ET TU TURNBULL?

Utegate did not go down well with the punters so the polls suggest. Lest we forget it was supposed to be the demise of Wayne Swan.

How was Malcolm Turnbull and those colleagues he consulted supposed to know that it was a fake email. In these matters the Government has the advantage, and it seemed relatively easy for them to identify the source of the email.

Clearly, the public has decided according to the polls that Turnbull is the loser in week long parliamentary contest. I am surprised that they were so prepared to judge an Opposition Leader so harshly. Now Turnbull is politically damaged, and the Utegate Affair is going to stick to him if he is the leader in the next election.

I do not know if tempramentally cut out to be an Opposition Leader, which perhaps requires that the focus should always be on the Governments short comings and mistakes while presenting as the alternative prime minister. It is no easy task, and many have fallen over in the job before Malcolm Turnbull. Malcolm it seems has a problem with consulting with his colleagues, which will be a problem if he were to become prime minister.

Paul Sheehan, who writes for The Sydney Morning Herald, seems to have surpassed the standard in terms of luridness and violent imagery. It is true, from what I heard, the Government counter-attacked, given the Opposition Leader believed he, like Brutus, held a dagger, not so much pointed at Caesar as his little mate.

The question then arises who else is there? The choices suggested are Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey. For the moment it looks as if the Liberals will stick with Malcolm, but when public opinion turns against the Rudd Government, as it inevitable, it means that he will not have same ride as John Howard from Opposition to Government. The question then will be will Malcolm Turnbull be able to last the distance, and if defeated will he continue on in Parliament?



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THE "FIELDING" REBUTTAL

Senator Stephen Fielding, Family First, has issued a paper setting out his (and his four experts) rebuttal to the answers provided by the Government to his three questions on global warming.

At his website he made the following general observations:

The Rudd Government is yet to prove that man made carbon dioxide emissions are the main driver behind climate change.

In their response to my three questions they shifted the goal posts and rephrased my questions to suit their agenda.

They were unable to debunk a graph used by the IPCC which shows average global temperatures remaining steady over the last 15 years while carbon dioxide emissions have increased.

Here is their summary paperl:

Assessment of Minister Wong’s Written Reply
to Senator Fielding’s Three Questions on Climate Change

By Bob Carter (bob.carter@jcu.edu.au)
David Evans (david.evans@sciencespeak.com)
Stewart Franks (stewart.franks@newcastle.edu.au)
William Kininmonth (w.kininmonth@bigpond.com)

Background

Emissions trading legislation, such as the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” (CPRS) bills that are currently before Parliament, rest upon the assumption that human greenhouse emissions, especially carbon dioxide, (i) are pollutants, and (ii) are causing dangerous global warming. Neither of these assumptions are supported by empirical evidence, and both have been under scientific challenge for many years by a large body of qualified and independent scientists.

Cognisant of these facts, Senator Steve Fielding has posed three direct questions to the Minister for Climate Change, Senator Penny Wong, in order to clarify whether or not evidence exists that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming, as alleged by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Minister Wong agreed to address these questions, first, through discussion at a meeting held between the Senators, ourselves and ministerial science advisors Professor Penny Sackett (Chief Scientist) and Professor Will Steffen (Director, ANU Climate Change Institute); at this meeting, an 11-page background presentation was made by Drs. Sackett and Steffen. And, second, by form of written reply, which was provided to Senator Fielding on June 18th.

We provide in this paper an assessment of Minister Wong’s written reply to each of Senator Fielding's three questions. A more exhaustive paper covering these questions, and other issues arising from the meetings between Senator Fielding and Minister Wong, is covered in the paper titled "Minister Wong’s Reply to Senator Fielding’s Three Questions on Climate Change – A Commentary".

QUESTION 1
Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period (see Fig. 1)?

If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?
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The government's response to this question queried whether global average temperature is an appropriate indicator of global climate, and listed circumstantial evidence for regional planetary warming.

1. What is the most appropriate measure of planetary climate?

1.1. The government’s reply says “When climate change scientists talk about global warming they mean warming of the climate system as a whole, which includes the atmosphere, the oceans, and the cryosphere”, and then adds “in terms of a single indicator of global warming, change in ocean heat content is most appropriate”.

1.2. We agree that in an ideal academic discussion, and were accurate historical data available, ocean heat content might be a better criterion by which to judge global warming than would be atmospheric temperature. Use of this indicator was first pressed strongly by Pielke (2007, 2009) as a test of the dangerous warming hypothesis, but it has not been widely publicized by the IPCC.

1.3. In any case, however, Senator Fielding’s question was predicated upon the history of IPCC’s public advice, which has consistently used the UK Hadley Centre near-surface air temperature record since 1850 as a measure of global warming. This near-surface air temperature record is the one that dominates in IPCC and government policy papers and discussion, and is the criterion of judgement that both politicians and the public are familiar with.

1. 4. As illustrated in Fielding (June 15, Fig. 1), the Hadley temperature record does not exhibit warming after 1998.

2. Natural variability in air temperatures

2.1. The government asserts that “at time scales of around a decade, natural variability can mask the atmospheric warming trend caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases”.

2.2. It is widely agreed that there is considerable natural variability in air temperature on decadal timescales and longer. It is the IPCC who have previously denied the effect of natural variability. For example, the 2001 Summary for Policymakers claimed, based on computer model simulations, that the climate system has only a limited internal variability. In turn, this claim was, and is, used to underpin the argument that carbon dioxide forcing is the only plausible explanation for the late 20th century warming trend.

For the government to now invoke natural variability as an explanation for the elapsed temperature curve is to destroy the credibility of their previous arguments for carbon dioxide forcing.

2.3. The government also claims that “in terms of the climate system as a whole, only about 5 percent of the warming since 1960 has taken place in the air”.

2.4. Using the Hadley CRU temperature record, the rise in air temperature since 1960 has been about 0.5oC. Translating the 15x1022 J of additional heat in the upper 700 m of ocean since 1960 into a temperature rise, we find that this corresponds to an increase in upper ocean temperature of only 0.15oC.

Thus, using these metrics, air temperature increase since 1960 has been more than three times greater than ocean temperature increase.

3. Ocean heat content

3.1. The government alleges that “in terms of a single indicator of global warming, change in ocean heat content is most appropriate”.

3.2. In reality, given present instrumental networks, ocean heat content is an unrealistic metric to use to judge climate change.
A 0.15oC increase in average ocean temperature (see 2.4) is not statistically significant when viewed against the known limited precision of the XBT instruments, and the temporal and spatial paucity of observations before the deployment of ARGOS buoys.
There remains controversy about the calibration of the ARGOS buoys, which we discuss in our more detailed paper.

4. Ice, snow and frozen ground

4.1. The government describes a number of regional changes in ice and snow distribution, and comments, without citation, that “overall the amount [global implied] of ice, snow and frozen ground has declined”.

4.2. So far as we are aware, no accurate inventory exists of the worldwide volume of modern ice and snow, let alone over the millennial history that is required in order to judge whether observed modern changes are unusual. As Idso & Singer (2009, p. 136) note, “global data on glaciers do not support claims made by the IPCC that most glaciers are retreating or melting”.

In the absence of such historical records, descriptions of melting ice in particular areas are indicative only of a negative precipitation:melt mass balance in those areas, and circumstantial so far as global change or the cause of melting are concerned. In attributing areas of melting to a human greenhouse effect, the government is making the common error of failing to distinguish between the occurrence of warming and the identification of its cause.

4.3. As the government notes, different trends occur in different areas. For example a post-2000 retreat of Arctic sea-ice parallels a similar melting that occurred in the 1930s, whereas at the same time sea-ice around Antarctica has increased to an all time high of >1 million km2 above the long-term average. Apart from the small region of the Antarctic Peninsula there is no evidence of warming over Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

4.4. The latest available data indicates - in the context of the large annual cycle of variation, and the observed decline during 2007 and 2008 - no global trend in sea-ice cover. Arctic sea ice extent today is similar to that in 1979, when satellite observations commenced, and at the same time sea-ice cover around Antarctica is currently enhanced in area.

4.5. Finally, there is no particular reason to view contemporary values of sea-ice cover as representing a climatic ideal. Historical records point to much less sea ice over the Arctic Ocean during the 1920s and 1930s, and to several prior openings of the Northwest Passage. And, of course, Greenland was much warmer in the 10th and 11th centuries when there were approximately 3,000 individual settlements and farmlets. As the cold of the Little Ice Age set in thereafter, none of these settlements survived beyond 1550 and some sites remain frozen today.

5. The basis of the IPCC assessment

5.1. The government asserts that “The argument presented in Q1 above is not new and has been thoroughly refuted by a very wide range of observations”.

5.2. No argument is presented in Question 1. Rather a simple question and its supplementary are asked.

5.3. The government also points out that IPCC’s 4AR (Summary for PolicyMakers, p. 5) concluded that: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea-level”.

5.4. The IPCC passage that is quoted is an underwhelming conclusion which was apparent long before the IPCC even existed, and anyway says nothing about the cause of any warming. Scientists have known for more than one hundred years that earth’s climate has warmed since the depth of the Little Ice Age during the 17th century. Indeed, the climate system had already undergone considerable warming before the establishment of a global network of observing stations in the late 19th century, which first allowed for the systematic monitoring of near-surface air temperature.

The key questions are not whether the climate system has warmed during the 20th century, but rather (i) whether the warming terminated in 1998 (Question 1); (iii) whether the warming was unusual in rate and magnitude (Question 2); and (ii) the degree to which the warming might have been caused by human carbon dioxide emissions (Questions 2 and 3). These questions are those that were posed by Senator Fielding, and they remain unanswered by the government.

QUESTION 2

Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) were not unusual as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth's history (Fig. 2a, 2b)?

If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions; and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?
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The government responded, citing ice-core data, that today’s magnitude and rate of temperature change was unusual, that the last 2,000 years of climatic history is more relevant to humans than deep-time history, that strong evidence exists that post-1850 warming was caused primarily by human greenhouse emissions, and (after Garnaut) that the costs of adapting to climate change in Australia may be more expensive than attempting to abate it.

6. Rate and magnitude of change

6.1. Judgements about rate and magnitude of temperature change through deep time, i.e. prior to instrumental measurement, have to be made using proxy data (such as temperature-related oxygen isotope measurements) for particular sites or regions.

Global warming between the last glacial maximum and the Holocene varied according to region. Ice cores from Vostok, Antarctica suggest a temperature rise of about 12oC; from Greenland the ice cores suggest much greater warming still. In contrast, isotopic analysis of sea bed cores from the warmest oceans around Indonesia suggests a temperature rise of only 2-4oC in tropical regions (and note that a 1oC increase in tropical ocean temperatures is accompanied by a natural increase in of about 7% in global evaporation and precipitation).
6.2. Figs. 2a, b of Fielding (June 15th) reproduce data from two such proxy deep-time temperature records. As explained in their captions, these records show that the rates (1-20C/century) and magnitudes (about 0.80C warming since the last cold phase of the Little Ice Age) of historical climate change fall well within prior natural limits.

This is especially the case if the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D/O) events referred to by the government are taken into account, irrespective of the debate (which continues) as to the degree to which such climatic events are worldwide or restricted to particular regions.

6.3. D/O events are sudden, step increases in the northern Atlantic and Greenland region temperature of more than 10oC over decades, followed within centuries by rapid cooling again.

The Arctic is a region where more infrared radiation is emitted to space than is absorbed from incoming solar radiation. This local radiation imbalance is corrected by the transport of energy from the tropics to sustain local temperatures. Sudden increases in local temperatures arise from changes in this equator to pole energy exchange, which is modulated by a combination of changes in wind pattern, changes in ocean currents and changes in atmospheric circulation. Such changes in poleward energy transport are similar to an El Nino event, and are at least hemispheric in scope. Indeed, the typical Atlantic D/O climatic patterning is present in some Antarctic ice cores.

7. Climate record of the last 2,000 years

7.1. The government writes that “in terms of timescales of importance for humans, the last 2,000 years are most relevant, because this is the period over which our civilisations have developed”.

This statement reflects simple anthropomorphic bias, for there is nothing “typical” or “special” about the climate of the last 2,000 years. Understanding climate change in context requires the study of climatic records that cover at least hundreds of thousands of years.

7.2. The government reproduces an IPCC figure of Northern Hemisphere air temperatures over the last 1800 years. This figure represents a variety of proxy (mostly tree ring) temperature histories that are joined together with the (UHI-influenced) 20th century temperature record and a speculative further “ ’committed’ additional temperature rise due to the thermal inertia of the ocean”.

7.3. One of the proxy temperature series plotted is the infamous “hockey stick” reconstruction of Mann et al. (1999). This reconstruction is discredited (e.g., McIntyre & McKitrick, 2003, 2005, 2009).

7.5. Disturbingly, the government continues to exhibit the “hockey stick” graph on its website at: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/science/faq/question2.html

7.6. In general, the proxy reconstruction of ancient temperatures only provides a smoothed representation of the temperature trends and that at a local or regional level. The interpretation of tree rings, etc cannot discriminate the same detail as direct observations of temperature.
Thus it is poor practice to append a global instrumental record to the young end of a series of proxy geological records. Such a construction amplifies recent temperature trends without scientific foundation.

7.7. Abundant historic and geological data shows that warming events associated with the Minoan, Greco-Roman and Medieval Warm Periods occur on a millennial, perhaps solar, climatic cycle (Bond et al., 2001; Singer & Avery, 2008), and were at least as warm as the late 20th century warming. These warmer periods were interrupted by the colder Dark Ages of the middle first millennium and the Little Ice Age of the second millennium, and such climatic rhythmicity must be controlled by major variations in equator to pole energy transport, i.e. is not primarily driven by carbon dioxide variations.

8. The greenhouse effect

8.1. The government asserts that “The greenhouse effect is a well-understood physical phenomenon, like gravity”.

8.2. The greenhouse effect is indeed a real phenomenon that lends itself to measurement. The intrinsic nature of gravity, however, is not understood. In contrast, the intrinsic nature the greenhouse effect is well understood; but it is often misrepresented, as it is in the government’s summary statement.

8.3. A fuller explanation and discussion on the greenhouse effect is provided in our more detailed paper.

9. Empirical relationship between change in radiative forcing and global air temperature

9.1. The government reports that a general relationship between radiative forcing and temperature rise can be derived by an “analysis of the climatic shift between the last ice age and the present warm period”, and that “this relationship includes all feedbacks within the climate system in an empirical way that is derived without using models”.

9.2. Analysis of the climate shift between the last ice age and the present warm period cannot give a quantitative relationship between the change in radiative forcing and the resulting change in global air temperature.

This is so because the influences of Earth’s orbital changes versus the feedback effect as Earth warmed, and the oceans expelled more carbon dioxide, are not known.

9.3. Furthermore, if carbon dioxide forcing is as powerful as is being suggested, then the question has to be asked: “Why did each of the interglacial warming events of the past ~500,000 years stabilise at about the same temperature?” For several recent interglacials were significantly warmer than the Holocene interglacial (e.g., Watanabe et al., 2003), which should require the Earth to have already have passed the so-called tipping point of irreversible warming on more than one occasion.

9.4. As we understand it, the paper that first formalised the concept of a “CO2 forcing parameter” in the fashion referred to by the government was that by Hansen et al. (1988).

Hansen et al.’s forcing parameter has no physical basis in measurement. Rather, the assumption was made that the ~100 ppm post-industrial increase in carbon dioxide was directly responsible for the increase in global temperature of 0.60C that has been measured over the past century.

9.5. Over the 20th century, both cooling and warming phases were concurrent with rising carbon dioxide levels, and the 1988 paper was published 13 years after a 33 year cooling trend that was paralleled by an increase in carbon dioxide concentration. Essentially, in the 46 year period from 1942 to 1988, when the paper was published, saw 33 years of cooling and only 13 years of warming concurrent with increases in carbon dioxide, yet the models used a forcing parameter that directly related only the warming to concentration increases.

Also, in calculating the carbon dioxide forcing parameter no allowance was made for the likely contribution that the urban heat island effect made to the (thermometer) measured warming.

9.6. Therefore, (i) there is no valid basis for the assumed carbon dioxide forcing parameter, (ii) the parameter has a built in warming overestimate, and (iii) climate CGMs that apply the parameter are inaccurate.

10. Costs of adaptation could be high: but not as high as those of unnecessary precaution

10.1. The government asserts that “The Garnaut Review also found that the climate change impacts on infrastructure will have a significant effect on Australia’s output and consumption of goods and services, and that the costs of adaptation could be high”.

10.2. The Garnaut Report, like the heavily criticized Stern report that preceded it (Carter et al., 2006), contains no credible science assessment but simply uncritically accepts IPCC science advice as a given. For that reason alone, the economic analysis in the report is of little value.

First, the report presumes that late 20th century warming will continue unabated throughout the 2ist century, which is already known to be wrong.

Second, the report adopts a precautionary approach in a situation where the potential hazard – future warming or cooling - is quite unknown.

The pitfalls of adopting a precautionary approach to an assumed hazard, rather than a prudent approach to known hazards, are explained in our fuller paper.

QUESTION 3.

Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were followed by 10 years
of stasis and cooling. (Fig. 3)?

If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?
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The government pointed out that the model averages plotted in many IPCC diagrams result in a smoothing of the simulated natural variations that are present in individual GCM model runs. This has the effect of suppressing the episodic short periods of cooling that are simulated by most models.

11. Natural climate variations

11.1. It is indeed clearly the case that individual GCM model runs simulate natural variability in a way which includes the depiction of periods of several years to a decade or so of cooling within a temperature projection that nonetheless progressively rises.

But in concluding that “GCMs can and do simulate decade-long periods of warming or even slight cooling embedded in longer-term warming trends” the government is implying that the lack of warming since 1998 is caused by a natural cooling forcing of sufficient strength to temporarily overcome the assumed longer-term carbon dioxide-forced warming.

11.2. Hitherto, the IPCC (e.g. 3AR, 2001) has argued that the climate system possesses only limited internal variability, which is why carbon dioxide forcing came to assume especial significance in their eyes.

11.3. The climate system varies on a range of timescales from the interannual (El Nino-La Nina) through the decadal (e.g., Pacific Decadal Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation), the multi-centennial (eg, the Mediaeval Warm Period-Little Ice Age) to multi-millennial (glacial-interglacial). The shorter timescale oscillations are manifest as internal variability, and are not incorporated in the GCMs. So even if the models do simulate some variability in global temperatures, they cannot be doing it for the correct reason, and any short-term variability that they happen to predict “right” must be either by chance or for the wrong reasons. And that individual GCMs may project periods of cooling as long as 10 years has no necessary bearing on the cause of the current cooling trend.

11.4. We conclude that there is no reason to call upon carbon dioxide forcing to explain the recent limited warming that occurred between 1979 and 1998, and that the computer-based projections that show progressive warming through the 21st century are highly misleading scenarios to provide to policymakers.

In essence, to now acknowledge that there is significant internal variability to the climate system is to destroy the plausibility of anthropogenic global warming alarmism.

REFERENCES

Bond, G., Kromer, B., Beer, J., Muscheler, R., Evans, M.N., Showers, W., Hoffmann, S., Lotti-Bond, R.,
Hajdas, I. & Bonani, G. (2001) Persistent solar influence on North Atlantic climate during the
Holocene. Science, 294, 2130-2136.

Carter, R.M., de Freitas, C.R., Goklany, I.M., Holland, D. & Lindzen, R. (2006) The Stern Review: A Dual Critique. Part I: The Science. World Economics, 7, 165-198.

Hansen et al. (1988) Global Climate Changes as Forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies Three-Dimensional Model. Journal of Geophysical Research, 93, 9341-9364.

Idso, C. & Singer, F.S. (2009) Climate Change Reconsidered. Repor-t of the Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). Heartland Institute, 855 + 12 pp.
Mann ME, Bradley RS, Hughes MK (1999) Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties, and limitations. Geophysical Research Letters 26:759–762
McIntyre, S. & McKitrick, R. 2003 Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) proxy database and northern hemispheric average temperature series. Energy & Environment, 14, 751-771.

McIntyre, S. & McKitrick, R. (2005) Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance. Geophysical Research Letters, 32, doi 10.1029/2004GL021750, 5 pp.

McIntyre, S. & McKitrick, R. (2009) The M&M Project: Replication Analysis of the Mann et al. Hockey Stick. http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html and
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354.

Pielke Sr., R.A. (2007) A Litmus Test For Global Warming – A Much Overdue Requirement,.
http://climatesci.org/2007/04/04/a-litmus-test-for-global-warming-a-much-overdue-requirement/

Singer, S.F. & Avery, D.T. (2008, 2nd ed.) Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.

Watanabe, O., Jouzel, J., Johnsen, S., Parrenin, F., Shoji, H. & Yoshida, N. (2003) Homogeneous climate variability across East Antarctic over the past three glacial cycles. Nature, 422, 509-512.

They conclude that the observations that the earth is warming and that human activity is not a factor in climate change. They do not contradict the fact greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere, and the increase is due to human activity. If greenhouse gases are not causing global warming, when the science that outcome as likely, then they explain why that is not happening, or explain why the properties of CO2 in relation to absorption of heat is incorrect. Furthermore, what set of observations, or proposed observations, would confirm that belief.

On a technicality, since David Evans was so insightful about the adversarial nature of political debate, it is not the government making the case for climate change, but specifically its' scientific advisors.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) released their last major report in 2007.
The Garnaut Climate Change Review provided its' final report in September 2008.

HONDURAS COUP

There has been a coup in Hondouras. Do we thereby conclude that the President could not be corrupted, or was it that the local wealthy elite merely acted on their own?

Since 1975, Australians can identify with the overthrow of an elected government.Al Jareeza sets out some general facts about Honduras:

• Second largest country in Central America


• Population of 7.2 million


• Second poorest country in the region


• Economy forecast to grow less than two per cent this year


• Relies on money from Hondurans in the US for more than 25 per cent of its gross domestic product


• Former Spanish colony gained independence in 1821.

The BBC described events in Tegucigalpa:

Troops in Honduras have detained the president and flown him out of the country after a power struggle over plans to change the constitution.
President Manuel Zelaya was flown to Costa Rica from an air force base outside the capital, Tegucigalpa. Mr Zelaya, elected for a non-renewable four-year term in January 2006, wanted a vote to extend his time in office. His arrest came just before the start of a referendum ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and opposed by Congress. There was also resistance within Mr Zelaya's own party to the plan to hold the vote. Reuters news agency reports that police fired teargas at about 500 supporters of Mr Zelaya who had gathered outside the presidential palace.

The United States, it seems, has opposed the coup which would have happen earlier if they had supported. The most plausible explanation is that the coup was organized from within Honduras without external support.

Deposed President Zelaya has asked his supporters to mount "peaceful resistance".

Honduras would appear to be the classic banana republic. Military coups occurred in 1963 and 1975 with the government returned to civilian rule in 1981.

IRAN'S FUTURE

Has the protest movement in Iran, as is suggested for example by Kim Sngupta in The Indpendent, run out of stream? Will it now dissipate into an acquience to the reality of a repressive and violent state, or will the dream of the 1979 Islamic Revolution be kept alive.

Much like early Christianity in the Roman Empire, the astounding success of Islam rapidly expanding from Mecca and Medina following the Prophets death in 633 so that it had reached Spain and our near north by 1082. No religion could have spread so quickly without a strong appeal to people. The Qu-ran represented a liberation theology. As with Christianity, Islam was duly accommodated (if that is the process) to the needs of State Power. I imagine in Islam as in Christianity there is a tension between the two impulses.

In such a context the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah supported by the US - no small achievement - both a democratic and Islamic revolution. William Pfaff, via Truthdig, observes:

Iran has made itself the leading Islamic state in the Middle East, a republic standing alongside the traditional Muslim monarchies of Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. It was meant as a model of Muslim self-liberation from foreign oppressors.

It had been an exemplar in both 1951 and 1979 of popular uprising against Western domination, and subsequently of the installation of a modern Islamic form of government with a democratic substructure, controlled within clerical institutions, with a clerical supreme leader who spoke the divinely inspired final word on government decisions.

This government now stands discredited internationally, as well as in the eyes of what clearly seems the majority of Iranians, who are ruled today by a massive deployment of police power for the sake of unaccountable personal or clan advantage of the leadership. They, and Muslims in general, should learn from this that the enemies are not all without—they are also within the Islamic world.

The hardliners in Tehran seem to be in the ascendant, as reported by Kin Sengupta. For example, opposition leader and defeated presidential candidate has it is reported adopted "a more conciliatory" by agreeing to seek approval for demonstrations. Equally as part of the systematic dismantling and isolation of communication, Mousavi's website has been hacked. He is now off line. It is reported:

. . . one Assembly of Experts member, Ahmad Khatami, said: "I want the judiciary to punish rioters without mercy, to teach everyone a lesson."

Mr Khatami's speech, which was broadcast nationwide, continued: "Based on Islamic law, whoever confronts the Islamic state should be convicted as mohareb [one who wages war against God] and punished ruthlessly and savagely. Under Islamic law punishment for those convicted as mohareb is execution."

Robert Fisk, also in The Independent, provides background on the religious control of the Iranian state.

The fickle nature of the attention by the media is not necessary the measure of what is happening in Iran. It seems to me that the protest, in the face of brutality, has entered a new phase. Violence and repression have their limits. It is difficult to suppress a populations of millions that live in a large mega-city such as Tehran. The regime has effectively lost its legitimacy and the appeal of the 1979 by corrupting the results of the election, as would appear to be the case. Simply by the expedient of not allowing full and transparent accountability they have almost ensured administrative inefficiency and corruption. So despite the surface compliance that may have been gained, it is unlikely that the grievances will disappear. The likelihood is that they will increase.

The question might now whether the opposition will be violent or nonviolent. In the situation where the state has overwhelming monopoly on violence, other than the American supported terrorist organization, the MEK, is likely that the opposition will necessarily have to be nonviolent, as in fact the demonstrations were in the main. Strategically, aside from a principled stance, this would make sense, since the regime is now looking for evidence or the opportunity to manufacture evidence that the opposition is complicit in external manipulation.

Much like the situation in Pakistan with the creation of millions of refugees, just because the Western Media has other trivia to absorb it's attention, it does not mean that the lights have gone for the Iranian people.




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FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG - WALKING AND WATCHING

Sasha and Dexter don't just go for a walk. They get a chance to stop and look around. Sometimes they have their own ideas about what is interesting.

Their enthusiasm can sometimes get the better of me. Most of the time is easy to be ignoring what is around me. The dogs hardly ever make that mistake.

Framing can make a difference:

I seldom know what Sasha and Dexter are finding of interest:

As a general rule they are not by nature co-operative subjects:

There are usually many distractions along the way:

The plan is for them to lead going up the hill and follow going down:

Sometimes going down to the back embankment to the back fence is not a risk I am prepared to take. So we head to the street:

Sometimes we get to sit and watch. The situation may be different, but the spirit is the same:

As usual at about this time each week , we are now heading over to Modulator to join if possible the diverse passengers on board Friday Ark.



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"ALAMISTS' VS "SKEPTICS"

David Evans, along with three other scientists, who accompanied Senator Steve Fielding meeting with Senator Penny Wong, argues that the "climate alarmists" will not debate the "skeptics".

Global Warming is clearly a major public policy question and should be debated as such. The question is then whether the debate should be a scientific debate or a public debate. The scientific debate goes to the questions related to the evidence for catastrophic climate change, and the public policy debate goes to alternative ways of dealing with the consequences, based on expert judgement of probability.

Joanne Nova, a science presenter, on her blog links to the Heartland Institute as the reference for those "skeptics" who have published advertisements calling for a public debate. On its surface this appears to be a public debate on "beliefs" about understanding scientific evidence. Senator Fielding, famously has an open mind who firstly attended a Heartland Institute Conference and then went to the Wong Meeting supported by the leading Australian '"skeptics".

Fielding's office provided background on his experts, including the concern of Associate Professor Stewart Franks:

He is perhaps guilty of providing a more philosophical approach to climate modelling than most. Stewart prefers to believe that if we do not understand the physics of climate change, then we might be premature in building models of it and blindly believing their clourful output. He is also a firm believer in the politicization of science by politicians, science advocates and environmental groups is a particularly dangerous development in modern technological society.

Now politicization of science is an interesting term, and the belief in it, goes to the heart of the issue (puns aside). David Evans argues that his side was composed on "independent scientists", that is they are not beholden to public funding, and he claims many of the other side would lose their jobs if they expressed an alternative view. So can scientists on the public payroll still be scientists?

The four skeptics summarized their case in The Australian. The case that the dissents, or skeptics, made is that there is no evidence for greenhouse gases causing global warming, although they accept the evidence of mean temperature rises. The forecasts have proven incorrect in relation to "hotspots" and the measurement of ocean temperatures are unreliable.

Fielding has presented three questions and these were answered by the Government's climatologist, Will Steffen. Tim Lambert presents the graphical evidence for refuting Fielding's questions.

How are scientific issues to be resolved? The fundamental argument is about cause and effect. The argument is that global warming is not caused by greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, and going further that increased carbon dioxide levels do not have a detrimental effect on the earth's climate. Therefore we should be pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What scientific skeptics should be doing, is not engaging in political debate, but in scientific research and experimentation. As David Evans notes political debates are adversarial.

As soon as science (and technology) enters into the realm of public policy they are politicized. This is as true of the science of the atom as it is of the science of the weather.

A question for the skeptics: Do they recommend that we all take every opportunity to pump as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as possible?




*

SPECK IN THE SKY

How you see things depends on from position they are seen. In my case I could not see it all. Take the view from Saturn, and background crescendo hardly seems appropriate.

Pause to reflect the Earth looked pretty good from the moon. Saturn has a number of moons. It is hard to keep up since it is said there are twenty-one of them. Some of them have atmospheres and climate features.

The BBC has the story. Can you see the speck in Saturine sky?
Watch the BBC's Audio Slideshow: Splendour of Saturn




*

POST COLONIALISM

In an editorial the writers of The New York Times identify errors made in Afghanistan which will be need to be fixed if the mission is to succeed.

There is no mention of capturing and putting on trial Osama bin Laden. It seems that the Taliban are the enemy. The good thing is lessons can be learned from success of smashed Iraq. When was war declared? Was the invasion and now occupation legal in terms of international law? These are not questions.

Afghanistan is grim. There will be increased violence as "the pressure is stepped up" against the enemies. American forces will not be able to be withdrawn until Afghanistan has a functioning military and police force. The dictator who will be installed must have the tools to run the place.

The first lesson: the Bush Administration never sent enough trainers to Afghanistan because of the completing demands of Iraq. One of the great successes, the editorial writer sagely notes, is that trainers have been "embedded" in the Iraqi Army, so they can keep a watch on things. The newspaper fails to observe the similar success of embedding journalists.

Another problem is that the nationalist resistance can pay their soldiers more. There is not record keeping and security of weapons, which are usually sold to anyone interested in buying them. Do the taxpayers in the United States realize that they are now expected to pay the Afghani army?

Still, we are confidently told that while now most Afghan people it is not their war but:

Perhaps most fundamentally, American war planners never seemed to understand that a more effective Afghan Army and a more honest and competent police force could help persuade civilians that the war against the Taliban was more their own fight and not just an American war being fought on their territory.

The new American general in Afghanistan has immediately taken measures "to protect Afghan people from errant air strikes" by imposing strict restrictions so that air power is only used when absolutely necessary. The murder of civilians is not a war crime, but just a mistake.

No decision has been made but the size of the Afghan Army will need to be increased to 260,000, which is twice the size proposed by the Bush Administration. Presumably, this decision will be made by Obama. We are told this will be cost effective over the next seven years:

The Pentagon estimates that it would cost $10 billion to $20 billion over a seven-year period to create and train a force that size. Paying it would cost billions more, especially if the current $100-a-month salary is to become more competitive with the $300 the Taliban pays.

The total bill would still be a lot smaller than the cost of sustaining a huge American fighting force there. By the end of this year, there will 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan, costing American taxpayers more than $60 billion a year.

Then there is the police force to be fixed:

Afghanistan’s national police force will have to be rebuilt almost from scratch. Kabul’s central government is notoriously corrupt, but the tales from the field are even more distressing. Journalists for The Times have reported seeing police officers burglarizing a home and growing opium poppies inside police compounds. American soldiers complain of police supervisors shaking down villagers, skimming subordinates’ wages and selling promotions and equipment. Muhammad Hanif Atmar, the interior minister, has pushed for greater accountability by senior police officials. He has a lot of work ahead of him.

The new man has special qualities, and things in Afghanistan are surely on the up and up:

There are high expectations for General McChrystal, based on his aggressive attitudes and past special operations success. The Taliban must be confronted head-on. To turn around the war, ordinary Afghans must begin to trust their own government more than they either fear or trust the extremists. Building an effective Afghan Army and police is critical to that effort. There is no more time to waste.

There was a time when it was not necessary to read the sub text, however explicit. The Philippines was a colony - pure and simple. In that case Manila was the entrepot for the China trade. At this time, it is not exactly clear what return Afghanistan is expected to return. I suppose the bases and the theft of the oil of Iraq justifies that criminal venture.

There is no surprise in that the lessons from Vietnam have not been drawn. The Times dare not suggest that the purpose is to keep the wars going as long as possible, since they are such great wealth transfer devices. You only have to look at Iraq, to see how much better off the people are now compared to twenty or thirty years ago. The same doubtless will be true of Afghanistan.

The generosity of the American taxpayers apparently knows no bounds. If international law was in full effect they would have more generous, especially to Iraq.






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PEOPLE POWER LIMITS

John Quiggin's notes that "people power" is not unproblematic.

He observes:

The authorities in Iran seem to have succeeded in suppressing popular protests for the moment. More generally, it seems clear that “people power” has its limits, summarised by the aphorism that a successful revolution consists of kicking in an open door. That is, if a state is divided, unsure of itself and illegitimate even in its own eyes, a manifestation of mass opposition will be enough to bring it down. But a coherent ruling group, confident of its own rightness and willing to use force against its opponents, can retain power even in the face of a strongly mobilised majority of the public. It remains to be seen which of these analyses applies in Iran.

The analysis assumes violence is that the only kind of force or power that is effective. Joha n Galtung suggested three types of power. Threat power which employs violence. Exchange power, such as in a commercial transaction. Integrative power a relationship that develops from authenticity or truth.

It seems to be in Iran the dead vote in numbers. Apparently there were as much as three million extra votes cast in the election.

The protesters have been extraordinarily brave to mass as they have to the point that the legitimacy of the regime is under question. It is apparent that there is a division among the ruling group, who have an appreciation from thirty years ago of the potential of mass demonstrations to unseat a dictatorship supported by an external power.

Martyrs, Juan Cole notes, have a special place of honour in Shiite Islam. If the protest reappear in numbers on the streets more than likely they will be wearing black (and carrying candles) to mourn the slain, giving the lie to the identification with "the coloured revolutions". While CIA agent,Kermit Roosevelt,with his handy cheque book was a great success in 1953, this time it seems Western(US) influence is minimal or non-existent despite what the government is claiming.

When a regime relies on violence to suppress mass demonstrations, it runs the risk of creating divisions within the police and the army. For example, in 1979 there was case where a mullah rose to speak, and was ordered to be shot, another mullah stepped in he too was shot, and then another, until it reached the point the troops shot the officer giving the orders.

What ever the limits of "peoples power" such as the lack of leadership and direction that seems to have been a problem in recent days in Tehran. Still if sufficient people are prepared not to be intimidated in the face of brutality, the regime will have a problem. Of course, the regime will attempt to characterize the protesters as terrorists, or worse, and shift the blame of violence to them, even if they are in the main nonviolent.

The path followed by Iran will now either fascism or democracy. Another problem for the regime is that while it may be able to suppress expression through technological media, it does not control them. So the regime will continue to off balance in a way that does not happen in either Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Given the repression they face, the stakes are raised, with large scale demonstrations more likely rather than less so.



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ZEITGEIST

According to this video, Zeitgeist (Addendum), the money system based debt and interest is the fundamental problem of humanity.

Money creates power for the few while it inhibits human growth while causing wars and environmental destruction. We live in a world of scarcity whereas we could live in a world of abundance, including energy abundance.

How accurate the operation of the reserve bank system and creation of money with debt is, I cannot say. The analysis in the video makes perfectly understandable the operation of the US political system, and the creation of perpetual war. War is so profitable that the smart thing to do is back both sides. Despite what the military might thing, war is not about winning. It is about profit. The longer they run, the more profitable they are.

The big problem is that others see how successful the scheme is and start copying the idea. I notice that in Tehran the demonstrators are now being called terrorists. Isn't imitation wonderful?

Wikipedia has a review of this film and of the earlier version.

There is as well a Zeitgeist Movement with a website explaining the philosophy.

We are always stuck in our paradigms and similtaneously threatened or made uncertain by alternative views. One thing is clear the world is not only working for most people, but we are headed for environmental disaster. What are the alternatives?

GREENLAND'S LIMITED SELF RULE

With the next step Greenland might become Australia 1901. Now the people of Greenland will control their natural resources and not Denmark, marking a further step towards independence. So the situation is perhaps closer to New South Wales 1855.

The article in Deutsche Wella does not suggest that the new government will have a "governor-general"-type figure to keep watch on things while the new government takes wing. It seems that things have been more glacial there: Denmark has ruled Greenland for almost 300 years. Greenlandic will be the new official language.

The report notes:

The Arctic island faces a historic shift on Sunday when a new self-rule status takes effect, the product of a referendum last November in which just over 75 percent of Greenlanders voted to take back more powers from Denmark after years of negotiations.

Greenland's new Premier, Kuupik Kleist, will preside over the giant step when he and Denmark's Queen Margrethe II officially mark the expansion of "hjemmestyre" ("home rule") into "selvstyre" ("self- rule").

Under the self-rule agreement, Greenlanders will be recognized as a distinct people with the right to self-determination and Greenlandic will become the territory's official language.

"Greenlanders wish with all their heart to become independent one day and we can do it," said Lars-Emil Johansen, a member of the social democratic Siumut (Forward) party, who served as the head of the island's local government from 1991 to 1997.

Denmark granted Greenland limited sovereignty when its parliament approved home rule in 1979, but this new deal – which comes into effect on Greenland's national holiday and some three centuries after the first Danish ships landed – gives the island of 57,000 inhabitants more control over its natural resources such as oil, gas, gold and diamonds. Denmark will retain control of defense, foreign and monetary policy only.

Global Warming works in Greensland's favor because it uncovers the ice cover allowing the natural resources, including gas and oil (we are told) to more accessible. As the ice melts, the prospect is that the population might increase from the existing 57,000, and the Australian model might be useful. At the moment, the history of political dependency is reflective of economic dependency. Fishing is a major occupation.

Interestingly, Greenland stores 10% of the world's fresh water as ice, so the economic prospects for the planet as well as Greenland are in reality not looking too hot, as that resource will presumably progressively melt and add to a rising sea level, and a loss of reflectivity.


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FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG - RED SKY

The weather is a source of continual interest. Now we can read the weather forecast but in earlier times people looked to the nature's signs.

There is an old saying that sticks in memory:

Red sky at night, shepherds delight.
Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning.

I not sure if this is true here or not. All I know is that we heavy rain aplenty during the week, and it seems colder than past years.

We had red skies:

The usual suspects were rounded up. There were no objections:

The usual spots were thoroughly checked:

We were lucky not much was happening in the street:

Our friend Peebles kept a low profile but barked at our presence:

The horses kept their rain coats on just in case ( or because it was cold):

The important signs for the dogs seem to be on the ground or in the air:

Bob has the song for the occasion:

..........................................

As last week, and before the weeks before last week, we will now head to Friday Ark, at Modulator, to say hello.

WHAT NOW FOR IRAN

Given the experience of the rule of the Shah, elections are probably necessary in Iran, and on basis it better have them for the office of President than for real holders of power.

They cannot be blamed too much for incompetence in rigging the results, as seems to be the case. For example, there was anecdotal evidence of five members of a family voting for an opposition presidential candidate whereas that ballot box officially recorded two votes for the that candidate. If vote rigging is stuffed up, as it were, then undermines the legitimacy of the regime.

Here again, the skill set and background necessary to take more subtle actions, such as effect a blackout on media to the outside world is of a different kind that a mentality that will fire automatic weapons into a crowd and engage in other barbaric acts. Characteristically, authoritarian regimes require a selected thug caste. They too have had and have a noble mission, much like soldiers sent to fight wars mostly against civilian populations in smashed outposts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The BBC provides a profile of the Basij milita force

Large demonstrations do not look good, because people get the sense that the regime cannot control them by fear. But it seems there is another dynamic in play. Demonstrators are not now just carrying green ribbons. They have added black ribbons. They are mourning the dead killed in the protests. Juan Cole explains:

Today's protesters are wearing green, which symbolizes Mousavi's descent from the Prophet Muhammad. (Mousavi's family name refers to the Seventh Imam (descendant of the Prophet with claims to divine knowledge), Musa Kazim, whose tomb is in Kazimiya, north Baghdad. Sayyid families, those claiming descent from the Prophet, often take one of the Imams' names as a family name to honor them, though of course they are also claiming descent from the previous Imams right back to the Prophet.) The repertoires of protest the reformists are using echo those of the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution-- they are chanting "God is Great," mourning pious fallen martyrs, etc.-- another sign that this movement is not just alienated secularized elites.

But now Mousavi's his supporters are also sporting black ribbons to indicate that they are in mourning for the fallen. Typically, the dead will be commemorated again at one month and at 40 days. In 1978 such demonstrations for those killed in previous demonstrations grew in size all through the year, till they reached an alleged million in the streets of Tehran. Since the reformists are already claiming Monday's rally was a million, you wonder where things will go from here.

And then there is the problem that mass demonstrations overthrew another authoritarian regime thirty years ago. What is significant about that overthrow is that regime had external support, which is crucial to the survival of the regime in Burma, as it is to that in Egypt, as it is to Israel, engaged as they in the deprivation, imprisionment and dispossession of the Palestinians. The rulers of Burma and Egypt would never allow elections that give rise to mass participation. Perhaps the rulers in Tehran should have taken lessons from those in Cairo.

These nonviolent demonstrations in Iran have worked in ways that anticipated, regardless of what happens to the government of Iran. They have demonstrated to the world through their television sets that people live in Iran and not "ants", and thus they taken any bombing of their country off the table. And, of course, it is not clear that the Iranian people have not won a greater victory than they might have imagined when they turned out in record numbers to vote.



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PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS

Australia, it is said, is the only long established liberal democracy with no formal human rights protection.

Some people argue that human rights are well protected in Australia. These arguments were presented on ABC Radio's Big Ideas. Reasons for this include the integrity of the judiciary, the protection provided by the common law, and the bicameral system combined with proportional representation. Beyond these reasons, we cede to Parliament the duty to protect human rights. Other arguments are that a bill of rights politicizes the judicial system. There are unintended consequences, for example, on the military. There is a problem with language that rights petrify absolutes. Finally there is a contention that there is a rights protecting culture in Australia.

Former Prime Minister Robert Menzies argued for the superiority of the common law over the Roman System of arguing the law from general principles that underlies some of the argument against codification into a bill of rights. He suggested:

The draftsmen of the Code Napoleon were intellectually at the poles from the creators of the English Common Law…our intellectual tradition is inductive – trial, error, trial, success, a precedent – so that we sometimes appear to the onlooker to have no principles; while deductive minds elsewhere sometimes seem to us to be so occupied by pure syllogisms that common sense and human values seem to disappear.”

You have to wonder whether the judicial process is really all that different, or to how often the Common Law judges distinguish the individual case and whether the "Roman Law" judges do not do the same. As far as I know Robert Menzies had no experience, for example, of Scottish law. The argument is repeated by those who oppose a codification of the civil, political and other rights, ignoring that Australia is signatory, in part, if not in whole, to the Universal Declaration of Rights (1948) and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. There are other agreements to which Australia has ratified with the expectation that the accepted principles be incorporated into Australian Law sometimes at both Federal and State levels. Somebody should tell the opponents to rights legislation, the horse is no longer in the barn.

The criticism is that as in the United States, with the Sotomayor nomination in mind, that a Bill of Rights politicizes the judiciary. Firstly, Judge Sonia Sotomayor has already been appointed an federal appeals court judge by the Senate. Just because judges to the Australian High Court are selected by the Cabinet it does not mean their appointment, or non selection is not political. It just means that it is not a public process, which I agree can make it unedifying as in the current situation, but against that if the US Senate Judicial Committee does it job properly then an appropriate appointment can be made.

The fact that Judge Sotomayor's gender and background are an issue suggest that she is exceptional. Law students tend to be drawn from the sociological (as distinct from the economically defined) middle class, and judges (I suspect) from barristers. I am told that judges have integrity and I hope it is true, but I am not sure what the mechanism is that maintains the standard.

The Australian Constitution mostly did not provide give expression to rights. There is a section providing for freedom of religion, which reflects colonial experince since the settlement was, unlike the United States, not framed by religious exile and there was no religious denomination with a majority in any colony. There is some protection of the right to vote, but compulsory voting and proportional representation for the Senate from 1948 are both statutory provisions. The right to vote does not extend to local governments, and until 1967 not to Aboriginal people. There is a right to jury trial for some offenses. Then there is the example of High Court-made law, which is all over the important sections of the Constitution, with an implied right of political communication.

Now Robert Menzies had a particular view of the absence of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution:

“I am glad that the draftsmen of the Australian Constitution, though they gave close and learned study to the American Constitution and its amendments made little or no attempt to define individual liberties. They knew that, with legal definition, words can become more important than ideas. They knew that to define human rights is either to limit them – for in the long run words must be given some meaning – or to express them so broadly that the discipline which is inherent in all government and ordered society becomes impossible. As I understand it, the Australian draftsmen had good reasons for not following the American model…

In short, responsible government in a democracy is regarded by us as the ultimate guarantee of justice and individual rights. Except for our inheritance of British institutions and the principles of the Common Law, we have not felt the need of hidden formality and definition. I would say, without hesitation, that the rights of individuals in Australia are as adequately protected as they are in any other country in the world.

In America, if I may say so as a most friendly observer, there is a long history of hidden distrust of ‘official’ people. As they are not directly answerable in Congress, where hidden; they do not sit, and in whose proceedings they are ‘outsiders’, it has been thought necessary to impose constitutional limits upon them, with the Supreme Court as the interpreter of those limits. And as the interpretation of such provisions will be largely affected by political and social concepts, the judgments of the Supreme Court of the United States tend to possess a political flavour which is notably absent from the judgments of the High Court of Australia.”

People in Austraila probably know through television programs more about the American Bill of Rights, amendments to the Constitution. We imagine we have similar rights here. Still the wording of the amendments allows the opportunity for abuses, especially with respect to the presidential powers in war time.Now the fashion, following the Bush Administration, is to create hysteria around terrorism, and thus begin the descent into a transformation of a democratic system to fascist one, following the well established steps identified by Naomi Wolfe. Glenn Greenwald writes suggesting that not all is roses in the garden of the land of the free, and the home of the brave :

I hope to write more about this with time permitting, but this decision - by Bush 43-appointed federal Judge Jeffrey White from Friday - refusing to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Jose Padilla against John Yoo, which alleges that Yoo violated numerous constitutional rights of Padilla's by virtue of his torture and other memos - is both extremely significant and very well-reasoned. Ironically, the Obama DOJ, in representing Yoo, raised many of Yoo's defining legal theories in order to argue for dismissal of the lawsuit (see p. 22: the Executive is vested with war-related power and the judiciary has no role to play in such matters; judges should defer to the President; what was done to Padilla is too secret to allow judicial review, etc.). It was those Yooian theories that were resoundingly rejected by Judge White, who held that the brutal, inhumane treatment to which Padilla alleges he was subjected plainly constitutes serious violations of his Constitutional rights and that Yoo's memos can be shown to be responsible for those violations.

Judge White's systematic rejection of the arguments once made by the Bush DOJ -- and now made by the Obama DOJ -- to prevent courts from adjudicating the legality of presidential actions was prefaced with this citation to the Federalist Papers:

[War] will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be safe, they at length become willing to become less free.
(The Federalist no. 8 at 44 - Alexander Hamilton.)

It is reasonable to say that complacency that arises from being a lucky country, in that other the Aboriginal wars waged against with few exceptions mostly against small groups of people, who could be overcome by disease and superior weapons there has never been a civil war in Australia. Declarations of human rights typically follow wars. This was true of Magna Carta (written in Latin), the 1699 Bill of Rights, the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen, following the French Revolution, as it was of the US Bill of Rights as amendments to the US Constitution. In Australia the quality controls of the legal system were set up externally beginning with the Bigge Commission. Appeals to the Privy Council in London were effectively ended in 1986, although the change had progressively taken effect over a period of almost twenty years.

What Menzies and others current opponents of the legislative rights protection, consistently fail to notice is that Parliament can over-ride the Common Law. George Williams, makes the case for a Charter of Rights and Responsibilites, much like the Victorian Model for the Federal Parliament:

If Parliament wanted to make a law that infringed human rights, it could still do so but only by confronting the issue head-on and involving real deliberation and more media and public scrutiny. Parliament needs reform when it comes to human rights. The record speaks for itself. Recent federal laws have restricted freedom of speech under new sedition offences, twice suspended the Racial Discrimination Act to allow such discrimination in native title and the Northern Territory intervention, and detained children in immigration detention for years at a time so that many have become mentally ill.

The problem is partly one of inadequate processes. The enormous volume of laws made each year by Parliament means they may receive little or no scrutiny. The day is now long past when parliamentarians could read, let alone debate, all of the laws they make. This produces a poor result for human rights due either to oversight or manipulation of procedures to avoid scrutiny.

Even laws with a big effect on our freedoms can be rushed through with minimal debate, leaving the media and the public oblivious as to the outcome. For example, the complex package of legislation for the Northern Territory intervention required robust debate to get the balance right. Instead, the 480 pages of the law were seen for the first time when introduced into House of Representatives on the morning of August 7, 2007. It was passed later that day, with the key debate on the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act running for only 13 minutes. The Senate did only a little better.

When it comes to human rights reform, Parliament, and not the courts, must lead. The goal must be to prevent the violation of human rights, and not merely to provide remedies for their breach. This means putting in place processes and protections that ensure that laws and policies respect human rights when they are first made by parliaments and governments.

To make the greatest difference, the focus must be on day-to-day government services. Many human rights problems affect Australians at vulnerable points in their life when they come to depend on government-delivered or funded services in essential areas such as aged care, child protection and mental health.

While our system generally works well, it can still allow the mistreatment of people in ways that are unjust and infringe the dignity, respect and freedom to which everyone is entitled.

On reflection we might now consider our record on human rights to be not as good as it seems. Those who have suffered loss of rights and human dignity do so often because of power imbalances, and when their experience is brought to the light of day, as in the case of the Stolen Generations, their plight is met with denial and inaction.

I agree that a social and political culture that believes in the the fair go for everybody, that can resist and repudiate scapegoating, is as important as federal and state laws to protect human rights. The simple proposition is that in order to protect your rights you need first to know with clarity what they are. As others have suggested these rights should be those accepted by the international conventions that have been signed. Should the need arise to balance such rights against wider social concerns then there should be sunset clauses.

So how did I come to consider this subject at this level of detail? Last Thursday a small group of us met to discuss how best human rights could be protected in Australia. I tend was given the task of writing the report of our findings for the National Human Rights Consultation Committee. So I spent last weekend, ignoring my other duties around the house, tangling with Work, writing up the group submission. Our group followed the advice of Geoffrey Robertson and George Williams, because when we considered our stories related to rights we found in those case they were not well defined or protected.

*

DRONE TERRORISM

If the following account is accurate then the drone attacks in NW Pakistan are a form of terrorism.

The United States condemns correctly the terrorism practiced by outlaw groups such as al Qaeda, but then they turn around and practice terrorism against civilian populations. The president properly condemns the violence of assymmetrical warfare of Palestinians against university cafeteria and public bus travellers, while recommending for the Palestinians nonviolent resistance, but not noticing that such protesters are shot in cold blood by Israeli snipers.

The culture of secrecy of CIA operations who apparently control the drone attacks means in practical terms that they are deniable. Therefore they do not either contradict the principles of peace espoused or the mission to win militarily.

Gareth Porter, at Counter Punch, writes that:

Since early 2009, Barack Obama administration officials have been claiming that the predator attacks in Pakistan have killed nine of 20 top al Qaeda officials, but they have refused to disclose how many civilians have been killed in the strikes.

In April, The News, a newspaper in Lahore, Pakistan, published figures provided by Pakistani officials indicating that 687 civilians have been killed along with 14 al Qaeda leaders in some 60 drone strikes since January 2008 – just over 50 civilians killed for every al Qaeda leader.

So how was it that so many civilians were killed? Was it simply, as it seems to be true in some instances, of local people providing hospitality to visitors in accordance with custom to then be subject to a drone attack. That result would arise from surveillance, presumably by drones, and interpreted by people who do not have any idea of local customs.

But there is another cause, and it is very familiar. It is the same method by which people were collected for Guantanamo Bay and other places. People were paid for information. Here apparently is how it worked for the drones:

Press reports that the CIA is paying Pakistani agents for identifying al Qaeda targets by placing electronic chips at farmhouses supposedly inhabited by al Qaeda officials, so they can be bombed by predator planes, has raised new questions about whether the CIA and the Obama administration have simply redefined al Qaeda in order to cover up an abusive system and justify the programme.

The initial story on the CIA payments for placing the chips by Carol Grisanti and Mushtaq Yusufzai of NBC News Apr. 17 was based on a confession by a 19-year-old in North Waziristan on a video released by the Taliban. In his confession, the young man says, "I was given 122 dollars to drop chips wrapped in a cigarette paper at al Qaida and Taliban houses. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars."

He goes on to say, "I thought this was a very easy job. The money was so good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money."

The video shows the man being shot as a spy for the United States.

A U.S. official told NBC news that the video was "extremist propaganda," but a story in The Guardian May 31 said residents of Waziristan, including one student identified as Taj Muhammad Wazir, had confirmed that tribesman have been paid to lay the electronic devices to target drone strikes.

The knowledgeable Washington source told IPS the Guardian article is consistent with past CIA intelligence-gathering methods in Afghanistan and elsewhere. "We buy data," he said. "Everything is paid for."

The implication of the system of purchasing targeting information for drone strikes is that there is "no guarantee" that the people being targeted are officials of al Qaeda or allied organisations, he said.

Some of us my be familiar with the principle that violence begets violence, but did not suspect the equally universal principle that terrorism begets terrorism. It seems to be the case that if you practice terrorism, terrorism is created in response.

Such is the precarious state of the system of constitutional checks and balances in the United States, not abetted by the continuation of the perpetual war, we have to hope that the government and people of that country will choose democracy over dictatorship, and peace over murder. It is unexpected to find the Obama Administration as the perpetrator of the policy, and stranger yet that the dice determining the fate of American democracy are thrown so recklessly in the wilds of Afghanistan.

Why is that people in, for example, Somalia, or the Congo, or Afghanistan are not considered as full human beings deserving the dignity of human rights?




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ISRAELI DEMOCRACY

The claim that is made for Israel as the preeminent democracy in the Middle East.

I suggest you watch this video by Max Blumenthal (via The War in Context) not so much to confirm that some Israelis stand for universal human rights, or that there seem to represent so few, but for the behavior of the police you will notice at the end.



The evidence is not conclusive, but indicative of an authoritarian attitude. So is Israel the perpetrator of recent widespread overt violence in Lebanon and Gaza, not to mention persistent discrimination and other forms of structural violence, as illustrated by the "settlement program" and the exclusion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, such a democratic country as we are led to believe?

As the person in the video commented, it is time for the rest of the world to save Israelis from themselves.

Is the Australian Labor Party listening? Probably not. Political operators may not see any inconsistency, given the paramount importance of political expediency, of the remnant Israeli Labor Party forming an alliance with a fascist party to be in the Likud Government led by "Mr Yahoo".

In terms of representative government, Australian democracy is not such great shape either, but with less excuse.



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WAR WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

We almost never hear from the victims of war who still live. And what we are given are broad generalizations about people. Could it be possible without stereotypes to understand human cause and effect?

First hand reports from the tribal areas of Pakistan are relatively rare. The people there never get a chance to speak for themselves. It is interesting to hear what they have to say.

Kathy Kelly reports from Islamabad for Voices for Creative Nonviolence:

The most recent plane to attack the Pakistani village of Khaisor (according to a Waziristan resident who asked me to withhold his name) came twenty days ago, on May 20th, 2009. A U.S. drone airplane fired a missile at the village at 4:30 AM, killing 14 women and children and 2 elders, wounding eleven.

The previous day, some travelers had come to Khaisor, and the villagers had served them a meal. “This is our custom,” my friend relates. “It is our traditional way.” But these travelers were members of the Taliban, and their visit was noted by U.S. forces. It is possible they were identified through pictures taken by unmanned U.S. drones. Although the visitors had left right after their meal, the U.S. responded to this act of hospitality by bombing the homes of the hosts early the following morning.

I asked my friend how families cope, when a bomb suddenly blasts their home in the middle of the night. Do they have any kind of first aid available to help the wounded? “You see this,” he said, pointing to the long shawl that I happened to be wearing, a customary part of every village woman’s dress, “they try to use this [as a bandage] because it is all they have.” I imagined the shawl rapidly soaking up the blood of a dying Pakistani man, woman, or child.

On the morning of the 20th, the other villagers had rushed to the section where the missile had hit, hoisting injured survivors onto their shoulders and carrying them across rough, hilly terrain to the nearest road (about five kilometers away from the village) where, lacking vehicles of their own and with no hope of receiving an ambulance visit, they waited for a car to stop, their only means of reaching a hospital.

The first car they saw did stop, but its driver refused to take any of the wounded for fear that his action would be noted by an unmanned U.S. drone, and that he himself would face the reward for his hospitality which the village had received.

The villagers walked along the road until another car stopped and did agree to take some of the wounded to a nearby center run by the International Commission of the Red Cross.

For three days following the attack, people collected in the village, coming in from all over the region for the funerals. My visitor told me that whether people know the villagers or not, they will come to pray. “On the cell phone you get the word,” he said, “Look, this bloody thing again happened. People share the sorrow, but the anger increases. Everyone says we should get rid of the Americans.”

At Truthdig, William Pfaff argues that the accepted assumptions about various places including Pakistan should be questioned in the light of evidence. He observes:

The first is the revolt of tribesmen against the Taliban in part of Pakistan’s northwest tribal area, including the well-known tourist region of the Swat Valley, where the “students of religion” recently infiltrated and seized power from the Pakistani authorities and police. This provoked alarm there and in the United States that the religious extremists are a menace to Pakistan.

This fear was exaggerated from the start; Pakistan has a serious government and army. Now, popular anger at Taliban abuses and imposition of unacceptable religious and social norms has erupted among tribesmen and traditional leaders. The formation of popular militias has resulted in expulsion of the Taliban from the positions they have taken, while Pakistan’s army has successfully retaken territories further south, at a cost to the population of tens of thousands of refugees. These refugees are a grave problem for a government under stress.

The significance of all this is major: The Taliban with their religious rigor do not automatically win converts among their own people.

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FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG - TAXING TIME

Admittedly it is a challenge to say new things about familiar scenes, but that is not an excuse not to try.


I do not wish to be taxing your time, and the dogs are making my time by providing me to get some walking done. At the same time some part of the time is spent siting around.

On this occasion Dexter took up this position of his own accord:

This stance is not the usual Sasha mode:

Side by side:

Around we go:

The red ground was not something I had noticed at the time:

Getting along together:

If the photos are not to your taste, here is a bloke playing a piano. Oh there is an orchestra as well. Again it takes time.



We will again this week seek to join everybody at Friday Ark via Modulator.

CONTROL ORDERS THUMBS DOWN

Control Orders were enacted into British law by Parliament in 2005. Now they are doubt after the Law Lords ruled that they breeched human rights leglisation and fundamental legal rights.

Alan Travis in The Guardian reports:

In a unanimous decision, a panel of nine law lords found in favour of three Libyan men, who argued that the Government's refusal to give any details of the evidence against them made a fair hearing impossible. The men have not been named for legal reasons.

While the control orders against the men have not been quashed, their cases will have to be heard again. But the Government now faces having to lift orders granted using secret evidence. Suspects can be banned from meeting certain people, stopped from using mobile phones or computers, or even forced to adhere to a strict 16-hour home curfew under the orders.

They were introduced in 2005 after the law lords ruled that the previous practice of locking up foreign terrorist suspects who had not been charged with an offence breached their human rights. There are 17 terrorist suspects who are currently subjected to control orders, six of whom are British citizens.

Lord Philips of Worth Matravers, the senior law lord, said: "A trial procedure can never be considered fair if a party to it is kept in ignorance of the case against him." Alan Johnson, the newly installed Home Secretary, called the ruling "extremely disappointing", adding that it would make it more difficult to protect the public from terrorism.

"All control orders will remain in force for the time being and we will continue to seek to uphold them in the courts. In the meantime, we will consider this judgment and our options carefully," he said.

The security services claim that to reveal their secret sources and intercepts who compromise their sources. This consideration is more important than the rule of law. It seems now that control orders will simply wither away.

The crucial difference between Australia and Britain is that they have enforceable human rights legislation, and other than the limited constitutional guarantees including: the right to vote, the right to trial for some offenses, limited protection of religious freedom and implied rights of political communication.

To quote Get UP:

Australia is the only democratic country without formal human rights protections and has few human rights protections.

Furthermore, constitutional change is difficult, and any law enacted by Parliament to protect human rights could be rescinded or overridden. There are human rights and we ordinarily take them for granted but they are not legally entrenched rights.

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PHOTO CHALLENGE: DOMESTIC

Mountain Girl must be back home. Anyway she back to setting photo challenges. Throw down the gauntlet and maybe I can stoop to act.

The first thing was the high winds threw down the branch from the Tallow Wood in the front, then the one of the high stumps we had in the back fell over. I like to think that a possum was climbing it at the time, and managed with alacrity to jump clear. So these kind of events then to worry me. The result was we got the tree cutters in and one of the them - rather him than me - the rocking stump you can see and the dead tree in the front. Now the happy result was that our neighbour Chris got some free firewood for her other residence in Callaga Bay.

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CHINA THE NEW GREEN

Somebody should tell the coal exporters that China may not want the stuff in the future. Maybe they get global warming.

Still it is going to be tough if the solar flares create a cloud cover such that there is global colling and less solar radiation. So perhaps the charts and diagrams Steve Fielding brought back from the Heartland Meeting might be valuable yet. Now Steve needs to fly to Beijing - an increase carbon footprint not withstanding - to present his charts and proof to the Chinese Government, and saves Australia's coal exports and exporters.

Julian Borger and Jonathan Watts inThe Guardian reports:

China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher.

In the current development plan, the goal for wind energy is 30 gigawatts. Zhang said the new goal could be 100GW by 2020.

"Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW]," Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.

"We are now formulating a plan for development of renewable energy. We can be sure we will exceed the 15% target. We will at least reach 18%. Personally I think we could reach the target of having renewables provide 20% of total energy consumption."

That matches the European goal, and would represent a direct challenge to Europe's claims to world leadership in the field, despite China's relative poverty. Some experts have cast doubt on whether Britain will be able to reach 20%. On another front, China has the ambitious plan of installing 100m energy-efficient lightbulbs this year alone.

Although not mentioned in the article the intermediate technology represented by solar energy, provided it can be mass produced to lower unit costs, probably makes sense for use by the millions of people who live in rural villages. Having viable villages, would then reduce the population pressures on the urban areas.

It is possible that Chinese policy is not just address carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere but also the distribution of quality of life.

India is another country that like China has similar population problems with less traditional energy resources.



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SOLAR VARIATION

Senator Stephen Fielding, recently returned from a Heartland Conference in the US suggests the evidence supports the notion that global warming was caused by solar flares, or changes in the sun's energy output.

I don't follow these scientific arguments as closely as I should, and don't travel at tax payers expense, so knowing virtually nothing. I would expect solar energy to vary, and I would climate scientists to have measurements. For example, the fossil radiation from the Big Bang(s) can be identified. We are dealing with an assumption here, either climate scientists are incredibly stupid, or that they are self serving. The first does not seem to be incredible on its face since climate science seems to be a very difficult and intricate subject. As for the second, I think that is very desirable to have very able people in that field.

Former engineer, Steve Fielding is sufficiently convinced by the case that he now questions, according to the ABC report, any link between carbon emissions and global warming. Would not the normally construct person be inclined to conclude, on the basis of probably that if enough gas is released into the atmosphere there will be effects, as has been true in other cases? One implication is the increasing acidification of the oceans, an effect mostly independent of solar radiation? If Senator Fielding is so open-minded why did he not attend get advice from those who are suggesting greenhouse gases are the principal cause of climate change? So much for the rhetoric?

Had Senator Fielding stayed home, reducing his carbon footprint, he could have accessed all the relevant information. The Heartland Institute website will probably give most of the research. As it happens they have a report from a rather impressive sounding organization, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. The paperback only costs $154 - at that price it must be good value. As a Senator, Steve Fielding, he could have found out various scientific opinions. For example:

Graeme Pearman, who is former chief of atmospheric research at the CSIRO, says the solar flare debate has been around for a long time.

"Senator Fielding might have just learnt about it, but in fact the science community has been aware of it for many years," he said. "The changes of output of the sun are well and truly documented. We've been observing this for over a hundred years. "We understand that there was probably some warming earlier last century, due to changes of emissions from the sun, but no evidence that the recent warming is due to that.

It seems that the solar flare theory actually posits a new ice age. It is a theory of global cooling:

One proponent of the solar flare theory is Phil Chapman, an Australian-born geophysicist and former NASA astronaut scientist.

"The sun is extremely quiet. There are very few spots, much less than we expect," he said. "The implication is that if this continues, we're going to see worldwide cooling rather than warming." He says the theory is that when the sun is not active, its magnetic field shrinks. "That means that more cosmic rays get through to the earth from out in the galaxy," he said. "And the cosmic rays, when they stop in the atmosphere, tend to produce clouds, and the clouds reflect sunlight back into space. "So when you have fewer sunspots you have more clouds and therefore cooler weather."

Dr Chapman is warning against policies to reduce carbon emissions. "The fact is that everyone that's looked at the data recognises that the climate has simply not been warming since 2002," he said. "Whether that's going to continue, nobody can tell, but until we do know it is really foolish to start spending money."

The ideologists, masquerading as scientists strike back:

"[Global Cooling] is absolutely rubbish, [ideologist Dr Pearman said.] What that is referring to the fact is that last year's temperature was cooler than it was 10 years ago," he said. "The year to year variation of the planetary mean temperature has been two or three tenths of a degree, and the trend that we've seen over the last 100 years is only one tenth of a degree per decade. "So, if you only look at one 10-year period, you're never going to be able to see the trend. You have to have a longer period of observations."

David Karoly is a professor of meteorology at the University of Melbourne. He says the source of Senator Fielding's new-found knowledge - the American Heartland Institute - deserves closer inspection. "It is very surprising that he doesn't accept the best information from scientific assessments... but seeks to get his information from a group of climate change deniers, an organisation that's receiving sufficient funding from the fossil fuel industry," he said.

"He seeks to accept their scientific misinformation more than he accepts peer-reviewed scientific publications." While there might be some doubts over the causes of climate change, Dr Pearman is more concerned that revisiting the solar theory is wasting valuable time. "We really don't have time to wait - we have to get on with it. That doesn't really mean that we're absolutely sure about everything that is projected in climate change," he said. "There will be uncertainties always, but the potential magnitude of the change, and the high probability it will occur, means we simply have to stand up and manage that risk through both adapting to it and reducing our emissions."

The problem is that governments have ignored the warning about global warming for the past thirty years. When circumstances are ignored they have a habit of becoming an existential crisis. Why has climate science being ignored? Why haven't changes being made to the economy? What are the political forces at work? Who has benefited by this inaction?



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FINDING PEACE

John Kennedy in his 1963 graduation address at the American University in Washington spoke of our collective ignorance about peace. Here we are almost a half a century later and we have not moved forward.

In that speech Kennedy defined what he meant by peace:

What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.

Speaking at time when the possibility of nuclear war and human extinction loomed large in the imagination, and when the world was dominated by two super powers and opposing ideologies, the speech set forth the practical way forward:

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor, it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors. So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly towards it.

The key to peace at the time of the speech was co-existence. In that sense, the world before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a simpler world. The agreements made between Reagan and Gorbachev made in the old context were not kept in the new one. We might have expected that outcome because that is the way that power politics have been played and are played. In recent years, with the invention of pervasive fear, the dedication to self interest of the strong, and the contempt of institutional development, Kennedy's path to peace has been eroded so that its traces can barely be seen, as if it has few, albeit brave and dedicated, followers.

That said, Kennedy's call spoke universally for all time when he observed:

And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights: the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation; the right to breathe air as nature provided it; the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

In that sense the ecological crisis that threatens the planet is a common cause for all beliefs and all attitudes of all people. And it is a necessary condition to meet that crisis to develop a sustainable way of life without the impost of violence and war. The preparation for violence and war almost guarantees destruction of ultimately the planet and its supporting systems are haphazardly destroyed and polluted.

Obama's recent speech might be retrospectively seen as a call for a wide conversation about peace and survival, as well as peace and harmony. He seemed to be suggesting, if unconsciously, for a Pax Americana. His concluding comments suggesting commonality between the religions of the Abrahamic tradition based on their respective texts went under the radar for me.

Carl Sagan said we are star stuff. In that sense we are cosmic. Now religion is binding back into the cosmos, so other religious traditions might be mentions, including those that arose from the Sanskrit texts. As we have had cause to see recently it does not follow that the followers of religions necessarily keep to their prescriptions. The Buddha said:

They are not following dharma who resort to violence to
achieve their purpose. But those who lead others through
nonviolent means, knowing right and wrong, may be called
guardians of the dharma.

Eknath Easwaran explains the concept of dharma:

The Hindu and Buddhist scriptures often use the word dharma,
which comes from a root meaning "to support." It
is a very difficult word to translate into English. In fact,
there is really no English equivalent, but dharma is that
which supports us, keeps us together. Dharma is the central
law of our being, which is to extinguish our separateness
and attain Self-realization. This is the universal law
inscribed on every cell of our being, and the proof of it is
that the more we live for others, the healthier our body
becomes, the calmer our mind becomes, the clearer our
intellect becomes, the deeper our love and wisdom become.

The Hindu and Buddhist scriptures also speak of a personal
dharma. This is our present context, our present assets and
liabilities. On the spiritual path, we start from where we
stand. Later on, as our capacities grow, our opportunities
for service will become greater. What is the right
occupation now may not be right later on, but as long as it
is not at the expense of others, our job can be made a part
of our spiritual journey.

One suspects that if peace and harmony eludes us on a personal level, we miss it completely, which is equally true collectively. At the same time, as for example, Naomi Wolf reminds us with her ten steps from democracy to fascism, there are other processes that are afoot and have to be perceived and effectively resisted. Institutional arrangements are necessary but vulnerable. Dharma might be seen as a whole composed of a multitude of parts.




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FRIDAY NIGHT DOG BLOG: A WORLD APART

I had to do something different this week. So I hope it all falls into place. It is a challenge to see the commonplace in new ways. Our experience can be worlds apart

So to set a musical background and illustrate the theme here is some scenes from Livorno with Mascagni's Cavellera Rusticana Intermezzo from You Tube:

With collages all the let us have a look at the walk world of Sasha and Dexter.

Setting the scene:

There is usually time to stop along the way, but the detail (whatever that might be) is more important than the big picture:

We usually stop around here for a an overview, and to see you else might be around:

And we are on the lookout for somewhere that we have not shown before, mainly because it was wet so we avoided the bike track:

Sasha enjoys the opportunity to stride into a puddle. Dexter will stop for a drink, but otherwise is less enthusiastic about water:

What a change! This week we might be early to board Friday Ark at Modulator.

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OBAMAS LANDMARK SPEECH

Publics across the Muslim-majority countries can be expected to have very different responses to the US Presidents speech at Cairo University. Then there is the management of news filters within the US media. Did Obama cut through the fog?

Brad De Long identifies the critical paragraph:

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered...

The comments there are pretty much to the point, which is just a reminder that Congress is fundamentally broken in that it does not reflect public opinion. Unlike Britain this fundamental political crisis has not come into focus yet, but it will in due course - and how I cannot foresee.

Credit to President Obama for talking of peace, even in a self-contradictory way and without a constructive program to achieve it. He scored a few goals speaking before an audience in a police state. To that extent: well done.

The speech was not as good as JFK's 1963 speech, but the task was orders of magnitude more difficult, nor did it have the substance and integrity, and therefore truth, of the Kennedy speech. In practical terms, the result is that it will not be as effective. That means something more, perhaps something different, is required, but it does not mean that the endeavour to achieve peace in Palestine should be abandoned.




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ACID OCEANS

I wonder what the climate deniers and their commercial supporters think of the increasing acidification of the oceans. Perhaps not, but it is a parallel process with increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"Deborah Smith, Science Writer for The Sydney Morning Herald reports that 70 scientists, including from Australia, urged governments to address the problem at the Copenhagen Conference. The case:

In the past 200 years the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities, and the current rate of acidification is much more rapid than at any time during the past 65 million years, the scientists said in a joint statement.

Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society in Britain, said that unless global carbon dioxide emissions were cut by at least 50 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050 there could be an "underwater catastrophe" and loss of marine life.

"The effects will be seen worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging local economies that may be least able to tolerate it," Professor Rees said. "Copenhagen must address this very real and serious threat."

As carbon dioxide dissolves it alters ocean chemistry, leading to an attack on the carbonate building blocks needed by marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to produce their skeletons, shells and other hard structures.

"Ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years," the scientists said.

Although it was a global problem, some areas, including the tropical waters around the Great Barrier Reef, would be more affected than others.

Scientists noted that this a problem in real time. It is not a computer simulation or projection. It can be observed now with real threats to human well being. But maybe the measurements are wrong? Maybe the cause and effect relationship is unsound. Perhaps smoking tobacco does not cause cancer after all.

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RIYAHD THEN CAIRO

Barack Obama, firstly visits the capital of Saudi Arabia and then it is on to the capital city of Egypt to make what is expected to be a landmark speech.

Location is not just real estate acumen. Think of the great political speeches, those that memorable down through history, and almost always the setting gives special significance. There are many examples. Elizabeth at Tilbury on the eve of the Armada. Lincoln on the Gettysburg battlefield. King at the Lincoln Memorial. Even Bush had his fantasy moments on the aircraft carrier off the Californian coast, just a few miles from Hollywood.

Obama plans to give his speech. Cairo University because of its significance for the "Muslim World" may be a very good stage. (Al Azhar University, founded in 975, would have added resonance) As commentators, including at al Jazeera, noted the "Muslim World" as distinct from, for example, The Arab World is a very diverse place with a multiplicity of cultures, ethnicities and social situations, much like the rest of us.

Visiting the Kingdom of Saudi and the Dictatorship of Egypt, a favoured place among others for the rending of torture, simply reifies who the principle allies of the US are in the Middle East, other than Israel. Before he utters a word, Obama is unlikely to be about change as much as the point of his rhetoric will be about a change in values. He, I expect, will be trumped by the overwhelming and continuing American Middle Eastern policy, that almost without exception has never supported democratic government or human rights.

Predictably, the criminal gang around Osama bin Laden have taken the opportunity to break out from the cave to seek publicity for their political cause, which is perhaps not without sympathy especially from those on the wrong side of the exercise of political and military brutality. Never mind the close ups with King Abdullah and Mubarak. Al Jazeera notes the effect on Obama's decisions in widening the war in Central Asia, which may undermine his message:

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said that Bin Laden will be able to exploit the escalating conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where an increased number of US troops have been deployed under Obama in the latter case.

"As long as Afghanistan is that kind-of swamp of corruption, chaos, landlords, drugs and war it will be a place where extremism can be groomed against the United States and also Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the Islamic world," Bishara said.

Meanwhile, resident Middle East reporter and commentator, Robert Fisk, via Common Dreams, is not impressed:

I haven't met an Arab in Egypt - or an Arab in Lebanon, for that matter - who really thinks that Obama's "outreach" lecture in Cairo on Thursday is going to make much difference.

They watched him dictate to Bibi Netanyahu - no more settlements, two-state solution - and they saw Bibi contemptuously announce, on the day that Mahmoud Abbas, the most colourless leader in the Arab world, went to the White House, that Israel's colonial project in the West Bank would continue unhindered. So that's that, then.

And please note that Obama has chosen Egypt for his latest address to the Muslims, a country run by an ageing potentate - Hosni Mubarak is 80 - who uses his secret police like a private army to imprison human rights workers, opposition politicians, anyone in fact who challenges the great man's rule. At this point, we won't mention torture. Be sure that this little point is unlikely to get much play in the Obama sermon, just as he surely will not be discussing Saudi Arabia's orgy of head-chopping when he chats to King Abdullah on Wednesday.

So what's new, folks? Arabs, I find, have a very shrewd conception of what goes on in Washington - the lobbying, the power politics, the dressing up of false friendship in Rooseveltian language - even if ordinary Americans do not. They are aware that the "new" America of Obama looks suspiciously like the old one of Bush and his lads and ladies. First, Obama addresses Muslims on Al-Arabiya television. Then he addresses Muslims in Istanbul. Now he wants to address Muslims all over again in Cairo.

Still one can hope for positive outcomes in the cause of peace and the saving of lives. Anything to those ends is worth trying, and hoping for success. President Obama has a personal history unlike any other American leader. The critical test, I expect, is what happens in relation to Palestine and Israel. The Israeli electorate and the Israeli leadership have not got the message that change is necessary. This speech represents a challenge for Obama and his Administration, perhaps critically setting the stage for the events to follow in the Middle East.

I know that sounds like wishful thinking, but the 1963 Kennedy speech at The American University in Washington had a big impact among the Russian people by his understanding of their history and experience. Speeches can matter.

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STATELESS UYGHURS

The Uyghurs are Turkic speaking people who are indigneous to the North-Western Chinese region of Xinjiang. Some Uyghurs have been waging a guerilla war against the Chinese who have been engaged in cultural violence against the native people.

Dingbats in the Republican Party - is there any other sort? - argue that the Uyghurs swept by the bounty payments soon after the presence of Americans in Afghanistan are a danger because they are alleged to have attended al Qaeda training camps, and weak-kneed Democrats - is there any other sort? - have gone along with them. After the bounties were paid the Uyghurs were transported to the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to be outside the juridiction of US law. Four years ago, the US Government had to admit these prisioners, held in best tradtion of Anglo-American law without charge, were not enemy combatants. Five prisioners were sent to Albania, since it was acknowledged that they were genuine refugees. Catch 22: If the Americans would not take the remaining 17, why should any other country. The option of paying compensation and returning them to Pakistan has not been considered.

Democracy Now reports:

The Obama administration has urged the Supreme Court to reject a petition filed by fourteen Chinese Uyghurs held at Guantánamo seeking their release into the United States. The Uyghurs are still being held at Guantanamo even though they are no longer considered enemy combatants. In a brief filed on Friday, the Obama White House backed the Bush administration’s claim that the court does not have the power to order the Uyghurs released into the United States.

The editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald is transfixed by the quandry and conundrum:

. . . the Obama Administration, like that of George Bush, refuses to release the Uygurs or to allow them into the United States. It maintains it is holding them lawfully at Guantanamo, in less restrictive conditions, while it seeks to persuade some other country, apart from China, to take them in. It has asked the Supreme Court to uphold a federal appeals court ruling to that effect. The Uygurs fear, with reason, that if they were returned to China they would be regarded as terrorists, punished, tortured and perhaps executed. For its part, Beijing is warning other countries against offering them a safe haven.

This is awkward for Mr Obama. He already faces stiff opposition in Congress to his promise to close Guantanamo by early next year, and even stiffer public opposition to allowing any of the camp's former inmates into the US. It is also messy, for humanitarian, diplomatic and security reasons, for Australia. The Rudd Government earlier refused two requests from the Bush administration to accept the Uygurs. Now it has received a third request, this time from the Obama White House. It is a quandary, and the options available to Kevin Rudd seem to involve offending either Australia's closest, most powerful ally or a crucially important trading partner.

The Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, has so far been studiously noncommittal. He says Australia will carefully consider the new US request on a case by case basis, and points out that the number we are being asked to accept this time is lower - up to 10. The question he has not answered, however, is the one posed, fairly, by the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull: if the US Government thinks the stranded Uygurs are safe enough to walk the streets of Sydney or another Australian city, why are they not safe enough to walk American streets? After all, it was an American government, not an Australian one, that created the Guantanamo "solution" and left the Uygurs there.

Bob Brown for the Greens argues that we should take these men on humanitarian grounds. Still who these days can trust the Yankee Dollar? Perhaps, we had better insist we are paid in Euros.



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911 AND ALL THAT

We were told by the Bush Administration that the attacks of 9 September 2001 because they happened in the United States changed human history.

And they did. We now appreciate the long unbroken history of United States colonialism and attacks on other countries. A process that continues despite (or because) of "the change we can believe in". Can it be moral to enshrine war as a fundamental and constant resort of State Policy, when as Chris Hedges accurately observes "War is Sin"? Such is the identification that most of us have with the American Empire that their sins might as well be ours.

It is a fact, not a conspiracy, that 15 of the 19 hijackers of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were from Saudia Arabia. So why did the Bush Administration invade Iraq? Now the Obama Administration has joined Bush in opposing the lawsuit of the victim's families against the Saudi Government for financing the terrorists. sovereign governments cannot apparently be sued in US Courts, although their countries can be invaded and puppet governments established, as in Afghanistan, which to everyones immense surprise do not attract the support of their populations. It is inherent to imperialism to impose cultural processes on the subject countries while making decisions what form they should have and how they should be divided.

There is a bit of argy bargy going on here with the victim's aiming to bankrupt terrorism, which presumably is fair enough. It seems that the Saudis were very helpful in the Bush invasion and conquest of Iraq, which is in no way similar or as justified as Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, a democracy of sorts, much like Saudi Arabia.

Stephen C Webster, at The Raw Story, has more of the details and the links, including the following observations:

The solicitor general argued in Friday’s Supreme Court brief that unless the State Department designates a nation a supporter of terrorism, U.S. citizens are restricted from suing under the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

“It noted that the State Department has issued no such finding regarding Saudi Arabia and concluded Saudi government financial support for radical Islamist charities was too far removed from the 9/11 attacks themselves to cause the Saudi government to be liable,” reported The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The only charity to be convicted by the Bush administration for funding terrorism was The Holy Land Foundation, based in Dallas, Texas. After lengthy deliberations resulted in a mistrial, administration lawyers fine-tuned their arguments against what used to be the largest Islamic charity in the United States and returned convictions against its U.S.-based directors for allegedly funneling over $12 million to designated terrorist group Hamas.

Peripheral vision no doubt is a good thing, but you are still supposed to aim at the target. I am waiting for the Iraqi people to claim substantial reparations against the invading countries that smashed their country and murdered countless individuals and left others wounded and suffering. That would be justice without blindfolds because it would extend to the oppressed and the poor.

POSTSCRIPT:

Vicki Santillano and Divine Caroline, at AlterNet summarize The Ten Most Popular Conspiracies, forgetting to mention that smoking does not cause cancer.

It is an odd argument to say that people favour a more complicated explanation over the simple explanation, when propaganda almost exclusively relies on the latter. I suppose it can be suggested that conspiracy theories reflect a distrust in the veracity of government, a distrust that is often well founded. Clearly, with respect to 911, the Bush Administration wanted to spin events and the Presidential Commission to avoid certain facts, namely that the CIA had warned about Osama bin Laden's intentions, and his group of conspirators was behind the East African embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole.

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PAKISTANI REFUGEES

The United States of America, despite its president's politics of empathy and the global financial crisis, still acts as the Uber-Power.

There seems to be a contempt for the sovereignty of other governments, whether they be Britain or Pakistan. Afghanistan is supposedly an United Nations operation with troops from a number of other countries including Australia. The US seems to be setting the policy directions without consultation with the United Nations.

The presidential system is not based as is the parliamentary system on a cabinet. In the latter system the prime minister can dominate decisions, but sometimes there are real differences and real debates. In the American system, if I am right, its seems that the advisers to the president can have as much influence as cabinet officers, and they are not politically accountable. An young and inexperienced president, such as Obama, can be trapped in the bubble, and the skillful courtesans representing the interests of, for example, the military-industrial complex can exercise enormous influence. The checks and balances of Congressional oversight seems to be broken beyond repair. Group think rules, something that Nixon, regardless of his faults, was aware of. In so far as Defence goes, Obama has taken over the Bush policy setter and framing. The military mind, despite counter-insurgency theory, seems incapable of seeing the world in social and political terms. Perhaps the underlying assumption is that violence solves every problem seen through the prism of a command and control structure.

Why was not a longer game played in relation to Pakistan? It is all very well to set up the Pakistan army to attack the Taliban without any apparent consideration of the consequences, or are they simply irrelevant to American policy? So much for the presumption of empathy?
Clinton's hysterical talk about an existential threat was as hysterical as it was ill-advised, reflecting her neophyte status in the management of foreign policy, but more accurately the mental outlook of her advisers, and at the same time pre-empting, like other quick fixes, the longer view.

Surely a political analysis would have been made of the state of the Pakistan government. The following is from Speigel article by Susanne Koelbl and Gabor Steingart which goes into other issues such as the role of the army as the dominant political force in Pakistan and their militant Islamists, the strained relationship with India and the loss of Bangladesh, the nationalist significance of the nuclear weapons:

But Pakistan's key vulnerability may not actually lie with the security system for its nuclear warheads. A greater threat to the 166 million Pakistanis appears to emanate from the country's immeasurably corrupt society, with its stark class differences. The rich elite ignore the miseries of the poor, and there is no compulsory education or functioning judiciary or health-care system. This makes society's underprivileged particularly receptive to any form of attention, even from the otherwise dreaded Islamists. The militants at least offer income and opportunities to rise through the ranks. The social services of the radicals are almost as well organized as those offered by the country's other main concentration of power -- the military.

Residents in the Swat Valley region used to have to pay up to 15,000 rupees to initiate court proceedings, more than twice the monthly salary of a civil servant and the equivalent of over €140 ($186). It was not unusual for them to wait as long as four years for a decision. The door was wide open to corruption.

Now a butcher who sells old meat is punished in public with 35 cane lashes. A farmer whose land is stolen by a rival is given justice because a Taliban commander picks up the phone and tells the accused that he will have to bear "the consequences."

To pay their fighters, the Taliban are tapping new resources. Near Mingora and in Shamozai they have seized government emerald mines. They pocket one-third of the output themselves, and two-thirds is distributed to the workers, who have received a significant raise. Before the Islamists arrived, the wood mafia controlled all the forests in the Swat Valley. Now the profits are being redistributed. Many landowners have already left the region.

By contrast, the powerful army is more concerned with pursuing its own business deals than with protecting the Pakistanis from Islamist aggressors. The military is the biggest market player in the country. Generals buy and sell real estate, occupy top positions in think tanks and manage large export companies. Their children attend army-owned schools and occasionally play on squash courts that are paved with marble.

The military intends to hold onto these sinecures. This also explains the latest army offensive against the Taliban in the run-up to President Zardari's visit in Washington -- it was aimed at placating the Americans, who have backed Pakistan with almost $10 billion in military aid since 2001.

The policy of the US is directed is therefore directed to propping up a corrupt system, and even if the Taliban are comprehensively defeated that system will remain.

Even in immediate terms the question is: Why was not the problem created by a flow of refugees number perhaps over three million people not anticipated? The implication is that the relevant policy makers do not care, or else they believe such a massive dislocation of people can be fixed quickly. The latter I suspect amounts to what Barbara Tuchman described as a miscalculation of war.

The Machiavellian, or unforgivingly cynical view is that the refugees are a form of cultural destruction to destroy in part Pashtun familial and tribal solidarity. Andrew Buncombe in The Independent reports:

Until now, the worst of the problem has been kept largely out of sight. Of the total displaced by the military's operations against the Taliban – the army yesterday claimed a crucial breakthrough, taking control of the Swat Valley's main town, Mingora – just 200,000 people have been forced to live in the makeshift tent camps dotted around the southern fringe of the conflict zone. The vast majority were taken in by relatives, extended family members and local people wanting to help.

But this grassroots sense of charity is slowly starting to show real strain. In a week when the relentless danger of the militants was underlined by a massive car bomb in the city of Lahore that killed at least 30 people and injured hundreds more, aid groups have warned that the communities taking people in – already some of the planet's poorest people – could themselves be displaced as they desperately sell their few assets to help the homeless.

In these "homestay" situations, some that exist purely because of tribal links between the displaced and those opening their doors, anywhere from 10 to 15 people are crowded into one room. A single latrine is shared by, on average, 35 people. Aid groups have called for a large and immediate injection of funds to help these host families who have stood forward to help those with nothing.

Graham Strong, the country director of the charity World Vision, said: "Families have provided refuge for up to 90 per cent of those escaping the fighting. They are sharing their homes, food, clothes and water. They are poor already and are making themselves poorer in the process. As the disaster continues, hosts are having to sell their land, cattle and other assets at far less than the market value to keep providing for their guests. The cultural ethic of generosity and hospitality means hosts are now facing the agonising choice between asking guests to leave and becoming destitute and displaced themselves."

And Juan Cole points a factor that was inherently predictable:

There is an urgent need for the fighting to end soon, so that people can return to their homes and aid can reach the dispossessed. The monsoon, or rainy season, is coming, and with impromptu rivulets springing up, there will be danger of cholera and other water-borne diseases among the refugees living in tent cities with no proper sewage.

I think it is inconceivable that there will not be blowback from the presuite of the policies by the Pakistan Government, which will not have the resources or the infrastructure to deal expeditiously with the problem created, and that reaction will have a long fuse which has been now lit despite any other settlement in the Afghan-Pakistan War.

John Quiggin thinks that the Taliban are on the ropes, in essence because the military advantage of safe haven has been effectively now denied them and because in lesser part because of the alienating effect of their brutal method of meting out justice. Some of the other propositions are contested by the reporting quoted here.

But the real question is: What are the objectives of American policy? Is it simply crude imperialism to foster the continuation of the military-industrial complex, and internal economic construct with external implications? Still it is a costly business to attempt to run the world by military edict, and the costs are not simply economic. For example, they include burnt out troops overwhelmed by constant redeployment and angst of murder.

So what happened to the cause of justice and human friendship. We might recall the words of Martin Luther King from his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail":

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

And now, possibly for the better, we are consciously global citizens, which means the suffering of others cannot escape our notice and compel us to act. Justice matters more than violence and power, in whatever forms they may be clothed in the immediate and long term. How else will we as a globe and a species be able to marshal our resources to face our dominate existential threat based on the inequity inherent in overconsumption and underconsumption?




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