(Payerne, Switzerland)
On the morning of the 8th July a solar plane piloted by André Borschberg and financed by billionaire Doctor Bertrand Piccard landed after a 26-hour flight. Through its 12,000 solar cells it had collected enough solar energy to fly all night, becoming the first plane to do so.
To quote directly from the website:
But we succeed! Not only in staying airborne right through the night, but in making our discourse credible.
At the sun came up, there were still several hours of energy reserves in the batteries. Yes, renewable energies and cleantechs can do the impossible! We were right to bet on our conviction.
It is no surprise that this plane has been designed, built and tested entirely with private money. Governments do not have that sort of money; nor can they justify such supposed extravagance at a time when people are losing their jobs and banks are putting people out of their homes. Not only that: billionaires can be entrepreneurs who develop systems like this and then make phenomenal amounts of money selling the idea to governments, but from the other angle it can be said that governments wait around for people with enough money to do what they can’t afford to do and then take the expertise off them. It is yet another form of taxation.
Neither will it be a surprise that this idea will never become commercial. Solar power, tidal power and wind power can all be harnessed in many more places than fossil fuels, simply to different degrees of efficiency depending on the geographical location, and even though coastal areas do belong to governments wind and sun belong to no-one. They do not exist in limited quantities under the land of states with smaller armies than the USA or the UK and will therefore not be coveted by greedy Western governments.
In short, without the incentive of making profitable wars Western governments will never allow this scheme to take off.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Supremely guilty
(Al Amarrah, Iraq)
This week the British Supreme Court ruled that British troops are not protected by human rights laws on the battlefield, concluding a case in which the family of a private who died of heatstroke argued that the government was responsible for protecting their troops in foreign wars.
An army is an organisation which is sponsored by a government to kill civilians in other countries. If you join an army you are declaring that you are prepared to go to another country and kill somebody you have never met before on the whim of a politician you have never met before either.
Armies are on a par with governments and organised religions as organisations that show the utmost disdain for human rights, but they are perhaps the most effective at actually suppressing those rights. The British army has trampled over the rights of millions of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan during the last decade, killing hundreds of thousands of them.
However, while it is difficult to summon any sympathy for a man who takes a gun to another country and kills a family in an unprovoked attack – whether the private who died of heatstroke did this or not is moot because individuals are complicit in the murders of a homogenous group – it is true that the ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the employees of the state lies with the state.
The faceless – and shameless – bureaucrats who send young men to a pointless and unjustifiable war should not be allowed to throw off the responsibility for the deaths of either their own soldiers or of the civilians murdered by their soldiers. They should be brought to justice for any deaths, be they from a bullet or from the heat of the desert.
The judges who fail to recognise this are as complicit in these deaths as the politicians and are guilty of perverting the idea of justice, and here the Supreme Court is supremely guilty.
This week the British Supreme Court ruled that British troops are not protected by human rights laws on the battlefield, concluding a case in which the family of a private who died of heatstroke argued that the government was responsible for protecting their troops in foreign wars.
An army is an organisation which is sponsored by a government to kill civilians in other countries. If you join an army you are declaring that you are prepared to go to another country and kill somebody you have never met before on the whim of a politician you have never met before either.
Armies are on a par with governments and organised religions as organisations that show the utmost disdain for human rights, but they are perhaps the most effective at actually suppressing those rights. The British army has trampled over the rights of millions of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan during the last decade, killing hundreds of thousands of them.
However, while it is difficult to summon any sympathy for a man who takes a gun to another country and kills a family in an unprovoked attack – whether the private who died of heatstroke did this or not is moot because individuals are complicit in the murders of a homogenous group – it is true that the ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the employees of the state lies with the state.
The faceless – and shameless – bureaucrats who send young men to a pointless and unjustifiable war should not be allowed to throw off the responsibility for the deaths of either their own soldiers or of the civilians murdered by their soldiers. They should be brought to justice for any deaths, be they from a bullet or from the heat of the desert.
The judges who fail to recognise this are as complicit in these deaths as the politicians and are guilty of perverting the idea of justice, and here the Supreme Court is supremely guilty.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Figures go boom in government's face
(Dublin, Ireland)
The Irish government has published figures through the Quarterly National Accounts which it claims demonstrate that the country is out of the recession.
This claim is based on the fact that a “recession” is defined as two consecutive quarters of falling GDP. One quarter with a positive percentage is deemed not to be a recession – would that make it a boom?
The two previous quarters returned a fall in GDP of 7.4% and 7.9%; the last quarter apparently yielded a rise of 0.3%. Bang goes the boom.
According to the government’s own “seasonally adjusted” figures unemployment stands at close to 14%. This figure is appalling enough were it not for the fact that their figures show that around 450,000 people out of a population of 4.5 million are jobless, making a mockery of their figure of 14% unemployment.
The reality in Ireland is that the people are still in a recession and will continue to be for some time to come. There are no jobs; there is no money. The government will continue to fiddle the figures of course – right up until the next election, when the only figures that matter to them will blow up in their faces.
The Irish government has published figures through the Quarterly National Accounts which it claims demonstrate that the country is out of the recession.
This claim is based on the fact that a “recession” is defined as two consecutive quarters of falling GDP. One quarter with a positive percentage is deemed not to be a recession – would that make it a boom?
The two previous quarters returned a fall in GDP of 7.4% and 7.9%; the last quarter apparently yielded a rise of 0.3%. Bang goes the boom.
According to the government’s own “seasonally adjusted” figures unemployment stands at close to 14%. This figure is appalling enough were it not for the fact that their figures show that around 450,000 people out of a population of 4.5 million are jobless, making a mockery of their figure of 14% unemployment.
The reality in Ireland is that the people are still in a recession and will continue to be for some time to come. There are no jobs; there is no money. The government will continue to fiddle the figures of course – right up until the next election, when the only figures that matter to them will blow up in their faces.
Abusing our intelligence
(Brussels, Belgium)
Last week Belgian police raided the central offices of the Catholic Church in Brussels, church commission offices in Leuven and the home of former archbishop Godfried Danneels in an attempt to collate information about child abuse within the church in Belgium. According to newspaper reports the archbishop’s computer was taken away to be examined, with the suggestion that it was not to find images of children but rather documents relating to cases of abuse reported to church authorities over the past few decades.
The raid appeared to be a direct result of the resignation of the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, and his admission that he abused children before and after becoming a bishop. The church in Belgium issued a statement after the raid in which it declared a policy of “zero tolerance” towards child abuse; the Belgian police force are already way ahead of the church in this issue since the Dutroux case exposed so many unsavoury facts about Belgian society and justice in the mid-nineties.
It was to be hoped that the Vatican would respond with the same firmness; after all, in less than a year the Pope had gone from blaming the whole affair on errant homosexuals to admitting the church should do penance for its sins against children, which is quite a large leap for this pope to make.
Unfortunately the Pope took advantage of the situation to retreat once more into the shadows of Papal secrecy while declaring his solidarity for abusive Belgian bishops. The independent commission set up by the Belgian church to investigate abuse cases took the slight rocking of the boat as a signal to jump overboard as one, declaring that it was the fault of the Belgian police that there was now no future hope of any trust or cooperation between the police and the church.
The Church believes it deserves some diplomatic respect, as if it was a sovereign state and as if those who harbour and promote abusers deserved any respect. It has also demonstrated that it never had the slightest intention of cooperating with civil authorities in any country and was simply waiting for the first police force to stop treating them with kid gloves in order to claim victimisation.
There is no doubt that the Belgian police have acted within their rules of engagement and exactly as society expects them to act. It is unfortunate that the Catholic Church has responded exactly as we expected them to respond – however, it is obvious that the Church is in the wrong, and their refusal to cooperate now will only serve as another black mark against them. They may try to protect themselves behind the Vatican walls, but it is only a matter of time before their walls are breached, not by the police but by the weight of public opinion.
Last week Belgian police raided the central offices of the Catholic Church in Brussels, church commission offices in Leuven and the home of former archbishop Godfried Danneels in an attempt to collate information about child abuse within the church in Belgium. According to newspaper reports the archbishop’s computer was taken away to be examined, with the suggestion that it was not to find images of children but rather documents relating to cases of abuse reported to church authorities over the past few decades.
The raid appeared to be a direct result of the resignation of the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, and his admission that he abused children before and after becoming a bishop. The church in Belgium issued a statement after the raid in which it declared a policy of “zero tolerance” towards child abuse; the Belgian police force are already way ahead of the church in this issue since the Dutroux case exposed so many unsavoury facts about Belgian society and justice in the mid-nineties.
It was to be hoped that the Vatican would respond with the same firmness; after all, in less than a year the Pope had gone from blaming the whole affair on errant homosexuals to admitting the church should do penance for its sins against children, which is quite a large leap for this pope to make.
Unfortunately the Pope took advantage of the situation to retreat once more into the shadows of Papal secrecy while declaring his solidarity for abusive Belgian bishops. The independent commission set up by the Belgian church to investigate abuse cases took the slight rocking of the boat as a signal to jump overboard as one, declaring that it was the fault of the Belgian police that there was now no future hope of any trust or cooperation between the police and the church.
The Church believes it deserves some diplomatic respect, as if it was a sovereign state and as if those who harbour and promote abusers deserved any respect. It has also demonstrated that it never had the slightest intention of cooperating with civil authorities in any country and was simply waiting for the first police force to stop treating them with kid gloves in order to claim victimisation.
There is no doubt that the Belgian police have acted within their rules of engagement and exactly as society expects them to act. It is unfortunate that the Catholic Church has responded exactly as we expected them to respond – however, it is obvious that the Church is in the wrong, and their refusal to cooperate now will only serve as another black mark against them. They may try to protect themselves behind the Vatican walls, but it is only a matter of time before their walls are breached, not by the police but by the weight of public opinion.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Pulling back the veil on Western politics
(Lléida, Spain)
PART ONE: THE POLITICS OF EQUALITY – CORRAMOS UN ESTÚPIDO VELO
This week the council in Lléida, north-east Spain, has announced that it will refuse entry to any woman wearing a burqa or a niqab into any public administration building. The council attempted to extend the ban to cover any public thoroughfare until it was ruled that the council did not possess the power to legislate for that area. Catalonians insist we see them as a separate and homogeneous nation, so it would only be fair to them to mention the fact that towards the end of April PP (the ultra-conservative Partido Popular) councillors in Badalona distributed leaflets containing the slogan “We don’t want Rumanians” on the streets of the town.
However, Lléida is by no means alone in this new legislation. At the end of March Belgium became the first European country to ban women wearing either a burqa or a niqab from appearing in any public place. France has a partial ban in place on women wearing the veil in public places and the Italian authorities have been fining women in public for months. Quebec banned women wearing the veil from entering government offices from March onwards, completely forgetting that the government is the servant of the people and not the other way round, and last October even clerics in Egypt were planning to ban the veil in certain educational establishments.
The effect of banning women from public offices according to their dress will be to further undermine the standing of women in society. They are denying a certain proportion of the female population of the country the right to deal with their own administrative issues. They will be unable to deal with public officials and will be obliged to rely on the men in their family for such issues as passports, identity cards, child allowance and housing benefits. Apparently we are already worried about not speaking to women who have no voice – this measure renders women even more mute. This is not to even mention the ethics of effectively placing women under house arrest.
In the case of the government offices it appears that no-one considered it would be more appropriate to introduce an alternative such as having a room where women can bare their faces to a female employee, therefore allowing integration in the same way we have always integrated other people who for whatever reason are in danger of not enjoying the same status as the majority of the community.
These measures are typical of highly unintelligent patriarchal authorities. For a start, they only affect women, making a mockery of the suggestion that they exist in order to make women more equal. (Note that in the West we have to make women equal – there is no suggestion that perhaps they already are and we simply have to recognise it more, no, women are incapable of being equal enough and therefore need our help.) Secondly, the authorities claim they are banning a piece of cloth but they choose to ignore that there is human being behind each one. They are not banning cloth but people.
Were any women consulted on this matter? Have any Western women tried walking around in a niqab? Have any of these politicians ever lived in a country which totally rejects your culture and beliefs? Have they ever considered the question of personal choice or do they just assume that all women outside our perfect Western world are oppressed? All the niqab-clad women I have spoken to say it is their choice – and believe me, none of them was afraid to express their opinion on this or any other subject – and anyone who believes women have no voice underestimates the complicated dynamics of relationships in any country. Women are not weak.
PART TWO: ORGANISED RELIGION – THE CRUTCH THAT TRIPS US UP
Having said that, imposing minority religious ideas based on personal choice on a majority is somewhat akin to running a country according to the wishes of the supporters of one football club. If you see the comparison as far-fetched look around – religious people often show as much passion as a football supporter and their chosen crutch is as pointless as the playing of the same league year in, year out.
France has been widely criticised for banning these garments for not being in tune with French cultural and societal values. However, not every person has a religion but everyone (except for a few hundred stateless people) has a nationality, which is why the world is not run on religious grounds but is organised according to nationality and by extension cultural and societal values. Religion is no more than a lifestyle choice and belonging to an organised religion is by no means necessary in order to survive; on the other hand legally you cannot be without a nationality and any individual obliged to live unprotected by the umbrella of nationality would be leading a precarious existence. Nationality has its cons but it is the best system there is for now.
The alternative, allowing organised religion to run a country, leads to travesties of justice and atrocious crimes against anybody who gets in the way. If you doubt this, read the Murphy Report. Then read the Ryan Report. Then talk to the survivors of Catholic abuse.
As an example of nationality over religion take Kurt Westergaard, the Danish journalist now famous for “that” cartoon, who said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, "I have fulfilled my job requirements, a job which is in tune with the Danish tradition of defending free speech”. His was not religious pig-headedness, but rather a rational continuation of his existence as a Dane.
PART THREE: WHEN IN ROME, FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T BEHAVE LIKE THE ROMANS
So if nationality is the key, and national territories should be allowed to impose the rules it wishes to, should we always follow the moral code existing in whatever country we visit? Should women be obliged to remove their niqabs in public in Western countries and dress in jeans and trainers like Western women? Should gay men accept being imprisoned and tortured in almost every sub-Saharan African country? Should they accept the risk of being put to death? Should we become cannibals in a community in which cannibalism is acceptable?
Would it be better to insist that there is a certain ethical code – the European one, obviously (!) – which should be accepted as the norm the world over?
And should we continue to condemn as fascists the people who insist that “you do what we say; if you don’t like it, go back to your own country” or should we condemn as fascists the people who try to import new social impositions from other cultures?
PART FOUR: CONCLUSION
The answer is obvious. We should get over ourselves and stop telling people how to live their lives. Politicians should stop moralising and get some work done which actually benefits the people. Priests should stop abusing people and oppressing society and get a real job. We should talk to each other and ask each other’s opinions instead of just assuming that our way is better. In short, it’s time to live and let live.
PART ONE: THE POLITICS OF EQUALITY – CORRAMOS UN ESTÚPIDO VELO
This week the council in Lléida, north-east Spain, has announced that it will refuse entry to any woman wearing a burqa or a niqab into any public administration building. The council attempted to extend the ban to cover any public thoroughfare until it was ruled that the council did not possess the power to legislate for that area. Catalonians insist we see them as a separate and homogeneous nation, so it would only be fair to them to mention the fact that towards the end of April PP (the ultra-conservative Partido Popular) councillors in Badalona distributed leaflets containing the slogan “We don’t want Rumanians” on the streets of the town.
However, Lléida is by no means alone in this new legislation. At the end of March Belgium became the first European country to ban women wearing either a burqa or a niqab from appearing in any public place. France has a partial ban in place on women wearing the veil in public places and the Italian authorities have been fining women in public for months. Quebec banned women wearing the veil from entering government offices from March onwards, completely forgetting that the government is the servant of the people and not the other way round, and last October even clerics in Egypt were planning to ban the veil in certain educational establishments.
The effect of banning women from public offices according to their dress will be to further undermine the standing of women in society. They are denying a certain proportion of the female population of the country the right to deal with their own administrative issues. They will be unable to deal with public officials and will be obliged to rely on the men in their family for such issues as passports, identity cards, child allowance and housing benefits. Apparently we are already worried about not speaking to women who have no voice – this measure renders women even more mute. This is not to even mention the ethics of effectively placing women under house arrest.
In the case of the government offices it appears that no-one considered it would be more appropriate to introduce an alternative such as having a room where women can bare their faces to a female employee, therefore allowing integration in the same way we have always integrated other people who for whatever reason are in danger of not enjoying the same status as the majority of the community.
These measures are typical of highly unintelligent patriarchal authorities. For a start, they only affect women, making a mockery of the suggestion that they exist in order to make women more equal. (Note that in the West we have to make women equal – there is no suggestion that perhaps they already are and we simply have to recognise it more, no, women are incapable of being equal enough and therefore need our help.) Secondly, the authorities claim they are banning a piece of cloth but they choose to ignore that there is human being behind each one. They are not banning cloth but people.
Were any women consulted on this matter? Have any Western women tried walking around in a niqab? Have any of these politicians ever lived in a country which totally rejects your culture and beliefs? Have they ever considered the question of personal choice or do they just assume that all women outside our perfect Western world are oppressed? All the niqab-clad women I have spoken to say it is their choice – and believe me, none of them was afraid to express their opinion on this or any other subject – and anyone who believes women have no voice underestimates the complicated dynamics of relationships in any country. Women are not weak.
PART TWO: ORGANISED RELIGION – THE CRUTCH THAT TRIPS US UP
Having said that, imposing minority religious ideas based on personal choice on a majority is somewhat akin to running a country according to the wishes of the supporters of one football club. If you see the comparison as far-fetched look around – religious people often show as much passion as a football supporter and their chosen crutch is as pointless as the playing of the same league year in, year out.
France has been widely criticised for banning these garments for not being in tune with French cultural and societal values. However, not every person has a religion but everyone (except for a few hundred stateless people) has a nationality, which is why the world is not run on religious grounds but is organised according to nationality and by extension cultural and societal values. Religion is no more than a lifestyle choice and belonging to an organised religion is by no means necessary in order to survive; on the other hand legally you cannot be without a nationality and any individual obliged to live unprotected by the umbrella of nationality would be leading a precarious existence. Nationality has its cons but it is the best system there is for now.
The alternative, allowing organised religion to run a country, leads to travesties of justice and atrocious crimes against anybody who gets in the way. If you doubt this, read the Murphy Report. Then read the Ryan Report. Then talk to the survivors of Catholic abuse.
As an example of nationality over religion take Kurt Westergaard, the Danish journalist now famous for “that” cartoon, who said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País, "I have fulfilled my job requirements, a job which is in tune with the Danish tradition of defending free speech”. His was not religious pig-headedness, but rather a rational continuation of his existence as a Dane.
PART THREE: WHEN IN ROME, FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T BEHAVE LIKE THE ROMANS
So if nationality is the key, and national territories should be allowed to impose the rules it wishes to, should we always follow the moral code existing in whatever country we visit? Should women be obliged to remove their niqabs in public in Western countries and dress in jeans and trainers like Western women? Should gay men accept being imprisoned and tortured in almost every sub-Saharan African country? Should they accept the risk of being put to death? Should we become cannibals in a community in which cannibalism is acceptable?
Would it be better to insist that there is a certain ethical code – the European one, obviously (!) – which should be accepted as the norm the world over?
And should we continue to condemn as fascists the people who insist that “you do what we say; if you don’t like it, go back to your own country” or should we condemn as fascists the people who try to import new social impositions from other cultures?
PART FOUR: CONCLUSION
The answer is obvious. We should get over ourselves and stop telling people how to live their lives. Politicians should stop moralising and get some work done which actually benefits the people. Priests should stop abusing people and oppressing society and get a real job. We should talk to each other and ask each other’s opinions instead of just assuming that our way is better. In short, it’s time to live and let live.
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