Syria update

Looks as though the West, through the Saudis, is trying to buy off the Russians to clear the ground for an attack on Syria:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10266957/Saudis-offer-Russia-secret-oil-deal-if-it-drops-Syria.html

(htp: Tap blog)

But in that case, why bother?

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404: Democracy not found

In 404 BC Sparta, a militaristic kingdom, defeated Athens, a democracy run by an assembly composed of all its free men. Tyranny 1, Freedom 0.

Syria may not be a democracy in the mould of Athens - Index Mundi classes it as a "republic under an authoritarian regime" - but under its 2012 Constitution it does have (as well as a President) a Prime Minister, a unicameral legislature and multi-party elections.

Now look at the alternative, as illustrated by this Facebook video from SyriaOnline (CAUTION: contains graphic scenes of murder). The putative Al-Nusra Front terrorists in that compilation state cheerfully that they intend to kill the Syrian Alawites (the sect to which the Assad family belongs) and re-establish the Muslim Caliphate - all the way to Spain.

Human rights in Syria have long been a concern. However, consider the challenges of running a country where many people don't "agree to disagree" or consider themselves bound by the will of the majority, but will kill to have their way and glory in the slaughter.

What would you do? It's not like governing Britain or America - not that either of those is slow to use force to maintain internal authority. So, a black-leather-glove democracy versus a violent theocratic revolutionary horde - your choice?

Then there's a fog of conflicting assertions about the use of chemical weapons, the artillery strike on eastern Turkey (from which, allegedly, the Free Syrian Army is waiting to invade) and so on. It seems as though people have become far more skeptical since Iraq - and Libya.

Underneath the fog seem to be economic and geopolitical motives - Qatar wishing to extend the Arab Pipeline northwards through Syrian territory and into Turkey, Assad wanting to refresh the east-to-west Kirkuk-Banias Pipeline, the Saudis and the US keen to complete and make secure the Nabucco pipeline in competition with Russia's Gazprom network in Europe (connected with the alleged 2008 "Pythia" plot against the then Greek Premier Kostas Karamanlis, who was negotiating with the Russians re a branch of the South Stream to cross northern Greece - see the Gazprom site here).

According to a Turkish colleague of mine, Erdogan's out at the next election, having upset so many of the populace - but if Turkey should ever decide to throw in her lot with the Islamists, we might wish Karamanlis had concluded the South Stream deal, after all.

South Stream: http://www.gazprom.com/about/production/projects/pipelines/south-stream/2012/

The old Trans-Arabian Pipeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline

The Kirkuk-Banias Pipeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkuk%E2%80%93Baniyas_pipeline

 

Nabucco and others: http://www.economist.com/node/14041672

Would you send your son to risk his life in a fight there - and what for, and on which side?

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Order for the Service of Holy Communication

Collect from the Revised Book of Common Interaction (2013):

ALMIGHTY GOVERNMENT, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Special Advisers, Public Relations and News Media, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name…

Cum privilegio gubernatorum
________________________

http://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-can-crack-almost-any-type-of-encryption-1258954266

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/09/06/nsa-breaks-encryption-here-we-go-again-there-is-nobody-and-nothing-they-have-not-tapped/

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Global warming continues

A new videopost this week revisits the contention that global warming has stopped (htp: Paddington).

Not so, it seems: there are many different measures being used to assess climate change and one of them is the temperature of the upper levels of the oceans, which is rising. The seas are acting as the reservoir for most of the heat gain so far -

(Image from above video)

- and the heat is expanding their volume (a point I hadn't thought of). So it's not just ice melt that will affect sea level rise.

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Spain: "What is 'the crisis?'" - by Brett Hetherington

Brett Hetherington's latest article in Catalonia Today magazine (reproduced with the kind permission of the author):

(Photo: Javier)

This so-called crisis, which would more accurately be called a“depression” is a thousand varied things that need never have happened.

Despite the occasional sensation that life is just continuing on very much as before, the crisis here is certainly the more obvious things that many of us see when we care to look: more beggars on the streets, long queues in shoe repair shops, the recent appearance of solitary men selling tissues or cigarette lighters on the trains and Metro, a greater number of empty shops for sale or rent (or replaced by cheapo-import Chinese shops) and it is also reading more socio-political graffiti on walls.

 

The crisis is a European-wide failure of institutions like the financial system and the pathetic political response to it, but it is also a very immediate, local phenomenon.

In the small town where I live, three years ago there was both a bank and a restaurant – now there is neither.

As well, there are the abstract statistics that simply cannot put a human face to this tragedy - day after day of grim, sullen economic news.

 

Three months ago, a newspaper headline stated that “60% of Andalusian children live in poverty.”

 

This sounds remote and abstract until we learn that there were children in Catalonia who were still going to school in July just to eat lunch, and they had to do this because it is next to impossible for their parents to provide daily meals at home.

But the crisis is about work too.

 

It is hearing that another man has lost his job, or finding that your wife's job has been cut in half and therefore her income has also been halved.

It is thousands of workers still lucky enough to have a job but not being “lucky” enough to get paid for their labour...for yet another month.

 

And it is the insult of "mini-jobs" - (the underpaid mileurista is seeming like the one who is well-off) or it is listening to people at a café talking about the benefits of learning Chinese or German, ahead of English.

As well, the crisis is the news media being full of corrupt, cowardly politicians talking about everything except what could end the crisis.

 

For thousands of people not in the aptly-termed “political class”, it is a rapid or a gradual descent into poverty – what George Orwell called “the crust-wiping,” - that constant search for ways to save money but still ending up unsatisfied after you eat.

 

On top of all this, the crisis is that all-day sensation of being unpleasantly squeezed by the invisible forces of debt, a permanent unconscious burden that is carried by the unemployed and under-employed when a family has no genuine bread-winner.

But what is it that has saved this country from violence, riots and social disturbance on a grand scale?

The family.

The extended family, acting as helpers, carers and givers of money, love, and as many kinds of assistance that you can think of.

 

Without this blood-linked stability across Mediterranean Europe, things would surely be even worse.

Sometimes, when I have thought about the crisis I have been reminded of a Bob Dylan line about how the sun starts to shine on him.

 

But then (in a single phrase that could speak for millions of Europe's economic victims) he sadly sings “but it's not like the sun that used to be.”

 

[A version of the above text was first published as an opinion piece in Catalonia Today magazine, September 2013.]

 

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All most offsetting – land developers and nature conservation

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson posted a cheery piece on biodiversity offsetting on the BusinessGreen website this week[1].  It’s a masterclass in positive propaganda - teachers, get your students to highlight all the whoopee phrases.

Essentially, if some developer can’t unleash his yellow bulldozers because Gussie Fink-Nottle has identified a rare newt on the site, then shift the dem’ thing. “Biodiversity offsetting can ensure that they recreate the same or even a better environmental site somewhere else.”

There’s a tiny tinkle of worry about that “can”. A more balanced and informative briefing is on the Parliamentary website[2], which recognizes that “badly planned offsets could result in a loss of biodiversity by allowing inappropriate development to proceed, or by compensating inadequately” and makes reference to the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme, whose Advisory Group includes a number of respected conservation organisations[3].  Friends of the Earth are against, the Woodland Trust is wary, as Thursday’s Guardian’s “licence to trash nature” piece shows[4].

Paterson says the Environment Bank supports the scheme. It would, as becomes clear when you look at their site[5]: “The Environment Bank Ltd (EBL) is the leading trader in the UK in environmental assets (natural capital stocks), enabling and brokering deals between buyers (developers, corporate, investors) and sellers (landowners, farmers, conservation bodies, land management companies), thereby facilitating new markets to substantially increase investment in the natural environment.” Ultimately, the EU’s behind it, as the passage goes on to say: “At EU level, the European Commission is currently developing policy for a ‘no net loss initiative’ scheduled for 2015.”

The Environment Secretary paints a rosy picture of compensation with (possibly) bigger or better alternative land. “Bigger” is easy to understand, but it’s not obvious what “better” will mean in every case – microclimates and local ecosystems are very subtle; even “similar” could be a challenge.

DEFRA is consulting us until 7 November[6]. Naturally, to hear is not the same as to obey, but silence betokeneth consent, as Sir Thomas More reminded the court.

---

[1] http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/opinion/2293143/biodiversity-offsetting-a-chance-to-improve-the-environment-and-grow-the-economy

[2] http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn_369-biodiversity-offsetting.pdf
[3] http://bbop.forest-trends.org/pages/advisory_group
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/05/biodiversity-offsetting-proposals-licence-to-trash
[5] http://www.openness-project.eu/node/7
[6] https://consult.defra.gov.uk/biodiversity/biodiversity_offsetting

 

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Syria: yet another pipeline, yet another enemy

David Malone looks at Qatar's interest in extending the Arab Pipeline (not to be confused with the TransArabian Pipeline) through Syria into Turkey.

What a curse oil and gas have been. US, Israel, Russia, Egypt, Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood vs.  other Islamic sects and political parties... how could anyone keep on his feet in a boat everyone is rocking?

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