2011 draws
to a close with financial instability and climate change topping the agenda of
global issues to confront in 2012. The signs are, however, clear that a
co-ordinated, multi-governmental approach to problem solving is an emerging
trend, if a hotly debated one, with developments of the past week underlining
the increasing relevance of intergovernmental approaches to problem solving.
Yesterday,
new capital disclosure templates were published for comment by the members of
Basel III, the latest in international regulatory standards for banking,
requiring banks in more than 30 countries to use a common format for disclosing
the size and quality of their capital safety margins to investors.
Last week, the COP17 summit gave birth to a new agreement that commits all
signatories to developing a future framework for legally binding carbon
emission reductions, bringing hope of an eventual remedy to one of the key
deficiencies of the Kyoto protocol.
However, in the same week, Britain elected to abstain from participation in a
treaty intended to protect to the European market, leading to wholesale
domestic re-evaluation of Britain’s role in an evolving European Union.
The debates will continue in 2012 with the evolution towards intergovernmental
co-operation being resisted by nationalists sounding somewhat outdated calls
for increasing independence in an increasingly inter-dependent world. Because
rationalism tends to favour harmonisation, trends towards integration are
seldom opposed on rational grounds but rather through messages of sound and
fury, fear and loathing.
When Southern States began advocating for secession from the United States to
preserve their "economic interests", Abraham Lincoln famously pointed
out, three short years prior to the commencement of the US Civil War, that “a
house divided against itself cannot stand”.
Provided that the slow evolution of international co-operation and regulation
never comes at the expense of freedom of culture or expression, or the principal
of subsidiarity (a principle that affirms that a more centralized level of
government should exercise only those responsibilities that cannot be more
effectively handled at a local level) then latter day nationalists should
hopefully, ultimately, and without necessity of war, come to understand that
they have little to fear from a more co-ordinated approach to solving the big
problems that affect everybody equally.
For all the
contemporary criticism leveled against the European Union, none of these
critics lived through the continents’ great wars and nothing in their criticism
can trump the truth: from the time European supra-nationalism was first
introduced, major warfare amongst member states became unthinkable.
Let’s hope
2012 sees our global body politic keep moving in the right direction.
Peter Kent, Canadian Environment Minister, says India and China are amongst the world’s biggest pollution emitters. He uses their “developing nation” exemption from the emission reduction standards of the Kyoto protocol as a possible basis for Canada’s withdrawal from the treaty.
But here’s the irony: while Canada might have previously committed itself to carbon emission reduction targets of the Kyoto Protocol, in the last decade Canada’s merchandise imports from India increased by over 60% and imports from China have risen to over $44 billion per year.
From a horse of such giddying height as the one he obviously saddled before cantering into Durban, can Peter not see that where a nation commits itself to emission reduction targets, if it then simply increases its imports of goods from the very developing nations it criticizes, it’s not actually reduced the level of carbon emitted into the atmosphere, but simply shifted production from its own back yard to somebody else’s?
Climate control has descended into a debate between developed and developing when, in truth, there’s only one atmosphere and everyone will lose from a negotiation stalemate. Kent suggests that the Green Climate Fund is a “guilt” payment demanded by developing nations when it is simply one proposal to finance cleaner power in developing nations. The Fund and the global carbon tax are strong ideas that deserve rational consideration – perhaps Kent’s projection of morality and guilt onto the negotiating floor belies his own state of mind more than anything else, especially after Greenpeace produced this terrific piece of satire about him earlier this year.
It’s been very impressive.The commitment, the organisation, the sheer tenacity.But having taken Wall Street hostage, it’s time to send through at least one clear demand.
Within any adaptive system there are considerable advantages to the development of information and communication (neural) networks between system components to enable the adaptive response and re-organization of the system.
If the Universe itself is an adaptive, responsive, system (as it seems to be) then Social Media should probably be understood as the new kid on the evolutionary block.
While still just infants now, social media platforms will mature to offer more highly aggregated content services and the streaming of an increasing amount of sensorial, neurological and positional data in real time.
Eventually bionic sensory organs will even make it possible for people to literally see what others are seeing and hear what others are hearing in real time. If this seems too far-fetched to you for now, consider the fact that cochlear implants can already capture sound and directly stimulate cochlear nerves by electronic impulses (making it possible for persons with damaged hair cells on the ear’s basilar membrane to hear) and that implanted retinal devices enable light to enter micro-cameras, bypass damaged retinas and electronically stimulate optical nerves (enabling some blind persons to see).
It doesn’t require a major conceptual leap to recognize that these electronic devices will one day record the sights and sounds they can sense and that these recordings could ultimately be relayed by micro-wireless transmitters, streamed to websites and shared with other people. Microsoft has already purchased the patent to transmit data using the human body - you can view the patent itself here.
Humanity seems destined to benefit from increasingly reliable and replaceable bionic organs and if all the sensory information directed at a person is recorded and redirected towards a person’s social media page, then anyone accessing that person’s site will be able to take a real-time walk in that person’s virtual shoes.
Hopefully all this sharing of "what's on our minds" will lead to greater empathy and understanding between us but an increasingly important issue to debate and address will be the degree to which users can personally control what information to stream and precisely when to stream it. Privacy has already become the wild new frontier of social psychology with different social media behaviors currently being flame-tested for social acceptability.
While it may seem frightening at first, the gradual collapsing of the boundaries of self-consciousness and the progressive ease with which we will identify ourselves and others as parts of a collective body of consciousness are evolutionary processes in themselves and social media should be understood as the evolutionary development of new neural pathways in our systemic consciousness.
The events of 15 October 2011 deserve to go down in history as the first globally co-ordinated protest of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring, through to the European summer of discontent, the citizens of individual nations have taken turns in expressing their indignation at different systems that they believe are failing them.But on 15 October, persons from all over the world stood simultaneously for global change.
Much of the detail of the protests center on financial issues, including sovereign currency crises. What follows are some thoughts on the continued use of domestic currencies in the modern global financial system:
(1) Domestic currencies are, by definition, intended for domestic use only.To trade internationally one has to exchange currencies through registered brokers and the buy/sell differential rates immediately remove 2,5% of the economic value of each international exchange.
(2) When banks hold their assets in their domestic currencies but borrow in foreign currencies, they make a mockery of minimum liquidity regulations and can, as a result, be thrust into financial distress as result of remote events or weather patterns over which they have little influence or control. Older members of society who depend on savings and investments to generate their income (a demographic group you might not yet belong to but one day surely will…) are particularly vulnerable to the erosive effects of currency depreciation.
(3) When currencies were lifted from objective standards like gold and became valued relative only to other currencies, changes in economic conditions in one region quickly began affecting the value of currencies in other regions. As the global web of trade expanded and became increasingly complex, the inherent instabilities of a financial system based on cross referenced free-floating currencies became more pronounced and institutional speculators began to exploit, and in the process exacerbate, these inherent instabilities for profit.
(4) Many people have identified the property market bubble in the United States as one cause of the current financial crisis without going further to consider that the United States dollar depreciated against major international currencies by 30% between 2002 and 2007 which encouraged the production of more money by the US Federal Reserve, drove investors towards fixed property assets and banks towards property backed lending, resulting in the property bubble.
So here’s a proposition to consider: the single most effective and practical intervention that can be made to reduce financial instability in the global economy is to introduce a common international currency and allow the price of products and services across different regions to be more naturally determined by factors of quality, supply and demand.
If you don’t agree with the above proposition, then you either don’t believe that the financial system has become inherently unstable or you believe there is a more effective and practical solution to the problem.If it’s the latter, I hope you will share it.
The introduction to every Asterix book begins with a description of the leading characters.Chief Vitalstatistix has only one fear: the sky might fall on his head.
He would be alarmed to note that on "approximately" the 23rd of September, a 6 000 kg NASA satellite that has run out of fuel is going to crash back to earth, somewhere between the latitudes of Edinburgh and Cape Town. That's "approximately" on Friday.
No one is sure exactly where and when the decommissioned satellite will land, or how much of it will be left after burning up through the atmosphere - NASA's current estimates are that 532kg of debris will hit the ground at speeds of up to 100 metres per second.
NASA estimates that the odds of a person being killed by any of this falling debris are "1 in 3200".
(Your chances of picking all the right numbers in the lottery are 1 in 13983816).
NASA doesn't explain how this vital statistic has been calculated - perhaps they've worked with the estimated size of the scattered debris and the average density of humans across the surface area of the potential strike zone. But however the “1 in 3200” risk of loss of human life on slide 8 of this NASA powerpoint has been calculated, it probably serves a public relations purpose at best, because even if NASA had calculated the risk to be much, much higher, I’m not sure that Asterix ,or even Ben Affleck, could do anything about it.
Deep underground in the bedrock of Manhattan lies the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, home to 7 million kilograms of gold bullion owned by governments and banks from around the world.
There’s an inescapable irony in expending massive amounts of time, money and human energy, even lives, to extract this metal from the great depths of the earth only polish it up and then hide it underground again.
The depositors of the gold are the ultimate beneficiaries of a series of transactions that begin with a premise that resources located beneath a particular section of the earth’s surface automatically belong to the people who exercise control over that patch of the planet’s crust.
It should come as no surprise then, that from colonial times through to contemporary, the relationship between natural resources and warfare has always proven to be intimate.
As recently as April 2007, a Russian submarine provocatively planted a flag on the Artic shelf as part of an expedition to claim exclusive ownership over the region’s estimated 10 trillion tonnes of fuel reserves in accordance with the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea. Tension over this claim is bound to heat up as the surface ice continues to melt, making exploitation of the region increasingly viable.
In an era characterised by a rapidly growing populations and diminishing natural resources, International Law 2.0 needs to be urgently developed.
The Earth is, quite obviously, one indivisible system and only a global framework of shared, equitable access to the planet’s natural resources, including fossil fuels and water, will achieve humanity’s sustainable occupation of the planet. Unless every single nation on the planet commits to a new, enforceable global resource and environmental protection framework, then every other nation’s future will be at risk.
Commentators that confine contemporary debate over the ownership of underground resources to private versus national ownership are trapped within the context of a very outdated paradigm.
It’s time that debate on inter-nationalisation of natural resources began.
When the same thing is interpreted differently by different people, it’s often a sign that different values or motivations are influencing those differing interpretations.
Currently, this is nowhere more striking than in the differing responses of western and eastern nations to whether the NATO bombing of Libya is necessary to protect Libyan civilians under the wording of United Nations resolution 1973.
Western nations are heavily backing the Libyan opposition movement headed by Mahmoud Jibril, while eastern nations seem more sympathetic to the incumbent, Muammar Gaddafi. Both western and eastern nations profess to value the protection of civilian life, so the inescapable conclusion has to be that their different responses to the situation in Libya are influenced by other perspectives.
Recognising motivations can take a little digging, but understanding those motivations often requires digging a little bit more. In fact, a reasonable understanding of the present often demands some knowledge of the past and, despite what certain strands of the New Age movement proclaim, there is not only a “now” - consciousness regularly brings understandings of the past into the present for the benefit of the future.
In coming to grips with the current situation in Libya, a review of its past is therefore required. That means this blog post is going to be a longish one but fortunately we don’t have to go right back to antiquity to get a basic understanding of current Libyan affairs as the tumultuous realignment of North African interests brought about by the 2nd World War offers us a very convenient place to start.
Libia Italiana was an Italian colony at the outbreak of the War. At that time Muhammed Idris was leader of the Senussi movement that fought against Italian colonial rule. During the War, Idris supported the Allies and carried out guerrilla campaigns against the Italians from his base in Egypt. After the eventual defeat of the Axis powers in North Africa, the United Kingdom invited Idris to form a government and in 1951 the United Nations proclaimed the United Libyan Kingdom as an independent state.
In 1969, while he was in Turkey for medical treatment, king Idris was deposed in a coup led by a group of Libyan army officers under the leadership of a 27 year old by the name of Muammar Gaddafi. The monarchy was immediately abolished and a republic proclaimed. Idris was placed on trial in absentia in the Libyan Peoples Court and sentenced to death. He never returned to Libya and died in exile in Cairo in 1983. Even in 2011, many Benghazian-based rebels like the one pictured below have been seen carrying portraits of King Idris during protests against Colonel Gaddafi.
Throughout the 1970's Libya under Gaddafi was considered a rogue state and diplomatically isolated by Western powers. Gaddafi pursued an Arab nationalist and politically socialist agenda but his rule quickly became characterised by the suppression of dissent. He became involved in the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (now OPEC) and began to leverage Libya’s oil production for political and economic gain. A few highlights of his time as ruler of Libya that help to explain the present impasse between eastern and western nations are chronicled below:
1973: Gaddafi proclaims the entire Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean to be Libyan territory, including a 115km exclusive fishing zone extending from the coastline. The United States asserts its right to conduct naval operations and maintain trade passages in all international waters at a standard 22km distance from a country’s shore. Tensions over this issue gradually begin to heighten in a slow, creeping cold war kind of way.
23 March 1983: two US F-14 navy fighter planes escort three US navy warships into the disputed waters of the coast of Libya. Libya fires surface to air missiles towards the planes but they miss and fall into the sea. Libya then dispatches 2 Soviet-made MIG fighter planes and several patrol boats. More US navy fighter planes are released and their missiles take out Libyan radar stations before striking at Libyan boats. 35 Libyans are killed and many wounded.
One month after this incident, a magazine article entitled “Top Guns” about US Navy fighter pilots is published in America. Hollywood purchases the rights to the article and begins preparing for production of the film starring Tom Cruise as an F-14 navy fighter pilot who wins a spectacular stand-off against several Soviet MIG’s. To his eternal credit, Bryan Adams turns down an offer to record the song “Danger Zone” due to a concern that the film glorifies war. Kenny Loggins steps in and has a enormous hit, but Bryan Adams the longer career. Kenny's video is posted below for everyone too proud to admit they've seen the movie more than once...
January 1986: At the height of the Cold War and amid mounting tensions, President Ronald Reagan imposes sanctions against Libya and terms Gaddafi the “mad dog of the Middle East”.
December 21, 1988: Pan Am Flight 103 en route to New York explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 bystanders on the ground. Libyan nationals are identified as prime suspects in the bombing.
March 31, 1992: The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 748 imposing sanctions on Libya, including an arms embargo and air travel restrictions.
November 11, 1993: The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 883 which tightens sanctions on Libya. The resolution includes a limited freeze of Libyan assets as well as a ban on exports of oil equipment to Libya.
August 5, 1996: The US passes the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act into law. The act authorizes the president to impose sanctions against foreign companies that invest more than $40 million a year in Libya’s oil industry.
April 5, 1999: Libya hands over two suspects--each reportedly linked to Libyan intelligence--to Dutch authorities for trial in the bombing of Pam Am Flight 103. Immediately following the handover, the Security Council suspends sanctions against Libya originally imposed in 1992.
January 31, 2001: Three judges hand down verdicts in the Pan Am trial. Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, is found guilty of 270 counts of murder. A leading Scottish jurist calls the trial the greatest miscarriage of justice and conspiracy theories over the real cause of the bombing still abound.
September 11, 2001: The September 11 attackstake place in the United States. Airplane hijackingsresult in the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York, damage to the Pentagon and the crashing of a passenger airliner in Pennsylvania.
November 19, 2001: Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton states that Libya may be actively seeking to develop or deploy offensive biological weapons.
August 3, 2002: President George W. Bush extends the provisions of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act for an additional five years.
March 2003: The US begins its invasion of Iraq citing concerns over Iraq’s alleged biological and WMD programmes. US officials indicate that the United States will remove its sanctions on Libya if the Libya verifiably dismantles its WMD’s programmes.
August 15 2003 Libya agrees to compensate the victims of the Pan Am attack and accepts responsibility for the bombing.
December 19, 2003. Gaddafi renounces Libyan WMD program and invites international inspectors to verify weapons status. US and British officials hail the announcement.
January 18, 2004: US and British officials arrive in Libya to begin elimination and removal of WMD designs and stockpiles.
February 26, 2004: The US lifts its Libya travel ban and allows businesses to enter negotiations to re-acquire pre-sanctions holdings inside Libya.
September 20, 2004: Bush lifts most of its remaining sanctions on Libya.
October 11, 2004: European Union foreign ministers lift a 20 year-old arms embargo on Libya. Part of the EU rationale for lifting the embargo is to improve Libya’s capacity to patrol its own maritime borders to prevent illegal immigration to the EU from North Africa, a particular concern of southern European states such as Italy.
May 15, 2006: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announces the U.S. establishment of full diplomatic relations with Libya. President George W. Bush allows Libya to be removed from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
October 24, 2008 – according to Wikileaks, a diplomatic cable is sent warning that convicted Lockerbie suspect has terminal cancer and that his death in prison would threaten British security. His release on compassionate grounds is considered.
August 20, 2009 - Mohmed Al-Megrahi is released from jail on compassionate grounds in yet another diplomatic success for Gaddafi.
But now here’s where things begin to go really pear-shaped for Gaddafi…
December 17, 2010: a 26 year old Tunisian street vendor. Mohamed Bouazizi, sets himself on fire in protest of the confiscation of his goods and the harassment inflicted on him by municipal officials. His actions spark violent mass demonstrations which culminate in President Ben Ali stepping down on 14 January 2011 after 23 years in power.
The Tunisian protests begin to ripple throughout Arab nations, including Algeria, Yemen, Jordan and Egypt. Over in Tripoli, Gaddafi maybe gets a little edgy.
January 29, 2011: Libya signs a $1.8 billion arms deal with Russian, believed to cover tanks, fighter planes and air defence systems.Not sure if you can believe that?Check out the Reuters announcementof 30 January.
February 11, 2011: Hosni Mubarak steps down as president of Egypt after 30 years in power.
February 15, 2011: Civil protests begin in earnest in Libya. Unlike the opposition movements in other Arab nations, Gaddafi’s opposition reveals itself to be heavily armed. When Gaddafi retaliates with military power, the conflict quickly escalates into a full blown civil war.
February 17, 2011: Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom signs an agreement to take a 50% stake in Libyan oil field with estimated reserves of 110 million tonnes of oil.
February 25, 2011: Citing security concerns, Barack Obama issues Executive Order 13566 banning the import of all oil from Libya.
February 27, 2011: a Transitional National Council is formed by Libyan opposition members to act as the political wing of the armed rebellion.
March 14, 2011, French oil giant Total says conflict in Libya has slashed Libyan oil output from 1.4 million barrels a day to under 300,000. On the same day, Hilary Clinton travels to France and arrives at Le Bourget Airport in Paris as pictured by the New York Times (below). After dining with foreign ministers of the G8 group, she meets Libyan opposition leader, Mahmoud Jibril, at her Paris hotel for diplomatic talks.
March 16, 2011: Gaddafi meets with Russian, Indian and Chinese ambassadors and invites proposals from those countries to increase their stakes in the production and exploitation of Libyan oil.
March 17, 2011: the UN Security Council passes the pivotal resolution 1973 which authorizes member states "to take all necessary measures to protect civilians and civilian populated areasunder threat of attack” in Libya. Any half decent international lawyer should have noticed that the conjunctive phrase “civiliansandcivilian populated areas under threat of attack” means that any vague "area" in which there are civilians, including areas where civilians are under no threat of attack, will also fall within the ambit of the resolution if any armed rebel forces are under threat of attack in those vague areas. The resolution therefore authorises support for the armed rebels in all populated areas of Libya.
Notably, Russia and China, two of the 5 permanent members of the UN security council with veto powers, abstain from voting on the resolution. India, a temporary member, also abstains. The US, France and United Kingdom vote in favour. While my own view is that a resolution authorizing civilian protection was called for, the wording of resolution 1973 was flawed. In any event, the first signs of a split between members of the security council over Libya are now obvious.
Following the resolution, NATO airstrikes against Gaddafi forces commence.
If you've read this far, hopefully the above chronology has been informative. What all of this detailed background to the present situation in Libya underscores for me is that the interpretation of any issue will generally be framed by one’s values and perspectives and just as vague expressions like “necessary means” depend on an interpretation of words like “necessary”, so the ultimate liberation of Libyan civilians is going to require a long, hard look at the meaning of liberty itself. Hopefully Libyan civilians will experience a more peaceful liberty than Iraqis have to date but the Libyan war still seems some way from over.
I believe that the US is sincerely motivated by the desire for a better government in Libya for the benefit of Libyan people and I do not believe that the Russian and Chinese abstentions at the UN and their condemnation of the Nato strikes is linked to the lucrative deals those nations were able to strike with the Gaddafi regime. But what I am also concerned about is that while the "Cold War" between the US and Russia may be a thing of the past, an "Icy Peace" based on different cultural and economic perspectives might have replaced it.
In a time of diminishing natural resources... (which is intended to be read like the opening line of a movie trailer), where international energy and security policies are so closely linked as to be virtually indistinguishable, the survival of the planet hinges on management of the earth’s natural resources (& not Ben Affleck).
Unfortunately, institutions like the United Nations, OPEC and the International Energy Agency are historically and culturally grounded in a security v energy paradigm and deference to national state sovereignty over energy and security affairs. Those institutional values play a deep role in the formation, interpretation and implementation of day to day policies. Until those institutional cultures evolve towards a shared global resource management paradigm that is better suited for our times, the planet’s natural resources will repeatedly be caught up in standoffs between western and eastern superpowers and wars will persist in the spaces between them.
I became acutely aware of the literal meaning of the word when I read a safety warning about oxygen inspiration levels printed on the side of the incubator that was home to my daughter for the first days of her life.
“Inspiration” is, literally, the process of drawing in energy through the breath.
I reflected on this word again last week at the funeral of a friend from university days. His death was a tragic case of someone with great talent and heart taken from life too young.
But while people mourned this loss at his funeral, something else was very clear – people also felt inspired.
If there is one sentence in the Simunye Hypothesis that has attracted a lot of comment from friends and colleagues it is the statement that “death is the liberation of energy from form”. Many people seem to like this statement, take comfort from it and recognize that “death” is the counter-cycle to “life”, a process of organizing and maintaining energy within form.
David’s death seemed to unleash his own particular brand of energy over all who knew him. People who breathed that in have become inspired by him.
If this isn't an example of how one should properly understand "life after death", then I don’t know what is. Click here if you need further explanation, Stephen Hawking.
People want to be inspired. That’s the only sense I can make of the “royal” wedding that took place on Friday. The bride and groom have, to date, done little in their young lives to actually merit the affection of the public. So why do people cheer them? It must point to some part of our psychology that wants to believe we are part of something bigger and more important than our daily lives might suggest and “royalty” are easily identifiable apex points of "kingdoms" or systems people can feel they belong to. That’s why occasions like “royal” weddings or even national sporting events inspire a sense of patriotism and pride. People are cheering from their own sense of purpose and pride in belonging to something bigger than themselves.
But that instinctive sense of wanting to belong is both a natural and dangerous thing. It’s natural because it’s true. We are all part of something bigger than our own narrow selves. But it’s dangerous, because the craving to belong can be manipulated and abused. One thing about the royal wedding that disappointed me was the military gear that the groom chose to wear. It’s a subtle infusion of pride and passion with warfare and it’s the sort of emotive blend that has been abused for centuries by kings and rulers to turn people into subjects and citizens into soldiers.
I know it might have been "protocol", but I will respect William more if he chooses at some point in his life to break with protocol and forge his own path, hopefully one that promotes unity and diversity and desists from glamourizing the military, as “kings" and "princes" have been known to do.
Thursday 21 April 2011
The Simunye Hypothesis went online on Amazon.com today. The short book is the current output of a burning pursuit for meaning to life, stoked over the years by conversations with great friends and family who helped to forge the philosophical viewpoints on consciousness and democracy that are expressed in the book.
This blog aims to track and discuss the merging relationship between these two concepts as we move more deeply into the 21st century. But not in a overly-heavy kind of way.
If you haven’t read the Simunye Hypothesis yet, please do, and then come back to this blog every now and then to keep up with the debates. Or if you don’t feel like reading the e-book, take a look at the short video on the side bar which is an attempt to illustrate the concepts discussed in the book with music and images.
PS. In the video, I’ve used a Faithless track called “We Come One” from the Outrospective album. A short note to their label – I emailed you some time back to check you were cool with this but you never replied. If you don’t like it, let me know and I’ll take it down. But I’ve given the album an advertised link on this site so I hope that makes us even..
