Obamacare - not healthy, not care, not a system

The American healthcare system will remain neither a system, nor about care, nor healthy, after Obama's reforms. This is why my support for Obama 2 years ago was so patchy and lukewarm. The warnings that I gave at the time have all unfortunately been realised.

Read this excellent 'MediaLens' alert, to find out why:

 

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MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media


March 30, 2010


MEDIA ALERT: VICTORY FOR THE OVERLORDS - OBAMA'S HEALTHCARE REFORM


In November 2008, the "historic" importance of Barack Obama's presidential victory was a relentless theme across the media spectrum. Even the pretence of a mainstream commitment to balanced reporting vanished from sight in deference to the self-evident Truth. The Guardian led the way, gushing almost exactly as it had over Blair in 1997:

"They did it. They really did it. So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in the eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world... Today is for celebration, for happiness and for reflected human glory. Savour those words: President Barack Obama, America's hope and, in no small way, ours too." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/06/barackobama-uselections2008)

The former Europe minister and arch-Blairite, Denis MacShane, sounded a rare, unwitting note of caution:

"I shut my eyes when I listen to this guy [Obama] and it could be Tony. He is doing the same thing that we did in 1997." (Tom Baldwin, 'Blair team look in mirror of history,' The Times, November 8, 2008)

The passing of Obama's health reform bill on March 23, was again greeted as "historic" across the media. A Guardian leader declared:

"... a piece of history was made on Sunday night, and yesterday Republicans were scrambling to come to terms with it. It is not just that the United States finally has healthcare legislation that will ensure near-universal coverage (although it will take until 2019 to acquire it). America yesterday also woke up to the comparatively new spectacle of a Democratic president who can get things done..." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/23/united-states-healthcare-barack-obama)

In an Observer article titled, 'Principled and passionate: how Obama sealed his place in history,' Henry Porter quoted the Leader of the Free World:

"This is one of those times where you can honestly say to yourself, doggone it, this is exactly why I came here. This is why I got into politics. This is why I got into public service... we are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/28/barack-obama-healthcare-israel)

Porter commented: "these words represent the highest political endeavour and give the sense of a cause that remains just and noble despite all the compromises he had to make".

An Independent leader noted:

"The historic importance of Barack Obama's presidency doubled this weekend. The House of Congress' approval for comprehensive healthcare reform is on the same plane of significance as the election of the United States' first African-American President 16 months ago.

"The legislation is far from perfect. The absence of a 'public option' health insurer means there is still scope for abuse from private insurance companies and other powerful vested interests in the system." (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-an-even-tougher-battle-now-awaits-the-democrats-1925431.html)

Some possible problems remain, then, but a wonderful step nonetheless. It is hard not to be swayed by this kind of rhetoric.

The Daily Mail agreed that this was "the most historic occasion of Barack Obama's presidency so far." (Leading article, Daily Mail, March 24, 2010)

As did the Telegraph:

"President Barack Obama will today sign into law the historic reform of the American health care system that has eluded his predecessors for a century."
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7499647/Barack-Obama-signs-health-care-bill-amid-warnings-of-Pyrrhic-victory.html)

As did the Mirror and The Times:

"Barack Obama's historic victory in Congress teaches us two things. The first is a political leader can make a real difference, to be a force for good. President Obama's triumph is the gift of care to 32 million destitute Americans." (Leading article, 'Obama's gift,' The Mirror, March 23, 2010)

And:

"Sunday's vote in the House of Representatives was historic by any measure. It addressed many questions, among them whether Congress is beyond repair and whether President Obama has the toughness to govern as well as to campaign. He has shown that he has both: he was a consequential candidate and will now be a consequential President." (Leading article, 'A Vote for Progress,' The Times, March 23, 2010)

When money-grubbing media corporations are unanimous on an issue of fiscal policy, you can be sure that all is not as it seems.


An Economic System That Is Truly Evil

Consider, by contrast, the views of Michael Moore, a non-corporate journalist whose documentaries have powerfully challenged the status quo (and therefore been subject to a torrent of abuse). His excellent 2007 film 'Sicko' focused specifically on the scandal of US healthcare. Moore described his feelings in an interview with the Democracy Now! website:

"I mean, I'm sorry, I'm just so - I feel so disillusioned. And I sit here on this camera here, and I'm thinking, you know, I'll try and sound upbeat and positive and optimistic and all this, because people are filled with such despair right now. But I'm sorry, I, too, am filled with that despair.

"And I think that he [Obama] isn't really going to take on the powers that be. He's not really going to take on the banks and Wall Street. He cut a deal with the pharmaceutical industry so that they got completely left out. They weren't even touched by this bill, so they get to go on their merry way of bilking the public out of billions of dollars every year.

"So, no, I'm sorry, I just - I just don't - you know, and I have felt through most of my life, actually, that sometimes it's worse to have the kinder, gentler version of the same bad thing than the actual bad thing, because at least when it is that bad thing, you can deal with it, because you know what it is. But if you've got, as is often the case with Democrats, this mask over it that looks like a nice mask, it looks like - wow, it looks like one of us..."

"Well, I mean, to me, it all comes back to this issue of an economic system that is truly evil. And the healthcare bill that was passed ultimately will be seen as a victory for capitalism, because it protected the capitalist model of providing healthcare for people. In other words, we're not to help people unless there's money to be made from it. That is so patently disgusting and immoral, but that's the system. That's where we live." (http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/23/michael_moore_health_care_bill_a)

And it is interesting to compare what the American people, rather than elite British and American politicians and journalists, wanted from health reform. In a 2006 Gallup Poll, 69 percent of Americans thought it was the responsibility of the federal government to provide health coverage to all US citizens (Gallup Poll, 2006). A January 2009 CBS/New York Times poll found that 59 percent of Americans supported a single-payer health insurance system. In a "single-payer" system health insurance is paid by a single government source and extended to all citizens. In April 2008, Annals of Internal Medicine reported that 59 percent of doctors also backed a single-payer system.

On the ZNet website, Paul Street cited these figures, commenting:

"In a remarkable CBS-New York Times poll conducted in late September of 2009, 65 percent of more than 1,000 Americans randomly surveyed by CBS and the Times responded affirmatively to the following question: 'Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan - something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and over get - that would compete with private health insurance plans?'" (http://www.zcommunications.org/health-reform-theirs-and-ours-by-paul-street)

Moore explained his objections to Obama's bill:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody... This bill was never about universal healthcare. It, you know, did a couple of good things that could have been done anytime, I guess, like ending the pre-existing condition rule for children. It doesn't end it for adults for four years, so you can rack up another, you know, probably 20,000 to 40,000 deaths in the meantime from people who otherwise would have received help had we truly gotten rid of the pre-existing condition thing for all citizens."

He added of Obama:

"I don't think he really cared about a public option. I don't think he really believes in true universal healthcare that's managed by we the people. He was the number one recipient of health industry money in the Senate and when he was running for president, so I'm not surprised that he had very little interest in doing any of that..."

Indeed, even the idea of universal single-payer healthcare was banished from much discussion on the bill. Bruce A. Dixon, managing editor of Black Agenda Report, comments:

"Persistent and single-minded interventions of the White House and its minions in the Senate and House Democratic leadership have relentlessly censored and excluded single payer viewpoints from the public conversation and pushed the actual legislation further and further in the directions the insurance companies, the drug companies, and the biggest medical providers desired."
(http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=print/content/obama-democrats-vs-tea-party-republicans-fake-fight-over-fake-reform)

In a Media Lens search (March 29) of the LexisNexis media database, we found just three articles containing the words 'Obama', 'Health' and 'Single payer' (or 'Single-payer') in the UK national press over the last month. We found a single mention of Michael Moore's view of Obama's health bill in a single sentence in the entire UK press.

Street noted that, in an interview with Fox News, Obama had said of his health bill:

"Now, we can fix this in a way that is sensible, that is centrist. I have rejected a whole bunch of provisions that the left wanted that are - you know, they were very adamant about because I thought it would be too disruptive to the system." (Street, op. cit.)

Street commented:

"Never mind that these sane and sensible 'Left' measures were supported by most Americans. They had to be demonized by the President and his fellow noble 'centrists' as too dangerous and radical because big insurance and drug companies and their Wall Street backers hate such policies - for obvious reasons."

As Noam Chomsky has joked, such measures "didn't have 'political support,' just the support of the majority of the population, which apparently is not political support in our dysfunctional democracy." (Ibid.)

Dissident journalist Chris Hedges is also damning of the reform:

"The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense. It is the health care industry's version of the Wall Street bailout. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies. The some 3,000 health care lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money. The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations."

Hedges added that the bill "will do nothing to ameliorate the suffering of many Americans, will force tens of millions of people to fork over a lot of money for a defective product and, in the end, will add to the ranks of our uninsured... Chalk this up as yet another victory for our feudal overlords and a defeat for the serfs."
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25051.htm)

Dixon, points to an ugly truth that is all but unthinkable to mainstream US and British journalists:

"A much better health care bill could have been passed at mid-year 2009, and a less good, but still somewhat better one was possible at year's end. But the Obama administration was convinced that still more could be given to Big Insurance and Big Pharma, and so delayed the bill into 2010.

"In health care, as in war and peace, as in the environment and education, as in the rights of women and immigrants, the First Black President's historic role is clear. His job is to smile and speechify and neutralize the left on every front, while taking the country further to the right than his white Republican predecessor would ever have been able." (Dixon, op. cit.)

Pure Blairism, in other words.

Almost none of this principled opposition exists for the mainstream. Instead, analysis of the debate is falsely restricted to a struggle between Obama 'liberals' and 'Tea Party' Republicans opposed to his reforms. Henry Porter, for example, writes in the Observer:

"The Tea Party protest swelled with a strident, inchoate panic about un-American policies, a reflex that Lincoln and Johnson would both have recognised because this kind of allergic reaction was the measure of the changes they promulgated." (Porter, op. cit.)

This was also a central feature of Blairism: big business-driven "astroturf" protests (artificial grassroots activism) are cited to prove the radicalism of what in fact are corporate-friendly "centrist" politics. The whinings of "loony lefties" like Moore, Street, Hedges, Dixon, Chomsky and much of the American people, can then be safely ignored.

But why, one might ask would a corporate media be so blind to the depredations of the corporate system and to honest dissidents opposing them?

An unsubtle hint was provided by news that Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of Guardian Media Group, is in advanced talks to run budget airline easyJet. Mark Kleinman commented for Sky News:

"It will be intriguing to hear the explanation of Sir Mike Rake, easyJet's chairman, for the recruitment of McCall, since at first glance there are few obvious similarities between the worlds of media and aviation.

"I would expect that Sir Mike will point out that both easyJet and GMG are consumer-facing businesses in industries in which the internet is becoming an increasingly important distribution platform."
(http://blogs.news.sky.com/kleinman/Post:c5e773a0-bf73-4476-81f9-f668e1bcdcc7)

Are we suggesting some kind of corporate conspiracy? Not at all. David Yelland, former editor of the Sun newspaper, was asked this week whether his ex-boss Rupert Murdoch had attempted to interfere in his editorship. No doubt to the chagrin of former colleagues, Yelland, post-rehab, has joined the human race. He answered:

"All Murdoch editors, what they do is this: they go on a journey where they end up agreeing with everything Rupert says. But you don't admit to yourself that you're being influenced. Most Murdoch editors wake up in the morning, switch on the radio, hear that something has happened and think, 'What would Rupert think about this?' It's like a mantra inside your head. It's like a prism. You look at the world through Rupert's eyes." (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23819883-david-yelland-rupert-murdoch-is-a-closet-liberal.do)

It is like a prism. Or, indeed, a lens.


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to Henry Porter
Email: henry.porter@guardian.co.uk

Write to Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk

Roger Alton, editor of the Independent
Email: r.alton@independent.co.uk

Please also send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org

This media alert is archived here:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/10/100330_victory_for_the.php

Marmite and the General Election

Marmite ads to stage parallel election: http://bit.ly/ddh8SE

 I like Marmite; but this is rather silly, and belittling.

'Monsieur Rupert?' - DEB worries

Hello Rupert's Readers. Check out this image, and it will I think start to become clear to you why the DEB has to go...


Not sure what I am talking about? You need to be. So read on... The UK Government has been pushing a piece of legislation through Parliament called the Digital Economy Bill (DEB), the main thrust of which is to set out how the UK manages its digital economy for the future.

Clauses in the bill deal with such subjects as the broadband tax, which charges each household a fee so that all households can be brought up to a minimum connection speed, and controversial legislation allowing illicit file sharers to have their internet connections blocked.

But buried deep within the bill are some clauses which far from protecting the rights of the creative industry, will actually leave almost no protection against infringement. Section 43 of the DEB deals with Orphan Works. Those are creative works (photos, illustrations, videos) which have become separated from their owners. A work with no identifying metadata, no watermark. A child of a creative mind, lost and alone, waiting for Fagin to take it under his “helpful” wing.

The original plan was to allow museums, galleries and the like to release from dusty vaults tens of thousands of forgotten works, the creator of which is unknown, so they could licence them in ways that would bring much needed revenue to those institutions. However, certain politicians not being the sharpest tools in the box thought it would also be a “good thing” to encompass ALL works whose creators could no longer be traced.

As an illustration, a photo you take on Wednesday morning, post to Flickr by lunchtime, is lifted by an unscrupulous blogger or corporate marketeer by 5pm and so (because they stripped your watermark and IPTC info) created an instant orphan by teatime. Anyone stumbling upon that stolen version will have no idea who took it.

Your photos could be stolen and used for anything. However objectionable the context.
Because there is no way to trace that photo back to you, even a “diligent” search (as required under the act) would not reveal your ownership of the photo. So anyone else wanting to use that image just has to pay a made-up fee to a newly made-up UK Government licensing body, and off they’d go on their merry way, using your photos for heaven knows what.

If at some point you happen to stumble upon that use of your photo, you’ll be able to go to the Government and ask for “some” money for its use. Assuming the government can see that you took the photo, and that the user of the photo paid the government some money, or beans or a sheep, you’ll be able to claim a fee (or beans, or sheep, who knows?) This fee may or may not reflect the commercial value of your photo, or the money spent taking it, but no matter. Government knows best.

There isn’t time here to go fully into the nightmare scenario of child identification/model release/property release issues in orphaned works used on the net, or exclusivity agreements a photographer may have had with their client before the photo was nicked. Nor is there time really to go into what happens when a UK company steals a photo held by, oh let’s say, Getty – an American company with lawyers whose litigious fingers are twitchier than a Wild West gunslinger’s, and whose fighting fund would bale out Iceland and Greece rolled into one.

The Digital Economy Bill is complicated enough, but the legal ramifications of what happens when it becomes law and all starts to go horribly wrong, will make your head spin like an owl in a blender.

For further enlightenment, go to: http://copyrightaction.com, or http://stop43.org.uk

Whether professional or amateur, it’s important (if you care about photography at all) to contact your local MP now. The bill looks set get thrown into the Parliamentary “wash-up” on April 6th, where it will not be debated at all and will become law, so there isn’t much time to react.

BNP glee at ASA ban on climate ads

(Originally publish at www.leftfootforward.org)

Further to Left Foot Forward’s story here about the decision of the Advertising Standards Authority to ban two climate change ads, it is important for us all to be clear just why the ASA caved in to pressure and made this bizarre decision to ban the excellent “nursery rhyme” adverts on man-made climate change

So, look at this link, not widely picked up last week; here are some of the things said at this notable location:

“This development comes just six weeks after the BNP’s “Operation Fightback” urged supporters to lodge complaints with the ASA over misleading Government claims made in its ‘man-made’ global warming ‘Action on CO2’ television adverts.

“These used the words ‘scientists agree’ in connection with disputed and in some cases, retracted, IPCC findings.

“Specifically Operation Fightback pointed out that the use of the words “scientists agree” implied that all scientists agreed with the now largely debunked IPCC claims made for “man-made” global warming, something which is manifestly untrue.”

There we have it: a systematic campaign by neo-fascist climate-denying BNP supporters seems to have achieved just what it wanted. To sum up, the BNP campaigned against these ads and the ASA did what the BNP were calling for.

It is worth noting also this SERA piece:

“While the ASA decision was dreadful, it is important to be clear nevertheless that the ASA did NOT uphold most of the complaints against this ad campaign.”

On precation and climate: PROSPECT-letter

Check out my letter published in the latest issue of PROSPECT magazine: 

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/03/letters-8/ [Link only works if you are a subscriber]

26th February 2010
Roddy Campbell and David Goodhart’s calls for a “proper scepticism” towards global warming data is completely wrong. Even if the illegal hack at UEA had undermined the data set showing an alarming global temperature rise, there are other similar data sets to rely on. Nasa’s evidence shows just the same warming-trend.

Campbell and Goodhart also ignore the most basic element of environmental safety: the precautionary principle. We do not require certainty for it to be rational to take “drastic” action to protect ourselves against the threat of global over-heat. If the risk proves to have been over-egged, we will merely have sacrificed some economic growth (and beneficially cushioned ourselves against the threat of peak oil). If we fail to act, and the dire predictions become reality, then we will have negligently signed the death warrant of our civilisation.

Councillor Rupert Read, Green Party

 

My rule-change proposal makes headway

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2010/mar/24/just-a-minute This is fun!: My JUST A MINUTE rule-change proposal makes headway -now in Grauniad!  :-)

And in Torygraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/7505101/Rule-change-proposed-for-competitive-Radio-4s-Just-a-Minute.html

Agrofuels - the current status of the threat they pose to civilisation on Earth

[This is a guest blog of mine that will appear shortly on the excellent ACTION AID website, as part of their very welcome 'biofuels action debate']

 

Let's start with this, from the agrofuels-mad U.S. of A.: http://environmentalresearchweb.org/blog/2010/03/the-smallprint-of-rfs2.html One remarkable detail that stands out in this (worrying) article is that the Environmental Protection Agency (sic.) analysis here accounts for the reduction in food consumption which is associated with using foodstuffs for fuel as a GHG benefit… Quick translation: Starving people is supposed to be good for the planet!

That moment of madness tells you a lot about the rise of agrofuels, which is all about profit, and none about reducing GHG emissions, let along about being good for people.

 

The issue of land-use being altered away from food toward fuels is big in Europe right now too. Take this newspaper headline, again from just last week: "Four environmental groups have sued the European Union's executive for withholding documents they say will add to a growing dossier of evidence that biofuels harm the environment and push up food prices:" http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-environment/ngos-take-commission-court-over-biofuels-reports-news-321885?utm_source=EurActiv+Newsletter&utm_campaign=14fe74fa7d-my_google_analytics_key&utm_medium=email

In November 2008, eight of the largest agrofuel-producing countries, including Brazil and Indonesia,
threatened the EU that they would go to the WTO if restrictions on agrofuels-influenced land-use change were not
removed: this was following a massive lobbying effort by agrofuel companies in Brussels. Yet land-use-effects have by far the greatest negative climatic impacts of agrofuels. Removing any land use restrictions gives producer countries a free licence to destroy vital ecosystems and habitats. …Bottom-line: If we want to feed people, rather than cars, and if we want to stop rainforests etc. being trashed to set up monocultures, then we must stop agrofuels companies and mass-producer states from dominating the debate. The actions of these four environmental groups in taking the EU to court over this is thus very welcome.  

 

But there has been bad news as well as good lately for those of us campaigning against agrofuels. Take this, for instance:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/18/palm-oil-biofuels-eu-plan
The recent draft communication from the European Commission to the European Parliament on the sustainability of biofuels says natural
forests have to be protected. But the devil is in the definition of a forest. The document says: "Continuously
forested areas are defined as areas where trees have reached, or can reach, a height of five metres, making up a crown cover of more than
30%. They would normally include natural forest, forest plantations and other plantations such as palm oil. This means that a change from
forest to oil palm would not per se constitute a breach of the criterion [for sustainability]."
If plantation bosses succeed in redefining palm oil as forestry then that will attract double subsidies from European taxpayers - for managing
forests and for producing agrofuels. Double subsidies – for ripping up rainforests!

 

The hugest long-term threat posed by the agrofuels business is in greenwashing aviation. The aviation industry is 'committed' to reducing their CO2 by more than 90% by 2050. This is simply and utterly impossible, given the industry's massive expansion plans. So the aviation industry pretends that they will put the entire aviation sector on to agrofuels, and greenwashes their emissions in the process. The problem is that agrofuels, in part for the reasons given above, are far more destructive to the environment (in most cases) than kerosene…

 

Last but not least, check this out: http://rupertread.fastmail.co.uk/FYI%20%20Highlevel%20biofuels%20lobbying.doc . This email, that some MEPs received last week from the dismal Burston Marsteller PR firm, and that at least one of them had the courage to pass onto us and thus to make public, will give you some idea of the kind of massive lobbying effort that the agrofuels profiteers are currently engaged in, as they endeavour to replace biodiversity and resilience with monocultures – and temporary profits.

 

I've been campaigning against industrial biofuels for nearly a decade now. It is absolutely vital that we have politicians in Westminster as well as in Brussels who are committed to being truly green, not to the ludicrous greenwash of agrofuels. Please think about that, in the run-up to May 6^th.

 

[Many thanks to Andrew Boswell, Mark Crutchley and other friends and colleagues who helped me research this piece.]

Want to help make history in Norwich?

Not the usual setting for one of my books...!

The reality: our CO2 emissions have been shooting upwards

The link below offers further in-depth confirmation of what I have argued in this blog for years: that the Millibands et al have systematically betrayed the public trust in their presentation of UK CO2 emissions figures. Emissions from [i.e. due to the economy of and consumption of] Britain and other 'developed' countries have in reality shot up, over the last 20 years, and especially since 1997.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/436374/eu_exporting_onethird_of_co2_emissions_to_poorer_countries.html

Really scary article ..

 

http://www.tierramerica.info/nota.php?lang=eng&idnews=3337

Eco-philosophy!

There are important philosophical issues connected with the idea of ecology: e.g. What is an ecosystem? To what extent can ecology escape being merely anthropocentric (unlike biology)? Does the concept of 'Gaia' as employed in Lovelock's work make philosophical/conceptual sense? To what extent does it make sense to think of ourselves as stewards of the Earth / as the Earth's consciousness or conscience / as 'visitors' to the planet, only 'accidentally' dependent upon it? To what extent are any of these desirable stances to take? What would be the fundamental assumptions of an economics (or a politics - or a philosophy!) that took seriously that we are it seems utterly and inexorably dependent upon Earth systems? Are there inevitable clashes between animal rights and ecologism? Is there / could there be / should there be an ecological ideology or political philosophy to rival liberalism / Maxxism, etc? Must eco-philosophy be political? Is this a bad thing?
The world is in profound ecological crisis. Is there anything more important for philosophers to do than to figure out whether there is anything that we can do to alter this situation? Does the world need new thinking, as John Locke gave us new thinking to 'found' liberalism, as Karl Marx gave us new thinking to found Communism, to deal with this crisis of _our_ time?

[If you are on Facebook, and you have read this far, then why not goto

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=343908829035&ref=mf

http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2010/03/eco-philosophy.html ]

Quiet Coaches - civic action in action

I regularly ask people to be quiet in the Quiet Coach on trains [e.g. not to speak loudly on their mobiles]. An obvious thing to do. But so few of us do it. [English reserve - and fear - at its worst] When we do do it, then it keeps the Quiet Coach quiet - which is as it should be!
To enable us to have some peace and quiet if we want it, to be able to concentrate; to avoid us all drowning in noise...
Civility in this country is in decline. That is bad news for us all - we should all, as citizens, encourage people to be public-spirited and to care about others' experience.

[Note: there suddenly seem to be a lot less Quiet Coaches on the train from Norwich to London. This is concerning me. Anyone else noticed this?]

UNESCO considers ClimateChange UniversalDeclaration of Ethical Principles

This is encouraging:

UNESCO considers a possible Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles in Relationship to Climate Change

Following the initiative of UNESCO and COMEST to promote serious debate on the ethical stakes of climate change, regional expert consultation meetings will be held across the world between March and May with a view to assessing the advisability of a Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles in Relation to Climate Change.

The outcomes of the regional expert meetings, along with other consultations, will feed into a report by the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) that will be submitted to the Director-General of UNESCO in July 2010. Subsequently, the Executive Board of UNESCO, meeting in October 2010, will decide whether to request the Director-General to submit to the 36th General Conference in 2011 a draft declaration drawn up in consultation with the Member States.

Organized by the Secretariat of UNESCO, in close liaison with COMEST and with local host institution and countries, these expert consultation meetings will create a forum where the possibility of universal consensus can be assessed through the articulation of local concerns regarding climate change and its effects.

The meeting schedule is as follows:

• Europe and North America: Meetings are proposed in Yerevan (Armenia) on 19-20 April and at UNESCO Headquarters on 10-11 May.
• Arab States: A meeting is proposed in Amman (Jordan) on 4-5 May.
• Africa: Meetings are proposed in Dakar (Senegal) on 16-17 March and in Nairobi (Kenya) on 19-20 May.
• Latin America and the Caribbean: Meetings are proposed in Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago) on 9-10 April and in Montevideo (Uruguay) on 13-14 May.
• Asia and the Pacific: Meetings are proposed in New Delhi (India) on 29-30 March, in Yokohama (Japan) on 22-23 April, and in Auckland (New Zealand) on 26-27 April.

UNESCO attaches great importance to the success of its regional consultation meetings, which will ensure that the full range of expertise is taken into account in considering the advisability of a Universal Declaration of Ethical Principles in relation to Climate Change.

This ethics initiative is set more generally within the framework of UNESCO's Strategy for Action on Climate Change as approved at the 179th Session Executive Board in April 2008.

UNESCO's work in this area is currently built around three strategic objectives:

• Building and maintaining the climate change knowledge base: science, assessment, monitoring and early warning;
• Promoting mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, including through enhanced education and public awareness; and
• Moving towards a climate-neutral UNESCO.

The United Nations System determined that the overwhelming importance of addressing global climate change requires the concerted efforts of the entire System, not least because there is increasing concern that climate change and climate variability could undermine the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.

For more information, please contact

John Crowley, Chief of Section, Ethics of Science and Technology Section,

Division of Ethics of Science and Technology: j.crowley@unesco.org

Tel: +33 (0)1 45 68 38 28

Straw inadvertently confirms: it's childporn offences that Venables is being accused of

Justice Secretary Jack Straw inadvertently seemed to confirm (on TODAY just now, around 8.15) that the reason Venables has been recalled to prison IS for child porn offences. In answer to a question from Humphreys about whether he might say more later today about what offences were involved, Straw remarked that as the news had been getting out, the situation was changed. He then realised his mistake and refused to comment further; but this 'non-denial' appears fairly clear. It would now immensely surprise me if it turns out that the offences are not indeed child porn offences.

Which really would underlie the appalling irony of this sad individual's ruined life. A child kills a younger child horrifically, in the public eye (that famous CCTV image). 17 years later, he is apparently engaged in sexual offences - involving images of children. Tragic, for all concerned.
Straw's tacit admission is 10 minutes in:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8555000/8555083.stm

Nuclear: a thought

If we only think of our children, then we might think of nuclear power as a good thing; but if we think of more distant future people, then evidently nuclear waste is a horrific legacy to leave them, people who won't even get any benefit at all out of the waste in question having been produced.

Eco-philosophy

I've just created a new Facebook group (my first ever!), on Eco-philosophy. If you agree and are a Facebooker and interested in this topic, then do join!:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=343908829035&ref=mf

Phil Hutchinson and Tom Greaves co-created this group with me.

 

A scientist speaks, aftertheUEAhack

A very interesting comment from a scientist on a thread I was on today on Facebook:

 

>I'll give my view as a scientist. I find it incredibly difficult to communicate the science at the right level without either dumbing down and being inaccurate or totally baffling and losing people. When I'm passionate and angry I scare people. But given the data and the evidence I have been terrified. When pushed as to why I am it is difficult to explain as there are so many overlapping theories and evidence an unless a lay person can grasp the basics then the rest is lost.

In the cases of others I think there is a tendency to think that as the people doing the research they are already doing their bit for the planet when in fact every single one of us needs to a full review.

So there you go. People have gotta understand that the time to change is now and we are all in this together. Peak oil, peak soil, peak phosphorus, is on us. Lets hope we don't end up in peak bloody human misery because we make the necessary changes too late.

I say seriously if you have children and grand children then WAKE UP, research, think about it, read widely. There will be no techno fix. Its time for behaviour change and to value our natural ecosystems and services they provide. It is time to repay the debts to the planet, restore the soils, plant trees, stop further tarmac-ing of the earths skin, get off the fossil fuels, start treating all beings with respect, to stand up to cruelty and violence and work in harmony with our nature. Our natural resources can provide us with everything we need to feed, clothe and warm ourselves. Our health is dependent on the health of our planet. There is only one earth and one humanity. It's not rocket science. It's permaculture.

 

Future people

 
 My latest newspaper column, in today's EASTERN DAILY PRESS, on 'Future people': http://oneworldcolumn.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-people.html

 See what you think; and let me know! [...if you like it, why not forward/share it?]

Turkey's Armenian genocide recognised

Brilliant news that the U.S. Congress has declared that what happened to the Armenians in 1915 WAS a genocidal crime. http://bit.ly/bLQFfA Did they finally do so, however, in a number of cases at least, primarily to punish Turkey for its courageous strong line against Israel's war crimes in Gaza? That was my immediate first guess, and speculation along these lines does indeed turn out to be widespread.
[Recommended, by the way, if you want to understand the Armenian genocide and its impact better: Atom Egoyan's astounding feature film, ARARAT.]
We should never forget that Hitler said, in the mid-30s, as he began to plot the mind-boggling genocidal crime that was the Holocaust: "Who now remembers the Armenians?" We should remember them, remember what happened, and acknowledge all such true genocides.

 

Speaking about (against?) 'sustainable development', next week: Culture and the Environment seminar Wednesday 10th March

Culture and the Environment Seminar, Wednesday 10 March, 3pm, Blackdale Building 0.17, UEA

 

Approaches to Sustainability: An Interdisciplinary Debate

Dr  Earl Gammon (PSI),  Prof Tim Lenton (ENV), Dr Grischa Perino (ECO) and Dr Rupert Read (PHI)

 

The ways in which we can think about and discuss issues related to culture and the environment are, as this seminar series has shown, related to the norms of our fields and the institutional and cultural divisions which often define academic work.

This session aims to explore these divisions, by inviting colleagues from a number of Schools to talk about a key environmental issue: sustainability. Each speaker will give a 15-minute presentation on what sustainability means to them and their field, without knowing what the other speakers are going to include in their presentations. The floor will then be open for discussion and debate.

What range of things can 'sustainability' mean? What similarities and differences exist between fields? And how can we usefully come together to discuss sustainability?

 

Tesco loses in Sheringham: Good news

Those councillors deserve Green medals: 

News flash from Eastern Daily Press:

Tesco loses Sheringham store wars

The latest battle in Sheringham's store wars today saw councillors approve plans for the eco-friendly Greenhouse Community Project while once again throwing out proposals for a Tesco in the town.

Wonderful news