Archive for December 2007
The Uncomparable Life and Death of the Most Famous Pakistani Leader
Whatever one could think of her and her many defects, there will undeniably be a time-before and a time-after the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
And that should be enough to establish that she wasn’t just “the daughter of <somebody>”.
Even her assassination has been a very special event. Gunshots followed by a bomb? Virtually unheard of. Al Qaeda it ain’t! As things stand now, it’s more likely that the bomb has been the tool used to “cancel the fingerprints” of whoever ordered the shooting.
Sadly, that means the Pakistani Government is the most likely culprit.
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One definitely wonders what has gone so wrong in the past 60 years, to make the inhabitants of the Land of the Pure so keen to kill each other.
On Nuclear Hypocrisy
Letter published on the International Herald Tribune, Dec 14, 2007
Regarding “Get Tehran inside the tent” by Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh (Views, Dec. 7): The one underlying issue that the writers do not mention, and that does not appear in the article by Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin (“In Tehran we trust?” Views, Dec. 7), is that Iran is alone in a sea of hostile neighbors.
Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb is as logical as Israel’s or Pakistan’s. For the current Iranian regime, and perhaps even for a hypothetical Iranian democracy, it would be extremely foolish to leave the fortunes of the state to the whims of the United States, Europe, Russia, or the Sunni Arab states, especially with troubled neighbors like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It is obvious that the West needs a new policy for Iran. Perhaps once – just once – the powers that be will pay attention to the basic needs of Iran, starting by ruling out an invasion.
Isn’t it telling that Nasr and Takeyh repeat the old fairy tale that during the Cold War “confronting Communism meant promoting capitalism and democracy,” forgetting to mention an egregiously contrary example? In a most tragic decision 54 years ago, the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh was toppled and an autocratic monarch reintroduced, all in the name of fighting world Communism.
Maurizio Morabito, England
Death Penalty Moratorium: New York Times Editorial
Newspapers are slowly waking up to the importance of the Moratorium against Death Penalty approved on Thursday, Dec 18 by the UN General Assembly. Here’s an important editorial “A Pause from Death” from The New York Times (and “Lining up against the death penalty” from the International Herald Tribune):
The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday for a global moratorium on the death penalty. The resolution was nonbinding; its symbolic weight made barely a ripple in the news ocean of the United States, where governments’ right to kill a killer is enshrined in law and custom.
Go to The Board » But for those who have been trying to move the world away from lethal revenge as government policy, this was a milestone. The resolution failed repeatedly in the 1990s, but this time the vote was 104 to 54, with 29 nations abstaining. Progress has come in Europe and Africa. Nations like Senegal, Burundi, Gabon — even Rwanda, shamed by genocide — have decided to reject the death penalty, as official barbarism.
The United States, as usual, lined up on the other side, with Iran, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Iraq. Together this blood brotherhood accounts for more than 90 percent of the world’s executions, according to Amnesty International. These countries’ devotion to their sovereignty is rigid, as is their perverse faith in execution as a criminal deterrent and an instrument of civilized justice. But out beyond Texas, Ohio, Virginia, Myanmar, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe, there are growing numbers who expect better of humanity.
Many are not nations or states but groups of regular people, organizations like the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic movement begun in Italy whose advocacy did much to bring about this week’s successful vote in the General Assembly.
They are motivated by hope — and there is even some in the United States. The Supreme Court will soon hear debate on the cruelty of execution by lethal injection. On Monday, New Jersey became the first state in 40 years to abolish its death penalty.
That event, too, left much of this country underwhelmed. But overseas, the votes in Trenton and the United Nations were treated as glorious news. Rome continued a tradition to mark victories against capital punishment: it bathed the Colosseum, where Christians once were fed to lions, in golden light.
It is rather unfortunate that no mention has been given of the Transnational Radical Party and “Hands Off Cain“, the organizations that have initiated the whole process almost 14 years ago. But the fact that the NYT deemed it important enough to warrant an editorial, should be placate those claiming the Moratorium, as a nonbinding document, is a useless document or worse.
For other articles on the Moratorium:
(1) On the Los Angeles Times, an opinion piece “The UN’s Death Blow” by Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
(2) On BBC News, a Special Report “UN votes for death penalty freeze” with words from the Singapore and Mexican ambassadors and the “detail” that only 51 nations still retain the right to use death penalty
(3) On Euronews (in French), an article “L’Italie s’est fortement impliquée en faveur d’un moratoire sur la peine de mort” with some background on those that have fought for the Moratorium
(4) On the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (in German), an article “Die guten Menschen von Rom” about the Community of Sant’Egidio mentioned by the New York Times’ editorial.
(5) On the Tagesenzeiger (Swiss, in German), an editorial “Ein Akt der Zivilisation” that makes the rather obvious points that dangerous criminals should be locked up, and the death penalty, whatever one thinks of it, is arrogant and archaic.
(6) The Argentinian El Mundo (in Spanish) hosts a commentary “Una victoria italiana contra la pena de muerte“ by the local Italian Ambassador, Stefano Ronca.
(7) In Diário Digital (in Portuguese) there is an exhaustively explanatory article “ONU: AG aprova apelo a moratória na aplicação pena de morte“, explaining the origin of the “Hands Off Cain” name.
And I am sure there’s lots more in other languages I an as yet unable to perform searches with…
Capello’s First Point of Order
Fabio Capello (pr. Kah-Per-Lo), the new England football manager, may or may not have serious intentions in getting the team with a trophy or another.
But if he does, there is one clear thing he needs to impose to change the squad’s attitude: a complete alcohol ban for any player willing to represent England.
Otherwise, Capello’s tenure will end up like Eriksson’s and any other manager’s this side of 1966.
England’s football system is large enough to guarantee that a team of 11 average alcohol-free players can be put together, and they will have an enormously higher chance to win than highly-paid drunks.
If Italy made it in 2006…
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I am not just saying players should stop drinking before matches, or during major competitions. Of course they should, and to do otherwise is a clear sign of foolishness.
But if I were Capello, I would ask for players to not drink any alcohol at all in any moment of their day. Ever.
A player’s career in the national team is usually short anyway, seldom lasting more than 4 or 6 years. If anybody cannot resist that short a time as an absolute teetotaller, in exchange for the possibility of winning the Cup in South Africa 2010, that person must have a serious alcoholism problem. And he should be sent for some basic detox, not to play for his Country.
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Of course there’s always another solution: change nothing, pretend it’s all about football schemes, play on, and just wait for next abysmal failure…
…while going from one rape allegation to another, of course!
ps Is it important for Capello to learn how to speakka goode Englisch? Maybe not. He’d better spend some money to buy a large amount of wild dogs, to unleash against any player showing signs of drunkeness (or just slacking).
Santa A Week Earlier: UN Approves Moratorium on Death Penalty
104 States in favor, 54 against, 29 abstentions. We finally have a Moratorium on the Death Penalty, a moratorium that is approved by the United Nations General Assemply.
This is an extraordinary occasion indeed, the end of almost 14 years of efforts starring “Hands Off Cain“, the Transnational Radical Party and Italian Governments both from the Left and the Right.
The ecumenical impetus is so strong, even the Vatican has positively commented the results.
December 18 may go down in history as the largest Italian foreign policy victory in more than 140 years. And finally, one will be able to say that Italy has given something to international politics, something else than the the invention of Fascism.
A very Merry Christmas to everybody!
The Economist: Does Charlemagne Speak Any French?
Perhaps it would be better for commentators in European matters to travel and live a bit more around Europe
Letter to The Economist:
Dear Editors
The author of the “Charlemagne” column makes quite a fuss about the alleged ability in EU documents for fish to “fish themselves” (“A fishy tale“, Dec 13).
The incipit and a lot of the sarcasm in the article are about “a daring, if grammatically correct, use of reflexive verbs, so that a ministerial statement blamed undersized hake that se pêchaient et se vendaient, suggesting the fish had fished and sold themselves.”
The actual ploy though appears to be based on “Charlemagne“‘s own challenged relationship with the French language.
Far from being “daring“, “passive impersonal” (or “passive reflexive”) is a very common construct in French and in other languages, with the reflexive pronoun “se” used to avoid the seldom-liked standard passive voice.
No French speaker, and nobody but a person with plenty of negative prejudices against the European Union, would have imagined that anybody had ever suggested that “the fish had fished and sold themselves“.
If you have something to criticise about the EU (and there is plenty of material in that respect!) could you please at least make an effort not to concoct baseless innuendos.
Stop NASA’s Life Fixation
There is so much still to explore in the Solar System, and an untold number of astonishing discoveries just out of sheer serendipity…and yet, the only thing that matters for NASA is the possibility of life???
Whatever the source of Enceladus’s fountains, it is obviously very well worth the effort to find something about it.
Tuesday 18: UN General Assembly Vote on Death Penalty Moratorium
The UN General Assembly is likely going to vote on the Universal Moratorium on Capital Punishment on Tuesday 18, presumably shortly after 10am New York time (3pm GMT).
There are many positive indications that a majority of States will support the resolution, although of course nothing will be certain until after the vote’s results are announced.
In any case, it will be the culmination of almost 14 years of efforts:
(1) In 1994, following an initiative by “Hands Off Cain” and the Transnational Radical Party, the Italian Government asked the UN General Assembly to vote on a document asking all Member States to stop capital executions. The resolution did not pass by just 8 votes.
(2) In 1997, the Moratorium was approved by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. The same Commission has approved it since, every single year.
(3) In the meanwhile, the number of States still having the death penalty in their penal codes has gone down from 97 (in 1994) to 48 now.
(4) The Moratorium was presented to the UN General Assembly in 1999, by the European Union that proceeded to inexplicably withdraw it.
(5) During the past year, “Hands Off Cain” and the Transnational Radical Party have been working relentlessly for more than one year with Parliaments, Governments and citizens the world over, to get the resolution once again submitted for a UN General Assembly vote.
(6) The Italian Parliament lower Chamber and the European Parliament have unanimously declared support for the resolution. Signatories to an “Appeal for the Moratorium” included 55 Nobel Prize winners and tens of thousands more people.
(7) On June 18, 2007 the European Union General Affairs Council decided to present the resolution to the UN General Assembly’s 62th Session in September.
(8) On November 15, 2007 the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly approved the resolution as presented by Italy and 86 more countries from all continents. Votes have been 99 in favour, 52 against.
Finally, sometimes on December 18, 2007 the whole UN General Assembly will be asked to approve the Moratorium.
Fingers crossed!!!
Formula for a Happier Life (2)
Follow English football coach Fabio Capello’s advice: “Why should I waste my time listening to people who are clearly less intelligent than me?”
(here the first Formula for a Happier Life)
There Is More Than One Pope
Listening to the Pope has become like looking at a piece of art. Everybody stares at the same thing, but few will agree on what they are actually seeing…
Who will ever believe that the news articles reported below are meant to be about the same person giving the same speech?
(1) From Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”
“The Pope on the environment, nuclear bombs and the Family in defence of peace and the poorest Countries” (Dec 11)
The Pope asks the international community to assume its responsibilities and to not postpone its decisions in matter of environmental protection of the atmosphere. That must be done, he reminds, “with precaution”, a collective engagement and “without ideological accelerations towards hastened conclusions”. It must be done – he adds – within a “dialogue” and not with “unilateral decisions”.
(2) From UK newspaper “Daily Mail”
“The Pope condemns the climate change prophets” (Dec 11)
[The Pope said] “it is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances. […]
“Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken.”
(3) From Reuters South Africa
“Pope urges prudence in environmental decisions” (Dec 11)
(4) From AFP
“Environmental policies must respect needs of the poor: pope” (Dec 12)
(5) From UK newspaper “The Guardian”
(nothing at all. Must be busy trying to figure out their own spin)
(6) From UK newspaper “The Independent”
(nothing at all. Must be busy trying to figure out their own spin)
(7) From “Pink News” (yes you guessed it…)
“Pope’s message – gay weddings threaten peace” (Dec 11)
Global Warming May Be Just European
Readers of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report – Working Group 2 (AR4-WG2) may be forgiven to think a colossal misreading of available data may be at the foundation of contemporary Climate Change/Global Warming scares.
That report contains a map of “significant changes” (SC) already observed around the world. It is repeated throughout, and you can see it in the Summary for Policymakers, page 10, Figure SPM.1.
A total of 29,459 SCs are reported. An impressive number, at first glance.
Only, 96% of those changes regard just Europe.
The IPCC itself could not list more than 1,225 SCs not related to Europe.
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This enormous geographical bias does not get better when we count how many of those SCs are actually “consistent with a warming world”.
Planet-wise, there are 26,285. Of those, 96% are in Europe. Actually, 25,022 are European SCs related to “biological systems”.
That’s 95% of the total.
That means that outside of Europe, the IPCC could not find more than 1,150 SCs “consistent with warming”.
Compare that to the number of European SCs NOT-“consistent with warming”: 3,100
We have twice as many changes that are INCONSISTENT with warming in Europe, than CONSISTENT with warming in the rest of the world.
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Note also the distribution of the other “observed changes”. Only 7 for the whole of Africa, 114 for Asia, and 144 for the Polar Regions.
But what is most notable is that in the whole of North America (where, one would expect, a lot of researchers reside), only 810 SCs have been reported. Of those, 752 are consistent with warming.
That’s 3% of the total.
So for a summary: 96% from Europe. 3% with North America. Almost nothing for everywhere else.
How global can that be?
The Best Science Blog 2007 Saga (3 of 3)
Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy (BA) and Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit (CA) have been awarded the 2007 Weblogs Award for Best Science blog. Remarkably, they are both prisoners of their own devices: BA cannot criticize mainstream science, CA can only criticize mainstream science. They are both great blogs and their shared Award is a honest snapshot of their relative merits. PZ Myers’ Pharyngula, on the other hand…
The Best Science Blog 2007 Saga (1 of 3) – Introduction and The Bad Astronomy Blog
The Best Science Blog 2007 Saga (2 of 3) – The Climate Audit Blog and The Weblogs Award for Best Science Blog committee
The Best Science Blog 2007 Saga (3 of 3) – Pharyngula and Conclusions (and a Prayer)
Pharyngula
Pharyngula was one of the nominees this year, having won the title for 2006. Its author PZ Myers is a friend of Phil Plait’s so I am sure that somehow somewhere in some occasion he must be fun, knowledgeable and a person nice to discuss things with.
Evidently though, not in matters of climate.
Where Science has in Plait an ally in the War against it, in Myers it finds a mixture of a pasionario and a pasdaran. For a guy competing in Best Science Blog he has definitely shown too short a temper and too high a willingness to shower insults to anybody in sight. Not sure how he won anything last year, but I do wonder how (highly) lively and how (pretty) meaningless the commentaries on Myers’ blog must be.
Well, I’ll keep wondering. Pharyngula? No thanks. I’ll stay away from it.
Conclusions (and a Prayer)
In a sense, both BA and CA show strong signs of being more than a little bit prisoners of their own background. One cannot criticize mainstream science, the other can only criticize mainstream science. One can only think climate change is strong science, the other cannot think it is strong at all.
Is BA better than CA? The other way around? Who knows?
The one thing that can be learned is that as in so many other endeavours, anthropogenic-global-warming (AGW) advocacy poisons everything it touches
In fact, there is one big difference between McIntyre and Plait. The former can afford talking graciously of the latter. Phil Plait instead only (mostly?) sees global warming skeptics as “denialists”: being at war _and_ in the AGW camp, out of sheer comradery he simply has to sing in tune with question-dodging debate-challenged censors like RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt.
McIntyre may then look a tad more gracious than Plait regarding the BSB prize, but that’s also because his war is of much more limited size than Plait’s.
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May the Bad Astronomer wake up one day to the fact that if there is a War on Science out there, it is not the only game in town. And so it is possible to honestly doubt the dire predictions of contemporary mainstream climatology: just as one can be a honest cosmologist and still not believe in strings or dark energy.
I am optimistic about it. You see, being a Skeptic, Phil Plait is bound to agree with that. What is the point of being very strict in analyzing and refuting the claims s that prayer can heal you, only to support shoddy politicized statements by the IPCC on climate?
One last thing though. Did I mention this already? Pharyngula is a foul-mouthed blog too full of its author.
Preventative Nobel Peace Prize a Sign of the Times
After a (disastrous) preventative war in Iraq in 2003, we are going to see a (potentially disastrous) preventative Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC on December 10 at a ceremony in Oslo.
Why can’t we deal with real-and-present problems, and have to make up fantasies of new ones, I wonder?
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What will people make of our climate change circus in 50 years’ time is anybody’s guess.
Surely though, they will still question what Al Gore and the IPCC had actually done, by the middle of 2007, to deserve a prize. No Kyoto-II agreement has been reached yet, no CO2 emission cutting program has been implemented by any Government yet, and no “smoking gun” for greenhouse-gas-induced climatic change has been found yet.
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Things are actually a-moving, and the still-ongoing Bali conference may come out with a document asking developing countries to develop rather less. Who would have thought that “global warming” rhymes with “neocolonialism”?
And yet, there is some hope. The bandwagon has become so huge, it will be next-to-impossible to steer. Expect ridiculous targets nobody will ever try to reach, set for times unbelievably far in the future.
Until one day, the Sun will cool us down, and so will die the mad dream of anthropogenic climate change.
Iran: Security, Not Insults
Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh’s op-ed on the IHT (“Get Tehran inside the tent“, Dec 7) may be finally pointing to the obvious: provide stability to the Middle East by realizing that Iran is not going to move elsewhere any time soon.
But for that be achieved, a better vocabulary wouldn’t hurt. In fact, what would any Nation make if not insults of words such as “opportunistic“, “seeking predominance“, “to be contained“?
The one underlying issue that Nasr and Takeyh don’t mention, and does not even appear in Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin’s other op-ed in the same newspaper about Iranian nuclear activities (“In Tehran we trust?“) is that the former Persian state is alone in a sea of neighbours all of whom are hostile to various degrees.
Its pursuit of a nuclear bomb capability is as logical as Israel’s or Pakistan’s. For the current Iranian religious regime, and perhaps even for a hypothetical fully-fledged liberal Iranian democracy, it would be extremely foolish to leave the fortunes of the State to the whims of the USA, Europe or Russia, or of the Sunni Arab states, especially with troubled places like Iraq immediately to the West, and Afghanistan and Pakistan just to the East.
With the recent collapse of years of strong-armed American attempts at isolating Iran, it is obvious that there is a need for “a new policy now for going forward“, as one European official is quoted saying. Perhaps once, just once, the Powers will pay attention to the basic needs of Iran, starting from the elemental security of not risking any invasion, war, or foreign-concocted “regime change“.
Isn’t it telling that Nasr and Takeyh repeat the old fairy tale that during the Cold War, “confronting communism meant promoting capitalism and democracy“? Forgetting therefore to mention an egregiously contrary example.
In a most tragic decision 54 years ago by the CIA, the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was toppled and an autocratic monarch reintroduced, all in the name of fighting world communism.
And where did that happen? Why, in Iran.
By the Beach in Florida, in 1957
Dec 6, 1957: Vanguard-TV3, three feet up, still 656,165 to go before reaching orbit…
Ponderously it lifted itself off the pad—one foot, two feet, three feet. For one blink of an eye it seemed to stand still. A tongue of orange flame shot out from beneath the rocket, darted downwind, then billowed up the right side of TV3 into a fireball 150 feet high. “There it goes! There is an explosion!” an observation pilot cried into his radio
News of the failure of TV3 was flashed out around the nation and the world. Impact: shock, scorn, derision. Almost instantly the U.S.’s tiny, grounded satellite got rechristened stallnik, flopnik, dudnik, puffnik, phutnik, oopsnik, goofnik, kaputnik and—closer to the Soviet original—sputternik. At the U.N., Soviet diplomats laughingly suggested that the U.S. ought to try for Soviet technical assistance to backward nations. An office worker in Washington burst into tears; a calypso singer on the BBC in London strummed a ditty about Oh, from America comes the significant thought/Their own little Sputnik won’t go off. Said a university professor in Pittsburgh: “It’s our worst humiliation since Custer’s last stand.” Said Dr. John P. Hagen, director of Project Vanguard, as he got ready to face a doleful press conference in Washington: “Nuts.“
UK: 42-day Terror Limit Explained
London, 6 December (MNN) – Uninformed sources far from the British Home Secretary have finally explained why Jacqui Smith is going to recommend to Parliament to give the Police 42 days to hold terror suspects without charge.
“The number is magic“, our informant explained. “Apart from the Douglas Adams connection, it is the number of seconds the Prime Minister dedicated to the well-being of the electors during the whole of last month. It is the number of privacy-data-containing disks actually lost by HMRC. It is the number of sleaze scandals left to discover in the life of this Government“.
In unrelated news: new analysis have confirmed that the average IQ of a Labour Government Minister is in the region of 42.
Also, the Tories have stated their “terror limit” is 28, whilst the LibDems are still debating, all meeting in the back of the usual cab.
Did We Just Miss George W Bush’s Election as President of Venezuela?
Roger Cohen’s thoughtful piece on Venezuela (“The limits of 21st-century revolution“, IHT, Dec 3) may have missed some important news coming from Caracas…
In fact, President Hugo Chavez said on the eve of the recent Venezuelan referendum that “Anyone who votes ‘No’ is voting for George W. Bush“.
Now, since the majority of people actually did vote “No”, doesn’t that mean George W Bush has just been elected President of Venezuela?
One wonders…
Shame in Bali (Beware of the Gents!)
The UN Conference on climate change in a luxury resort in sunny Bali is likely to go down in history as the biggest waste of public money this side of Nero’s rebuilding of Ancient Rome. The idea that the only way to get less CO2 in the atmosphere is to organize the biggest event in UN history is beyond belief.
Anyway, as usual in everything called global warming, numbers simply never add up:
(1) the Sunday Times estimates 15,000 people, TV crews included
(2) Voice of America opts for 20,000, without the TV crews
(3) AP talks of more than 10,000 delegates, celebrities included
(4) Radio Australia says 5,000 police officers will be there, an extraordinary amount that will generate several tonnes of CO2 by itself (also, I didn’t think UN meetings could get rowdy?)
In truth, if anybody can manage to get anything meaningful out of 10,000/15,000/ 20,000 people in two weeks, either all those are there just to rubber-stamp something already prepared, or the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the wrong UN group
In any case…they better watch out when using the gentlemen’s lavatories
Maurizio - Omnologos 