatest forebearance. The invasion of Tibet 50 years ago was an outrageous act of aggression but they could have perhaps modified their disgraceful behaviour if they had treated the Tibetan culture with respect and had helped its people financially instead of moving in thousands of their own citizens to occupy a land that for centuries had been independent and focused on spiritual concerns. The cowardice of the West in not opposing the invasion from the start is typical of the political mind-set which rules the world. A few individuals, notably the Prince of Wales, have expressed their condemnation but governments have not done so. When will this archaic drive for power and dominance yield to the realisation that all governments and, in particular the Chinese and American ones, must move into a new place, a new vision of their role in the world, which is not to fight for greater power but to serve the needs of the planet? China has an ancient and venerable spiritual culture but it has apparently forgotten the foundation on which its true greatness was built. China would win immense respect if it could find the courage to change course.February 5th, 2008
I have been appalled to hear that a young journalist in Afghanistan, Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, has been tried in secret without legal representation and sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading something from the internet. He was accused of blasphemy for downloading and distributing among students at his university a report from a Farsi website which said that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the Prophet. His fate is arousing international protests. What cruel internalised image of God do these people carry in their psyche that they engage in such acts of cruelty? Europe thankfully freed itself three centuries ago from the Inquisition but these arcane practices linger on. The Prophet himself treated women well and would, I am sure, be appalled to learn that two women in Iran are to be stoned to death for adultery or that this young man should lose his life for supposed blasphemy. Anyone who wants to add their name to the Independent Newspaper's petition to save his life can go to this website address.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sign-our-petitionbrbr-we-the-undersigned-urge-the-uk-foreign-office-to-put-all-possible-pressure-on-the-afghan-government-to-prevent-the-execution-of-sayed-pervez-kambaksh-brbr-775954.htmlFebruary 2nd, 2008
I am posting at some length the last part of an article by Paul Rogers that was put up on the Open Democracy website on January 31st because it sums up the situation in Iraq from the perspective of the imperial intentions or pretensions of the US."In a sense, however, the overall strategic environment in Iraq suggests that a massive and sustained US military presence will be required in any circumstances. This is the view of independent observers such as retired US general Barry McCaffrey, whose firsthand experience of the country helps underpin a deserved reputation for accuracy in his assessment of the progress of the Iraq war. In his view "an active counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq could probably succeed in the coming decade with 25 US Combat Brigade Teams" (this would represent more than half the army's available combat troops). Such a commitment, which would require large numbers of soldiers in supporting roles, would imply a long-term occupation of Iraq by over 150,000 US soldiers (see Mark Perry, "US Military Breaks Ranks", Asia Times, 24 January).
The imperial scale
Whether such forces can actually be maintained is a moot point, but it comes with the clear intention to establish what is best described as a long-term US protectorate in Iraq. The US officials currently negotiating agreements with the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki are charged with seeking a quite extraordinary degree of influence and control. This is already apparent in the building of the world's largest embassy in Baghdad; what is less noted is that Washington is pursuing a strategy based on rules set down by Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) early in the second year of the US occupation (see "America plans Iraqi escalation" [1 July 2004], and Rajiv Chandrasekaran & Walter Pincus, "U.S. Edicts Curb Power of Iraq's Leadership", Washington Post [27 June 2004]).Perhaps the clearest indicator of where power in Iraq is intended to lie is the attempt to impose or extend wide-ranging exemptions for non-Iraqis from Iraqi laws. The more than 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq are already exempt, as are a core of around 13,000 private-security contractors working there for the US defence department; the aim now is to award the same extra-legal status to 154,000 civilian contractors also working for the Pentagon. This would take the total personnel under US auspices who would have immunity from any infraction under the Iraqi legal system to nearly a third of a million people (see Thom Shanker & Steven Lee Myers, "U.S. to seek broad powers in Iraq as UN mandate expires", International Herald Tribune, 25 January 2008).
The need to guarantee the security of a protectorate on the scale envisaged - and, more immediately, to avoid attacks on US ground-patrols - is already being met by a second and largely hidden military surge. This one is airborne, and involves the expansion of US air-power in Iraq far beyond even the intensive pounding of insurgent-held areas around Baghdad. Among its features is the assignment of a squadron of A-10 ground-attack aircraft to al-Asad airbase and an additional squadron of F-16C strike aircraft to Balad air-base (see Tom Engelhardt, "Bombs away over Iraq: Who cares?", Asia Times, 31 January 2008).
In an echo of the Baghdad embassy, Balad has grown to become the largest US air-base anywhere in the world: a fifteen-square-mile mini-city with its own bus routes, fast-food outlets, two supermarkets and accommodation for 40,000 military personnel and contractors. The base - from which up to 550 air operations each day are conducted - is a permanent construction site; the latest addition is a $30-million command-and-control system that will integrate air-traffic management across the country as a whole.
In sum, the United States plan for Iraq is to establish a series of tight political mechanisms of control deriving from the original CPA-era agreements; a huge embassy-based structure in Baghdad to oversee and maintain these; immunity for over 300,000 foreign personnel; and continuing, direct authority over and access to Iraqi detainees. The entire operation is to be secured by the US military and its private contractors, increasingly protected by the use of air power.
This ambitious project is hardly consistent with the idea - still the official line propagated by Washington, and uncritically recycled by much of the establishment media - that the US's political objective is to bolster the independent governance of Iraq by the Iraqis themselves. Indeed, it goes further than the considerable power exerted by the United States in several central American countries in the early 20th century; its sheer grandeur might better be compared to some of the French or British colonial-era protectorates. In contemporary terms, it comes close to the establishment of a fully-fledged American colony in the heart of the Arab and Islamic world. Whether or not the George W Bush administration and its supporters realise it, the implications of that - for Iraq itself and for the whole region - are set to match even what has happened over the last five years."
January 10th, 2008
A study (published January 9th) has confirmed that 151,000 Iraqis have been killed since the beginning of the invasion. Maybe these sacrificed lives can be placed in the scales to provide a counterweight to the ridiculous claims of "victory". What will ever change the mind set that sees events in these outmoded terms that are so dissociated from the actual experience of human beings caught up in the horror of war? Below I have put a quoted passage from an article by Michael Thieren on the Open Democracy website (January 13th)
"Although adequately controlled, these biases are still present, and this makes the final estimate of "151,000" the one that is, for that survey, the closest to the true toll. The survey released by the New England Journal of Medicine, therefore, concludes that between 104,000 and 220,000 people died in Iraq during the three years after the coalition forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, with the highest probability that the true number is 151,000."
December 29th, 2007
Benazir Bhutto has been assasinated. Tragic and awful as this is, I don't see how it could have been avoided given the volatile situation in Pakistan, the mantle of political leader that had been laid on her shoulders by her murdered father and brothers, her own sense of destiny and her genuine love of the people of Pakistan. All these drew her back to a country that she could not have hoped to govern, even with the backing of the West - or maybe because of the backing of the West. Now (30th December) I read that Benazir's political will appoints her son to lead her party once he has finished his studies at Oxford. Loyalty to the Bhutto dynasty seems to take precedence over the survival of her son in that quagmire of corruption and violence.December 16th,2007
The UN talks on climate change in Bali have ended, not without moments of high drama - the main one being the last minute outburst by Kevin Conrad, head of Papua New Guinea's delegation. He won mass applause when the told the American delegation - that had repeatedly submitted amendments or new texts that threw the whole process into disarray - "We seek your leadership, but if you cannot lead, leave it to the rest of us. Get out of the way." In the end, all they agreed on was to proceed to the next meeting in 2009 when emissions reduction targets cuts would be "finally" decided. Too little and too late might be the epitaph on this meeting. What is encouraging is that individual cities and states within America are not waiting for government to take action but are taking it themselves. China also is waking up and beginning to address the challenge of a changing climate.There is a big article by Andrew Sullivan in today's Sunday Times on Barack Obama and his rise in the presidential stakes - saying that he seems to be the only candidate who can unite the fractured segments of American society.
December 14th, 2007
I see that Al Gore has spoken in Bali, saying that Bush and his administration will be gone in a year's time and then there is a chance that America will be able to follow a different and more enlightened policy in relation to climate change. How slow these leaders are to take the necessary action. They talk and talk and put off action until after the next meeting. But the Earth will not wait.December 8th, 2007
I have been shocked to discover in an article by Paul Rogers on the Open Democracy website that Britain is spending colossal sums on defence in the belief that she will need the most advanced weapons (including nuclear ones) if she is to be equipped to fight a future war. Britain currently spends more on defence than any other European country even though her fighting force is poorly paid, atrociously housed and treated with shocking neglect when its members are wounded or traumatised by combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. Britain still entertains the fantasy that she has a global role that is well beyond her financial reach. Currently, the costs of the Eurofighter Typhoon have gone from £7 billion to at least £19 billion. Secondly the Royal Navy's new Astute-class submarines and Daring-class destroyeers are running late and over budget, the total cost rising towards £6.4 billion - nearly a billion pounds for each of the six ships planned. The new Nimrod planes were due in 2003 and may not be ready in 2009, with costs rising to £3.8 billion.On top of these already huge costs, there is the planned replacement of the Trident nuclear-missile fleet with new submarines and warheads. And the decision to built two huge new aircraft-carriers and equip them with the formidably expensive F-35 multi-role aircraft purchased from the United States. At least 7.5 billion will be spent on the planes, not counting the cost of the ships themselves. (facts taken from the article)
To me it is clear that these colossal expenditure plans are not directed towards protecting the people of Britain but towards maintaining Britain's position on the world stage as one of the "Great Powers" - trying as always to keep up with America - living the old patriarchal dream.
The real threat to national security, already clearly apparent, is climate change. The current meeting on climate change taking place in Bali is faced with a situation of immense urgency and complexity and, at the same time, the torpor of politicians who cannot seem to grasp the need for a total change in their thinking. They remind me of someone wandering in a field with a bull in it who doesn't become aware of the danger until the bull's horns are about to gore him.
An article by Tom Burke today on the same Open Democracy site mentions the core elements that need agreement:
1. Further steep cuts in carbon emissions by industrialised countries
2. much more money for adaptation and technology-transfer
3. quantifiable commitments from developing countries
4. measures to reduce deforestation (a most urgent requirement possibly involving the richer countries paying Brazil and Indonesia to halt deforestation).If the British government took on board the need for a total change of direction from old fashioned military defence targets to the urgency of confronting the real danger of climate change, it would consider diverting the huge sums listed above to taking the vital steps necessary to reduce the long-term effects on climate change on the planet as a whole. What is needed is not national thinking but global thinking. It may be too late to halt the present commitments but at least future ones planned could be put on hold until the British people are given some say on where their money is to be spent.
The meeting is apparently discussing - not what should be done about climate change now - but the setting up of a negotiating process working towards the former in two years time.
Tom Burke comments: "The world is some way from making a comparable effort (to the billions spent on the Cold War) yet on climate change even though the inexorable threat to the prosperity and security of everyone on earth is far more certain. We are currently stuck in an increasingly futile conversation about who caused the problem, who should act first to solve it and how the pain should be shared...The "global deal" to be negociated at Bali and beyond would be better focused on how nations can work together to make a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy than on who should carry the biggest burden for reducing emissions."
December 6th, 2007
I was interested to read in an article by David Steven posted today on the Open Democracy website, that China is taking steps to limit its impact on global warming."Until recently, China has taken a similarly strong line, arguing that ‘no new commitment' of any kind should be accepted by any developing country under a the post-Kyoto agreement. Recently, however, China's position has been softening. In June, it published its first national climate change strategy, a document that signals growing concern about the potential impact of unchecked climate change. According to the strategy, China has already experienced ‘noticeable' climactic change. Future impacts look worse.
Chinese scientists project that average temperatures in the country will be up by as much as 3.3 degrees by 2050, if climate change is unchecked. Much of the country will be wetter and sea levels will rise. But dry areas will get drier and glaciers will shrink or disappear. Most worrying of all, the Chinese government believes that:
The possibility of more frequent occurrence of extreme weather/climate events would increase in China, which will have immense impacts on the socio-economic development and people's living.
The strategy sets out a package of measures to control emissions. Together, they aim to reduce energy intensity by 20% by 2010, raise the use of renewables to 10% of total energy supply, control emissions from agriculture, and increase forest coverage by 20%.
December 5th, 2007
I watched a programme last night (BBC2) which showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a huge Greenland glacier which, until 1997, was relatively stable, has changed dramatically in the last ten years. The glacier is now moving towards the sea at 40 metres a day. It is also much thinner. The whole glacier is on the move because melted water, pouring down to the bedrock, is causing the mass to lift from beneath and move towards the sea where it breaks up into icebergs. Other glaciers in Alaska and South America are also melting and moving in the same way. The Alaskan glacier is now 500 metres thick whereas 20 years ago it was 1000 metres. Ice is falling into the sea thirty times faster than before. The programme showed this from aerial photographs. Whether global warming is our fault or not, we have to take action to anticipate the effects of rising sea levels on populations which live near the sea. We have also to prevent further destruction on the forests of the Amazon and Indonesia - being cut down to feed the demand for palm oil.November 30th, 2007
Talking to someone who lives iin Harrogate, I have just become aware of the presence of the American missile defence system being installed at Menwith Hill, which already has the largest monitoring station in the world that can intercept all the telecommunications in the British isles and throughout western Europe. The missile defence system, run by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States, is one of a global network of Signals Intelligence Bases which monitors the world's communications and relays information to NSA HQ at Fort Meade in Maryland, USA. I remember the furious protests of Labour MP's who discovered in August that the govoernment's decision to agree to the missile defence system had been slipped in just days before the summer recess, with no prospect of Parliament being given a say. Yet another example of the duplicitous acts of this government. Tony Blair apparently committed the UK to it some time ago. The British people have become like so many sheep led by dysfunctional shepherds.November 10th, 2007
I am putting up part of an article by Paul Rogers posted today on the Open Democracy website because I think it is so relevant and important. Its title is "Wanted: A New Global Paradigm"
"In June 1972, the UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) took place in Stockholm. The expectation was that the gathering would concentrate on the pollution problems of the old industrialised states, and thus be relatively limited in focus. In the event, the conference turned out to have a much wider frame of reference, raising the discussion of global issues onto a new level. Much of the credit for this was due to the publication of a slim book which had an extraordinary intellectual impact.This was The Limits to Growth - an early analysis of global systems undertaken at MIT by Dennis L Meadows, Donella H Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, who had been commissioned by an unusual collection of industrialists, diplomats, bankers and others known as the Club of Rome. The volume sold more than a million copies in its first couple of months after publication (just in time to influence the Stockholm conference) and eventually as many as 12 million copies in thirty-seven languages would be purchased. It was a pivotal influence in introducing ideas of sustainability, environmentalism, and new economics to an emerging global community of professionals, activists, academics, and citizens concerned in fresh ways about the "fate of the earth".
The core analysis of The Limits to Growth was that the impact of increased human activity would ultimately exceed the capacity of the global ecosystem to maintain itself, with potentially disastrous consequences. The vigorous reaction to the book at the time (especially by free-market economists) was part of its effect; many of its arguments, such as its estimation of the time it would take for problems to emerge (seventy years, in some cases), were subject to severe criticism. Yet today, The Limits to Growth and the warnings of many at the UNCTAD and UNHCE conferences that addressing global inequalities was essential in ensuring global stability are looking uncomfortably prescient.
The driving force of the Club of Rome, the singular group that commissioned The Limits to Growth study, was an Italian industrialist called Aurelio Peccei. For a period, the Club of Rome (founded in 1968) achieved a degree of prominence; this gradually faded, but as with the Limits project (which was updated on its thirtieth anniversary, in 2002) there are signs that its message has echoes in this new generation.
An example of this reviving interest was a Club of Rome meeting on 6 November 2007 in the grand surroundings of the Schloss Bellevue in Berlin, at the invitation of the president of the Federal Republic of Germany (and former head of the International Monetary Fund), Horst Köhler. It was an opportunity for the club to voice a new agenda which emphasises three linked aspects of the global system:
* the deepening wealth-poverty divide, as a globalised free market delivers patchy economic growth but singularly fails to enhance or even aid socio-economic justice
* the increasingly evident environmental constraints on human activity (most prominently climate change and intensifying conflicts over resources, especially oil and gas)
* the inability of the more powerful states to see such problems as matters for anything other than control, if need be by military force. All too often, their attitude seems to be that it is preferable to maintain the current system rather than recognise the problems of unsustainability and even survivability that it poses.
The participants in Berlin, as befitting the wellspring of the Club of Rome initiative itself, were an unusual mixture. They included former foreign ministers, ambassadors, industrialists, bankers, development specialists and even the odd academic; they were drawn principally from continental Europe and north Africa, secondarily from Latin America and India, with a smattering from north America or Britain. That alone gave the meeting a "feel" that differed markedly from the normal atmosphere in the numerous security conferences that dot the globe. It may not have been truly global, and it was most definitely an elite group, yet its very make-up insulated it from the familiar if almost intangible fate that attends many such gatherings: slipping easily into the usual Euro-Atlantic English-language mindset that effortlessly assumes it knows what is best for the world.
Instead there was a certain unease, born of a recognition that the status quo simply cannot be maintained. It is not just that the "war on terror" has proved to be such a disastrous example of the failure of the control paradigm, nor is it that the anticipated emancipatory promise of the globalising 1990s has been found so wanting. It is, rather, an understanding that socio-economic divisions are getting wider precisely at a time of encroaching environmental pressures and constraints. In such circumstances, the "old thinking" that is rooted in the maintenance of the current order is just starting to be recognised as obsolete if not dangerously counterproductive.
The past as prologue
In the same year as the Santiago and the Stockholm conference, the economic geographer Edwin Brooks envisaged the risk of "a crowded glowering planet of massive inequalities of wealth, buttressed by stark force yet endlessly threatened by desperate people in the global ghettoes". That seems in retrospect a projection informed by acute foresight, yet there is very little sign of the new thinking that will be vital if a more peaceful world is to be achieved.In Britain, for example, senior defence chiefs on 8 November 2007 called (at the launch of the National Defence Association) for increased military spending. The appeal comes at a time when the Royal Navy is planning to build Britain's largest ever warships, two 65,000-tonne aircraft- carriers designed to pursue advanced expeditionary warfare, no doubt primarily in the waters of the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
The government also plans to spend tens of billions of pounds in order to remain a nuclear-weapons state for at least the next half century. With its carriers and its nuclear "deterrent" British security policy entirely ignores the real security threats and persists in its desire to help the United States in its vain - but potentially hugely destructive - efforts to maintain control.
Here, in principle, "Britain" could be substituted by "France" or indeed most other leading states of the western alliance - where military and political elites are accompanied by think-tanks which too engage in deep exploration of the technical and political requirements for staying in control but with little evident concern for or real understanding of the underlying causes of insecurity.
There is some, all too disparate, evidence of new ideas (see, for example, here, here and here) but they often lack institutional and financial support. This is where the revived Club of Rome could have an impact. It may be drawn from an elite but its members appear to have some appreciation of the scale of current global predicaments and the urgency of creating new policies to match them.
Thirty-five years ago the Club of Rome, through its The Limits to Growth report, expanded the world's understanding of the global ecosystem in a quite remarkable manner. As it approaches the fortieth anniversary of its formation, the ideas which the group embodies are more needed than ever.
November 3rd, 2007
"It is almost certainly still the case (as several columns in this series have argued) that the greatest risk of war with Iran comes from a provocation that precipitates a crisis that in turn tips over into armed confrontation - rather than from a sudden, unforeseen attack by the United States or even Israel (see "America and Iran: the spark of war", 20 September 2007). The worry is that the manner in which the US presidential election campaign is developing may come to mean that there will be no senior, authoritative voice of reason arguing coherently against the war option. That alone serves to make a war against Iran more likely." from an article by Paul Rogers posted on the Open Democracy website today.October 21st, 2007
The persecution of the hapless McCanns continues. Anne Enright, the woman who has just won the Booker prize, recently wrote an outrageous article in the Times Review of Books, explaining why the McCanns arouse the hostility of the public and justifying this hostility - even suggesting that their demeanor masks denial and guilt. It seems extraordinary that with over a hundred years of psychotherapy and thousands of psychotherapists working in this country, no-one in the media seems yet to have heard of projections and how unconscious complexes and beliefs can be projected, whether negatively or positively, onto figures in the public eye, reflecting nothing so much as the unconscious prejudices of the projector. The incredible arrogance of people who claim the right to judge the McCanns, who dissect their characters and criticise their demeanor, beggars belief. Their suffering, with the hostility of the ignorant public compounding the agony of the loss of their daugher, is unimaginable. No doubt these self-appointed judges would, in another age, have happily condemned people to the guillotine or the gallows, convinced of their own righteous moral superiority.October 5th, 2007
I have taken these passages from an article "Commentary" on the following website http://www.irrawaddy.org
"The Burmese people are tired of this diplomatic language, and the endless litany of diplomatic terms like “deeply concerned,” “closely watching,” “monitoring the situation,” “turning a new page,” and “forcefully urging dialogue.” For two decades, a toothless UN has done nothing to protect the people of Burma and effectively advance their aspirations for democracy. Instead, UN inaction has only protected the generals and their own aspirations to entrench their bloodstained power base. UN action is now urgently required if innocent blood is not again to be spilt in the streets of Rangoon. Time is rapidly running out—doctors and nurses are reported right now to be gathering at Shwedagon Pagoda in the expectation of a military crackdown.So what is to be done if a tragedy on the scale of 1988 is to be prevented? What do the superpowers and Europe plan to do? And what about the Asian countries, who are so concerned to protect their non-interference policy? How about countries with large Buddhist populations, such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam? How about China, India and Thailand, whose concern for events in Burma is overshadowed by their trade deals and reliance on Burmese natural resources? Will those interests outweigh their concern to prevent bloodshed in Burma?A realistic strategy, based on a plan of action, is needed now after two decades of silence.The strongest possible message has to be sent to the Burmese junta, warning it of grave foreign policy consequences if it engages in a military suppression of the peaceful demonstrations. Such a message would cost nothing, but it could save thousands of lives. The time for grandstanding and paying lip service to the generals is long over."
But how can the UN act when China and possibly India as well will block any move in the Security Council in order to protect their commercial and political interests in Burma?September 27th, 2007
Burma is today the focus of the world's attention. The Buddhist monks are leading a protest movement to try to bring to an end the oppressive power of the ruling military junta that has been in control of the country since 1962. In the Security Council yesterday, China and Russia blocked any statement of criticism of the regime and said they would block any UN sanctions against Burma. Patriarchy certainly takes a long time to die. The courage of the monks in taking on the power of the generals is phenomenal. Unless there is a miraculous melt-down of the regime as there was in Germany, many will be martyrs, as in the vicious crackdown by the military in 1988. Fortunately, this time, mobile phones and images transmitted by them have been able to tell the world something of what is going on in the streets of Rangoon and other cities in Burma.September 20th, 2007
I am putting up this extract from an article by Paul Rogers on the US/Iran confrontation. (Open Democracy website)
"Such internal dissent over the drive to war also means that a sudden, large-scale attack by the United States on Iran remains unlikely. What becomes more plausible by the week is that a spark might start a conflagration - a war not entirely by accident but not by direct design either. And once it started, there would be little prospect of turning back. In this dangerous environment, it may be that international leadership is the best hope of leading a process that offers a route away from confrontation. Amid the feverish rhetoric, almost the only actor who is championing the diplomatic option and cooling the temperature is Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). ElBaradei's initiative in securing agreement with Iran on 27 August 2007 over a timetable for resolving the disputed nuclear issues provoked intense opposition among leading western states, but it may represent the basis of a way forward. It will need to find support among the political power-brokers if this perilous moment is not to end in another devastating war."July 25th, 2007
I have finally found the time to watch the dvd called "Why We Fight" (obtainable from Amazon). It confirms everything I have been writing on this blog since before the onset of the Iraq war. I wish every single person in government here and a good proportion of the population of America and the UK could see it, as well as the media. It might awaken them to the madness of what we are engaged in the so-called "War on Terror". It might awaken them to the great tangle of lies, propaganda and deceit in which we have become enmeshed and the unconsciousness of those who dare to proclaim themselves "leaders".July 20th, 2007
A new and positive event has just been announced (July 17th). A group of planetary Elders has been formed, including Nelson Mandela and his wife, Graca Machel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Muhammad Yunus, Kofi Annan and others to come, including, hopefully, Aung San Suu Kyi. Ultimately, there will be twelve Elders. I hope they will be able to offer humanity a new perspective on its problems and perhaps encourage a change of consciousness, a new sense of unity and a new ethic of responsibility not to any nation, but to the planet itself and all its people and species. What concerns me, however, is that no Elder of an indigenous people such as the Kogis of Columbia or the Hopi Indians of the US has been invited to join them.
The news from Iraq, Darfur and Zimbabwe continues to be calamitous.
If there is one book I would recommend, it is John Gray's recently published Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia - a devastating indictment of Utopian fantasies for improving the human condition by the use of force. Tracing Utopian ideologies, whether religious or secular, to the millennial beliefs of early Christianity, he shows how these "took off" with the French Revolution and how their latest incarnation is the Bush Administration's doctrine of pre-emptive war in the belief that democracy can be imposed by this means. I wish all politicians would have it as required reading before they take office.May 14th, 2007
Naomi Wolf has written an article in the Guardian on April 24th, called "Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps". The website address for this article is http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html. "From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all."May 13th, 2007
I have not been writing recently because the news offers more of the same. While the English political establishment buries its head in the fascinating question of the succession of Gordon Brown, the news from Iraq is of more killing, more suffering, more terror. Tony Blair, released from the responsibility of being prime minister of this country, prepares to dance like a dervish on the world stage. I am preoccupied at the moment with the abduction of the little girl Madeleine in Praia da Luz, in Portugal. I don't know how any parent survives the trauma of this experience and, like so many, feel for the suffering of her parents and for the child's terror and bewilderment. The men and women who abduct children for the purposes of sexual abuse to be displayed on the internet have truly sold their souls to evil. There is no greater crime than to cause horrific suffering, physical and mental, to a helpless and innocent child. I can't understand why paedophiles are given the freedom to travel from country to country exporting their vile compulsion abroad. At the very least, they should be tagged, so the police can trace their whereabouts. Whose freedom is more important - theirs or that of children everywhere?April 13th, 2007
A report by the Red Cross (as well as two others) came out yesterday. In it, the situation in Iraq generally is described as unbearable for its citizens, particularly in Baghdad which has now lost half its doctors, where corpses lie in the streets because it is too dangerous for the families to collect them, where no-one can go out in the morning and be certain of returning alive at night. Governments have no idea about the dangers of triggering a mass psychosis and the fact that this will draw every individual with psychopathic tendencies into the mêlée, convinced that his lust to kill and mutilate his fellow-human beings is justified. The revolting description of how members of the Shia militia break the bones of their Sunni victims, forcing them to "confess" and then shooting them dead, is just one example of this pathology.
February 20th, 2007
Mohammed ElBaradei, Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. who has led the United Nations nuclear watchdog for 10 years, gave a talk yesterday at the London School of Economics, in which he cast doubt on his own moral authority in seeking to curb the nuclear ambitions of countries like Iran.
“They are told nuclear weapons are counter-productive because they do not protect your security. But when they look to the big boys, what do they see? They see increasing reliance on nuclear weapons for security, they see nuclear weapons being continually modernised.” He also condemned the “unfairness” of a world in which nine countries seek to maintain their monopoly of nuclear weapons. “How do they expect this system of haves and have nots to be sustainable?
How do I go to country X and say ‘you should keep your obligation not to develop nuclear weapons’, when the big powers are making no progress towards their obligations for disarmament?”...“Britain cannot modernise its Trident submarines and then tell everyone else that nuclear weapons are not needed in the future.” …We need to treat nuclear weapons the way we treat slavery or genocide. There needs to be a taboo over possessing them.”
(The nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which came into effect in 1970 and which Mr. ElBaradei is legally obliged to enforce, bans all signatories from using atomic power for military purposes. In addition, they are obliged to disarm – but no deadline has yet been set for this to take place).January 28th, 2007
A new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - prepared by more than 2,500 scientists from 113 countries - is to be published this week (February 2nd). It confirms the findings of Al Gore's DVD "An Inconvenient Truth", concluding that the next ten years are crucial in preventing irreversible climate change and that we have to act now to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions and begin urgently to reduce them. The latest research shows that the threshold of disastrous changes triggered by rising CO2 levels will come when these levels reach 550 parts per million, roughly double their natural levels - estimated to happen around 2040-50. Richard Betts, leader of a research team at the Met Office's Hadley Centre for climate prediction comments: "At the moment the real impact of our emissions is buffered because CO2 is absorbed by natural systems. However, if we reach this threshold they could be magnified instead...It means we must start the action needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few years."January 26th, 2007
I have watched Al Gore's DVD "An Inconvenient Truth" twice and have been deeply moved and impressed by the skill with which he presents the urgent need for the world's governments to respond to the challenge of climate change. He has shown it in over a 1000 cities and watching it, I felt that the planet has found an advocate to speak out on its behalf. Not only do the graphs he presents show the sudden and accelerated increase in CO2 emissions which has already taken place but also the rise in temperature that will accompany this increase. In 650,000 years (according to core-ice samples drawn from deep within the Earth) there has not been this increase in either CO2 emissions or a comparable temperature rise. What he finds worrying and incomprehensible is the denial on the part of the US government of the facts of climate change and its incomprehension of the threat to the planet which they present. He compares this denial to the situation of a frog sitting in a container of water which is gradually heating up. Because the warming process is gradual, the frog doesn't realise what is happening until suddenly the water becomes unbearably hot. Luckily for the frog (in his DVD), a hand lifts it out of the water in the nick of time - that hand being the warnings of climate change. One alarming fact in his presentation is the effect on the planet's resources - water, food etc. - of the growth of the human population. In 1945 the population of the Earth was approximately 2.2 billion. Today it is 6.3 billion. By 2050, it could be over 9 billion. So in a single generation - for someone born in 1945 - it will have increased by nearly 7 billion. That level of growth is unsustainable but this fact does not seem to have dawned on governments or, for that matter, on the religions which encourage their followers to have many children.Denial is a primary psychological symptom of an addiction - in this case an addiction to oil and to the power that a technology based on oil brings. Addicts are often the last to recognise and acknowledge their addiction, even when their world is about to collapse around them. While governments lagged behind, science accepted Al Gore's 'inconvenient truth'. As long ago as 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established by two United Nations organisations: the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme - to assess the risk of human-induced change.
After a report in 1993 on the analysis of the Greenland ice cores, it became clear to scientists that the climate could change massively within a decade or two. But this was not enough to make governments change course. They clung to the idea that acceptance of these findings would threaten economic growth. The book put out by Bjorn Lomborg, an Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School - "The Skeptical Environmentalist" poured scorn on the studies which proved that climate change was immanent. Naturally, there were many who chose to believe him since it meant that things could continue as before.
However, the Report of 2006 by Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, stating in no uncertain terms that business cannot proceed as usual, has suddenly woken the business world up to the crisis that is facing it. One article commenting on it (Paul Allen in "Clean Slate", the journal of the Centre for Alternative Technology) has compared its effect to that of Nicolas Copernicus five hundred years ago. For the first time there is a template of what the financial cost of climate change could be. Although it will be expensive to counteract the effects of climage change - about 1 percent of the world's gross domestic product - doing nothing will cost anything from 5 to 20 percent more. The final report says that we risk losing up to a fifth of the world's wealth and this, if unchecked, could devastate the global economy. This in turn would lead to major economic and social disruptions, mass deaths and migrations on a scale far worse even than the devastating wars and convulsions of the last century.
Pia Hansen, spokeswoman for the European Commission has said: "It clearly makes a case for action, and climate change is not a problem that Europe can afford to put into the "too difficult" pile. It is not an option to wait and see, and we must act now."
The Stern Report was quickly followed up by a report from the Institute of Public Policy Research that suggests we need to move even faster. Rather than 60% reduction of CO2 emissions by 2050, more recent science demands a 90% decrease by 2030. The world has less than a decade to reverse the growth in greenhouse gas emissions. By 2015 the world would need to be cutting carbon emissions by 4-5 % annually. As in Belshazzar's Feast, the writing is on the wall.
January 19th, 2007
As The UN gives announces that its puts the death-toll of civilians killed in Iraq during 2006 at 35,000 - 12,000 in the month of December alone, the scientists who run the Doomsday Clock - that was started in 1947 to assess the level and provenance of the dangers that humanity faces - have made a new announcement and moved the hands of the clock to five minutes to midnight. This is to reflect the twin dangers of climate change and nuclear proliferation by Iran and North Korea. This is what the British Association of Scientists have said (January 17th, 2007)
"As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility once again to inform the public and advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces.
“We foresee great peril if governments and society do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and prevent further climate change. As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may for ever change life on Earth.
“As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change.
“The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival."
January 7th, 2007
A new year and already it opens with the effects of the legacy of the old one. The threat posed to Israel by Iran developing a nuclear weapon has led to the situation where Israel may pre-empt an attack by using her nuclear weapons to destroy the Iranian installations. What is truly alarming is is that leaders cannot see that the proposed use of these weapons is a moral obscenity, something that dehumanises us, corrupts us in our very soul.December 30th, 2006
The year draws to a close in growing gloom. Saddam Hussein has been hanged with a degrading lack of humanity and incredible incompetence. Unless it was the intention of the Iraqi government to foment sectarian strife by humiliating Saddam, how was it not foreseen that someone might take photographs of the hanging and, through greed or malice, release them into the public domain? Some will rejoice, including George W. Bush who is so stupifyingly unconscious of the effects of his stance against the "axis of evil" that it makes one weep. Others will await the inevitable response to it in an increase of the already horrifying violence in Iraq.The Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken out against the Iraq war and also against the Trident Missile. He said that "moral and practical flaws" in Tony Blair's case for military intervention had been clearly exposed since the invasion, following up the comments made earlier this month when he criticised the "ignorance" and "short-sightedness" of the preparations for war. He said that the result of the decision to go to war was that British troops are increasingly at risk and, in addition, the safety of the Christian community in the Middle East was jeopardised. With regard to the Trident nuclear deterrent, he said, "My judgement has always been that the nuclear deterrent, that the threat of mass slaughter of the innocent, is not morally acceptable."
December 19th, 2006
A senior diplomat, Carne Ross, who resigned from the Foreign Office in protest over the war, has had his scathing assessment of the negotiations prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, made public on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee website (previously this evidence to the Hutton inquiry into Dr. David Kelly's death was barred from release to the public). 'Iraq's ability to launch a WMD or any form of attack was very limited because it had only a handful of missiles and its airforce was depleted to the point of total ineffectiveness.'... 'We would frequently argue, when the U.S. raised the subject, that "regime change" was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.' He also said that ' Co-ordinated, determined and sustained action to prevent illegal exports and target Saddam's illegal monies would have consumed a tiny proportion of the effort and resources of the war (and few lives).' Appearing before the committee last month, Carne Ross described the Iraq invasion and its aftermath as a 'rank disaster'. (Source: Daily Mail 16/12/06)Another interesting article by Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times (17/12/06) comments on the present situation: "It is now clear that the US invasion in 2003 took the last lid off the volcanic crater [of sectarian tensions and hatreds held down by Saddam Hussein]. Worse, America disbanded the only trained force capable of restraining it - the Ba'athist military - and refused to provide enough US troops to maintain order. Al-Qaeda shrewdly saw the potential for chaos and tried desperately to foment a sectarian war...The Sunni attack on the Shi'ite Samarra mosque earlier this year was the tipping point. From then on, a civil war grew and metastasised. And the forces of cohesion collapsed...The divisions are so deep, no national army is now possible, and the logic of sectarian violence and revenge... is irresistible. If a full-scale Shi'ite-Sunni war breaks out across the Middle East, then Lebanon will also be drawn in, and its fledgling democracy reduced to another war zone. All of this can be financed by oil revenues [from Iran and Saudi-Arabia]. You could have the world's most profitable energy source financing one of the world's deepest religious divides."
December 9th, 2006
To give a view of the horror ordinary people face in Iraq, particularly children, I include this extract from an article in The Times yesterday - "Religious Split that could set Region on Fire". The reporters tell the story of two boys, the only Shias in their class, who came home from school last week in tears. "Our religion teacher came to the classroom and said 'You are Shia, and it is halal [religiously permitted] to kill Shia in Islam. You are not good Muslims like us." Even in Jordan, a boy of 15 had his face slashed by other boys because he was an Iraqi Shia (seeking asylum). This is the kind of atrocity that a collective psychosis permits and encourages. Both Shi'ite and Sunni fanatics in Iraq seem to have succumbed to the same madness that once seized Catholic and Protestant in Europe. There is no discussion of the split in Islam in this country nor of the danger of this madness spreading to the Islamic community in England. What is one of the most extraordinary and to me, psychologically interesting facts of this whole catastrophe is that Shia and Sunni groups are engaged in murdering each other in precisely the same territory where Husayn (Hussein), the Prophet's grandson and his family and a small band of supporters, were brutally murdered or martyred in the year 680, at Kerbala, near Kufa and Basra in southern Iraq. Husayn should have been Caliph but his murder put his murderers in power and they established their centre of rule in Damascus, rather than in Medina. The Shi'ites descend from Husayn. Martyrdom became a favoured form of dying for the Shi'ite Muslims because of the martyrdom of Husayn that they still commemorate. How strange and how tragic that this split in the Muslim psyche and Muslim community has been perpetuated for over 1300 years without any religious leader of stature apparently being able to address and heal it.December 5th, 2006
Blair has committed this country to updating the Trident submarines at the cost of some 20 billion. The arguments are coming in both for and against. The argument for it is based on the fact that we cannot possibly predict the threats this country will face in the next fifty years and that it is deterrent against attack. The argument against it is that it will contribute to an escalation of nuclear weapons in other countries. The best letter I have read in the Times along these lines is from Kate Hudson, Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She writes: "An argument I often hear is that nuclear weapons are an "insurance policy", just in case we face some unknown future threat. The problem with this argument is that a decision to replace Trident is not neutral in its impact - it will have consequences. As Kofi Annan has pointed out: "The more that those states that already have [nuclear weapons] increase their arsenals, or insist that such weapons are necessary to their national security, the more other states feel that they too must have them for their security." A decision to replace Trident, with similar decisions by other nuclear weapons states, is certain to lead to nuclear proliferation, and will help create the dangerous scenario we most wish to avoid. The most effective way to insure against future nuclear threats is to work towards nuclear disarmament. A decision by our Government not to replace Trident, taken in tandem with a genuine initiative to towards multilateral disarmament will do much to provide for Britain's future security. Hans Blix recently suggested a global summit on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. That would be a good start."The biggest problem today in the political sphere is the projection of the shadow or of unacknowledged aggressive instincts onto others who are named as a threat and attacked as enemies. Jung was acutely aware of this in 1957.
" If you look at our situation you just cannot see where it will end...All the divine powers in creation are gradually being placed in man’s hands. Through nuclear fission something tremendous has happened, tremendous power has been given to man. … The forces that hold the fabric of the world together have got into the hands of man, … God’s powers have passed into our hands, our fallible human hands. The consequences are inconceivable. The powers themselves are not evil, but in the hands of man they are an appalling danger – in evil hands. Who says that the evil in the world we live in, that is right in front of us, is not real! Evil is terribly real for each and every individual." ( Collected Works 10, par. 879)The crucial problem is how to help political leaders withdraw their projections and become conscious of the evils they are engaged in promoting - such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons - while convinced that they are defending their people against attack. Nothing has made the need for the withdrawal of projections clearer than the war in Iraq and its ensuing catastrophe.
December 3rd, 2006
Examples of barbarism proliferate. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko by an individual using the radio-active substance polonium-210 continues to hold the main focus. I personally think that his murder was connected with evidence he held or was about to be given of who was behind the shooting of the courageous journalist Anna Politkovskaya some weeks ago, evidence that he would have used to indict President Putin if it proved that he was responsible. It is interesting to learn that Putin protested to the British government that they should not have allowed the final statement of the dying man to be made public - that he believed that government in this country could suppress it. Fortunately, there is still free speech and a free press here.In Iraq, the latest horror is the murder of Sunni wounded in hospital by Shia militants who either murder them there and then or, with the complicity of porters, remove them from the hospital to murder them elsewhere. This atrocity was reported by a surgeon in Baghdad who wondered why his patients who were on the road to recovery suddenly and inexplicably died or disappeared. What I find extraordinary and terrifying is the sheer barbarity of the human psyche when, under the influence of an ideology, it is given license to murder by its leaders. This barbarity has always been a feature of war but somehow it seems worse today and the helplessness of civilians who are the victims of it all the more pitiable. The guilt of America and Britain in bringing about this situation of lawlessness and the collapse of any kind of security and order is beyond question. Bush continues his idiotic stance of toughing it out.
November 12th, 2006
Simon Jenkins has some cogent observations in his Sunday Times article today. One of them is the fact that despite the catastrophe of Iraq, Americans believe that they are still in control of the situation. "Always the premise is that America possesses absolute power. This thinking is still so much in imperialist mode that the scale of America's impotence has yet to dawn....Iraq is in a state of anarchy beyond the wit of any foreigner to cure...Iraq has discredited British foreign policy as much as America's. The difference is that American democracy has realised this and America's leaders have had to listen...American democracy gave a raucous roar of dissent - and was heard." If only the same could be said of British democracy.November 11th, 2006
Armistice Day and all the usual commemorative ceremonies are taking place. I reflect on how strange it is that people continue annually to commemorate the sacrifice of the dead yet never address the need to relinquish the addiction to war and power. However, the good news is that the mid-term elections in America have shifted the balance of power there in favour of the Democrats and brought about the resignation of Rumsfeld. How appropriate it is that he has "died" at the same time as Saddam has received the death-sentence, since he was one of the people who, years ago, contributed to supplying Saddam with WMD. I wonder what the outcome of this shift will be - whether the Democrats can really institute responsible and perhaps even wise government to replace the puerile idiocy of the Bush Administration. Meanwhile in this country we are warned by the head of MI5 that the terrorist threat will continue for a generation at least and that some 1600 people are currently under surveillance and some 30 plots have been uncovered so far. Apparently rap lyrics are one of the ways in which young Muslims are being indoctrinated into terrorist activities; the other is infiltrating certain universities which have been named in an article today (12th) in the Sunday Times.October 24th, 2006
The British and American governments are beginning to admit for the first time that all is not well in Iraq. James Baker, Secretary of State under George Bush sr., has been called in to discuss possible alternative strategies, including asking Iran and Syria to take part in discussions on what could be done.In this country the focus is on tensions related to the Muslim community and the problem of how to integrate the people of this community with mainstream British culture. The threat of escalating terrorist acts by young Muslim men and the wearing of the veil have been the catalyst which has brought this tension to the surface and there are attempts at debate and discussion in various quarters. Every country in Europe has the problem of how to integrate their Muslim population with mainstream culture. I have just read that a Swedish minister, a Muslim woman, has said that every immigrant should prepare to do two things - learn the language of the country they have settled in and educate or train to enable them to have a job.
October 20th, 2006
I have posted the extracts below from an article by Paul Rogers today on the Open Democracy website. He brings evidence of the Bush Administration's preoccupation with total control - even extending it to the control of space. The United States was the only nation to vote against a United Nations resolution banning weapons in space in October 2005. 160 nations voted for it. No-one seems to be drawing attention to the pathological tendencies in the Bush Administration. The need for total control and the policies taken to promote it invite the mass psychosis that is developing in the fundamentalist movements of Islam and North Korea (another administration obsessed with control). I feel sad that there is nothing I can do to influence this situation except to record it."The war in Iraq continues to bring tragedy to Iraq's people and devastation to many American families. But just as there are minimal signs of any serious rethinking of military strategy in Iraq by the George W Bush administration, so the scale of forward thinking by the United States is revealed by its plans to dominate space.
Iraq: time to regroup?
In the past week the war in Iraq has broken through to the heart of the established western media in a sudden and unexpected manner. It started on 13 October with comments by the head of the British army, General Richard Dannatt, that the presence of British forces in Iraq was proving counterproductive and that they should leave "sometime soon".On 17 October, the commander of 3 Para battlegroup recently returned from Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler, emphasised the manner in which the Iraq war has been a dangerous diversion from Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, former United States secretary of state James A Baker - assigned by Congress with the blessing of the Bush administration to head an Iraq Study Group that is due to report in January 2007 - has given early indications of his deep concern at the desperate condition of Iraq; there are even suggestions that his team may recommend either a phased withdrawal or consultations with Iran and Syria to help end the fighting.
The reaction of the Bush administration to recent problems has been to focus once more on the supposed connection between the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq war, even going to the extent of conflating a series of issues into the overall "long war against Islamofascism".
This involves subsuming the extraordinary combination of al-Qaida, Hizbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, Iraqi insurgents and any other Islamic groups believed to threaten US interests. The combination is then seen as one single threat that relates directly to 9/11 and the presumed vulnerability of the US homeland.
Behind the concerns of people such as Dannatt and Baker lies a further deterioration across much of Iraq. The daily toll of violent civilian deaths is over 100, equivalent to the losses in the 9/11 attacks every month. Large parts of Iraq are entirely outside US or Iraqi government control and Baghdad itself has experienced a massive surge in violence in recent months...
war in space
... there is now clear evidence that the US military is moving to the next potential frontier of conflict - space. In the early part of 2001, in the heady days before the 9/11 attacks, the unilateralist Bush administration refused to entertain the idea of arms control negotiations to prevent the weaponisation of space. Now, a new national space policy has been announced that confirms this stance and firmly rejects any agreements that might limit US freedom of action. The policy was signed by President Bush on 31 August 2006, but released in a public document only on the late afternoon of Friday 6 October.This doesn't immediately involve the development and fielding of space-based weapons, but the policy does assert that "freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power" (see Marc Kaufman, "Bush Sets Defense As Space Priority", Washington Post, 18 October 2006).
Theresa Hitchens of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information says that the new policy "kicks the door a little more open to a space-war fighting strategy" with a "very unilateral tone to it". Administration officials strongly deny this; but the United States was the only country to vote against United Nations proposals for a space-weapons ban in October 2005, while 160 states voted "yes".
What is evident is that in new frontiers of conflict such as space, just as in existing conflicts, the Bush administration's bottom line is the absolute need to maintain control. Its armed forces may be experiencing difficulties but there really is no evidence of a rethink of the heart as opposed to the details of policy.
It is just possible that James A Baker's report might open up some new lines of thinking, but it is frankly unlikely. The strategic location of Iraq, and the loss of United States influence in the region if there was to be evidence of failure, together mean that a meaningful shift of policy is improbable - at least while George W Bush is in the White House."
October 15th, 2006
The Commander-in-Chief of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, has spoken out about the situation in Iraq as well as the need for the brave men fighting both there and in Afghanistan, to receive more equipment, higher wages and better treatment at home when they are wounded. Incredibly, some badly wounded men have been put into mixed sex wards. Quite rightly, he is aiming to have a hospital specifically for the treatment of wounded men, to be run by professional soldiers. His statements to the press about Iraq have precipitated a right royal furore and panic in government circles, for he has laid bare the ridiculous charade of the government's official position on Iraq, which it claims has not led to an increased threat from Muslims in this country nor to an escalation of violence worldwide. The press seem divided over whether to admire his courageous stance or to deplore the rift between a top general and the government he is supposed to serve. The men and women who serve under him are delighted that at last someone has spoken up on their behalf.October 8th, 2006
With great sadness and anger, I have learned today of the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskya, who with enormous courage, drew attention in her books "Dirty War" and "Dirty Russia" to the many crimes committed by the Russian army in Chechnya and to the increasing totalitarianism of President Putin. An article criticising the pro-Russian prime minister of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, was due to be published tomorrow. Mikhail Gorbachov has described her murder as "a terrible crime against the entire country, against all of us."Meanwhile, in America, Bob Woodward's latest book, revealing the incompetence of the Bush administration with regard to the conduct of the war in Iraq, is making waves, following in the steps of another book called "Fiasco", which similarly details the incredible failure to plan for the post-invasion situation. Both indict Rumsfeld as the key cause of the fiasco as well as Bush's inability to grasp the implications of what was happening, or not happening.
October 3rd, 2006
A letter to the Times today, signed by the leaders of many religious groups, including the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, calls for curtailment of the sale of arms worldwide, pointing out the terrible suffering caused by them. "Worldwide, up to 1,000 people are killed every day by gun violence, and many more are maimed or terrorised...the vast majority of the victims are not fight