Image via WikipediaPeddling Greenhouse Gases: How Much Does BC Export?
Bill Rees, the father of the ecological footprint, likes to say that fossil fuels are a powerful hallucinogenic drug. We are all addicted to cheap and abundant fossil fuels, and so have reshaped our economy and society in fundamentally unsustainable ways.
First Global Air Pollution Estimates
ACLU files suit seeking information on US drone attacks
seeks to enforce aFreedom of Information Act (FOIA) [text] request [text, PDF] made in January. The ACLU alleges that the unmanned warplanes have been used by the military and CIA for killings in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The ACLU also cites troubling reports indicating that US citizens may be targeted and killed by Predator drones. The FOIA request asks "when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized," as well as for information related to civilian casualties. Director of the ACLU National Security Project Jameel Jaffer emphasized [press release] the importance of the information requested:
The government's use of drones to conduct targeted killings raises complicated questions - not only legal questions, but policy and moral questions as well. ... These kinds of questions ought to be discussed and debated publicly, not resolved secretly behind closed doors. While the Obama administration may legitimately withhold intelligence information as well as sensitive information about military strategy, it should disclose basic information about the scope of the drone program, the legal basis for the program and the civilian casualties that have resulted from the program.
Talking Politics
Eulogy for Granny D
Thousands of news services, from Peterborough to Bangkok, from personal diaries to the New York Times, have reported these last few days on the life and death of Doris Haddock. In her life, she did not cure a disease or end a war. She did not write ten symphonies or do whatever normally occasions such notice. So what did she do? It is worth thinking about in this moment.
If people no longer spoke aloud, or if they no longer looked at things with their own eyes or through their own thoughts, if they let others do those things for them, then they would take it as unusual if one among them suddenly spoke up and dared see the world independently, describing without filter or permission the vivid colors and true conditions of the world.
It is difficult to understand why a lady from New Hampshire who did little more than take morning walks–though she sometimes did so without coming back for several years–should be so lionized in death, unless we also consider what has become of the world around her that made her exceptional by comparison. She is seen as exceptional perhaps because the rest of us have become a little too reticent, a little too slow-moving, in response to these times of high challenge.
A thousand people have told me that, when they reach her age, they want to be like Granny D. I have always agreed with them, but we have had it a little wrong. We must not wait until we are 90 or 100; we have to be, even today, a little more like Granny D. Our challenges will not wait for us to age.
Afghanistan Enacts Law That Gives War Criminals Blanket Immunity
A law that provides blanket immunity and pardons former members of Afghanistan’s armed factions for war crimes and human rights abuses committed prior to December 2001 was quietly enacted three years ago by parliament, despite previous assurances by President Hamid Karzai that he would not sign it or allow it to take effect.
According to Waheed Omer, Karzai’s spokesman, the amnesty law was enacted because it was approved by two-thirds of parliament and therefore did not need Karzai’s signature. Parliament is made up largely of former warlords who were accused by Afghans and human rights groups of war crimes.
Picks from 911 Truth
A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully
Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. Read the bill here, and then read the summarized points after the jump.
According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.
(There is no distinction between U.S. persons--visa holders or citizens--and non-U.S. persons.)
According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.
(There is no distinction between U.S. persons--visa holders or citizens--and non-U.S. persons.)
Revealed: Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld warned 9/11 Commission about ‘line’ it ’should not cross’
Who will judge the system?
Where in the media are such vital issues as the disgraceful level of child deprivation among some parts of our population, or the appalling level of education in many areas, or the sense of alienation that pervades much of our Muslim community, or our declining economic competitiveness? If the headlines are any guide - nowhere! Yes, a few brave voices speak out on these issues, but the coverage given to them is token, at best.
We may wonder why the government in 18th-century France seemed frozen in front of the revolutionary headlights bearing down upon it, but if we go on like this, it won't be long before the people grow tired of their celebrity shows and demand a few truly authentic, never before seen on television, executions instead. Our polity is locked in a death spiral. Why, and what, can we do about it?
To answer these questions, we need to understand how human organisation systems work. Remove human consciousness and we would do what every other species has done - elaborate, defend our boundary conditions to the last, and follow any advantage we have without regard to consequence until blocked by our environment, which includes other species. By contrast, and through a process of trial and error, consciousness has allowed us to create functional structures designed to achieve objectives. This has sped up the evolutionary process no end, and given Homo sapiens an advantage to which our number of 6.7 billion and counting attests.
But the intelligence we have embedded within our structures, particularly our government, is limited to the function the structure has evolved to achieve. Armies are designed to make war, not love, corporations to make widgets, not happy families and political parties to achieve electoral success, not improved government. When unleashed they will follow their structural imperatives until victorious, stalemated or defeated. We merely hope that the interaction between them will take us to where we would like to be. It is only when this rather haphazard approach blows up in our faces that we consider the overarching system we are part of, and even then we have no very effective mechanism for doing so.
Structures are our collective memory and do much of our thinking for us, but they are invariably backward looking. It is not just generals who are condemned to fight the last war. The current US president campaigned on an anti-war, anti-Guantanamo, platform, but is hog-tied by the system he inherited.
What we have not evolved, and urgently need to evolve, are mechanisms for looking at our systems of government and changing them. That is why change invariably only comes after a disaster; only when the story underpinning a structure becomes so discredited that its active components (that's you and me) stop doing its bidding.
We need four things. The first is a wider understanding of how our human systems work so that collectively we have a firmer grasp on the relationship between order and change. The second are generally accepted moral criteria against which we can judge the effectiveness of the systems we have. Thirdly, we need a much better mechanism for channeling individual priorities into the legislative arena. And lastly, we need an expert body whose sole task is to keep improving our structures in the light of what people, generally, want them to achieve.
And finally, here is one other change that could easily be made. There has been almost interminable discussion about what to do with the House of Lords. My suggestion is simple. Turn the House of Lords into the House of Ladies. Forget about all-women shortlists. Give them their own chamber, and watch the quality of government improve no end.
Robert Mercer-Nairne is a University of Seattle organisation theorist and the author of Notes On The Dynamics Of Man, published by Gritpoul on March 18th
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