21st Century Vision

Saving The UN

The “Better World Campaign” has organised the following petition. If you would like to sign it then you will find it here on the Better World Campaign Website.

The United Nations is facing a crisis. Strong differences of opinion about the direction of reform and governance at the UN threaten to collide with a rapidly approaching spending cap. Unresolved, these differences could paralyze the UN - paralyze diplomacy, paralyze operations, and paralyze the reform process. Some UN operations could even be curtailed or shutdown.

Ongoing political crisis, including the threat of the shutdown of some UN operations, does not serve the interests of any nation or group of nations and would represent a failure of diplomacy by all leaders and governmental representatives responsible for stewarding the United Nations’ essential functions.

The United Nations has operated uninterrupted as a platform for global peace and progress for more than 60 years. A political stand-off, or shutdown of UN operations now, for the first time in its history, would have significant consequences for the UN’s development, security and humanitarian efforts.

The UN is a work in progress, but remains the world’s hope for international cooperation. All nations and peoples have a shared interest that its important work continues, uninterrupted. We, the undersigned, urge world leaders to forge the common ground necessary to allow the United Nations to continue its life-saving work.

Enfield declares itself an Unfair Borough

Principles? What principles?

Watching the meeting of Enfield council last night from the public gallery was a salutary and depressing experience. We were there to see whether the council would declare Enfield to be a Fairtrade Borough, but before we got to that there was a motion put by the two newly-elected Save Chase Farm councillors committing the council to supporting Chase Farm's A&E unit - something which all parties have declared themselves in favour of. You might therefore have expected - and the Save Chas Farmers specifically wanted - a council united and a unanimous vote. No such luck.

The Tories, irked by the loss of a couple of seats to Save Chase Farm and always ready to upset Labour, had come up with a cunning plan. They threw in an amendment criticising Joan Ryan for not arranging a meeting with the Secretary of State as the council had (unanimously) asked her to. It was an entirely reasonable criticism on the face of it, but that wasn't the point. They knew that Labour couldn't support it under the abstruse rules of the political game. You or I could have supported it - or at least shrugged our shoulders at it - but we're not politicians. We would have kept in mind that what was important was that Enfield needs an A&E at Chase Farm, and voted accordingly. For politicians, though, the whole and only point is to look better than your opponents (even if that means just looking slightly less ridiculous than they do). So Labour duly voted against the amendment, and when it was carried anyway they voted against the amended motion. The poor, bemused Save Chase Farmers (I bet they're looking forward to the next four years!) ended up abstaining on their own motion as the vital unanimity had gone. They were the only ones to emerge with any honour from the whole affair, with the possible exception of Vivien Giladi who did at least make some conciliatory noises - but still voted against what she believes in. I thought there was a minimum age limit for standing for the council - how did all those 12-year-olds get in?

And so to the Fairtrade debate, which was apparently one of the longest with the greatest number of speakers in living memory. It started in confusion though, as there were both a recommendation from the cabinet to defer the decision until their 'concerns' about the 'financial implications' could be addressed, and a Labour motion to accept the recommendations of the Working Group that had considered the implications, i.e. to declare Enfield a Fairtrade Borough without further ado. In the end the cabinet gave way, as it gave them an excuse for voting against the motion.

They didn't really need all those speakers, as all the Labour and SCF ones were in favour and made much the same points, while almost all the Tories were against and ditto. Actually there were two Tory arguments: either that, while Fairtrade is good in principle, it's nothing to do with the council, or that it would be OK if the costs were nil. Even the minimal costs involved were too much for the hard-pressed council taxpayers of Enfield to be expected to bear. This may be the moment to point out (as several Labour speakers did) that later in the agenda they would be considering a move to increase councillors' allowances by 60% - at a cost to the council of £300,000!

There were two Tories who spoke in favour, and did so powerfully: Edward Smith who had chaired the Working Group, and Annette Dreblow who sat on it. She had approached the task with an open mind and been convinced. They didn't convince any of their colleagues, though. When it came to the vote we needed three Tory votes and got two - though surprisingly neither of them came from Edward Smith! He copped out to the party line and voted against despite his earlier rhetoric. Compensating for that, Henry Lamprecht, who had spoken against Fairtrade, voted for it! This may have been because he was outed by Labour as having told a constituent (in writing – he’s got a lot to learn!) that he would not only vote for Fairtrade but lobby for it! Naming and shaming sometimes works, even with Tories! Unfortunately, Lamprecht’s vote was not enough, though only because of Smith’s defection. The vote was lost 27-28, so now it’s official: Enfield council believes in Unfair trade. We had had enough and headed off for a much-needed drink without waiting to see how much these titans of the political world thought they were worth.

What did you do about climate change Mom?

Some of the key issues we discuss on these pages are poverty, the environment and health.  The June 10^th issue of British Medical Journal launched into these matters with several papers, the editors choice aptly named “What did you do about Climate Change Mom?”; reminding us that this is a very personal issues about our lifestyles.

Recent pages in this blog have begun to spell out what climate change means for the world: floods, crop failures, famines.  But these are too remote for most of us to bother about.  There is the usual reliance on “Science will fix it”!  Anyway it is in Bangladesh or some distant place.  And what can we do about it?

One of the scenarios is not at all distant.  What really would be the effect of the Gulf Stream stopping.  We would move from being a temperate island to scorching hot summers and freezing winters.  What crops could we grow then?  With a farming industry committed to an inflexible regime of maximising output of highly specialist crops, unable to respond to environmental change.  This is exactly the scenario we know from history that has created the worst famines.

But we could buy food from other places!  Not if these places are experiencing their own climate changes. 

What about the sea rises?  Well we know that most nuclear power stations are built on the coast, many within the predicted water rise.  How would we decommission them?  Does it matter if the Houses of Parliament and large tracts of central London are below the Thames water line.

What of malaria creeping back into Europe.  Is this what has triggered the recent interest in a cure for this debilitating disease? We need to consider more carefully the local impact on our lives and our children’s lives.

One idea to correct poverty, carbon emission and prevent the health consequences is called “Contract and Converge”, or as the author of this article in the BMJ says “Keep Cool and Mind the Gap”.  The contract is about a carbon allocation to each individual on the globe.  This allocation can be bought and sold.  The poorest can sell their carbon allocation as they produce so little, the richest buy it from them.  The convergence is that the world moves towards a reduced carbon economy and less inequality (the “gap”). The morality of this idea seems so sound, an equality of all peoples; the practice seems far off yet… but we must dream of something positive.

Back to ourselves and the practicalities; the push for carbon reduction is being used by the nuclear industry to make claims for the nuclear power but here is clear evidence that if the whole cycle of mining, extraction, enrichment etc is taken into account then this is not a carbon free technology.  The nuclear industry has even set up the “Country Guardians” to protest about wind farms so as to discredit alternatives.

The immediate solution has to include energy savings.  Our current models of energy production rely too much on carbon and until that changes we have to reduce our energy consumption.  The biggest usage of energy is transport followed by domestic consumption.  It is we who are bringing this on.  It is our children and our grandchildren who will be asking us “ What did you do about climate change?”    

China scrambles for Africa

A new Action Aid report exposes footdragging by the G8 in implementing last year's Gleneagles agreement.  Should we therefore celebrate growing Chinese influence in an African continent which stands to gain from a powerful rival to Western interests?  An editorial in Le Monde suggests caution                                                       

Will we see Africa firmly anchored in the Chinese orbit within the next ten years? The question seems far fetched, but it is being taken increasingly seriously by alarmed Western strategists. Since the end of the 1990s Chinese penetration in Africa has been spectacular, and the Beijing leadership continues to give it very high priority. In the space of two months the Chinese president Hu Jintao, and prime minister Wen Jiabao, have made high profile visits: in April Hu took in Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya, while Wen is in the final stages of a tour which will have included Egypt, Ghana, Congo, Angola, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. The charm offensive is sustained and methodical.

The Chinese are not there to preach world revolution. That is a thing of the past, as is the messianic ideology which governed Chinese diplomacy at the time of “anti-imperialist struggle” and rivalry with the Soviet Union. The period of intense competition for influence with Taiwan - which maintained a handful of African clients - has also ended, with South Africa and Senegal having allowed themselves to be wooed by the People's Republic. Today it is a crude, some would say cynical, pragmatism which drives Chinese policy.

Just like the West, China covets the rich resources of the African continent.  Its purchases of oil, manganese, cotton and other primary materials are enormous, while in return it exports a growing flood of Chinese-made goods, much appreciated by African consumers with their modest purchasing power.  Trade which already tripled from 2001 to 2004 is now growing exponentially.

Though Western powers are poorly placed to criticise the rising influence of Beijing over a continent where they themselves have shown such remarkable cynicism, this inexorable sinification of Africa nonetheless does give rise to legitimate concerns. The Chinese leaders burden themselves with few scruples in pursuing a strategy whose purpose is to fuel the economic machine of the Middle Kingdom. In the guise of an anti-colonialist rhetoric which continues to resonate powerfully in African capitals, they have made “non-interference in internal affairs” their cardinal diplomatic principle, something greatly to the liking of corrupt and repressive governments.

It is far less clear what the African victims of these governments have to gain. The dubious friendship between China and Zimbabwe borders on caricature. In a gesture intended to improve its predatory image, Beijing has funded the African Union force in Darfur.

It is time China showed as much concern for Africans as for their leaders.

Published in Le Monde 24th June 2006

                     

Read the Independent on the Action Aid report

Read the Guardian on China's African policy

Collapse of Globalism – a message of hope!

In an article written for Harper's magazine and published in the magazine's March 2004 issue under the title The Collapse of Globalism and the Rebirth of Nationalism, he argued that the globalist ideology was under attack by counter-movements. Saul rethought and developed this argument in The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World (2005). Far from being an inevitable force, Saul argued that globalization is already breaking up into contradictory pieces and that citizens are reasserting their national interests in both positive and destructive ways

John Ralston Saul, is a Canadian author, essayist and philosopher. Born in Ottawa, Saul studied at McGill University in Montreal and at the University of London, where he earned his Ph.D in 1972. After helping to set up the national oil company Petro-Canada, as Assistant to its first Chair, he turned his attention to writing.

These books deal with themes such as the dictatorship of reason unbalanced by other human qualities, how it can be used for any ends especially in a directionless state that rewards the pursuit of power for power's sake. He argues that this leads to deformations of thought such as ideology promoted as truth; the rational but anti-democratic structures of corporatism, by which he means the worship of small groups; and the use of language and expertise to mask a practical understanding of the harm this causes, and what else our society might do.

He argues that the rise of individualism with no regard for the role of society has not created greater individual autonomy and self-determination, as was once hoped, but isolation and alienation. He calls for a pursuit of a more humanist ideal in which reason is balanced with other human mental capacities such as common sense, ethics, intuition, creativity, and memory, for the sake of the common good, and he discusses the importance of unfettered language and practical democracy.

In the Collapse of Glabalism, Saul argues that the world now desperately needs a renaiisance of culture, thought and active citizenship. Most important of all he debunks the myth the world is governed by the inevitability of economics. Like Aristotle, he places politics centre stage as the master science – and thus encourages us to believe that by our actions, change is possible. 

Iran & A Negotiated Settlement

As the USA considers what it thinks is its options over Iran, Noam Chomsky has written an article that puts American behaviour into perspective. It is well worth a read!

The urgency of halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and moving toward their elimination, could hardly be greater. Failure to do so is almost certain to lead to grim consequences, even the end of biology's only experiment with higher intelligence. As threatening as the crisis is, the means exist to defuse it.

A near-meltdown seems to be imminent over Iran and its nuclear programmes. Before 1979, when the Shah was in power, Washington strongly supported these programmes. Today the standard claim is that Iran has no need for nuclear power, and therefore must be pursuing a secret weapons programme. "For a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources," Henry Kissinger wrote in the Washington Post last year.

Thirty years ago, however, when Kissinger was secretary of state for President Gerald Ford, he held that "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals".

Last year Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post asked Kissinger about his reversal of opinion. Kissinger responded with his usual engaging frankness: "They were an allied country."

In 1976 the Ford administration "endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium - the two pathways to a nuclear bomb", Linzer wrote. The top planners of the Bush administration, who are now denouncing these programmes, were then in key national security posts: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Iranians are surely not as willing as the west to discard history to the rubbish heap. They know that the United States, along with its allies, has been tormenting Iranians for more than 50 years, ever since a US-UK military coup overthrew the parliamentary government and installed the Shah, who ruled with an iron hand until a popular uprising expelled him in 1979.

The Reagan administration then supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, providing him with military and other aid that helped him slaughter hundreds of thousands of Iranians (along with Iraqi Kurds). Then came President Clinton's harsh sanctions, followed by Bush's threats to attack Iran - themselves a serious breach of the UN charter.

Last month the Bush administration conditionally agreed to join its European allies in direct talks with Iran, but refused to withdraw the threat of attack, rendering virtually meaningless any negotiations offer that comes, in effect, at gunpoint

Read more of this article

Noam Chomsky's new book is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy; he is professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

So what's so bad about global warming?

I should probably start by saying that I am not an expert on what follows. An interested amateur can get to pick up quite a lot of useful information, but some of it may well be wrong. Anyway, here goes:

I did a blog on climate change only a fortnight ago, but make no apologies for returning to the subject so soon - it is the biggest challenge mankind faces, and so far there is no sign of an even halfway-adequate response. If you read that one (and if you didn't, it's still there - just page down a bit) then you will know it was quite apocalyptic about the prospects for the human race in a warming world. I didn't go into too much detail about how the apocalypse would manifest itself, so I think it's time to do that. There are still plenty of people whose attitude is "A mediterranean climate in Britain? Bring it on!".

Leaving aside the strong possibility, mentioned in that other article, that we would end up no warmer - and maybe even colder - on account of the loss of the Gulf Stream, there's more to getting warmer than just hot summer days and no snow in winter. Plants and animals that are happy with the conditions we have now may be unable to survive as conditions change. Rainfall levels will change - they already have, haven't they? Crops won't grow any more. Pity the poor farmer who has to change his whole way of doing things every decade or so - who in this country knows how to grow olive trees?

Actually, trees will have the biggest problem, due to their long life-cycle and to being tied to one spot. A tree species can only 'move north' by having its seeds fall in areas north of the line which used to mark its furthest limit of growth and have them germinate successfully. If global warming gets into runaway mode, the southern border of viability may catch up with the northern border of where the newly-growing trees have got to. And trees, plants and animals all have a problem when their 'northern border' hits the sea.

None of that applies just to the UK, of course. Taking a wider perspective, we also need to look at rainfall patterns. They're going to change, sometimes dramatically, and probably not very predictably. Places that have been used to rainfall will find themselves drought-stricken; places that have been drought-stricken may get rainfall. That last isn't necessarily all good news, as there are no river systems in place to cope with all that water. Topsoil may well be lost in large quantities. The developing world, being mainly in the tropics and being least able to cope with the unexpected, will be hardest hit. There will certainly be mass starvation, which in turn will lead to severe instability, many failed states and hordes of refugees battering at the gates of Europe and other developed countries.

The effects of warming are greater in the polar regions, with the result that much of the world's ice is already melting fast. That is, of course, bad news for sea levels, which are due to rise by amounts which vary according to the commentator from a few millimetres to twenty metres. Goodbye Tuvalu, Vanuatu, assorted island communities and about half of Bangladesh. About a third of humanity lives near a coast and may have to move. At the other end of the height scale, the glaciers in the Andes, the Himalayas and other high mountain ranges are melting too, adding their bit to sea-level rises, but doing something worse too. Many of the great rivers of the world are fed during summer by glacial meltwater. No glaciers and the rivers become seasonal. Parts of Peru are already in difficulties for drinking water. The Amazon basin is fed from the Andes. Pakistan, Bangladesh and large swathes of northern India will dry up and blow away if the Indus, Brahmaputra and Ganges go. See Mark Lynas's excellent book High Tide: News from a Warming World for more on this.

I have already touched on the problems all species will face as their habitats change. As the world warms further, more and more of them will be unable to cope and die out. Every species has its place in a food chain; what do you do when your food supply is extinct? Or when the lake you live in dries up? The more gaps that appear in the food chain, the harder it becomes for the species that survive to hang on. In the previous blog I said that 250 million years ago when the world experienced a sudden 6 degree warming, 90% of the species then existing died out. That probably scared some of you and I apologise, for I got it wrong. The figure was actually 95%. Life itself came perilously close to dying out. Kids, don't try this at home.

Link to the Tyndall Centre for research on and responses to climate change.

Philosophy goes to war

A new book* by a leading academic philosopher invites us to do some thinking about war, terror and morality.

Anyone who thinks of moral philosophers as other-worldly beings developing abstract principles far divorced from the muddle and mess of ordinary life should read Ted Honderich. Here is the Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London mixing it in no uncertain terms on the battlefields of contemporary moral debate. What, he asks, are we to make of the rights and wrongs of Palestine, 9/11, Iraq and 7/7?  Honderich develops an innovative basis for answering these questions, with conclusions that are sometimes surprising and always challenging.

Some things help, but only a little: since international law, UN resolutions and human rights need themselves to be morally justified, they provide at best “moral data”, while just war theory poses every possible problem of interpretation (what is a “last resort”, what is “proportionality”?). Political perspectives are worse. Honderich regards conservatism as little more than disguised self-interest, while liberalism is morally vacuous. The idea that because it synthesises many points of view democracy itself (or democracies themselves) can be trusted to arrive at valid moral judgments falls at the first hurdle (the argument is circular). Even if it could get to its feet, it would then fall at all the remaining hurdles, particularly the fact that the vast inequalities seen in contemporary democracies make a mockery of any claim to inclusiveness.

For ourselves we all necessarily value “good lives” based on certain “great goods” (a reasonable length of healthy life, relationships with others, freedom from coercion, and access to forms of cultural expression), and we cannot escape that we are rational beings. Honderich thinks this commits us to what he calls the “principle of humanity”, the injunction “to take rational steps to the end of getting and keeping [other] people out of bad lives”. That in essence is the principle he applies to Palestine, 9/11, Iraq and 7/7.  It is the basis on which he thinks about terror and terrorism, war, negotiation and the moral standing of our leaders.

Where does it lead?  Terrorism - defined as violent, illegal, politically-motivated, on a scale smaller than war and prima facie wrong - may in some circumstances nonetheless be justified and command our outspoken support.  It may conform to the principle of humanity.  The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was “right”, and Jewish terrorism justified. However, as resistance has since demonstrated, the Zionist project violated nascent Palestinian national aspirations, and so was based on a mistake. One should distinguish between Zionism (honourable) and neo-Zionism (defined as the project of expanding beyond Israel's 1967 borders, and which offends the principle of humanity at every turn).  9/11 and 7/7 come close to wrongs so palpable they need no analysis.  However, if argument is needed, in neither case could it rationally have been believed that the wreckage they foreseeably made of other people's lives could possibly have led to better lives elsewhere.

And Honderich is quite clear that the horrors of an Iraq war repugnant in every way to the principle of humanity are part of the “moral context” of the 7/7 attack. Blair’s attempt to deny it only shows the bad faith to which he has resorted in evading his share of the responsibility.

* “Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War” by Ted Honderich (Continuum 2006)

Modernisation At The Hand Of God!

One of Gordon Brown's closest aides has warned that Labour on its current course will lose the next election and be out of power for 15 years, since voters have lost trust in the party and will no longer listen to its message.

The warning by Michael Wills, a former Home Office minister and the Labour MP for Swindon North, is the most public disclosure yet of the deep concern in the chancellor's circle that Labour may lose the election unless there is a radical renewal of the party.

He described the Iraq war as a seminal moment, costing him 3,500 votes in his own constituency. Some MPs are urging Mr Brown to mark a break over Iraq in the event of his becoming prime minister by admitting explicitly that mistakes were made.

This comes on top of a survey of Labour Party members asking to name five biggest mistakes made by the labour Government. The first on the list was Iraq and this was followed by the belief that we are far too close to the USA.

How did we get a Government not only out of touch with the majority view of the British people but of its own Party as well and what does this say about the health of our democracy. When faced with some of these points on the Michael Parkinson show, Tony Blair indicated he took his authority from god – well we are now fast moving back to the divine right of kings or at least its modern version – the Prime Minister.

What a moderniser our prime Minister has turned out to be!

The Plight Of Slum Dwellers Globally

Slum-dwellers who make up a third of the world's urban population often live no better - if not worse - than rural people, a United Nations report says. Anna Tibaijuka, head of the UN Habitat agency, urged governments and donors to take more seriously the problems of at least a billion people.

Worst hit is Sub-Saharan Africa where 72% of urban inhabitants live in slums rising to nearly 100% in some states. If no action is taken, the world's slum population could rise to 1.4bn by 2020. Some states, the report notes, have already taken significant action to improve conditions, notably in Latin America where about 31% of urban people are classified as living in slums (figures for 2005) - down from 35% in 1990.

Such progress is welcomed as part of the UN's Millennium Development Goal of achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020. Among the report's findings:

• Expectations of better access to education are unmet for most slum-dwellers; a 2003 study found that one in five children in the Nairobi slum of Kibera had no access to primary schools
• Poor sanitation, described as a "silent tsunami", means illness and death are rife; in one part of Harare, 1,300 people share one communal toilet with just six squatting holes
• In Cape Town's slums, children under the age of five are five times more likely to die than those living in the city's high-income districts
• Young adults living in slums are more likely to have a child, be married or head a household than their counterparts living in non-slum areas

"Rural poverty has long been the world's most common face of destitution but urban poverty can be just as intense, dehumanising and life-threatening," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in an introduction to the report.

Dr Tibaijuka told journalists that urbanisation in itself was not the problem as it drove both national output and rural development.

"History has shown that urbanisation cannot be reversed," she continued. "People move to the cities not because they will be better off but because they expect to be better off."

The only effective way to upgrade slums and prevent new ones emerging, she said, was to persuade governments to improve infrastructure. While help from international donors was required, she also argued that governments could take relatively cost-free action such as reforming property laws.