John Quiggin was somewhat irritated, even angry, with the climate “delusionists” (as I am) and so invoked a violent image, suggesting that Rudd had given then both barrels.

I tend to think it is a matter of squarely facing the evidence as much as intellectual honesty, but with a sustained attempt on both grounds no sustained and productive inquiry, scientific or democratic, can take place, and the cause of public policy will not be advanced. The analogy that works for me is the case, as I have had experience, where a specialist has said to me that we now need to undertake a medical intervention with no guarantee that it will work, but here is the evidence, and why don’t you talk to your GP about it. In those circumstances, I feel empowered to make a decision, even though I have no knowledge about kidneys. And yet, it seems the Liberarl Party in Australia, and other parties elsewhere, in an attempt to accommodate what they regard as key constituencies wish to run with the “delusionist” nonsense.

Professor Quiggin summed up his position with respect to the “delusionists”:

That’s what Kevin Rudd gave Australian delusionists in this speech to the Lowy Institute. I agree with him that there is no point in being polite about this. Those who reject action to address climate change are doing so on the basis of lies propounded by tobacco hacks like Steve Milloy, bought-and-paid-for thinktanks like the IPA, loony world-government conspiracy theorists like Lord Monckton, intellectual cardsharps like Bjorn Lomborg and reflexive contrarians like Richard (’the dangers of smoking have been much exaggerated’) Lindzen. In years following this debate I have seen no-one (literally and without exception) on the delusionist side separate themselves from these hacks and cranks and present a coherent case. That’s because it is impossible for an intelligent person to reach delusionist conclusions on this issue while retaining their intellectual honesty.

So what did Kevin Rudd say at the Lowy Institute:

Today we are approaching the crossroads. Both these policies are reaching crunch time.

. . . Action now. Not action delayed.

As one of the hottest and driest continents on earth, Australia’s environment and economy will be among the hardest and fastest hit by climate change if we do not act now. The scientific evidence from the CSIRO and other expert bodies have outlined the implications for Australia, in the absence of national and global action on climate change:
· Temperatures in Australia rising by around five degrees by the end of the century.
· By 2070, up to 40 per cent more drought months are projected in eastern Australia and up to 80 per cent more in south-western Australia.
· A fall in irrigated agricultural production in the Murray Darling Basin of over 90 per cent by 2100.
· Storm surges and rising sea levels – putting at risk over 700,000 homes and businesses around our coastlines, with insurance companies warning that preliminary estimates of the value of property in Australia exposed to the risk of land being inundated or eroded by rising sea levels range from $50 billion to $150 billion.
· Our Gross National Product dropping by nearly two and a half per cent through the course of this century from the devastation climate change would wreak on our infrastructure alone.

The Government took a plan to tackle climate change to the last election, to tackle the risks climate change poses to our planet, and especially to the health, lifestyle and livelihoods of our children.

That plan included two fundamental parts:
· First, a domestic plan of action to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution, including:
o Expanding the Renewable Energy Target to 20 per cent by 2020 (and subsequently directly investing over $2 billion in renewable energy, including investment in large scale solar generating capacity that will be three times larger than the world’s current largest project).
o A national energy efficiency strategy to reduce the energy that we can consume, and undertaking the largest investment in energy efficiency ever seen in this country.
o A Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that will increase the cost of carbon over time and facilitate a transition to a low carbon pollution economy.
· The second part of our strategy is participation in global action to tackle climate change, including:
o ratifying the Kyoto Protocol;
o participating in global technology transfers – including Australian leadership in a global coalition to develop carbon capture and storage through the Australia-initiated Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute; and
o strong engagement towards a new post-Kyoto global agreement .

And as Kevin Rudd truly said, it is “a moment of truth”. At such moments the whole paradigm of politics on the globe may shift, and I actually agree with Lord Monckton in a contrary way, since I see the the nation state system based on violence, is inimical to providing the necessary focus and action on global problems, of which the climate crisis along with inequality are urgent issues. I would envisage a largely, although not immediate, global democratic system with a global parliament, which however imperfect would allow all voices to be heard. I doubt that the nation state system can work, but pragmatism suggest that what we have to work with.

(In my view the war system associate inherently with nation states, and the peace system are fundamentally incompatible, and that violence to nature, to the interactions and inter-relationships with the set of embedded natural systems, is the intrinsic cause of the climate crisis.[evidence please])

It is one thing to identify the “delusionsists” and their possible motivations; it is another to consider those that swayed or persuaded by their arguments. If the tobacco companies can get 16% – or whatever that figure is hooked on their poison – then there PR advisers have done good, and they can continue to make profits. Apparently they are criminal, don’t care, and have the legal leeway to free from prosecution, or perhaps they genuinely think that cigarettes are torchlights of freedom. Further delusions should not surprise anybody.

Bernard Keanes at Crickey saw the Four Corners program. He identifies a demographic and a psychological condition which he identifies with the One Nation support base, or opposition to an issue identified with the left or the progressives (or whoever that set of people can be described as, including many Liberal voters as well). According to Bernard Keane, One Nation voters were old (over fifty), white (Anglo-Celtic), rural people, confused and unhappy. And it seems there might be something about cognitive style as well:

One Nation supporters were primarily older, conservative, low-income, poorly-educated voters, often in regional areas. Opposition to emissions trading is strongest amongst older and Coalition voters. And they share a similar approach to communication. Both are immune to rational argument, preferring “common sense” and invented or meaningless statistics over verifiable evidence or logic. Indeed, a salient characteristic of Hansonism was its equation of inarticulacy with authenticity.

Such a disposition, I am guessing, as with the birthers in the US, lends itself to authoritarian attitudes, to manipulation by the unscrupulous political operatives, and a sense of resentment to what they describe as “the elite”. Members of the real intellectual and social elite who they have never met, so they cannot judge them, only people who tend to put them down. Nonetheless, they have real grievances and they are as people entitled to respect. What those of us, who disagree with them have to do is to understand their grievances, bearing in mind they are probably less equipped to deal with the uncertainty they we take for granted – if that thought could be expressed without sounding condescending.

In his article Bernard Keanes makes further connections. For example:

And both Hansonism and climate denialism are more accurately understood as vehicles or expressions of other, more fundamental concerns. Many One Nation supporters were victims of a decade and a half of economic reform – blue collar workers left jobless by the decline in manufacturing, or regional communities where competition policy and agribusiness had cut employment and national businesses had packed up and left. It was their sense of abandonment by mainstream Australia that fuelled their embrace of Hanson, almost regardless of her views.

Both are driven by an innate hostility to the rest of the world which, for denialists, should do something about climate change before we do anything or, in its more extreme form, wants to use climate change to destroy Australia’s national sovereignty.

The absence of cosmopoliteness led to the Tampa and cruelty, executed by a political pragmatist, supported by a larger number of economic pragmatists. One supposes that in the politics of climate, that the short comings of such a trade off would be clearly perceived, and therefore not politically practical.

In fact, John Quiggin suggests that Rudd may be angling on this issue for a double dissolution, which is a unusual political gamble for the Prime Minister to entertain. If all the political poker chips fell Rudds way, the outcome would not be good political outcome in my view, since the Senate would be dominated by the Government and the minor parties diminished in influence.

Postscript:

The way I see it, is that climate science is somewhat like in the same position that physics was when it had to deal with Michaelson-Morley experiment and all the electromagnetic stuff, it was finding its way, but even if they have not figured everything out (even if possible) they were headed in the right direction, even to adopting the extraordinary idea that participant observer could consider sub atomic phenomena as a particle or a wave. It probably reasonable to assume that more is known about the working of the kidneys than the atmosphere, especially one that now includes record levels of carbon dioxide, not to mention methane.

ELSEWHERE:

See Gary at Public Opinion for another take on the state of the Liberal contribution to climate crisis public policy.

Along with all the other problems of Empire, the natives are whinging, and unwilling. This only adds to the lesser breeds who seem, as they have since World War One, prone to combat fatigue.

The profits from the resource stealing game had better be good because otherwise the problems of Empire seem to be increasing. Threat power may work a treat, as in the intimidation of brave Australia, but the footprint must be heavy, and the ecological impact unaccounted.

There are problems everywhere, which are always threatening to get out of control when you run most of the world with guns and violence, or at least covertly with the threat of violence. Drugs seem to follow the Empire, or the Empire seems to follow drugs, from Colombia to Afghanistan. Now it seems from the innocent support for the War against Drugs, Venezuela and Colombia are on a war footing. The BBC reports:

Mr Chavez has also ordered 15,000 troops to the border, citing increased violence by Colombian paramilitary groups.

The BBC’s Jeremy McDermott in Bogota, Colombia, says that normally such declarations would not cause alarm, but because of the current tensions there are fears of a possible spark on the border which could lead to further violence.

Frozen ties

In response to Mr Chavez’s comments, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said his government would seek help from the UN Security Council and also the Organization of American States.

“Colombia has not made nor will it make any bellicose move toward the international community, even less so toward fellow Latin American nations,” a statement by Mr Uribe said.

Ties between Colombia and Venezuela have been frozen since July when Bogota said it would let the US army use its military bases for anti-drugs operations.

The agreement has caused alarm among some of Colombia’s neighbours, who object to an increased US military presence in the region.

When news of the deal first broke in August, Mr Chavez warned that “winds of war” were blowing across the continent.

Who knows why the bases in Japan, and in particular Okinawa are deemed necessary. What with the fire bombing of Tokyo and other cities, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the point might have been made, but I suppose people forget. If the Red Chinese Capitalists are not a threat, then perhaps the crazy North Koreans might be. While when Obama lands in Tokyo he might not get the welcome that Bush received in Buenos Aires, he may be reminded that hosting the US presence in Okinawa for over sixty years is getting bothersome to the locals. According to the BBC, the Americans cannot even accommodate the local people by moving to the base to reclaimed land where is it claimed by opponents to have a damaging effect on coral reefs. There were claims of 21,000 turning out to protest, and it just possible that the new Government is listening now to public opinion. The report notes that the American forces number 47,000 in Japan (able to be deployed to Afghanistan to meet McChystal’s request?). The BBC noted:

The local mayor called on new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama “to put an end to Okinawa’s burden and ordeal”.

If this goes on, it will become impossible to play the good guys against the posited bad guys, who at least in the crude popular imagination, are monolithic Islam, a myth on a par with monolithic Christianity (How do we reach out to Islam?). Anyway, as this narrative runs out of legs in both Japan and South America in the absence of the usual suspects.

There is always poor, suffering Afghanistan. You can see in retrospect the efficacy of the settling the tribes within the limes of the Empire as Rome was doing, rather than to attempt to mobilize conscript armies of foreigners. I suppose you cannot exchange land for guns, if the locals have the mistaken belief they own the land, and have done for generations against all comers. Chris Hedges reports on the permutations of control and command in Afghanistan.

And so it goes. Glory is just around the corner. Obama is on the plane with another inspiring speech, and popular acclaim. For the moment, as more momentous matters are to the fore, attention to the Global climate crisis can be averted

Automatic Links:

Such is the magic of computing, they point the way from ironical musing to substance.

On this day twenty years ago the Berlin Wall was no more, and with it the USSR was dispatched to the memory of history and Germany was reunited.

Just for the record Deutsche Wella recounts the events and their significance of the day that changed European history:

In a press conference on Nov. 9, 1989 GDR central committee spokesman Guenter Schabowski unintentionally announced that citizens could travel to West Germany immediately. It was the beginning of the end for East Germany.

Guenter Schabowski’s press conference on November 9, 1989 was a fairly dull affair for most of its duration, according to those present. But a question by an Italian journalist right at the end turned it into one of European history’s most memorable events.

Schabowski was asked just before 7 p.m. about when a new law permitting GDR citizens more freedom of travel would go into effect. Schabowski famously told the journalist: “As far as I know, that goes into effect now, immediately.”

Since television viewers in both East and West Germany were following the live press conference, his comments electrified East Germans and eventually led to a redrawing of the European map.

Immediately following the remark, GDR citizens rushed to the border separating East and West Berlin, wanting to visit the western part of the city. The GDR border guards were unaware of the press conference, and, taken aback by the crowds gathering in front of them, made repeated calls to their superiors asking for guidance. They successfully prevented citizens from crossing the border for three hours.

But later in the evening, the guards relented and opened the borders. People were able to cross freely from East to West for the first time since the wall’s erection on August 21, 1961.

In the months prior to Schabowski’s press conference, thousands of GDR citizens had taken to the streets demanding political reform. The so-called “Monday Demonstrators” in the eastern city of Leipzig had drawn special attention for their protests.

Shouts by demonstrators of “We are the people!” became commonplace, followed by “Gorbi! Gorbi!” – calls directed at Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Since 1985, Gorbachev had been implementing reforms in his country, and Germans living in the GDR hoped to see his ideas adopted there as well.

70,000 protestors took to the streets on October 9, 1989 in Leipzig

However, the hardline government under GDR leader Erich Honecker was not interested in reform, and the government’s refusal to change ultimately led to its own demise.

On October 18, 1989, Honecker was forced to step down. He was replaced by Egon Krenz as head of state, but even this shift could not prevent the GDR’s collapse.

A November 4 protest at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz attracted 500,000 people, making it clear that a change of leadership would not win the people’s trust. When the Berlin Wall opened five days later, demands for reunification of East and West Germany grew louder.

In light of the increasing support for reunification, Western diplomats travelled to the GDR a few weeks after the Wall’s opening.

France and England in particular reacted with mistrust to the prospect of the large and economically powerful German state that reunification would create in the heart of Europe. If they could not stop reunification entirely, the two countries at least hoped to apply political sanctions on Germany.

Helmut Kohl, then-chancellor of Germany, kept their position in mind as he delivered a speech in front of the ruins of Dresden’s “Frauenkirche” cathedral that drew worldwide attention. Kohl declared that German unity would only be possible in the context of a more unified Europe generally. He said German and European unification were just two sides of the same coin. His speech garnered thunderous applause from the GDR citizens in attendance. Nevertheless, French President Francois Mitterrand travelled to the GDR two days later in an attempt to prevent West Germany from annexing the East.

By early 1990, the international community watched closely the process of German reunification to ensure that the interests of Germans as well as of the four conquering allied powers from World War II (England, France, the US and Russia) were respected. German negotiators worked out the conditions of a German reunification internally, while both West and East German officials consulted with the four powers about the international ramifications of their proposal.

This so-called “2 plus 4″ process (representing the two German states and the four allied powers) concluded with a declaration of sovereignty for Germany on September 12, 1990. German negotiations had already resulted in a contract that specified all aspects of the new relationship between East and West Germany on August 31, 1990.

On October 3, 1990, the former East German states officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany. The date marked the end of the GDR and a reunified Federal Republic.

Author: Matthias von Hellfeld (gsw)
Editor: Kyle James

ELSEWHERE:

Fred Halliday is less than sanguine about the outcomes, beyond Germany:

All in all, the emergence, from central Asia to west Africa, of a range of violent and often anarchic states is to be counted among the consequences of the collapse of Soviet power. As with the other two strategic consequences mentioned, the fragmentation of formerly multiethnic states, and the transformation of communist elites into new kleptocracies, these processes too must be included in the balance-sheet of 1989. It is not, entirely, a happy picture.

Mass killings by single gunmen, is doubtless an example of terrorism? Who knows why any person would open fire on fellow soldiers at an army base?

Will the mainstream media be concerned to to discover the truth? Will they simply play the role of the embedded media in the cause of the holy war against Islam following the attacks of the hijacked civilian airliners of September 2001?

Vengeance it seems has only served to kick the cycle of violence around. Violence is a robust dynamic process that can take hold over a person, even it would seem a doctor and a psychiatrist. The more pressure that people perceive themselves to be under, and the less aware of the subtle effects of the range of violence, for example, the isolation of the individual. Dehumanization of the person, if for those who commit murder, is both a form of violence and part of the argument against capital punishment.

Al Jazeera reports on the events:

Investigators are searching for a motive behind the shooting at a US army base in Texas, in which 13 military staff were killed by an army psychiatrist.

The suspected attacker, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was shot four times by police at the scene, Colonel John Rossi, a spokesman at Fort Hood, the biggest military facility in the world, said on Friday.

A woman died overnight from her wounds, raising the toll from Thursday’s shootings to 13 dead and 30 wounded, Rossi said.

The shooting took place inside the base as soldiers were awaiting medical and dental treatment at a processing centre for those being deployed on missions to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hasan, born in the US to Muslim Palestinian parents, was unconscious but in stable condition on Saturday.

. . . Hasan, 39, had spent years counselling severely wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington, many of whom had lost limbs fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was transferred to Fort Hood in April and was to have been deployed to Afghanistan, where the US military is engaged in an increasingly bloody war against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.

Al Jazeera’s Josh Rushing, reporting from Fort Hood, said: “[Hasan] joined the army after high school and went to the Virginia Tech university to get a psychiatry degree through a military programme.

“Every day, he heard how horrible those stories were and he really started to question the wars, according to what his cousin and sources who knew him said.

“Hasan became more devout in his religion and started arguing with soldiers about whether the wars were right or not, to the point where he received disciplinary action and negative work reviews.

“It raises a major question – how can a person responsible for the mental health of soldiers returning [from war] be allowed to continue in this profession when he has these kinds of questions himself?”

The Army Criminal Investigation Command and the FBI were investigating the shootings and no charges had been brought against Hasan, John McHugh, the US army secretary, said.

The expectation will be the final story will concentrate on the pathology of the indiviudal and not weigh the effects of the social and policy context. The report in Al Jazeera also refers to “lax gun control laws” in the United States that contribute to the number of multiple shooting incidents, but not to the violence portrayed by the media and the dismissal of people from employment that means that they cannot sustain themselves, referred to as “letting them go”. It never occurred to me before, but it seems obvious that if the American policy makers were serious about preventing terrorism they would act to restrict access to guns. Apparently on the largest army base in the country where people are being trained to kill only the military police are allowed to carry weapons.

Whenever violence occurs the case for nonviolence can always be made, but nonviolence is not easy in a society that is saturated with violence and in which violent responses have become for most habitual and unthinking. Since I am in the act of criticizing the United States, it is salutary to remember that they have traditions of conscientious nonviolent practice, through the Christian tradition, in particular, but not exclusively, the Quakers and Pennsylvania, and more recently Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.

Coda:

I suppose it could be suggested that religions have a soul, a spiritual centre, that seems to get lost when they are accommodated into state or institutional power. Constantine’s dream, or PR exercise at the Malvern Bridge marked the conversion from the exclusion of Christians to the point where the legions of Rome became wholly Christian. This story is so familiar that it is not shocking. What seems shocking is that a Buddhist government in Sri Lanka can engage, as seems to have occurred in perpetrating violence against the Tamils.

ELSEWHERE:

David Johnston and Eric Schmitt report in The New York Times that early investigations suggest that the Major acted alone, and the suggestion is that this act appears to have been premeditated. Aside from the legal and related matters, there are going to be questions from a military point of view as to why a officer and a psychiatrist was able to get to the mental state without his superior officers or colleagues expressing concern.

Benedict Carey, Damien Cave and Lizette Alvarez also in The New York Times report on the stress experienced by the relatively few psychiatrists treating soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder. They are suggesting that Major Hasan would have been pretty much left to his own devices. Aside from his personal circumstances, it could be that the Army is in denial over the issue of combat stress arising from killing, or seeing people killed. When a doctor is not able to experience compassion for their patients, they are in a bad space.

Kevin Drum has an eye witness account and opinion. The army, he claims, is not broken.

David Usborne in The Independent reports on the time the assailant had to reload repeatedly, the problems of constant redeployments after eight years, and the observation of a Muslim cleric who commented “there is something wrong with you”.

JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and JAMES DAO at The New York Times seem to have done a good job following up on the Hasan story.

Whether the US Army is broken remains a open question, but it seems clear, as Tom Dispatch points out, that deployment and war fatigue are stretching the personnel, and the costs have not been reduced, so they are stretching the budget with wider social implications, such as forestalling universal health coverage.

So what is terrorism? I am using a subjective definition. Had I been one of the soldiers at the base and had had experience of war, those experience would have been come back in a place I would expect to be safe. To me terrorism is the use of violence not just to intimidate, to induce shock and fear. Kevin Drum takes up the issue. To suppose that weapons of mass murder, such as drones, are not forms of terrorism, is to be absurd. Glen Greenwald also has thoughts on the same topic.

We had the best intentions, but for two days this week it was too wet. Otherwise Sasha and Dexter went around the circuit. They were going on.

“One foot in front of the next
This is the start of a journey.”

I’ve seen it with my own eyes
How we’re gettin’ otherwise
Without the luxury of leavin’
The touch and feeling of free is
Untangible technically
Something you’ve got to believe in
Connect the cause and effect
One foot in front of the next
This is the start of a journey.
And my mind is already gone
And though there are other unknowns
Somehow this doesn’t concern me.

And you can stand right there if you want
But I’m going on
And I’m prepared to go it alone
I’m going on
To a place in the sun that’s nice and warm
I’m going on

And I’m sure they’ll have a place for you too oohoohoo

Anyone that needs what they want, and doesn’t want what they need
I want nothing to do with
And to do what I want
And to do what I please
Is first of my to-do list
But every once in a while I think about her smile
One of the few things I do miss
But baby I‘ve to go
Baby I’ve got to know
Baby I’ve got to prove it

And I’ll see you when you get there
But I’m going on
And I’m prepared to go it alone
I’m going on
May my love lift you up to the place you belong
I’m going on
And I promise I’ll be waiting for you oohoohoo

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

We will go on over to Friday Ark to see who joins the journey there.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The photo arrangements were made possible by Picasa.

There is some talk about the two state solution in Palestine, and some people now are talking about the one state solution, but the policy of the Israeli Government is the continuing zero state solution for the Palestinians.

They are just Arabs who used to live in Palestine. Now many of them don’t. The big problem in for peace in the Middle East is now, and has been the colonialist and the imperialists. As Gandhi observed the Jewish people settled much of Palestine under the guns of the British, who shafted their World War One Arab allies, and have maintained their dominance with the munitions and support of the Americans, who need allies in the region other than corrupt dictatorships and “client” oil shrieks. In the context of the realities of geopolitics the indigenous people can be, as they have been, expropriated and dispossessed. Doh . . . terrorism! The clash of civilizations was always an exaggeration because one side had no pretense to being civilized, that is held a belief combined with a practice of peace, truth and justice.

The events in Germany and Central Europe, and during the course of the Second World War, without making light of the human depravity involved, do not in any way justify what has happened in Palestine, although they do go someway to explaining the determination to hold on to a culture in what was perceived as the homeland of that culture. The problem is compounded in that migration from Eastern Europe is more Russian than ethnically Jewish – if there is such a thing after the centuries of living in Europe, North Africa and other places in the Middle East. The Vatican because of its size is perhaps the only single religion state that can get away with it.

Aside from asking the obvious question as to why would anybody possibly conceive of Mahoud Abbas as a credible person to represent the Palestinian, other than it seems the Washington foreign policy establishment, the BBC reports that the Chief Negotiator, Saeb Erekat holds the view:

Palestinians might have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements, the chief Palestinian negotiator said.
At a news conference in the West Bank, Saeb Erekat said it was a “moment of truth” for President Mahmoud Abbas.
He said it might be time for Mr Abbas to “tell the truth” that a two-state solution “is no longer an option”.
But Israel rejects a one-state solution as a demographic time-bomb that would make Jews a minority in the country.
It may be time for President Abbas to “tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option”, Mr Erekat said in Ramallah.

Now that is breakthrough thinking! Ah no. Israel has the zero state solution in mind.

The Gentleman from Ohio had some interesting things to say on the denial by the US House of Reps on the findings of the Goldstone Report, and what is more the Gentleman spoke plainly, via War in Context:

POSTSCRIPT:

Israel was founded on colonial violence beginning in the Nineteenth Century. The violence was an ongoing dispossession of the indigenous people, much like Australia and North America. The state was based on realpolitik, perhaps there is an Prussian influence. At one level the problem is not Israel but the international system. The only way I can think of to get around this problem and set up a new model of how the world works is to establish a form of international democracy, an EU writ large. This would have the added benefits of providing a forum that would focus on global problems, including the climate crisis, an international rule of law and global inequality. If we can apply the principles of peace within our own societies, then it is reasonable to suppose a global democracy might work toward that end. What are the alternatives?

War represents the methods of violence taken to a more barbarous level in an overt attempt to deal with the violence of others in an effort to create a peace based on injustice.

Often times, as in Afghanistan, events and script are so discordant that even Public Relations struggles and fails to play their lullabies of glory with gore.

Chris Hedges at Truthdig takes aim at the Afghanistan slaughter:

The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting narratives used to justify the war in Afghanistan are pathetic attempts to redeem acts of senseless brutality. War cannot be waged to instill any virtue, including democracy or the liberation of women. War always empowers those who have a penchant for violence and access to weapons. War turns the moral order upside down and abolishes all discussions of human rights. War banishes the just and the decent to the margins of society. And the weapons of war do not separate the innocent and the damned. An aerial drone is our version of an improvised explosive device. An iron fragmentation bomb is our answer to a suicide bomb. A burst from a belt-fed machine gun causes the same terror and bloodshed among civilians no matter who pulls the trigger.

Five years ago Chris Hedges, addressing the American Friends Service Committee annual public gathering, recounted some of his direct experience of “living to the top” as a war correspondent.

War by this account is not glorious. It is inhuman. So it would be best if we all got down to the work of being human in the world, while we have a planet that makes that project possible, but for how much longer give current behavior it is hard to say. It is clear that the structures of thought, organization, and technology that that are indifferent to larger system of nature have met their end point. The human species gripped of the egotistical delusion is facing a merciful extinction if all that is on offer is cruelty and stupidity. Violence it turns out is the path to nowhere. But where is the way out?

César Chávez, has a very pertinent observation:

Violence just hurts those who are already hurt… instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.

Open Development:
So what does it mean to work at being human?

The focus shifts from work as moving stuff around, as activity for it own sake, although informed physical activity is intrinsic to human life. There has to be a relation between means and ends. Socially constructed systems that consign human beings to mere survival needs are evidence of structural violence, if it is objectively not necessary.

Have to say, I am somewhat grounded, risk averse person, which is perhaps wise given the sometimes precarious ladder-experiences I have been prone to.

Needless to say the possums and the snakes have the run of the temporary accommodation in the roof. Things changed today. Some weeks ago I happened to met at the Supermarket a builder who has worked at this house, and he told me about the Federal Governments program to provide free roof insulation. I had so other matter I needed quotes on, and I could see this would be help the building industry through the economic downturn, which it is susceptible to, so I agreed. The government described there program in the following terms:

The Energy Efficient Homes Package aims to install ceiling insulation in Australian homes making them more energy efficient; to boost the economy and to create jobs.
This practical step will help households reduce their energy use, cut their power bills by around $200 a year, and increase the comfort and value of their homes.

And today it was all done within two hours. Still I am potentially in all sorts of trouble of this initiative, since it did not have the imprimatur (the stamp was lifted and wiped) of the powers that be. It was exceptionally hot today at about 30 degrees Celsius and the bats proved their worth. Still my sense is once the house heats up, it retains the heat more this evening.

Now the only question might be, how the possums, snakes and other transient roof dwellers will take to the new accommodation.

The Government has reduced the rebate as from last Sunday, in part because of reports of rorting the system and unsafe practices. Because I know the person who installed the installation, I can be confident that he was very careful about the safety issues. Even if we have to pay some money toward the cost, we will have no complaints.

POSTSCRIPT:

Now we have a tangible link with Pudong, Shanghai, where the installation bats were manufactured. However, I did wonder, globalization and all, whether or not one reason for outsourcing the manufacture of such products might be that the workers in China have less recourse to Occupational and Safety legislation and compensation.

Patrick Gower in The New Zealand Herald is reporting that 49% of respondents in an opinion poll would like to see the multi-member proportional (MMP) electoral system abolished. 35.8 percent wished to retain and 15.2 percent did not know.

A simple majority will see the voting system in New Zealand changed, except the referenda will be held over the next two electoral cycles, and change if voted will be introduced in 2017 beginning at the next three year election in 1911.

Presumably the opponents of MMP have an alternative system in mind, other than one imagines winner take all, or first past the post, which created the dissatisfaction that gave rise to the MMP system in the first place. It might be observed that like Queensland, and so other places, including Sweden, New Zealand has a unicameral parliament, which means that without a proportional system minority parties would be excluded. Maori had designated electorates in the old simple plurality system.

In this system, minority parties once they have won an electoral seat or passed the threshold of votes get representation in the parliament, and sometimes membership of the government. Sometimes, as has happened in Israel for example, parties and their leaders have chosen the perks of ministerial office to being on the opposition benches. Although, unlike Germany, from which the system is derived at part of the post second war settlement, there have been no grand coalitions, which is the past experience would seem to have been a bad move by the Social Democrats.

The governing National Party seems have had been elected on the basis of changing the MMP, or least revising it. The article notes:

The Government has said an independent panel will be appointed to conduct a public education campaign in the lead-up to the 2011 referendum. It will have a budget of $6 million. The referendum itself will cost $11.5m.

Five Parliaments have been elected under MMP since the system was introduced in 1996.

During last year’s election campaign, National promised a referendum on the voting system.

MMP resulted from a royal commission into the electoral system that was set up by the fourth Labour Government and reported in 1986. It recommended a referendum on the adoption of MMP.

National’s then leader, Jim Bolger, promised to hold a referendum if his party was elected, which it was in 1990.

In a referendum in 1992, 84.7 per cent voted for change and 15.3 per cent wanted to retain first-past-the-post.

Of the four alternatives offered, MMP got 70.5 per cent support, STV (single transferable vote) 17.4 per cent, PV (preferential voting) 6.6 per cent and SM (supplementary member) 5.6 per cent.

A binding referendum pitching MMP against first-past-the-post was held at the same time as the 1993 general election.

The result was 53.85 per cent for MMP and 46.14 per cent for FPP.

Still the polling results are interesting, but not sufficient to indicate real dissatisfaction with the system that would lead to a change. I suspect that if the referendum was counterpoised the MMP against First Past the Post, then the support for the existing system may increase. Looking at the 1992 voting results on the alternative systems, given the political institutions, MMP is probably still in a far stronger position than the polling suggests. To change the voting system will effectively to reduce minority representation.

POSTSCRIPT:

So what is the likely outcome? Who knows but it will be very interesting. I expect that an attempt will be made to fine tune the existing MMP system, by restricting the possibility for grand coalitions and by circumscribing the influence of the minor government partners. The TTP system was too susceptible to top-down influence, and by some reason MMP is to open to bottom-up influence. So may be the smaller players have to play a smarter game if they want to stay in the game long term and keep their places at the Cabinet table.

LBJ, who had some years to observe these things, was firmly of the opinion that a president had one year of clear sailing.

Time flies, President Obama enters on his second year in office, and so how is he travelling?

Godfrey Hodgson at Open Democracy sources the Johnson quote:

You’ve got just one year when they treat you right, and before they start worrying about themselves.” The speaker was Lyndon B Johnson, laying out the facts of presidential life to his aide, Harry McPherson. ‘They” were first, Congress, and second, the news media. “The third year”, LBJ went on, ” you lose votes . . .The fourth year’s all politics. You can’t put anything through when half of Congress is thinking how to beat you. So you’ve got one year.”

Obama was elected on 4 November 2009. Godfrey Hodgson summarizes the problems that Obama faced: the financial crisis, health care, climate change, and foreign policy, especially the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. How anybody can judge Hilary Clinton, as Secretary of State highly, is beyond my wit. It is fair to observe that the President has not led on any of these issues, and while he may be playing the long game, the short term is that people are dying in Afghanistan.

I am hoping that Obama will take on the mantle of the presidency, but if the Johnson prognosis is right he has missed his main chance. According to Raw Story, Obama is seeking more options on Afghanistan, which at least provides a contrast with his predecessor.

On the question of Afghanistan, Scott Ritter, entertains the option that Obama perhaps cannot consider. He observes:

The president’s lack of military experience screams out when he calls America’s involvement in Afghanistan a “good war.” He would have been better off trying to make the case for a justifiable war, or even a necessary war, but to label a process that brings about the death and injury of thousands as “good” makes me wonder about Obama’s fitness to be commander in chief. His seeming inexperience on national security affairs and foreign policy leave him vulnerable to domestic political pressures that emanate from these arenas. The president does possess the vision to see a world in which America stands side by side with other nations as an equal, operating with a shared notion of due process and respect for the rule of law, but that doesn’t square with any decision to deploy more troops to Afghanistan. Expanding the war in Afghanistan will lend credence to the central worry about Obama: that, at the end of the day, this man of vision might in fact be little more than an Illinois politician who is willing to barter away American life, treasure and good will for political gain on the domestic front. And, in doing so, it will undermine his noble vision of an America “resetting” its relationship with the world following eight years of unilateralist militarism.

Scott Ritter had defined the problem:

Thus the solution itself becomes the problem, thereby creating a never-ending circular conflict which has the United States expending more and more resources to resolve a situation that has nothing to do with the reality on the ground in Afghanistan, and everything to do with crafting a politically viable salve for what is in essence a massive self-inflicted wound. It is the proverbial dog chasing after its own tail, a frustrating experience made even more so by the fact that any massive commitment of troops brings with it the fatal attachment of national pride, individual hubris and, worst of all, the scourge of domestic American politics, so that by the time this dog bites its tail, it will be so blinded by artificialities that rather than recognize its mistake, it will instead proceed to consume itself. In the case of Afghanistan, our consumption will be measured in the lives of American servicemen and women, national treasure, national honor, and, of course the lives of countless Afghan dead and wounded.

Scott Ritter then says that a “true leader of substance” would be able to stand apart from the venial pressures of self interest and the media that might well be confounding Obama’s best intentions. But since when, and by what miracle, has the United States in recent history produced a true leader of substance? In such an absence more poor people in Afghanistan and Pakistan (when does a democracy wage war against its own people?) are destined to cruelly and unnecessarily die, and the moral complicity falls on all of us.

The one year time frame to come to terms with the job, and the problems with which he was saddled from the start, not to mention a cautious approach (understandable?), combined with inexperience, the executive focus of decision making, without the benefit of burden shifting that a more formal cabinet system might provide, would make it difficult, if not impossible for any person to find his feet. What could be done? The mid-term elections will taking place in twelve months, and while it is unlikely (I am guessing) that the Republicans will do well, they will become more entrenched in the holes that they are busily digging. Probably widen his range of advisors is the best option, including use the experience, as other presidents have done of former presidents. Kennedy was lucky that he had Eisenhower to talk to.

Once all the excuses are made, and bearing in mind he does not want to be politically inept, he had to make decisions and lead. Two cases in point: Palestine and the Afghan imbroglio. In Ha’Aretz(via War in Context), Gideon Levy requests “America stop sucking up to Israel”, and Tom Engelhardt describes why are the options are bad in Afghanistan. It looks to me the American Empire will have to wind back to concentrate on the economic issues at home and in a related way dealing with the global climate crisis. The ideal will be a recovered American economy on a new ecologically sustainable footing.

ELSEWHERE:

Bill Moyers has a suggestion – bring back the draft!

NATO seems to be failing in its first ever imperialist foray – that if the Canadians are to be believed, and the Dutch Parliament has sensibly and democratically called back their troops.

Eugene Robinson declares at Truthdig, Obama is successfully changing the world