So far the voting is going 2:1 in favour of this image being used in the next election. But only 13 peeps have voted. Please help us to get statistical significance by voting here

PS it won't work for you if you have already voted.

Mumbai, Islamic fundamentalism and blood feuds

Marx said, "Religion is the opium of the masses"

I said, "If religion is the opium of the masses, fundamentalism is the crystal meth of the religious". (see above).

A friend of mine said, "Just leave fundamentalists alone, and they will either get totally bored or fall out with each other".

The right response to fundamentalists is to defend ourselves against their insane attacks by using the police, the Intelligence Services (here is their right use, not arresting democratic representatives for handling leaked information), the financial system (freezing their assets), but do not, repeat not, attack them militarily unless you are 100% certain that no civilians will be killed. Which means do not attack them militarily, because all bombings are likely to kill civilians.

This is because civilian deaths due to military attacks give a cause for the next wave of terrorist activity. Every time a civilian dies in a misdirected US or Israeli or British air attack, their friends and relatives entertain the thought, "If they kill our people, I should kill their people." And some of those who get that thought are likely to act on it. In other words, the War on Terror should rightly be called "The Blood Feud with Terrorists".

Blood feuds and revenge are primitive responses, produced in the unreconstructed animal parts of our brain. It is ironic that the people with the most highly sophisticated technology (the military) are using them at the promptings of the crudest emotional centres of our brain.

Mumbai, emotion and rationality

The knock-ons for the terrorist attacks in Mumbai begin. Indian home office government ministers resign. A war of words starts between India and Pakistan. A youth interviewed in a demonstration declares with adolescent certainty that what is needed is "a war with Pak".

Let us assume that the attacks (despite a denial from one source) were mounted by Laskar-e-Toiba (LeT), the "Army of the Righteous" (sick). They are a Pakistan-based Islamist group whose primary objective is to get India out of Jammu and Kashmir, but while they are at it they wouldn't mind restoring Islamic power over South Asia, and parts of Russia and China. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Oh, and they want to destroy the Indian republic and put an end to Hinduism and Judaism. And they have a fatwah against the Pope because of his unguarded remarks against the Prophet (PBUH).

LeT seem to be supported by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI, the most powerful and cloudy of Pakistan's three intelligence agencies, which has been kinked with election rigging, corruption, illegaity, and support for the Taleban. Confused?

The ISI appears to be a state within a state. This should not come as a surprise. Secret Services are by definition not transparent, and transparency is incompatible with democratic accountability. I have no clear idea how to respond to this problem. A few years ago I proposed some Green Party policy to try to rein them in, but it was crushed by the Handbrake Tendency. I must learn to be more dogged.

Contrary to immediate claims, there were early warnings of the attack, going back to March of this year, which specified the hotels targeted. It was said that the attack would come by sea. Fishermen warned in August of suspicious activity.

Given that security services do exist, it is surprising how ineffective they are. Mrs Thatcher had intelligence of Gen Galtieri's plans to invade the Falklands/Malvinas, but it was not acted on. The US security agencies ignored early warnings of 9/11.

The Indian Government will probably follow the US and UK by increasing surveillance of the whole population and reducing general civil liberties, but the real problem lies in assessing and integrating warnings. They probably get thousands of bits of information, and as a GP I can testify to the inherent difficulty of filtering the signal from the noise. However, it can be done. Computers can help, by handling vast volumes of information, although they are not infallible (computers discarded early data showing the ozone hole because they did not expect that to happen).

More importantly, a single agency needs to be responsible for filtering potentially important information, especially if 2 or more bits of information are pointing in the same direction.

There are other rational responses that can be made, but the overwhelming likelihood is that the attack will get an irrational response, with relationships between India and Pakistan, both nuclear armed, getting more angry.

Anger - the wish to hurt the one who is perceived to have hurt us - is a primitive emotional reaction, and if deployed, inevitably leads to escalation of the problem.

Philosophical rationality is the counter to anger. It takes the higher vantage point and the long-term view. It notes the emotion expressed by others, and integrates it as a factor in the equation, but it looks at all the causes of the problem, and tries to find an answer that addresses the whole field of problems. We humans do have the capability to respond in this way, it is just that we find it quicker to make an emotional reaction.

A DREAM OF WAR : Mumbai 29.11.2008

A DREAM OF WAR


If the red slayer thinks that he kills…

Two partisans about to die
suck on dry rags
and call for water, and
more bullets for their store

And if the victim thinks that he is slain…

To the north
Ganesh dances carefully
swinging his dusty blue trunk
above a child.
lucky beginning

they are mistaken…

To the south
two policemen
in best community manner
casually distribute letters and pleasantries,
as if to say
“Why not turn your muzzles to your mouths
to save us time and trouble?”

for the eternal in man cannot die…

But they have earned their choice of death
out of a lifetime’s oppression
and in this film that changed into a dream
they wait out their last few minutes
bounded by unforgiving grey walls, litter
broken glass, and outside, to the north,
the elephant headed one,
to the south, the emissaries of their death.

The spirit of Christ will never move us…

Just now, they’re sails becalmed, swinging, useless.
Waiting for the onslaught of noise that gives them point and purpose, turns on their power. The heart bursting of the mothers son their enemy, this strange love, rod to rod until they feel the numb red comfort of nemesis thudding into their flesh to wake them from the dream of life.

…to fight and war against any man with outward weapons…

It all began a long while back,
in dusty, endemic, common callousness
played out day by day,
the way it always does.






Richard Lawson
Congresbury 1999

This was a dream I had in 1999, written after some similar atrocity.

The first section in italics is from the Bhagavad Gita, the second a Quaker declaration.

Life is about learning how we can be happy in such a way that everyone else could be happy too.

Green Solutions for the Recession

Twice in the last two days I have heard from Greens who are not interested in any measures to try to mend the economy. The argument is that we do not want to go back to business as usual, and that the recession is OK.



My view is that unemployment is a scourge on the unemployed. It is based on facts. The unemployed are less happy, have poorer health, probably die younger, and some of them do minor car crime. The evidence for this is in my book (Bills of Health, Lawson R., Radcliffe 1996 , from a library near you).

Secondly, there is a vast amount of work that is crying out to be done. This is good work, real work, constructive work, work that opposes the second Law of Thermodynamics (See here:
http://www.greenhealth.org.uk/PhilosWork.htm )


This work is in the Green Sector of the economy:

1. energy conservation
2. renewable energy technologies
3. energy efficient goods manufacture
4. pollution control technology
5. waste minimisation
6. repair
7. recycling
8. water management
9. sustainable agriculture
10. forestry and timber use
11. countryside management
12. housing - new building and refurbishment
13. improvements to visual environment
14. public transport
15. education and training
16. counselling, caring and healing
17. community work
18. leisure and tourism
19. innovation, research and development
20. any business which passes a certain threshold in its environmental audit.


This is vital work that must be done.

What is ecologically necessary must be made financially possible.

Therefore it is necessary for Government to enable all this work to take place.

The Green Wage Subsidy is a simple, feasible, practical way to bring this about by amending the present benefit system. Effectively it extends Earnings Disregard to people who find work in the green sector.

The Green New Deal is necessary but not sufficient.

If we include the above 20 items, we have a Green New Deal Plus, GND+, which will help to heal the recession,heal the environment, heal society and enable us to emerge out of this recession into a greener economy, like a Green Phoenix out of the ashes of the old system. This is emphatically not Business as Usual.

Appendix 1: Keynes advocated Govt borrowing to pay for the investment into the recessed economy. In that banks are not lending, HMG has either to borrow from investors (through a gilts issue? Would that yield anything like the amounts they need?) or borrow from Oriental banks? I am just guessing here. You may have the answers. It seems a bit odd for the Government to borrow from the banking system that it has just lent a huge amount of money. Which raises the question of why the creation of money must necessarily be restricted to the private sector.

Appendix 2: In a stable green economy it could be that leisure might increase. If so, good. But please please do not confound unemployment in the present economic system with green leisure. Today, now, unemployment means poverty and hardship, with all that arises from it: anger, frustration, worry, violence, crime - and most importantly of all, community tensions which feed the BNP. Unemployment and housing scarcity are the twin flames that lift the BNP hot air balloon. "Look at those immigrants! They have your jobs and houses!! Send them home!!!"
And dissatisfied people buy that.

That is enough in and of itself to campaign enthusiastically for a GND+, which starts with energy conservation and renewables, but must also sort the general jobs and housing problems.


I am fully behind Citizen's Income, which would be a much more sensible idea than a cut in VAT, but unfortunately it is a dream in the present political climate. Green Wage Subsidy on the other hand is an achievable goal.
Cheers

Richard
http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/

Damian Green Arrest Scandal

Although I am a Green Party activist, I share the deep concern at this apparent abuse of police powers, even though he is a Tory. Now they know what it feels like.

Nine hours in custody is very boring (I speak as a Trident Faslane arrest veteran). I hope he had a book. I had a half a history of Scotland (hastily torn in half by a fellow protestor before we were banked up) but that was pretty boring in itself (McA killed McB who was in turn killed by McC).

If Ministers were not informed (as a Minister claimed on the Today programme), the government officials who took this decision must be outed and disciplined.

Luckily the Green Party has policy on this, fresh from the last Conference:
PA803
Civil servants will be responsible for their actions. If an error arises due to actions a government officer, that officer will be professionally accountable, according to guidelines laid down to match the magnitude of the error, up to and including dismissal. A code of ethics will be made available to every government officer, which will include guidelines for when the officer has a duty to act as a whistleblower.

(later)
These are the points we should be concerned about

1. abuse of Parliamentary privilege, which gives the people's representatives (MPs) freedom to handle information.
2. abuse of the Terrorism Act. Recall that the anti-terrorist police were active against Icelandic bankers too. Should we take this as a sign that they have not enough to do in investigating terrorists?
3. If Ministers really were not in the loop, then permanent secretary at the Home Office, Sir David Normington must take responsibility. Recall that at the last conference, we took the far-sighted action to pass the following motion:

PA803
Civil servants will be responsible for their actions. If an error arises due to actions a government officer, that officer will be professionally accountable, according to guidelines laid down to match the magnitude of the error, up to and including dismissal. A code of ethics will be made available to every government officer, which will include guidelines for when the officer has a duty to act as a whistleblower.

I think we should be calling for Sir David Normington to be investigated, and if found guilty to be stripped of his knighthood and his job.

Maybe we should consider street demonstrations on this matter.

9 Postulates on Money

I'm off to Dorchester today to discuss the economy with the local Green Party. Here are my notes (in case I leave them behind by accident):

1. The amount of money in the world is increasing year on year. The growth in the global money supply has a doubling rate of 6-12 years.
It follows from this that:
(a) the system is unsustainable
( b) money is being created somewhere

2. Since the power of Government to create money is limited to coins and notes, about 3% of the total, it follows that private loan institutions (banks &c) put 97% of the new money into the system, creating the growth in the money supply.

3. They do this by making loans (creating debt) which must be paid back with interest, and using a fractional reserve system that allows them to lend to a multiple of the amount of capital that they actually hold.

4. Governments have granted lenders the ability to provide loans which are supported only by the confidence that
- not many of their borrowers will default at the same time
- not many of their creditors will want to withdraw their money at the same time

These are not safe assumptions, as the 2007-9 financial crisis caused by the “credit crunch” has demonstrated. The privatised, interest-bearing loan method of creating money leaves the economy open to periodic crashes, which cause poverty, inequity, social tension and carry with them the risk of war. At the same time, when the system is working, the lenders’ only constraint is their judgement as to the borrowers’ credibility. They have no thought as to the benefit or harm to society and environment that the loans to which the loans will be put.

5. The necessity of paying back loans and interest is one of the drivers of economic growth, since a business that has interest and loans to pay off must produce more goods than a business that has no such obligations.

6. Economic growth is destroying the ecosphere.

7. Since all money is issued as debt, bearing compound interest, it is no wonder that the world is drownig in debt, at every level, from personal to international.

8. The derivatives have inflated this debt by “leveraging” – borrowing to buy in the hope of future profits. Minsky describes some derivatives as Ponzi schemes – pyramid selling. The total value of derivatives market is about 10x the world’s GDP. This is one reason that banks do not trust each other, and so will not lend.

9. If the banks will not lend, there is not enough money in the economy, and we go into deflation. It is absurd for the Gvernment to borrow money from the banking system it has just rescued at huge cost to the taxpayer. In this deflationary situation, it is open for the Government to issue new money for investment purposes, creating the needed money just as banks create it (as a multiple of its reserves). This can be issued to renewable energy projects as low interest loans, zero interest loans, or grants.

Darling Dinosaur Dashing to his Doom

Bit depressed over the Pre-Budget report debate. The only ray of light is the money going to energy conservation, but no mention of the necessary massive investment in renewable technology (unlike Obama, who is talking in Green New Deal terms). The Cameron line was a pathetic bleating about the fact that NuLabour considered putting VAT up, although in the end they took it down. Europe has decided against playing with VAT to try to get money circulating in the economy, partly because of all the fiddling with VAT codes that is involved, and the possibility that some vendors will keep prices the same and pocket the increased revenues.

So Brown looks as if his neighbour in Number 11 has pulled the rug out from under Brown's position as World Leader in The Recovery, given his lack of vision with VAT, Green New Deal - and also NIC.

Darling's promised increase in National Insurance contributions is also another Blairean disappointment. Does he not realise that NIC is a tax on jobs, and we need to maximise good work, not tax it?

More clouds on the horizon from the motor industry, who are approaching Downing street with a request for a handout. "Jaguar Land Rover, which employs about 15,000 workers in the West Midlands, has said it wants a £1billion loan to help it cope with "unprecedented trading conditions"."

I wonder if Darling will oblige? He probably will, given his eagerness to stop the Dagenham vote from migrating from NuLab to the BNP. If he does, he will be demonstrating that he knows nothing about economics, in particular that he does not understand the difference between investment and doling out random cash. Investment means putting money into a venture with the expectation of getting more money back in the future as a result. Spending means just giving money away with no prospect of a long-term return. You invest in renewable technology, you spend on motor cars. Motor cars need petrol, Darling, if they are to be of any use, and petrol costs money. How are people with no jobs going to pay for petrol, let alone a new car? Petrol is a finite resource, and is killing our planet. Let market forces take care of the motor industry.

The only valid reason to give money to the motor industry is the EU approach, which is to stimulate energy efficient cars. Darling should help and oblige the industry develop plug in hybrids, which can use waste electricity and boost underpower times on the National Grid. This would save up to 1% of Britain's electricity output.

I doubt that the Government will do that, because they are peopled by intellectual dinosaurs, galloping happily towards the cliff of extinction. Still, we must be brave and think positively. The recession has not yet really started. Once Government realises the enormity of the total mess that we are in, once the dinosaurs realise there is no ground under their feet, then they may be open to the Green New Deal. Give Piglet time, said Eeyore.

Fed up with politicians? Vote here

Many voters are not fully satisfied with the service provided by Westminster. Some continue doggedly to vote, acting out of civic duty. Others abstain, or even consider voting for the BNP - precisely to show their dissatisfaction.

The Green Party needs to get across the message that our world view is a radical departure from the dreary philosophy of corporate profit above all things that rules in Parliament, and that it is a valid constructive, non-violent alternative to the BNP.

I think the strap line image above encapsulates what we need to get across, but that's just my opinion. You can vote for or against this idea : Click Here to take survey

Naked forms etched against the sky...

The sun goes down early here, in the valley, and the trees on the other side of the valley have a bright sky to show themselves against, inky black lines, each line a history of the tree's life flowing to find the best bit of sun, their specific shapes recognisable, each species with its own contours, revealed in their essence now that the leaves are gone.

Trees put all the toxins they do not need into their leaves before they drop.
So when we kick our way joyfully through the piles of odoriferous leaf fall, we are wading through tree crap.

They must think we are disgusting.