Tony Blair visit to NZ.
Ok, Tony Blair has honoured us with a fleeting visit to Auckland after doing a tour of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and catching up with his buddy John Howard no doubt. John Campbell from TV3 had an “exclusive” interview (who cares if it was exclusive or not, surely it’s more important what the interview was about) to ask the hard questions. Oh yeah. Fair enough, he did ask Blair directly if he regrets the façade that was presented as the excuse to start the war with Iraq. And as usual Blair gave a totally bullshit answer about the need for democracy, stability in the Middle East, how much the people wanted democracy, and get this – putting “Western standards” aside, no-one wants to be ruled by a dictator. That is, the same rhetoric that is given without actually answering the question. However, this is where I don’t get it. Instead of letting Blair get away with this answer why didn’t Campbell then ask Blair that if he is so concerned about the issues of dictatorships and freedom, what is Blair now doing to address foreign policy practices, given that Britain is siding with the US who has a history of putting puppet dictators in power (as does Britain with the likes of Mugabe), plus the fact that Britain was supplying Saddam with arms to wage the war against Iran when it suited Britain. That is, we know that Western governments meddle with countries when it suits and help create the huge mess in the first place. Blair kept answering by turning the focus to “going on from here” but surely the question of whether any lessons have been learnt from the past should have been put him.
Am I missing something here? I just don’t understand why these types of questions are not asked. Is Campbell instructed on what he can/can’t ask ? In all this nonsense with Iraq, when the same “he was bad and needed to go anyway” answer is given. Why do the they (reporters) never ask “well, why did you wine and dine him in the first place when it suited you, knowing full well that he was a megalomaniac?”
I would so love to hear that question. Maybe it has been asked and is hidden amongst the piles somewhere. How do I find out if it has and what the answer was ?
Intro
Ok, rather than just having a rant section about politics en masse, I named this section “Nonsense Politics” to talk about what I see as some of the more ludicrous aspects of politics. I do believe that a truly sincere political system does have some important function in society to help keep things in check (humans, by nature, do need keeping in check) but there are so many aspects of it that are focussed around genuine lies, deceit, cruelty, greed and domination, etc. Need I go on? If the political systems of the world were really as sincere as they make out to be I think it would make such a huge difference to our existence. Is it unreasonable to strive for this?
You may find a lot of the discussions in here focus on Foreign Policy and the likes of the issues going on in the Middle East but I believe these are probably some of the more significant areas going on right now and we should be concerned and asking the truly hard questions.
The Oil is Going
These are some notes from an article by Katherine Mieszkowski. It discusses planting gardens and drafting city plans for the days when oil is gone.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/03/22/peakoil/print.html
A report on Peak Oil released in February 2005, known as the Hirsch Report, plays out three scenarios: Wait for the peak to occur before transitioning, plan a decade ahead, plan 20 years ahead. Only the third scenario concludes that major liquid fuel shortages could be avoided.
We have a problem that has no real solution, and we are trying to mitigate what will happen to culture. Some predict we are going back to the 13th century at some point – this is significant !! It is going to be more third world-like and people are going to need to cope.
Cities will start to struggle to provide basic services such as police, firefighting, public transport, water, road repair and other community services.
Office workers will lose jobs as businesses flounder under the strain of a failing global economy.
We cling to the vain hope that better fuel efficiency, more conservation and alternative energy will step in and save the day. The myth of biofuels – the likes of ethanol, fuel from crops like corn and switchgrass are not going to save the day. We would not be able to produce the same amount of energy that we now get from 85 millions barrels of oil a day. Sheer volume aside, we will end up overmining the soil.
As energy gets more expensive, food will get more expensive. Bio-intensive farming methods require 4,000 sq feet of land to produce enough food to feed a vegetarian diet to one person.
Some communities are already developing policies and infrastructure to become energy and food self-reliant. Convert school yards into a farm for healthy food in the cafeteria, put farms next to hospitals. Find local sources for electricity.
For individuals, having land and the ability to produce your own food is going to become very important.
We will need to adapt, not necessarily technically but rather socially.
The Greatest Journey – March 2006.
Ok, this article is about the genetic root of modern man. It’s cool – scientists have pretty much pieced the information together to prove that we all stem from a small group of hunter-gathers that ventured out of Africa.
A study has been conducted on the genetic mutations, or what are referred to as markers, in our DNA. By analysing these markers, scientists can trace ancestral connections. Scientists now calculate that all living humans are related to a single woman who lived roughly 150,000 years ago in Africa. All the variously shaped and shaded people of Earth trace their ancestry to African hunter-gathers. Between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, one small wavelet from Africa lapped up onto the shores of western-asia. All non-Africans share markers carried by those first emigrants. From here, we spread out all over the world taking some 40,000 years to make the far reaches of South America. Interestingly, we made Australia relatively quickly – only 5,000 to 25,000 years after leaving Africa.
Intro
I subscribe to National Geographic and have done for about 12 years now. Not only do I find the articles very informative – even if they do sometimes seem to come across with an American bias, they are after all, an American business (I want to avoid associating them with the “company”) – but I do also feel that by subscribing, I am somehow contributing to some form of world enlightenment about what this universe is really about. I’d like to share some of these bits and pieces.
Intro
Watch this space! This is important. Even to those that consider themselves energy conscious, this is something that is going to significantly affect everyone of us in a large way. The biggest danger as I see it, and that so many articles discuss, is that Peak Oil seems so far away that it won’t affect us or isn’t something we have to really worry about. Wrong. And this is not something that we should passively sit back from and assume that the “experts” will sort out for us. I don’t want to go down the doomsday path on this but from what I have been learning, it is certainly going to have a very significant impact on our lives. I think it is totally important to be planning seriously for this now. The idea here is to build up a picture of what the issues are and what we really should be doing about it, in order to preserve ourselves as individuals and as a community.
Australia’s new missiles
I see in the news today - "Australia to buy new lockheed missiles for figher jets". Um, why ? Apparently they have a range of 400km, how useful. Who the heck does Australia plan on using these on. Maybe the money for this "undisclosed number" could be put to better use investing in working on peace projects with neighbouring countries so no-one wants a war in the first place - perhaps if they focussed more on Indonesia's appalling record if abusing and killing it's people. Gee, I wonder if Australia's ties with the US has anything to do with this. Argh, bring on the sensible people.
