Sasha and Dexter have memories longer than the road that stretches ahead. So they are going home.

They are taking their time about it. Something might be missed.

The Beatles provided my inspiration this week:

Home might have changed – will Dexter be leaving home now?

Somethings don’t seem to change. We regularly stop at the knoll to sit down and take in the view. So the challenge is to see things anew:

Taking a detour means we can sit on the grass and look at the sky. Sasha and Dexter came into view:

Standing around, but having fun it seems:

Then home where Dexter checks out the new fence (which Sasha had done earlier). Fences are the intersection where dog environmental awareness meets human awareness:

Putting up the fence meant that the dogs did not have the same freedom of movement, although again Dexter saw the opportunity with open gates to head for freedom, but with no problems.

We will again this week, at this late hour, head over to Modulator and see who else is onboard Friday Ark.

Global warming is either a fact or it isn’t. There is no room for negotiation or politics. First there is the question of truth.

If the expected effects of climate change, such as among other implications the shrinking of the northern ice cap, the drying up of the Amazon and the potential release of methane from the sea bed and the tundra, the human race with enormous suffering will have change imposed on it. What will then be the price of vanity and hubris, and who will pay for the cruel effects? The imposition of death, suffering and cruelty on others is by definition immoral. So we should understand, if climate change is a fact it is primarily a political but more fundamentally a moral question.

Those who would argue that the increase in greenhouse gases caused by human activities does not affect climate cannot make specious or solipsist arguments. Here is the case that convinced David Attenborough:

If the increase of carbon dioxide is not causing the observed changes in the earth’s weather patterns, the increase in the ocean levels and the melting of the ice caps, then they have to provide alternative explanations that fit the patterns of temperature change over time. If they believe that the increase of carbon dioxide, and potentially of methane, is benign they have to prove it by establishing or suggesting a set of independent observations that would support the hypothesis.

“Great World and Moral Leader” Obama is currently attending the Group of Eight Meeting in L’aquila, Italy.  Peter Baker in The New York Times is agog with his herculean struggle. Obama after all with his powers of bipartisanship can game the United States political system, much like the global corporations, should be having no problems at all. Not so. It seems:

The world’s biggest developing nations, led by China and India, refused Wednesday to commit to specific goals for slashing heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting the drive to build a global consensus by the end of this year to reverse the threat of climate change.

. . . With Europe pressing for more aggressive action and Congress favoring a more restrained approach, Mr. Obama finds himself navigating complicated political currents at home and abroad.

If he cannot ultimately bring along developing countries, no climate deal will be effective.

The empire for which Obama is the willing figurehead is perhaps killing more people than global warming, but the later may be gaining. It is an interesting question as to which will crash first: the empire or the earth.

Without the empire, and the corporate stranglehold on what is laughingly called US democracy, the leader of that political system might have the moral standing to be a world leader, and one that leads by example. Obama politics can be more accurately guaged in Norway than in Washington.  India and China wisely observe the rules of the game as set by global polluters is that it is everybody for themselves. Unremarked by the hometown paper of record for Wall Street, local dignitary, the Secretary-General of the UN, seems to stepping into the vacuum of world leadership.

So who cares for Earth? Is it not the emotional and intellectual responsibility of every person, regardless of where they live, to protect the planet and the future, not for a few, but for as many as practical? There are no teams, only human beings, and their are no goal posts since by definition(mine) climate is a function of the planetary solar system mediated through a dynamic atmosphere. It may make more sense to seek to reduce temperature change if it were possible than to set limits of  2 degree rise over pre-industrial levels.

ELSEWHERE:

Brian at Larvatus Prodeo is on the case of Methane, which I note Tim Flannery said  has 21 times the effect as a similar amount of carbon dioxide.

According to the “quick count” it seems that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yuhoyono has won re-election without the need for a run off election in September.

Niniek Karmini for AP, quoted by The Jakarta Post explained:

An unofficial quick count at 2,000 polling stations – with almost 100 percent of ballots tallied – gave Yudhoyono 60 percent of the vote, which would be enough to avoid a runoff in September. He needs 50 percent of cast ballots to win in one round.

Megawati Sukarnoputri, a former president whose father was the first postcolonial leader of Indonesia, was second at 27 percent, with Vice President Jusuf Kalla at 13 percent.

The preliminary result was based on ballots from all 33 provinces and was conducted by the Indonesian Survey Circle, which has accurately forecast previous elections

Opponents of the President argue that they will wait for the results of the official count which will be released by the National Electoral Commission by 27 July. The purported result it is suggested is a result of the experience of economic and political stability, so perhaps Indonesia has not been as susceptible to the Global Financial Crisis as others.

Based on the unofficial results, President Yuhoyono has gained 90% of the vote in Aceh. He seems to be popular in Papua. His opponents in the presidential race were equally national figures.

Indonesia is the third largest democracy in the world along with India and United States. For whatever, reason they have chosen to develop a political system that is unlike those comparable countries, by adopting, for example, the method of holding run-off elections. Polling appears to have been without incident across the country.

Dr David Kelly’s death of apparent suicide at the time seemed unconvincing and strange in July 2003. Now The Daily Express has revealed that he was writing an expose of his work on anthrax and to rebut the possession by Iraq nuclear or biological weapons.

According to the newspaper, Kelly had advised Blair, the then British Prime Minister, of his conclusions prior to the invasion of Iraq. Kelly was an expert on anthrax, and he had been involved with Apartheid South Africa. As soon as anthrax comes up I am reminded of the murders in Washington, and that inconclusive investigation.

Dr Kelly it seemed accurately predicted the timing and circumstances of his own death according to the report by John Bryne via The Raw Story:

Kelly’s death — said to have been a suicide — has stirred controversy, as it came on the heels of testimony to the House of Commons about a memo which purported that Britain had “sexed up” a dossier on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. A Parliamentary inquiry ruled that the death had been suicide, though it also included testimony from a former British ambassador who quotes Kelly as having said, “I will probably be found dead in the woods” if Iraq were invaded.

There was, we are told, that Dr Kelly was involved in a bigger scandal which was the development of anthrax of the Apartheid Government of South Africa. John Byrne reports:

The allegations of a potential Kelly expose come from a new film about biological weapons being debuted in London on the sixth anniversary of Kelly’s death titled “Anthrax War” (the documentary aired earlier this year on Canadian public television). Kelly was an expert in biological warfare agents, as well as a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq.

‘‘The deeper you look into the murky world of governments and germ warfare, the more worrying it becomes,” the film’s director, Bob Coen, is quoted as saying. “We have proved there is a black market in anthrax. David Kelly was of particular interest to us because he was a world expert on anthrax and he was involved in some degree with assisting the secret germ warfare program in apartheid South Africa.”

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s summary of the film, Coen “was raised in Zimbabwe where the former white regime has been accused of unleashing anthrax against the black population… [who] embarks on a journey that raises troubling questions about the FBI’s investigation of the 21st century’s first act of biological terrorism.

“Coen’s investigation takes him from the U.S. to the U.K. and from the edge of Siberia to the tip of Africa. In a rare interview, Coen confronts ‘Doctor Death’ Wouter Basson, who headed Project Coast, the South African apartheid-era bio-warfare program,” the network’s website adds. “Project Coast used germ warfare against select targets within the country’s black population.

Sometimes conspiracy theories prove to correct. The reason they emerge and are given traction arises from government secrecy. Imagine having a Parliamentary Committee doing the work of an Inquest?

The response of authoritarian governments follow they stereotypical formula. Xinjiang is the latest example, when apparently the underlying tensions between the Han Chinese and Uighur ethnicities. 140 people are reported to have died as a result.

The disturbance seems have been caused by the video on the internet of a person based to death in Southern China. If the television reports are to be believed it seems that local Uighurs took revenge in Urumqi, the capital city. From the other side it is suggested that police fired on the crowd, as mentioned by the BBC.

Stephen McDonell for the ABC reports:

Xinjiang’s regional government has blamed international activists for planning the protest.

“This is a typical incident of beating, smashing and looting ordered by overseas forces. It was premeditated, planned and organised,” Governor of Xinjiang Autonomous Region Nur Bekri said.

This year is the 60th anniversary of Xinjiang’s re-incorporation into China; the government calls it the “peaceful liberation of Xinjiang” but many Uighurs still do not accept Beijing’s rule.

Chinese authorities have warned that today’s type of conflict could increase because of Xinjiang’s strategic location on the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

They are worried that if Uighur separatist groups link up with the separatists in Pakistan, they could have a much more serious armed conflict in western China.

Stephen McDonell observes that what Uighurs he has spoken to say publically and privately is contradictory. Authorities, as they did in Iran, are similarly, so it is reported, shutting down the internet to prevent pictures of the demonstrations being circulated.

Chalmers Johnson has been on the case of off shore US bases. He notes that world wide they are now almost 800 in number. How might they be necessary? Why is there not more opposition to them?

They are extravagantly expensive to operate and onCe established there appears to be no initiative or wish to withdraw from them. It is almost as if enemies, or at least contingencies, have to be invented to justify them, but I suppose that is simply the logic of wider military-industrial complex. Clearly once the US did withdraw, for example from the air base and associated facilities at Frankfurt there is no way could be retrieved despite the fact the cold war is now over. I suppose they might be analogous to the naval bases the Britain had during the Empire, and the bases represent landing rights, when not electronic spying stations.

Now it seems that cost squeeze may well increase – who knows (does anybody care?) what that does to the US budgetary bottom line. Chalmers Johnson, at Tom Dispatch, observes:

On June 23rd, we learned that Kyrgyzstan, the former Central Asian Soviet Republic which, back in February 2009, announced that it was going to kick the U.S. military out of Manas Air Base (used since 2001 as a staging area for the Afghan War), has been persuaded to let us stay. But here’s the catch: In return for doing us that favor, the annual rent Washington pays for use of the base will more than triple from $17.4 million to $60 million, with millions more to go into promised improvements in airport facilities and other financial sweeteners. All this because the Obama administration, having committed itself to a widening war in the region, is convinced it needs this base to store and trans-ship supplies to Afghanistan.

I suspect this development will not go unnoticed in other countries where Americans are also unpopular occupiers. For example, the Ecuadorians have told us to leave Manta Air Base by this November. Of course, they have their pride to consider, not to speak of the fact that they don’t like American soldiers mucking about in Colombia and Peru. Nonetheless, they could probably use a spot more money.

Now it is not the case, as has been alleged, that there was never opposition to the presence of the bases. As Chalmers Johnson knows well the base at Okinawa has been a source of angst for ever. At the same time, one suspects that Japan is not susceptible to the “economic hitmen” and the “jackals”, as for example Honduras might be. Nor is it the case that the bases have not attracted popular protest, as is currently occurring in Italy.

Empires are after all political systems, subject to “forcings” and “feedback” mechanisms, and potentially systemic breakdowns. It is ironic to say the least that one of the principle creditor nations, China, is at the same time, strategic objective of the Empire. Then again perhaps by becoming overly involved in the Islamic world, the Empire has averted its focus from Latin America, offering that potentially rich continent (and peninsula) the possibility of social and political progress.

I suppose it ought not be surprising that there is no political opposition to overseas bases in the US, since there is no political opposition in that system. The greater the cost of the delusion, the stronger the belief in the reality it suggests but cannot deliver. No, I think the US Empire will last for a thousand years, at least. Like the mark of Cain, it is a permanent feature of mankind.

The New Economics Foundation has an index, first published in 2006, that combines scores for most countries into a single index combining life expectancy, carbon footprint and subjective life happiness.

As might be expected the winners of such a world league table do not include the usual suspects. In fact far from it. The Happy Planet Index for 2009 identifies the top five successful countries as Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guatemala and Vietnam. These set of winners contrasts with the 2006 list which had as the leaders: Vanuatu, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica and Panama. What is it about Central American and Caribbean countries that accounts for their success?

Ashley Seager in The Guardian observes:

The report says the differences between nations show that it is possible to live long, happy lives with much smaller ecological footprints than the highest-consuming nations.

The new HPI also provides the first ever analysis of trends over time for what are supposedly the world’s most developed nations, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

OECD nations’ HPI scores plummeted between 1960 and the late 1970s. Although there have been some gains since then, HPI scores were still higher in 1961 than in 2005.

Life satisfaction and life expectancy combined have increased 15% over the 45-year period for those living in the rich nations, but it has come at the cost of a 72% rise in their ecological footprint. And the three largest countries in the world – China, India and the US, which are aggressively pursuing growth-based development models – have all seen their HPI scores drop in that time.

Money is one form of satisfaction, and quantitative measurement, can allow us to lose sight of other possibilities, in particular the social and planetary cost of economic activities. The article in Wikipedia points out the HPI is not perfect, but it has some objective basis. On this basis people who are born in Costa Rica are luckier than those born in Australia.

Costa Rica’s only other distinction that I was aware of was that they did not have an army, although they have  armed police. Honduras, by contrast, seems to have an army without a police force.  Still the amount of money spent, and proposed to be spent, on defence does not seem to improve the quality of our lives.

You might ask how can a dog story be one of nonviolence?

With poetic licence, the Dylan song could be easily cast as “tangled up in a blue”. Around these parts a blue could be seen as a fight. As you notice from the photos, Dexter of the blue harness, is not given too much leeway, although he when given the opportunity takes it. We replaced our fence in the back with a real fence (yet to be painted):

Dexter got out the back door, because an unnamed person had left it slightly open, walked pass the the bloke putting up the fence. I managed to block Sasha’s from getting out. Then I was on Dexter’s trail, but in these circumstances, when the call of the open spaces is heard he does not listen to me. As it happened two women walking two dogs came on the scene.

Dexter and the larger of the two dogs appeared to familiarizing themselves, and then situation turned into a fraca that sounded serious. What to do? One response would be enter into the scene with physical force and violence and make the situation and consequences far worse. One of the women started screaming to stop. It worked. Dexter sat like he had being told sit and stopped. The woman said she was normally frightened in these circumstances. There are always a number of different approaches in any situation with different outcomes.  Like human beings if there is a resort to violence, however pressing the circumstances, the results turn out for the worst.

Otherwise events were ran to plan.

Dexter had other things on his mind:

Sasha stands her ground despite appearances:

Dexter featured at the knoll, but Sasha is not forgotten:

“Tangled Up in Blue” should be included, since Dexter and I had a fortunate escape. Bob Dylan, 20th century poet, has the lyrics:

It seems there was shade of blue in some photos along the way:

And it was very pleasant to see two horses grazing:

Sasha might feel she has been left out, and we cannot have that. “If you see her, say hello”. Francesco De Gregori has the song- “Non dirle che non è così”:

Now we will set our course to again join Friday Ark at Modulator.

Wars are fought with words and narratives. Who would have thought that Associated Press was stubborned to the Pentagon?

Listen to the report from Associated Press report, via Truthdig and You Tube:

As others have noticed the reporter, doubtless following the proud tradition of objectivity, talks of “Taliban infected villages”. The clear implication and association of that description is that “Taliban” who might be described otherwise as perhaps Pashtun Clansmen, are casually dismissed as vermin, and therefore non-human and fit to be exterminated. Hence we move by constant repetition into an existential war against the enemy of civilization, on the premise that the Taliban were responsible for 911 and would if successful provide succour, if not sponsor other attacks on the West. Such a proposition ignores the many 911 in the form of drone and helicopter attacks on the Pashtun rural people, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The barbarity of the tools available does not make for civilization, nor does the abuse of language, the complete disregard of workable concept of justice, nor for that matter the complete reliance on violence that has worked so well in Iraq. The latter point depends on whose perspective we adopt. Perhaps from the point of view of the oil cartels and the merchants of death it has worked exceedingly well. The politics of the Afghan-Pakistan war should be in terms of whose interests are being furthered. Equally, it is undoubtedly the case that the “Resistance” are brutal and extreme as might be expected from thirty years of war, and the special favors that some among them received from the Pakistan Inter Service Intelligence, acting independendly and on behalf of American policy and financing.

George Orwell can in prospect have the satisfaction that what he observed and predicted has come to pass. Obama can too have the satisfaction that his war would be endorsed by O’Brian. 2 + 2 = 5.

POSTSCRIPT:

Admittedly this represents just one report, but it is such an egregious violation of standards of impartiality that it stands out. Unlike individual blogging, the mainstream corporate and government quite correctly might claim to have editors. I sometimes spot the need for correction, but at other times I miss my errors. To claim to completely unbiased is absurd. I pick up on the dehumanization, which I suggest is a necessary condition for all violence. We ought at least to be working to uncover the truth, and not simply engaged in propaganda.

ELSEWHERE

By way of comparison and contrast the BBC presents the 180 degree view, including the fact that the British troops are also operating in the area and the moves of the Pakistan Army across the border. Iraq redux, the American are claiming they will “clear, hold and build” (and presumably bribe and divide). Sounds like it is all over bar the shouting.

The Pakistani refugees from the Swat Valley and other places can at least take comfort that their suffering is in the interest of a noble cause, which in the immediate time frame is the Afghan Presidential Election scheduled for 20 August.

A group of twenty activists and their boat have been arrested in international waters by the Israeli navy.

The Israelis stated that any international organization could provide humanitarian aid through the crossings to Gaza from Israel.

At The Raw Story, Stephen C Webster reported that Huwaida Arraf, leader of the Free Gaza Movement and coordinator of the mission prior to his arrest by the Israelis said:

“No one could possibly believe that our small boat constitutes any sort of threat to Israel,” he said in a release. “We carry medical and reconstruction supplies, and children’s toys. Our passengers include a Nobel peace prize laureate and a former U.S. congressperson. Our boat was searched and received a security clearance by Cypriot Port Authorities before we departed, and at no time did we ever approach Israeli waters.”

Arraf called the intervention a “premeditated attack” and “a clear violation of international law.”

Despite the fact, as the BBC reported the British Government spokeperson said that they would be concerned if British Citizens were arrested in international waters, and despite the fact that the ship had on board a Nobel Prize Winner and former US Congresswoman, the Israelis went ahead anyway. They claimed the vessel had entered into Israeli/Palestinian waters, and that warning had been given.

The BBC reported:

On Monday, a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross described the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza as people “trapped in despair”, unable to rebuild their lives after Israel’s offensive.
Donors have pledged $4.5 billion for reconstruction and rehabilitation in Gaza following the 22-day offensive which left more than 50,000 homes, 800 industrial properties and 200 schools damaged or destroyed, as well as 39 mosques and two churches.

The blockade on the battered and slaughtered Palestinians of Gaza is carrying on violence by other means. Nuclear-armed, little Israel believes itself immune from International Law and standards of human decency and justice. The time for such toleration by other countries is long past since Israel has as much regard to their citizens as for the Palestinians.

Mairead Maguire, who won her Nobel Prize in Northern Ireland but who is no stranger to the plight of the Palestinians posted a copy of a letter she sent to Obama on her website in which she said:

“To visit Palestine is to walk with a people whose lives are being made unbearable by Israeli Policies of ethnic cleansing,” she wrote. “Each year when I visit I ask myself ‘how can the Palestinians bear so much suffering and still have hope?’ The Philosopher Karl Jung says ‘Go into your grief for there your soul will grow’. Being privileged to walk alongside the Palestinian people, one sees so much soul.”

“I appeal to you President Obama, to change USA Policies and stop supporting through military aid, etc, [Israel's] occupation of Palestine, and to move immediately to help lift the siege of Gaza and say to Israel ‘enough is enough.’ [...] Love and hope gives us all courage and belief that peace and freedom is possible.”

ELSEWHERE:

Just to make clear that not all Jewish Israelis are of one mind in relation to the treatment of the indigenous Palestinian people, Ezra Nawi tells his story, via The Nation.