FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG - FOLLOW THE PATH

December is soon upon us, and with the outbreak of bushfires, the living is not easy for those affected.

Sasha refused to go out today. She heard the thunder, and I followed her judgment, as she was right when we did experience lightning.

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Time to turn around:

To follow another path:

Sometimes there is an upgraded track:

With the famiilar places

And sometimes we see a horse:

So as Spring bounds from us, why not follow the Sun?

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The photo arrangements have been made possible by Picasa.

SOLDIER SUICIDES

Somethings appear very wrong with the US military, the great enforcer of the greatest empire the world has ever seen.

Violence incarnate and wrapped in pitiless steel cannot separate itself from human consequences. The problem is more for the army than the air force, with the advantage of distance and collateral murder. The murder of the drone attacks in Afghanistan goes unremarked, while that of those who flew civilian planes into buildings is expected to produce convictions, despite torture, and revenge. So much for the standard of justice. Pathetic.

The trauma of the industrial warfare, and its carnage, has been a problem for the tough guy image of the Empire's killers. The culture of denial is beginning to break down. Robert C. Koehler notes, via Common Dreams:

Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I've never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness." This is what whistleblower psychiatrist Kernan Manion wrote recently to President Obama about his experience counseling Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, as reported by Salon.

In September, Manion, having been told to "cease and desist all further correspondence with the government," was fired by the Navy for his urgent, outspoken communiqués about the mental-health minefield the military has on its hands. Two months later, of course, the issue of PTSD was blown into the national headlines by the massacre at Fort Hood. And a day after that, according to Salon, the body of a Marine was found at Camp Lejeune and a fellow Marine was arrested for the murder.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder becomes more explicable when we learn who the killers are killing as from this disturbing account, quoting Robert C. Koehler:

Here's how it looks before the humanity intrudes: "One morning, a few months before leaving, I was manning a machine-gun security post. I saw a Humvee come through the gate towing a blue mini-pickup. As they approached closer, I saw that the truck was riddled with bullets and shrapnel - full of dead insurgents, decapitated corpses. I'll never forget this. A very young PFC in the back of the truck lifted a decapitated head. ‘We really f---ed these guys up, didn't we?' Other soldiers were celebrating on top of the bodies. (The dead were) mostly teenage boys from the local community."

These words of Iraq War vet Jeffrey Smith were just a small shard of the four days of horrific testimony about this war - about the racism and cultural ignorance of our occupation, about the inhumanity of military culture, about America's official disregard for human life - given by vets at the Winter Soldier gathering a year and a half ago in Silver Spring, Md.

Phil Stewart. reporting for Reuters notes that the US army suicide rate is almost double the rate for the US population as a whole, despite home foreclosures and high rates of unemployment. General Peter Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff, at a Pentagon briefing observed:

. . . cautioned against generalizing about the causes of the suicides, or assuming links to combat stress on forces stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said the causes were still unclear and noted that roughly a third of the soldiers who took their own lives had never been deployed abroad.

The Army recently revealed that about one in five lower rank soldiers suffered mental health problems like depression.

The latest data and this month's shooting spree at a base in Fort Hood, Texas attributed to an Army psychiatrist have raised new questions about the effects of combat stress and the state of the military's mental health system.

Could it be that the boot camp dehumanization of people is sufficient to cause severe mental distress even before the victims get to the killing fields where the real fun is to be had?

It turns out that nonviolence when practices in a principled way has the advantage that while people die there suffering is not without purpose in illuminating the truth of the practice of the violent, dehumanizing and exploiting systems. Cruel systems are likely to leave their victims to their own resources and self medication.

ATMOSPHERIC CO2

Carbon dioxide emissions have risen since 2002 in ways not anticipated, suggesting that average global temperatures will rise by 6 degrees Celsius.

The dangerous threshold was judged to be 2C rise. The levels of CO2 have increased threefold from 200o to what was the case from 1990. There is evidence that the natural carbon sinks of the Earth cannot absorb further gas emissions, with catastrophic implications for the biosphere.


Steve Connor and Michael McCarthy in The Independent provide the detail:

The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. Such a rise – which would be much higher nearer the poles – would have cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable and threatening the basis of human civilisation.

We are headed for it, the scientists said, because the carbon dioxide emissions from industry, transport and deforestation which are responsible for warming the atmosphere have increased dramatically since 2002, in a way which no one anticipated, and are now running at treble the annual rate of the 1990s.

This means that the most extreme scenario envisaged in the last report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007, is now the one for which society is set, according to the 31 researchers from seven countries involved in the Global Carbon Project.
Although the 6C rise and its potential disastrous effects have been speculated upon before, this is the first time that scientists have said that society is now on a path to meet it.

It cannot come too soon, to judge by the results of the Global Carbon Project study, led by Professor Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, which found that there has been a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008, the last year for which figures are available.

On average, the researchers found, there was an annual increase in emissions of just over 3 per cent during the period, compared with an annual increase of 1 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Almost all of the increase this decade occurred after 2000 and resulted from the boom in the Chinese economy. The researchers predict a small decrease this year due to the recession, but further increases from 2010.

In total, CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have increased by 41 per cent between 1990 and 2008, yet global emissions in 1990 are the reference level set by the Kyoto Protocol, which countries are trying to fall below in terms of their own emissions.

The 6C rise now being anticipated is in stark contrast to the C rise at which all international climate policy, including that of Britain and the EU, hopes to stabilise the warming – two degrees being seen as the threshold of climate change which is dangerous for society and the natural world.

The study by Professor Le Quéré and her team, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, envisages a far higher figure. "We're at the top end of the IPCC scenario," she said.

. . . Meanwhile, the scientists have for the first time detected a failure of the Earth's natural ability to absorb man-made carbon dioxide released into the air.

They found significant evidence that more man-made CO2 is staying in the atmosphere to exacerbate the greenhouse effect because the natural "carbon sinks" that have absorbed it over previous decades on land and sea are beginning to fail, possibly as a result of rising global temperatures.

The amount of CO2 that has remained in the atmosphere as a result has increased from about 40 per cent in 1990 to 45 per cent in 2008. This suggests that the sinks are beginning to fail, they said.

Professor Le Quéré emphasised that there are still many uncertainties over carbon sinks, such as the ability of the oceans to absorb dissolved CO2, but all the evidence suggests that there is now a cycle of "positive feedbacks", whereby rising carbon dioxide emissions are leading to rising temperatures and a corresponding rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"Our understanding at the moment in the computer models we have used – and they are state of the art – suggests that carbon-cycle climate feedback has already kicked in," she said.

"These models, if you project them on into the century, show quite large feedbacks, with climate amplifying global warming by between 5 per cent and 30 per cent. There are still large uncertainties, but this is carbon-cycle climate feedback that has already started," she said.

The study also found that, for the first time since the 1960s, the burning of coal has overtaken the burning of oil as the major source of carbon-dioxide emissions produced by fossil fuels.

Much of this coal was burned by China in producing goods sold to the West – the scientists estimate that 45 per cent of Chinese emissions resulted from making products traded overseas.

. . . If two degrees is generally accepted as the threshold of dangerous climate change, it is clear that a rise of six degrees in global average temperatures must be very dangerous indeed, writes Michael McCarthy. Just how dangerous was signalled in 2007 by the science writer Mark Lynas, who combed all the available scientific research to construct a picture of a world with temperatures three times higher than the danger limit.

His verdict was that a rise in temperatures of this magnitude "would catapult the planet into an extreme greenhouse state not seen for nearly 100 million years, when dinosaurs grazed on polar rainforests and deserts reached into the heart of Europe".

He said: "It would cause a mass extinction of almost all life and probably reduce humanity to a few struggling groups of embattled survivors clinging to life near the poles."

Very few species could adapt in time to the abruptness of the transition, he suggested. "With the tropics too hot to grow crops, and the sub-tropics too dry, billions of people would find themselves in areas of the planet which are essentially uninhabitable. This would probably even include southern Europe, as the Sahara desert crosses the Mediterranean.

"As the ice-caps melt, hundreds of millions will also be forced to move inland due to rapidly-rising seas. As world food supplies crash, the higher mid-latitude and sub-polar regions would become fiercely-contested refuges.

In blunt terms, once the facts are absorbed, is that the levels of carbon dioxide emissions have to be drastically reduced. So what is the real problem here? In the absence of the determination to change our course, if not the intelligence of the dangers that lie ahead, do we just blindly sail on like the Titanic?

The vision of a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society seems to be disappearing up the smoke stack.

So what positive, constructive actions are we now continuing with and taking?

DOG ROUND-UP

The blue screen of death intervened with the usual Friday Night Dog pictures, so this might be the occasion to throw some together, showing if nothing else the powers of recovery.

Here is the evidence that Sasha and Dexter go out last week, and probably enjoyed themselves:

Along the way we met a blue tongue lizard, and perhaps that was portentous:

Some experiences are not as bad as they might seem at the time, and not in a relative sense to others. Joan Baez sings "Johnny I hardly knew ye"

As usual acknowledgement is made to Picasa for supplying the means to arrange the photos.

And probably this week, Friday Ark has long since sailed into the sunset. Then again nothing ventured, nothing gained.

CLIMATE CRISIS POLITICS

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 by 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 lead 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.

THE EMPIRE, THE EMPIRE

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, 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 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, is monolithic Islam, a myth on a par with monolithic Christianity. 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.

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TERROR WITHOUT REASON

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.

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FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG: GOING ON

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."

"And I’ll see you when you get there
But I’m going on".

Gnarls Barkley has the full lyrics (via The Being Brand):

Here are the lyrics:


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

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We will now go on over to Friday Ark at Modulator, and see who boards this week.

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The Photo displays were created with Picasa

OPTIONS ONE TWO OR ZERO

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 they don't, so suck on that. 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:

INHUMANITY AND WAR

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.

The audio is here

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.

ABOVE MY HEAD

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.

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OPINION AGAINST MMP

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.

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WHITHER OBAMA

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 HUMAN STORY

The environmental crisis will continue unabated unless appropriate action is taken, and appropriate action will not be taken until tunnel vision of nationality rather than global society is swept away.

How then to account for what has happened, and what is required? David Korten has an alternative narrative of the human experience on planet Earth. He writes,(via Common Dreams) originally in Yes Magazine:

For the past 5,000 years, we humans have been living in a cultural trance of our own making that alienates us from the land, our true nature, and our place in the cosmos.

So who are we humans? From where did we come? And for what purpose? Here is how I understand the big story based on the data of science, the wisdom of indigenous peoples, and the teachings of Jesus and other mystics.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Great Integral Spirit that expresses itself through what we know as creation embarked on a bold and risky experiment in reflective consciousness: bringing forth a species able to step back and to reflect on creation in awe and wonder and to participate as a conscious co-creator in the continued creative unfolding. We humans are that species.

Our reflective consciousness gives us the capacity to choose our future with conscious collective intent. It was a risky experiment, however, because the capacity for self-awareness gives us an ego that can run out of control if it forgets it exists only as part of a larger whole.

In our earliest days, we humans raised our children collectively in the clan, tribe, or village, initiating them to the ways of life and the need to care for our Earth Mother as she in turn cares for us.

Over millennia, as our human consciousness was awakening and our capacities for self-direction grew, we learned to communicate through speech, master fire, domesticate plants and animals, and construct houses of skins, wood, stone, and dried mud. We developed the arts of pottery, painting, weaving, and carving. We undertook vast continental and transcontinental migrations to populate the planet and adapted to vastly different physical topographies and climates. We created complex languages and social codes that allowed for life in larger communities.

Then, some 5,000 years ago, something began to go terribly wrong. We turned from the ways of Earth Community and embraced the ways of Empire. It was a time of separation and forgetting. Community, partnership, and the celebration of life gave way to individualism, domination, and violence.

The few expropriated the wealth of the many. The masculine drove out the feminine. We continued to worship the Sky Father, but turned against our Earth Mother. We came to value the power to kill and destroy more highly than the ability to create and nurture life. Conquest became the measure of greatness. Economies came to be based on servitude and eventually money became the prime arbiter of human relationships.

Consider the dynamics inherent in a dominator system. With a few on the top and the many on the bottom, everyone is placed in competition with everyone else for the favored positions and the bonds of caring and sharing are broken. The creative energy of the species is redirected from securing the well-being of the tribe to advancing the technological instruments of war and the social instruments of domination.

The winners expropriate the available resources to maintain the system of domination. Positions of power are too often claimed by the most ruthless and psychologically damaged members of society. And so it has been for 5,000 years

If this discussion of Empire sounds familiar, it is for good reason. The kings and emperors have been replaced by corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers, but we are still living in the Era of Empire—and the basic dynamics still hold.

In the past 100 years, we humans have achieved technological mastery beyond the imagination of previous generations. Yet, lacking in the wisdom of place and community that is the heritage of indigenous peoples, the cultures we call mainstream have lost their way—forgetting what it means to be human and denying our connection to the web of planetary life. The time has come to rediscover our humanity and bring ourselves back into balance with our living Earth Mother. Creation has presented us with our final examination to determine whether we are a species worthy of survival. We must not, need not, fail.

His thesis is arresting as it is radical. He argues that to have peace, a practical option for rehumanized human beings, it is necessary to have a peace economy. His premise:

I start with a basic truth. A persistent pattern of violence against people, community, and nature is inherent in the institutional structure of our existing economy.

Is this the truth? Since institutional structures are based on culture and stories about human nature, we need to ask the question, what is the truth about human nature? Are we the rapacious, egotistical, competitive beings that our society has cast us in the role of being?


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FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG - PAWPRINTS

It seems that having dogs as pets may be leaving a greater ecological footprint than expected.

Kate Ravilious in The New Scientist observes:

Robert and Brenda Vale, two architects who specialise in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington . . . In their new book, Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living, they compare the ecological footprints of a menagerie of popular pets with those of various other lifestyle choices - and the critters do not fare well.

As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution. It is time to take eco-stock of our pets.

. . . In 2007, Peter Banks and Jessica Bryant from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, monitored bird life in woodlands just outside the city to assess the impact of dogs being walked there (Biology Letters, vol 3, p 611). They showed that bird life in areas frequented by dogs, even when kept on a lead, had 35 per cent less diversity and 41 per cent fewer birds overall.

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Sasha and Dexter regardless of their other environmental impacts are vegans. They do not seem to be faring too badly on their diet as might be confirmed this week.

Even vegan canines have a significant impact on the environment it seems. While not gadflies they do have a tendency to annoy other animals. Of course if they did not go out they would be melancholy, bring to mind Dmitri Shostakovich:



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As we tend to do, we will now go over to Modulator and join the crowd their on board Friday Ark, and hope that we all can get along.

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The photos are produced here by means of Picasa

INFUSIONS OF DIFFERENT CONTENT

Following doctor's orders can take a person to places that they did not know exist and be subjected to experiences and reflections not anticipated. I know enough about hospitals now to appreciate that you walk into the maw of the bureaucratic machine and the unexpected can happen.

Yesterday, I was required to front the public hospital for a Aredia infusion at the medical ambulatory centre. I notice one patient departed in a wheelchair, otherwise it was a walk in sit down and get hooked up to a drug infusion with saline solution into a vein. I have never had a cannula that was prepared so well with a hot pack on the vein. Then it was just a matter of sitting in one spot for three hours while my blood system absorbed the 30mg of disodium pamidronate (the active ingredient in Aredia). The purpose of the medication was to prevent decalification of the bones caused by the prednisone I am taking and thereby stop other effects created by the automatic feedback mechanisms of the body. The effect I noticed at home was that I was tired and could not concentrate, so I thought it was likely the effect of the medication.

As I was sitting in my chair with the newspaper, I was subject to a fare of midday television, something I would otherwise not have experience. I found the cooking program pretty vacuous. Affability is personal quality, I suppose, but I find it tiresome after awhile. Otherwise the programs were American interview and talk program: Ellen and The View. I was thinking to myself these opinions about, for example, following the Letterman Affair, sexual and other relationships in the workplace, why should I be listening to these people's opinion, not that there opinions are not as valuable as anybody else's. It seems to me that this form of television abstracts what otherwise is a social process, and leaves the watcher as a passive recipient rather than a persons actively and socially engaged.

Blogging by contrast is an active process. You might even find things out after the fact, and assume that someone else might be interested enough to read what is written. Even if there is not readers the exercise of framing experience in the social technology of language is worthwhile. I am made a aware of the wider social context of my life, as distinct from the obsessing pursuit of individuality for it own sake that I think leads to the egotistical delusion. I feel very badly about having to have any medical treatment at all, although I am not the best judge of that requirement as experience demonstrates. So I am given to think as to what best I should be doing.

I made the wise decision and caught a taxi home. The driver was saying in that line you give up your social life because of the hours you need to put in to earn a living and how the introduction of the free shuttle bus service had affected their income. It struck me that he like I had been was in a hole, and when you are in a hole the thing to do is stop digging.

Once you stop digging, even when possible, there is the psychological burden of the lag - the difference between results and efforts. Activity can be a psychological balm one level and a cause of distress on another. What should be people be doing? They should be doing what they are good at and most suited for? In my opinion this represents a need that often is not recognized, sometimes seen as a threat, which is absurd, and negated as a product of interpersonal viciousness, often socially constructed.

The social focus is on outcomes rather than processes. Hospitals, for example, are not profit centres. I think we ignore roles for status. Roles are more important than status, and in an authentic sense peoples roles have to self validating, which gives them the space to recognize and appreciate all others.



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MOUTHS AND MONEY

Those who wish to deny the reality of climate change engineered by the atmospheric catastrophe that is about to befall us, a product of human foolishness and now outright ignorance can now take a stand on principle and belief. They can buy coastal properties and pay with equanimity the insurance premiums. As someone somewhere remarked, as another raged against the storm, "He that has a house to put his head in has a good head-piece."

Marian Wilkinson in The Sydney Morning Herald observed on 22 September that the penny has not dropped in the right quarters:

The world is now collectively planning to build so many coal-fired power stations over the next 25 years that their lifetime carbon emissions will equal the total of all the human coal-burning activities since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

That is just one of the alarming facts to come out of the latest World Bank report on climate change, yet the energy industry is spending alarmingly little on research and development that might clean up its emissions - about 0.5 per cent of its trillion-dollar annual revenues.

Now, let the assumption be made that the levels of atmospheric long-lived gases might be related to the severity of extreme weather events, ABC Online reports the findings of the House of Reps Environment Committee:

Calls are mounting for a national approach after a report raised the possibility of banning homes that could be threatened by rising sea levels and coastal erosion.

Parliament's Lower House Environment Committee has spent 18 months examining the effect the changing climate will have on coastal Australia.

The report has found planning laws and insurance rules covering buildings in affected areas will need to change to cope with the evolving coastline.

Julie Bindon from the Planning Institute of Australia says a national standard will prevent new developments being built on vulnerable sites.

"If we have a consistent regulatory framework of what we need to manage and control at local council level when they're assessing the applications, then [we need to know] some of the detail of what those controls might include," she said.

Eight in 10 Australians live on the coast and the coastline population is growing, while sea levels are rising.

Already some coastal dwellers have been refused insurance on their homes.

And Marian Wilkinson and Louise Hall report:

INSURANCE premiums will rise if no action is taken on climate change, the financial services minister, Chris Bowen, told Parliament yesterday.

A federal parliamentary report published on Monday recommended that the Productivity Commission investigate the gaps in insurance coverage for owners of coastal property as erosion, sea level rise and storm surges are set to increase with climate change.

The report also recommended that the commission should estimate the value of properties potentially exposed and examine a government mechanism that prohibits the continued occupation of land or future building development on property at serious risk of sea level rise.

The Insurance Council estimates of the value of property in Australia exposed to the risks from rising sea levels and increased storm damage ranges from $50 billion to $150 billion.

A spokesman for Mr Bowen said yesterday that the Government was still considering its response to the report.

Last week the NSW Environment Minister, John Robertson, made public a list of 19 ''hot spots'' along the state's coastline where erosion is a growing problem.

''Ballina is one area that will see, for the first time, areas that will be flooded'', Mr Robertson said. ''There will be other locations just around Sydney in the inner harbour area that will also see water pushing up through the drains into the streets.''

A property valuer on the northern beaches, Tom Webster, said yesterday that homes were still being bought and sold in Collaroy despite it being identified as at high risk from sea level rise.

''There is no evidence of buyer resistance, which I find difficult to understand because if people sat back and thought about what they were buying they might have some longer-term concerns.''

With regard to the Parliamentary Committee report on rising sea levels, where are the climate deniers when you need them. I am anticipating if not actions, at least statements of affirmation and hope of Canute-like magnificence. Now if they could change the world in a blink of an eye, a declaration of faith or conviction why not now? Or are they, in this instance, taking the coward's way and meekly accepting the science? Or alternatively they could, and probably are buying a house on the beach at Collaroy to demonstrate their convictions. Their undoubted integrity and conviction in the pursuit of truth is admirable.

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PSYCHOLOGY OF VIOLENCE, FASCISM AND WAR

I do not always agree with what Chris Hedges writes or prescribes, but on this occasion I agree he has got it right.


He writes at Truthdig:

Violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is wrong. So is violence against people in Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the bizarre culture of identity politics, there are no alliances among the oppressed. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the first major federal civil rights law protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, passed last week, was attached to a $680-billion measure outlining the Pentagon’s budget, which includes $130 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democratic majority in Congress, under the cover of protecting some innocents, authorized massive acts of violence against other innocents.

. . . Klaus Theweleit in his two volumes entitled “Male Fantasies,” which draw on the bitter alienation of demobilized veterans in Germany following the end of World War I, argues that a militarized culture attacks all that is culturally defined as the feminine, including love, gentleness, compassion and acceptance of difference. It sees any sexual ambiguity as a threat to male “hardness” and the clearly defined roles required by the militarized state. The continued support for our permanent war economy, the continued elevation of military values as the highest good, sustains the perverted ethic, rigid social roles and emotional numbness that Theweleit explored. It is a moral cancer that ensures there will be more Matthew Shepards.

Fascism, Theweleit argued, is not so much a form of government or a particular structuring of the economy or a system, but the creation of potent slogans and symbols that form a kind of psychic economy which places sexuality in the service of destruction. The “core of all fascist propaganda is a battle against everything that constitutes enjoyment and pleasure,” Theweleit wrote. And our culture, while it disdains the name of fascism, embraces its dark ethic.

. . . The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote, in words gay activists should have heeded, that exclusive preoccupation with personal concerns and indifference to the suffering of others beyond the self-identified group made fascism and the Holocaust possible.

“The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people,” Adorno wrote. “What is called fellow traveling was primarily business interest: one pursues one’s own advantage before all else, and simply not to endanger oneself, does not talk too much. That is a general law of the status quo. The silence under the terror was only its consequence. The coldness of the societal monad, the isolated competitor, was the precondition, as indifference to the fate of others, for the fact that only very few people reacted. The torturers know this, and they put it to test ever anew.”

The issue that Chris Hedges does not address is the way in which fear, usually against the other, sometimes in the form of scapegoating, can be effectively used to steer the course to militarism and war. When politicians start invoking fear the red lights should be flashing in our minds.

So what is to be done about fear?


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THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

Without tracking down the source of the reference there is necessarily a measure of babbling that happens around here, and in regard to history the water rushes with particular gusto.


So I am particularly interested by the Church of Rome's current effort to sabotage the Church of England, and it seems bizarrely to the outsider the contretemps hinges on the issue of female priests. Of course in these matters everything is bizarre to the outsider. The question then becomes who might be a good guide to what is apparently afoot.

"Diarmaid MacCulloch is professor of the history of the church at Oxford University. His latest book is A History of Christianity (Allen Lane), and his BBC4 television series on the same subject begins on 5 November." I thought I would quote the article in The Guardian in total, since it seemed to me more sensible that some of the other commentary on offer:

Over the centuries, the great church councils of Christian history have normally been held in magnificent echoing basilicas and stately palaces – but the church moves with the times. In 2003 a luxury hotel in Dallas, self-proclaimed as the largest in Texas (now that's big), hosted a gathering of very angry conservative American Anglicans, determined to do something about the consecration of a gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop of the US Episcopal church, sister church to the Church of England.

As they dithered about what doing something might mean, the delegates were electrified to receive an encouraging message from no less a figure than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. This was remarkable, because Ratzinger was head of the Roman Catholic church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: what in less mealy-mouthed times was known as the Inquisition.

Rather than ordering this roomful of Protestants to be burnt at the stake, Ratzinger assured them of his "heartfelt prayers" for all those taking part in this convocation. "The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond [Dallas] and even in this city, from which St Augustine of Canterbury was sent to confirm and strengthen the preaching of Christ's Gospel in England." There was wild applause.

So the former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, has form when it comes to sudden dramatic interventions in Anglican affairs. And now he has done it again. The announcement that whole parishes or even dioceses of Anglicans will be welcomed to Rome and allowed to keep many of their customs has been channelled through his successor in that line of prelates heading the Inquisition, Cardinal William Joseph Levada.

Benedict's idiosyncratic version of ecumenism overturns all the careful negotiations between the mainstream churches built up over the past half century. Rather, as in various other controversial personal initiatives of his pontificate, to do with Muslims or condoms in Africa, the pope has jumped into a delicate situation regardless of consultation with those in the Vatican who have charge of such matters. Senior figures in the Catholic church in England did not all seem up to speed with the decision when it was announced.

There has been a great deal of excited talk about this move: one hysterical front-page headline in the Times proclaimed that 400,000 Anglicans were poised to head for the Tiber. This turns out to be the self-estimated membership of a faction calling itself the Traditional Anglican Communion.

Equally extravagant claims that this could be the end of the Protestant Reformation need to be taken with several fontfuls of salt. It is in the interests of various discontented groups on the margins of Anglicanism to talk up the significance of the latest piece of papal theatre, while ignoring its wider context.

This much broader struggle within Christianity at first sight appears to be about sex. Throughout the world, the most easily heard tone in religion (not just Christianity) is of a generally angry conservatism. Why? I hazard that the anger centres on a profound shift in gender roles traditionally given a religious significance and validated by religious traditions.

The conservative backlash embodies the hurt of heterosexual men (or those who would like to pass for being heterosexual men) at cultural shifts which have generally threatened to marginalise them and deprive them of dignity, hegemony or even much usefulness. What they notice amid their hurt is that the sacred texts generally back them in their assumptions, and they therefore assert the authority of sacred scripture.

They fail to hear other voices in scripture, just as two centuries ago those who perfectly rightly believed the Bible legitimised slavery failed to hear the Bible's other message – that freedom is a universal Christian value. Self-styled "traditionalist" Anglicans and the Curia both emphasise ancient authority in their efforts to outface the inexorable realities of modern life, which some others might style new workings of the Holy Spirit. King Canute's courtiers would have signed up to Pope Benedict's proposed new jurisdictions.

The other concealed struggle behind this move is an internal split within the Catholic church over the legacy of the Second Vatican Council, that half-completed church revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, which suddenly introduced to astonished Catholics religious customs previously enjoyed only by Protestants, such as worship in vernacular languages, popular music in the liturgy, layfolk involved in church government and the faithful thinking seriously for themselves on matters of doctrine and biblical interpretation.

Virtually no one in the Vatican dares openly criticise the great council, but neither John Paul II nor his successor have been enthusiasts for the messages embodied in its statements of faith, which so brusquely overturned the safe doctrinal texts prepared for the council by the Holy Office (the Roman Inquisition).

They have been horrified by many of the council's results. Since John Paul II's election as Pope in 1978, there have been grim attempts to suppress growing Catholic calls for married clergy, for women clergy, for a greater real place for the laity in church decision-making, even merely for a real say for bishops of the church in decision-making.

John Paul II and Benedict have created the most centralised regime that Catholicism has ever known – a far cry from its state in either the medieval period or the Counter-Reformation. It is with an anxious ear for those alternative voices, not much different from those of mainstream wishy-washy liberal Anglicans, that Pope Benedict seeks to encourage those who think like him beyond the walls, and to bring them inside the fortifications.

Much is left unsaid amid the present triumphalist crowings of those Catholics who see this as a victory over a feeble, tottering Anglicanism, since Anglicans are temperamentally disinclined to blow their own trumpets. The Church of England is not about to disintegrate, as anyone who knows its day-to-day life, rather than listening to what journalists say about it, will be aware. Most Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals are fed up with all the name-calling, intolerance and calls for revolt.

The flow of Roman Catholics to Anglicanism has its counterpart in the flow of dissidents in the other direction. One particular flow has been little commented on: in the 1990s a few hundred Anglican clergy took a generous compensation package from the C of E and were received into the Church of Rome. A significant number then came back to Canterbury, because Rome was not what they expected.

It will be interesting to see exactly which customs the Vatican is going to allow from the past rich five centuries of Anglican worship, life and thought. Married clergy will have to be part of the package. What do faithful celibate priests of the Roman Obedience think about seeing their new colleagues happily allowed to bypass compulsory celibacy?

This will be different from the so-called "Greek Catholic" churches in eastern Europe. For centuries Greek Catholics have accepted Roman authority alongside married clergy with Orthodox beards and Orthodox liturgy, but they have had the decency to keep themselves to themselves.

These newly acquired Anglicans will be much closer to the centre, much more annoyingly able to go their own way in the midst of ordinary Catholic parishes.

There is one killer fact about the pope's present move. "Traditionalist" Anglicanism is a shotgun marriage between incompatible groups: extreme Anglo-Catholics and extreme evangelicals. One group believes an Anglican holy communion is the mass, and surrounds it with appropriate magnificence and ancient ceremony; the other thinks the mass is a blasphemy and stresses that holy communion is the Lord's supper, plain and simple.

Because of that, they cannot even agree on what a clergyman is, or what he does (though they can all agree that he ought to be he). Evangelical traditionalists, meanwhile, have no time for a reunion with an unreformed Church of Rome. Their alliance with the traditionalist Anglo-Catholics has been one of convenience, because both sides cannot stomach women in positions of clerical authority (for entirely opposite reasons) and hate the idea that homosexuals might be just part of the spectrum of boring normality in God's creation. (Anglo-Catholics are more muffled in their outrage on this one, given how many of them are gay themselves.) So the pope's move will split the traditionalists down the middle and reveal how fragile their alliance is. The best law in church history is the law of unintended consequences.

In one sense, this is a storm in a teacup, stirred by an elderly cleric in the Vatican with a private agenda and a track record of ill-thought-out policy moves. In another, it is a fascinating moment in a confrontation as much a struggle for the soul of the Church of Rome as of the Church of England. Once we have got past the screaming headlines, we should keep an eye open for the real story.

What interests me about all of this, other than limited vision that leaders of the Roman Church seem to be prone in its long history, is that Henry VIII armed with the Act of Supremacy, and caught in the politics of dynastic marriage, which his old man aced, and the perceived need for male successors, acted as autocrats always seem to do, and got shot of the woman, Anne Boleyn, that changed the course of history, of part of that little island up in the North West of the Eurasian landmass. Ironic, is it not, that the Church of England owes more to Elizabeth, Anne's daughter, than the wastrel, dissolute Harry. But as others always knew, including George Fox, they were never really Protestant either, and so the hemorrhaging from the establishment church continued.

The conservatives now in the Rome are looking for the reinforcements and they will take them from anywhere. There was a time when it was possible to run the Inquisition, from which I am speculating the Star Chamber drew its inspiration as least in regard to process. The reason for the use of force and terror was as always to impose unity rather than to accept diversity. Bureaucratic structures and corporate ideals are more concerned with unity, even if it is spurious, or simply an expression of the egotistical delusions of those that lead those organizations.



*

SMILING ON AFGHANISTAN

The surefire smile of the Afghanistan-Pakistan war never fails, a gift that keeps on giving.



(via Mr Fish and Truthdig)

The fact that Obama is considering more broadly the military commitment to Afghanistan and Pakistan may be considered as somewhat Hamlet-like, but it has the distinct merit of allowing other voices from within the establishment to be heard. Nobody expects Obama to following any other than the safe political course, which has been characteristic of his decisions to date. Perhaps he is been politically canny given the power of the makers and breakers, who might chose to co-operate or not (or however that dynamic works) on the assumption that who cares about the broader electorate who can so readily be steered by media magic. Hope at this point seems somewhat forlorn.

At Salon, Joan Walsh reviews Taylor Branch's "The Clinton Tapes", the story of how the beltway media slandered and electorally derailed Clinton's, from this perspective progressive, presidency, and gave rise to the reign of Bush and Cheney. At the very least it gives pause to follow the leader, pile-on commentary, and a reminder that Obama is not the worst president on offer, and so much better than some of the pathetic alternatives, whose ineptitude is apparently not a barrier to office. A politician anywhere who can stand the pain of electoral defeat while standing on his or her principles will be something to be remarked on, even if those beliefs are completely opposed to mine.

Having noted the problems of the political making process, and the media soundbox (playpen) that surrounds it in quadraphonic noise, we should keep in mind that the real suffering and destruction is happening among the populations in the target countries. Poverty, as in Afghanistan gives rise to preventable and curable diseases, such as leprosy. It is especially tragic when doctors, as I heard on the radio, who travel to those places get killed.

ELSEWHERE:

Obama's reply to Lily's question was a surprise (via Waging Nonviolence):


And then there are the drone attacks.