Climate Demonstration, Germany

Grey clouds of carbon footprint were to be seen in the skies ever Copenhagen yesterday as hundreds of planes took off, flying their valuable human cargos of world leaders, diplomats, lobbyists and journalists back home for Christmas. Below them, thousands of people were busy clearing up the mess as quickly as possible so that the city could get back to its daily routine.

The leaders know, of course, that they are being lambasted in the world’s press and accused of not having the nerve or the willpower to come up with the goods. Their efforts have singularly failed to produce any real progress on any of the issues, and, despite the sophorific spin-lines about tightening up what precious little decisions were taken in early 2010, everyone knows that nothing can be done to improve matters until the next planned summit in Mexico at the end of 2010.

And, even if Mexico did come up with a satisfactory deal, we are still about three years away from seeing any meaningful policy implementation.

So most of the analysis to be read, heard and seen on TV today blames the refusal of leaders to come to an agreement, and, according to the point of view you’re reading, the fault lies with Obama, China, rich countries, developing countries, or any combination of them. All the leaders know, of course, that that rather simplistic analysis does not explain everything.

Whatever, the rest of us are left to read the press, shrug our shoulders and get on with our lives as best we can. After all, we all knew that failure was on the cards even before the summit began and, because no-one asked us for our opinion on the matter, we knew we were powerless to influence events.

In the run-up to the summit, demonstrations were held in many major western cities to demand concrete results this time. Those demonstrations were well covered by the media and so much the better. But they did not succeed in changing anything, and nor could they be expected to. They were only very small demonstrations in terms of what was really needed.

Those participating in the demonstrations were, for the most part, environmental groups and associations, with a small number of more radicalised and politicised elements who, as in France, jumped thankfully onto the bandwagon to stick another pin in the governmental or presidential voodoo doll. Their marches, where peaceful, were a credit to them, and the same can be said for the thousands of peaceful demonstrators who went to Copenhagen. They said that the people of the world were demanding change.

But they were wrong. The people of the world have not been convinced that change is necessary yet, and to believe otherwise is confusing dreams with reality.

What everyone seems to want to conveniently forget here is that there was a notable absence at the demonstrations, that of the public at large. Joe Average was hardly to be seen.

The dirty little secret here is that the future of the planet is not at the top of most people’s priorities. Far from it in fact. In almost all highly developed countries – in other words, those who had a lot of potential Copanhagen Clout – the main priorities are keeping a job or finding one, paying the bills at the end of the month, hoping the car doesn’t break down today because there’s a lot of things to do, and stemming crime. And it’s the same in China and India too. A majority of the world’s polulation is too busy surviving to actively support climate change legislation just yet.

They are quite simply not prepared to, or even in a position to, fork out the amount of extra tax money needed to combat global warming effectively. Many of them believe that big polluters should pay more. They are right, of course, but the fact is that even draconian and forced corporate contribution to a slowdown in global warming could not possibly be enough on its own to change anything in a meaningful way. In the case of developing countries, nobody would accept the expense needed to reduce their pollution whilst the West is still on top of the heap.

Not only that, but most people are confused by so much conflicting information about the seriousness of the situation and see the debate as highly technical and far from having a real direction. Besides, no-one has even asked their opinion by, say, holding a referendum or other participatory action. They are out of the loop. Simple as that. And no graph-wielding, figure-quoting or brow-beating by well meaning ecology groups or political parties is going to change that.

World leaders know all this very well of course. Politicians are often criticised – and often quite rightly so – on the climate issue. But they cannot be accused of not knowing more than the average citizen on climate issues. They know a lot more. In fact they know enough to be more than well aware that their citizens are quite simply not yet prepared, or able, to make the sacrifices necessary to save the climate from deteriorating. It’s all very well talking about green jobs and bio food, but both cost a fortune right now, and cash-strapped families just cannot be expected to be milked more than they are being milked right now.

No leader in his right mind was going to go to Copenhagen and insist on the deal they all know needs to be stuck one day or another because he knew that it just isn’t possible to finance it without major disruptions in the way our society works. Most of the propositions submitted before the summit began were quite simply not realistic in terms of implementation and were thus inevitably scaled down by an unspoken common agreement and, in the case of the Danish Leak, an underhanded policy decision.

Besides that, we live in a world where countries are each trying to get the biggest market share, the biggest profit, the best standards of living for their populations. All countries have their political, geopolitical and economic enemies, and the richer among them were hardly to be expected to level the playing field as a Christmas present to the others, before going home and announcing “Hey guys, gotcha a real climate deal for once. Problem is, it’s gonna cost ya thousands of dollars each, starting in two months. Developing countries? Oh, we exonerated them to help their economies. Oh, and Happy Christmas.”

The world could change tomorrow if we all wanted it to. The potential to create all the clean energy we need exists. Building all the necessary infrastructure to start cleaning up the planet could start tomorrow.

But it wont. Because too many people do not understand the debate and no-one, from politicians to ecologists to scientists, have been able to convince them for reasons to varied to mention here.

Thus far, the people are not demanding change. By “the people” I mean the people, not just small interest groups. In fact there are no signs whatsoever that their opinion is going to change soon.

And, besides, it’s comin’ on Christmas, and they have to get out there and buy all those millions of tons of plastic and chemicals called toys and processed food.

And I for one can’t blame them, because no-one has yet been able to convince them otherwise.

Tony Blair (Pic - World Economic Forum at Flick'r)

Tony Blair is the object of a lawsuit which has just been filed for alleged breaches of the Geneva Conventions in connection with the war in Iraq.

The timing of this news comes just a day after Blair said that he would have gone to war in Iraq even if he had known there were not any weapons of mass destruction.

Charges being sought are centred around Blair’s alleged breaches of the 1957 Geneva Convention in committing British troops to a war that is accused of being unjustified by military necessity and thus illegal.

That sounds like good news for those wanting to put Blair – and Bush and Cheney and others – in front of a judge for their supposed criminal roles in the war.

But it isn’t.

Giovanni de Stefano is the Italian lawyer who is bringing the charges. He is also a man with a criminal past who spent several years in prison for fraud. He has been thrown out of several countries as being an undesirable, although he has regained limited visa access to the USA after being deported in 1992.

De Stefano is also known the man who unsuccessfully defended the following individuals, arguably the best known of a long list: The Serbian paramilitary leader and warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, who was a friend and business partner of de Stefano before being indicted by the UN for multiple crimes against humanity; His boss, Serbian war criminal and President Slobodan Milosevic, another personal friend of de Stefano’s; Ali Hassan al-majid, alias Chemical Ali, the man responsible for the gassing of thousands of Kurds in Iraq; Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussain’s right-hand man for many years; Gary Glitter, a British ex-pop singer-turned-convicted-pedophile.

And there are many others.

This is not the kind of lawyer that the anti-Iraq War lobby needs. On the contrary, he is a liability to their cause.

Distrusted in many legal circles, known for his love of the limelight, forbidden from exercising business activites in several countries and a friend of some of the worst war criminals to have been convicted since the Second World War, Giovanni de Stefano has reached new heights of hypocrisy in the legal world by now attempting to take Tony Blair to court.

The anti-Iraq War community had better start praying that he does not succeed in getting his filed charges to court. Because if he does, that would mean almost certain defeat and a resounding setback for all those who would like to see Blair before a judge.

Much more importantly, any jurisprudence reached in an eventual unsuccessful trial could well mean that getting Blair back to court later would be almost impossible.

Surely there must be some more credible and competent lawyers out there somewhere.

As we say in good old English: “I wouldn’t touch Giovanni de Stefano with a barge-pole.”

The guy has got it all wrong.

If he thinks he can stop the Internet from publishing every last little purported detail, true or false, of what is “purported” to be his extra-marital love life he is living in cloud cuckoo land.

There is no way that the British will not be able to access everything that is being written about him on the Internet, if not in the printed press.

Tiger Woods is making all the wrong moves here, and if he continues to think that the whole world should only have access to his life via “official channels” he is going to be one big-time disappointed man.

I am extremely surprised that he could be so dumb as to think that this tactic could work, and I am even more surprised that his lawyers would apparently agree to this pointless and counter-productive initiative.

Tiger, you play a mean round of golf, but your PR is lousy and it’s time for you to man up here.

Italian press article on Amanda Knox (courtesy of redbanshee on Flick'r)

No, the question doesn’t mean “Is Amanda Knox guilty?” It means “Are WE guilty?” “Guilty of what? you may ask.

Now that the verdict is in there are many people who have never met her and are pointing to a “fix,” a “stitch-up” and a “media massacre ” in an effort to explain it. They also point out the alleged shortcomings (read differences) of the Italian justice system compared to that of the USA/Canada/the UK etcetera.

Knox is described by many people-who-don’t-know-her as being hard-working, conscientious and a good old American girl.

All that is fine of course, and we all want to protect “our own” against what we consider to be injust treatment in other countries. That’s only natural and normal. Not only that, but there are a lot of grey areas in this issue, as well as an unduly hard press campaign against Knox.

Many of those people also claim that she is, or must, be innocent. That she “couldn’t” have done it.

Based on the facts at hand, no-one can go so far as to say that she “can’t” have done it.

There is not a single shred of evidence to prove that she is not guilty, just as there is too much circumstantial and inconclusive evidence which says she is.

There are hundreds of articles and documents on this trial and the evidence or lack thereof, and the plain fact is that there is nothing conclusive, one way or the other. We just do not know if she is guilty or innocent.

Amanda Knox deserves a retrial. She deserves justice. But she does not deserve a public opinion on her side which can think of nothing better or more constructive to do than blithely claim her innocence in all ignorance whilst at the same time shooting the Italian judicial system down in flames, as if our systems were perfect.

Because if what people say about a media lynching for Amanda Knox is true, the day is surely coming where there’s going to be another media lynching. That of what will inevitably be seen as our condescending and arrogantly superior attitudes.

She needs good lawyers and American Embassy support.

She does not need anti-Italian hysteria support. That will rub the Italians up the wrong way, sure as eggs is eggs.

What she needs is to plan her defence for a retrial as calmly and dispassionately as possible.

Do her a favour and turn the noise and anger down a little.

Because in the passion and noisy anger game, the Italian press always wins.

And you don’t want to be guilty of playing into their hands, now do you?

American troops in Afghanistan (Courtesy of wilpf.org)

The upcoming surge in Afghanistan announced by Barack Obama yesterday is not the call to action that many believe it to be. On the contrary, it’s the beginning of the last act of this predictable disaster.

However many troops we throw at the problem, we shall never win the military battle, and Obama knows it. The fact that he is putting in 30,000 more mainly regular combat troops is a clear sign that he accepts that the coalition cannot win militarily, and so all the Taliban have to do, and will do, is to adopt a slightly less high-profile attitude and wait things out.

But they will still be in a position to continue IUD attacks on convoys and patrols. The same goes for suicide attacks and car bombings in Kabul and elsewhere.

What Obama is doing here is preparing the coalition to leave Afghanistan without losing military face. That will be achieved and so much the better.

The telltale sign that we are not there to win the war is that the mix of troops he is sending does not suggest that he seriously envisages taking the battle to the Taliban, which would be the only way to win it. That strategy would involve the heavy and sustained use of special forces and other specialised units, whereas many of the 30,000 are regular troops who are not able to take that kind of advanced combat to the enemy.

Thus it would seem that the coalition will content itself to limiting the damage in terms of territorial and troop losses, shoring up Karzai as best as possible, then leaving in 2012 at the very latest.

That makes good sense.

I was a supporter of the invasion of Afghanistan and its initial, limited goal of defeating the Taliban regime and disrupting Bin Laden’s organisational capacity. I even supported the continuing occupation, though with some reserves, in the hope that maybe the West could at least help establish an effective power seat for Afghani leaders, whilst knowing at the same time that dismantling the tribal system is impossible.

The trouble is that we have done things badly and are now fighting for a country which will most certainly not change many centuries of tradition for the example we have offered as a replacement.

As a Brit, I do not want British – or American or any other – soldiers to die for what is going on there now.

Earlier this year Karzai’s government voted in laws legalising the physical punishment of women, their imprisonment at home, and their obligation to submit to sexual demands – in other words, Karzai legalised rape.

Afghan officials  have diverted unimagined amounts of aid financing to their overseas bank accounts and tribal leaders have used the cash they obtained after promising cooperation to settle deals with other tribal leaders and the Taliban for purely tribal power reasons. Whatever the West does, that will not stop by the very nature of how the aid is used, which is by Afghans. We cannot rebuild Afghanistan using Halliburton.

Afghan army and police units are heavily infiltrated by the Taliban and have shown a marked unwillingness to fight, that which is normal seeing as Afghanis see, and have always seen, foreign troops as being temporary invaders. Most Afghanis only “do it for the money” and do it half-heartedly. Who can blame them? After all, they will still be thre when the coalition has left….

Those are not situations we should be sending troops to die for. It will surely be a terrible blow to women’s rights, human rights, democracy and the fight against fundamentalist Muslim terrorists, but sometimes you have to know when you’re beat.

We’re beat, and Obama wisely knows it.

There’s no need to hang our heads in shame though. After all, Afghanistan has never been brought to its knees for centuries, although many have tried.

These are the words of someone who was reflecting upon the nature of conflict in Afghanistan:

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains and the women come out to cut up your remains just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your god like a soldier.”

Who was he? Rudyard Kipling in “The Young British Soldier.”

The Antarctic ozone layer. Courtesy PhotoJournal

Climatologists, researchers and scientists disagree on global warming. Wow! Talk about stating the obvious. Of all the futile and pointless debates going on right now, including healthcare, this climate change email spat is by far the most overblown of all.

I mean, is there seriously anyone out there who ever doubted that climatologists don’t have any more incontestable evidence on climate change than does the average amoeba? Or that climatologists have shock-horror-truth books to sell and interviews to give in order to pay the gas bill for their SUV’s? Or that some of them (at least) have vested corporate interests in coming down on one side or another of the debate?

If you to to today’s Guardian, you can read about even more new research which “shows” that a group of British scientsts are “very confident” that Antarctica may heat up dramatically as the ozone hole disappears. Great.

Go figure. Last I read the ozone hole was a dire threat to humanity and closing it was essential to maintain life on Earth as we know it.

Anyway, whatever, the article goes on to say – giving three examples as evidence – that this conclusion contradicts earlier and erroneous research by…..the same or related scientific institutes. In other words it is de facto in contradiction with what others in their specialty have concluded.

Conclusion: This research will surely be debunked before the end of next week, just like that which preceded it.

Remember all those impassioned appeals by scientists for the development of biofuels? Where are those scientists now, now that we know that many major biofuel sources pollute more during their production than is cancelled out by their use?

Recent temperature change phenomena are being interpreted as “proof” that global warming is/isn’t increasing, and scientists are busy arguing about which analytical methods work best. Read – which analytical methods work best to support their agendas.

And on it goes.

I don’t know about you, but I know full well that human science does not yet understand how climate works or evolves and is far from doing so. Even the scientists themselves agree on that (they have to – it’s a convenient get-out when their predictions go wrong.) We can’t expect miracles from scientists in this domain.

Also, I learned when I was 16 years old in Math Statistics lessons that you can make figures say what you want them too, so asking me to believe what any scientist says on face value is to take me for an idiot. Besides, my poor mother, exasperated by my latest convoluted explanations for why I hadn’t done my homework, always told me I could argue black was white and win.

So we mustn’t be too hard on the scientists. After all, the debate is highly polarised and bitter.

What with catastophist ecologists who believe any old end-of-the-world theory, and stubborn-headed-vested-interest negationists who deny any change is taking place at all, a scientist is more or less obliged to come up with some shock-horror formula for the masses or he will not be heard, his book will not sell, and he won’t get on TV and contribute to all those lame documentaries on climate change, and he will lose his funding.

We are getting the scientists, and the conclusions, that we deserve and demand, and it’s not something we should be proud of.

Tiger Woods in 2004

Are we sitting comfortably girls and boys? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time there was a nice little boy called Tiger Woods. As he grew up he found out that he was good at knocking little white balls into small holes using sticks. Then he discovered that being good at that could earn him lots of money to buy ice creams.

So he did just that and became famous throughout the land. And that is why he is now a role model for children like you all over the world .

Then, one evening, poor Tiger became the helpless and innocent victim of a cruel, injust and terrible car smash in his own front yard, which meant that his garden was soon full of mean and nasty American policemen who are well known all over the world for ripping babies’ heads off with their teeth, killing black men at the drop of a hat, collecting payoffs from the Mafia and generally terrorizing the American population using Fascist tactics.

Well, Tiger decided that he was not going to be bullied by these very bad men, nosirree!!

So, when they asked to interview him about the accident, he refused. What a brave Tiger, isn’t he girls and boys?!! Not only that, but he did the same the next day, courageously and defiantly defying the vast hordes of nasty killer-police who had laid a trap for him outside.

Bravo Tiger!!!!!

The moral of this story children is, either:

a) That we the people need to stand firm against wanton aggression by the Hitlerian pigs of power who try and oppress us and our rights,

or:

b) That rich people like Tiger Woods, what with their money and influence and all, can, not like us mere ordinary mortals, quite simply refuse to be interviewed by the police concerning possible misdemeanor offences, thus making the police look like a bunch of wimps and making a mockery of the principle of equal justice for all.

The end of the story is, of course, that he’ll allow himself to be interviewed just as soon as whatever drugs or other stuff he had in him at the time of the accident have mostly disappeared from his bloodstream.

She is, understandably, fed up that the great majority of the newly elected European Commissaires are on the right of the political spectrum.

But from that legitimate deception she has gone on to demand the cancellation of the nominations and is encouraging a sort of Socialist guerrilla resistance to them.

The reason for that is that she wants to see the number of Socialist Commissioners go up to the same proportion as that for Socialist European parlementarians. Sounds logical, but it isn’t.

Lienemann needs to be reminded that the job of European Commissioners is to represent Europe on an international level. That means that they represent the majority view of European countries.

Well, European countries overwhelmingly have, for better or worse, right-leaning governments right now.

Lienemann is cynically confusing national election results, which can often finish with the right just winning, with the international representation of European countries and their elected governments.

In other words, she is trying to impose via artificial and totally undemocratic means what Socialists have not managed to do for many years, and that is to be the political force which dominates Europe.

Europe is centre-right for now. That’s it, like it or not. And no falsely egalitarian levelling tactics will change that.

Mme Lienemann is very regrettably doing the only thing that French Socialists seem to know how to do right now, which is to criticise everything whilst at the same time failing to come up with any credible alternative policies and/or ways of making Europe work.

Instead of whining, complaining, and trying to load the dice, she should be concentrating on helping her French Socialist colleagues to find a candidate at least half-capable of affronting Sarkozy here in France in the 2012 presidential elections, because if they don’t, that which is looking more and more likely, the Socialists here will suffer yet another drubbing at the polls.

Whatever the truth behind the rumours that “Wikipedia editors are leaving in droves,” let’s just assume that there’s no smoke without fire.

And let’s just say that Wikipedia risks a serious penury of input, verification and updating.

And so let’s just say that Wikipedia dies.

I’d be really pissed off at that, and so would you. Be honest.

After all, what could be more delightful than reading a bio of (what follows can be adapted to the Monkees or Beethoven if that’s your bag) David Bowie, and then clicking by curiosity on the blue hyperlink halfway down the page that leads to “his Berlin days” and then going from there on a whim to “German deconstructionist art”?

Or, at thirteen years of age, going to “Internet” to know more about it, only to find you can go on to read about something weird and enticingly intriguing called the “Deep Web” and from there, “DeepPeep”?

Political animals can instantly switch from “Birthers” to “Conspiracy Theory” to “United States Special Operations Command Central” and god know where else. Heaven!

And that is the central question here. “Where else?”

Where else can we go to find out basic information on so many subjects, written in a relatively easy-to-understand manner, and with so many cross-references, all on one site?

Where else can you read about the American Civil War, biotechnology, ants, shotcrete (yes, shotcrete) and knitting all in one place?

Where else can you find out what happened on any day of any year or why Challenger broke up or what caused the Sichuan Dam disaster last year?

Ah, I see, so you’re a left or a right-winger who sees Wikipedia as being biased? Or you’re a so-called-or-self-styled-intellectual who seeks only the “facts”?

All I can say is that god only knows where you’ll find “REAL” “FACTS.” Whatever, there are those of you who believe that Wikipedia is a hotbed of Communists/Fascists/Nutcases or a mix depending on who is criticising.

Fine, but believe me, we ordinary people (one of which you are apparently not) are not stupid. We are capable of judging issues on their merits, and I do not need you to tell me what I should or should not be reading. Who are you? the thought police you pretend to be against? Biased is biased and I know how to recognise it just like you do. Is that OK with you?

Think what you like, but Wikipedia is doing a reasonably good job against those who, left or right, Jewish or Arab, pro or anti drugs, would corrupt what is a good basic research tool on so many subjects.

So while we’re waiting for perfection, Wikipedia is a godsend for the many millions of people who need quickly accessible and reasonably reliable information.

Period.

I am signing up to Wikipedia as an editor as soon as I have finished here.

As I said, to the chic and trendy Wiki-Critics and anarcho-censors reading this, don’t ask for it, you may just get it…..after all, if Wiki went down, you would have a hard time finding out what the word ‘Cynicism’ means…..

What is slightly different here though, is that the government, the official representative of the people, has  “apologised” for the scandal.

Good news, no? No, it is anything but good news. Think about it.

Catholics spend their lives confessing and atoning. There’s even a ceremony for it, “Confession.” Catholics are even BORN sinners, according to themselves.

So, because Catholics are no more (or less) virtuous than the rest of us, they spend their lives sinning and feeling bad about it. Yip, just like the rest of us.

It’s just that the idea of Confession is such a hypocritical way of considering crime. It comes down to “You can sin, and do, because you’re human, but if you confess and atone for your sins, you’re in the clear.”

After all, didn’t the famous writer Jules Feiffer once say:

“Jesus died to forgive our sins. Dare we make it meaningless by not committing them?”

The Irish people, and parents with children in particlular, should see this government charade for what it most probably is. An attempt to get off the hook.

When the authorities have jailed a few dozen offenders as well as the Bishops who have covered up their activities, and when they have changed their antiquated laws on the subject, put in preventative and proactively educative measures for children and implemented laws to control the Catholic Church in a much more effective manner, I’ll believe them.

But until they do that, I won’t believe in the sincerity of Ireland’s excuses at all.