Climate Change Activism’s Wreck of a Train

Observationally, they have nothing to show to support their claims of upcoming climate disasters. Scientifically, they got it mixed up and regularly distort what Science is and is not showing. In practice, they are using persuasion tools developed to save pandas and the Hudson river, and those are the wrong ones because Anthropogenic Global Warming is not a species in peril now or a river polluted at the present, but a risk for the end of the century.

No wonder then, Climate Change activists have been fighting a mostly political battle for at least two decades. And the main objective appears time and again to force their solutions upon us, and to stifle all forms of dissent.

In desperation, what else have they got?

IgNobel Peace Prize A More Likely Contribution to Peace than Al Gore’s

Apparently one of the reasons for Al Gore and the IPCC to receive the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize relates to “green” being nowadays equal to “peace”.

This is absolutely a fantasy as there are many, many wars and conflicts around the world and not even one can honestly be related to climate change or global warming.

The one example that is always used is the remote possibility that increased drought would be behind the Darfur genocide. Such a link has been fabricated in a recent UN report and it is a shameful way of abandoning all those women and children while providing a ready-made excuse for the people committing the genocide.

All that, because a bunch of rich people fear that world temperature may go up 2C in 40 or 100 years, and can only get their worries on top of everybody’s agendas by stocking up fears?

The issues about Darfur have nothing to do with climate. And in any case, on the entire rest of the surface of the planet there is not a single other place where armed conflicts can be even remotely connected to any presumed, measure or modelled change in the climate.

Israel is bombing nuclear targets in Syria and Damascus did not even complain, and we think that peace will come from lowering CO2 in the atmosphere??

———

The contribution by Al Gore and the IPCC to present or future peace remains a mystery indeed. And other big questions remain open:

• Why give a Prize before the fact, when we do not even have a Kyoto-II Agreement?
• Why a political award to what is supposed to be a non-policy-making international body of scientists like the IPCC?
• Why not a Nobel Prize in Physics for the IPCC if the science of global warming is strong enough to justify their efforts that earned them a Peace Prize?
• Why can’t concerned IPCC scientists group themselves outside of the Panel, thus separating Science from politics?

All in all, this year’s IgNobel Peace Prize does seem a more likely contribution to peace than what Al Gore and the IPCC have not yet done:

PEACE: The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon — the so-called “gay bomb” — that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.
REFERENCE: “Harassing, Annoying, and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals,” Wright Laboratory, WL/FIVR, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, June 1, 1994.

A bit far-fetched, perhaps, especially about attracting annoying creatures, eliciting halitosis and the extraordinary application of the old slogan Make Love Not War to the battlefield: still, the Wright Laboratory’s efforts were (are?) about changing the nature of the armed conflicts of today, not the ones some very worried people are imagining now will happen in five or more decades.

Lib-Dems Vote to Depopulate Scotland

Brighton, 18 Sep (MNN) – At their annual conference in Brighton, the Lib-Dems have decided to back a radical series of proposals to tackle climate change – including a ban on people living in Scotland by 2040.

Environment spokesman Chris Huhne said tackling global warming would need an “enormous economic change”.

As simply too many people stubbornly keep their abodes in the damp, cold northern regions of the British Isles, generating humongous amounts of carbon dioxide just to heat their houses up, the only solution is to get everybody over to the warmer side of Hadrian’s Wall.

“Climate Change is a threat to democracy”, Lib-Dem delegates have been told, “and tough sacrifices are in order to save our planet.”

In other news: Lib-Dems are going to vote on a proposal to mandate nomadism by 2047.

This will allow everybody to move (on foot!) from one day to the next to find the warmest place where to mount their tent, without having to burn any greenhouse-gas-emitting fuel.

The Positive Side of Terrorism

A warm welcome to my blog to all the folks at the NSA.

Hello guys and gals, how are you doing?

I know, I know, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. Don’t move, son, let me beat you up, I assure you it’s gonna hurt me more than it’s gonna hurt you. And all that.

By the way: no, I don’t see any positive side in terrorism. If you ask me, it’s a crime against humanity and an act of cowardice to plant bomb or otherwise try to instill fear into innocent people getting on with their daily lives with little or no hope to prevent their Governments do this or that.

Oh well, I hope you and your automatic e-mail scanning system have had the time to properly digest the paragraph above. Otherwise, see you all in Gitmo!

Kisses for now and goodbye also to the American Constitution

The Future of Marriage

The future of the religious form of marriage is in the hands of the respective clerics and faithful people.

The future of civil marriage is to be placed away from the hands of the State, until it lasts. And for civil wedding to be eliminated.

What is the State for, in fact, but to manage conflict situations also within its own society?

If I establish a friendship with a neighbour, do I have to make that public in the Town Hall? Of course not. But if I start an argument with them, it may go as bad as to warrant the intervention of the Law (the Police, or even “just” a lawsuit).

And so it should and surely will be that there will be no hand at all of the State when two people want to live together: whilst the weakest component of the couple, if the love and friendship disappear, will only have to demonstrate the two were living “as husband and wife” (in Ancient Rome, more uxorio), for the Law to act in their defense.

Even if policies dictate incentives for couples, again all they should have to show is that they are a couple (perhaps, a stable couple in the second year of cohabitation)…how it all started, and if there was a ceremony with a mayoral representative mimicking the religious ritual, all that must surely be immaterial from the point of view of the individual’s rights.

The above will finally re-align legality and societal mores, now so completely at odds with each other. With the added bonus of further separating God and Mammon, as Somebody recommended to do a few years ago…

From the Neo-cons to the Neo-warms

(Letter to the IHT – published on April 28, 2007 – reply from other IHT reader published on May 2, 2007)

Dear Editors

The phraseology of one of your Op-Eds is quite clear: the new “terror” is called “climate stress“, and it will cause a long list of disasters and upheavals if “nations fail to aggressively limit carbon dioxide emissions and develop technologies and institutions” “to cope with a warmer planet.”

(“Terror in the weather forecast” by Thomas Homer-Dixon, IHT April 25, 2007)

And so: just a few years ago the neo-cons pushed for an ill-judged preventative “war on Saddam” to protect us against fantasized Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

And to export the institutions of Democracy.

Nowadays it’s the turn of the neo-warms: recommending a preventative “war on carbon dioxide” to protect us against (future!) climatic changes of just as massive (predicted) destruction potential.

Ominously, this too will mean exporting political institutions.

Don’t we ever learn?

Blair and Gore Cannot Be Wrong on Climate Change

UK PM Tony Blair, former US VP Al Gore and so many other politicians: why have they been so eager to jump on the Climate-Change-is-Humanity’s-Fault bandwagon?

A cynical explanation is in order: because they can’t lose by joining in.

They risk losing a lot instead, by staying out.

In fact, if (a) they can appear to be doing something about Human-induced Climate Change (CC):

• a1. If CC doesn’t happen, they will claim victory, or
• a2. If CC does happen, they will blame us all for not trying hard enough, and introduce ever harsher policies in order to… appear to be doing something about CC

On the other hand, the opposite position, of (b) publicly expressing doubts that Climate Change is caused by humans if it is happening at all, will mean:

• b1. If CC doesn’t happen, they will claim victory, but
• b2. If CC does happen, they will be blamed by us all for not trying hard enough

Worse, as climate is bound to naturally change if we just observe it for long enough a time, the “If CC doesn’t happen” options are simply immaterial.

It is self-evident then that (a) provides unlimited reward and no risk, while (b) vice-versa carries little reward and career-breaking risks.

Only naive or honest politicians, provided they exist, will refrain from shouting that Humanity is bound to destroy the planet by overheating it with carbon dioxide.

If anybody believes that the above is going to inspire good policies, I’ve got a bridge to sell them

(blog inspired by messages on the Climate Sceptics mailing list)

Cato Institute Scholar Lauds the Power of Taxes

Perhaps Arnold Kling may want to reconsider his thoughts after realizing he has just argued for higher taxes, and heavier governmental intervention in the energy sector:

The most important, inconvenient truth about energy policy is that there is no justification for a subsidy for good energy. Subsidies for wind farms, solar energy, ethanol, and so forth, whether they come from government “energy policy” or personal carbon offsets, are pure pork.

It may be true, as Greg Mankiw argues in his Pigou Club Manifesto, that higher taxes on bad energy are justified. Figuring out the optimum tax is a difficult challenge, even for the Pigou Club. However, once the correct tax is set, that by itself provides all the incentive that is needed to get people to switch to good energy. The tax on bad energy will raise the price that people are willing to pay for good energy. That higher price for good energy is all of the incentive that producers need to undertake the effort to provide more good energy.

It would have helped to have a little more reasoning on how difficult the challenge to find what a “optimum tax” is, and how dangerous things can become if that’s miscalculated.

As things stand, I can imagine such details getting forgotten whilst certain people will use the article “The Political Economy of Alternative Energy” to support strong governmental activism.

Or perhaps it’s a matter of finding the lesser of two evils? Was Kling’s a way to demonstrate that pork looks worse than taxes in the eyes of a person advocating freer markets?

Climate Change’s Toothless Circus

Thousands of delegates have been flown to giant air-conditioned conference and hotel rooms in Nairobi, plus journalists, TV crews, etc etc, all eating lots of food and drinking plenty of water (and more…), neither likely to have been mass-produced locally

And the most likely outcome is…the usual wishy-washy Climate Change rubbish

Is there anything to worry about the Climate Change circus? I am starting to think, there is not

Catastrophilia at the NYRB

The juxtaposition in the Nov 16 issue of the New York Review of Books, of Bill McKibben’s “How Close to Catastrophe?” with Garry Wills’ “A Country Ruled by Faith” is deeply telling of the fashionable status of catastrophism in a varied set of social and cultural strata, from evangelical right-wingers to climate-concerned scientists

Wills laments the influence on the White House of “premillennial lack of concern for the earth’s fate as Jesus’ coming nears” and the related support of the Iraq War as “a focal point of end-time events” (in the words of evangelical writer Tim LaHaye)

For his part, McKibben may not expecting “Jesus’ coming” any time soon, but, ironically, he is really onto big thoughts about “end-time events“: perhaps of a climatic rather than theological variety; “scientific” rather than faith-based

Still, the language used by McKibben is remarkably similar to any Millennial cult’s

We are repeatedly lead towards believing in James Lovelock’s dire predictions for Earth to become a red desert. Ice is melting faster, and if we don’t do something by 2015, we will find ourselves crossing “a threshold” and creating “a different planet”

Lest the reader misses any of the points, McKibben writes with conviction that “a wave large enough to break civilization is forming”

Is that the same person that ends the article by suggesting that what “we need most badly is the technology of community—the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done“?

One only wishes McKibben would practice as he preaches, and stop using the language of fear, to substitute it with a deeper appreciation and respect, also for the community of his readers

ps There is one factual error. McKibben writes about a “homeostasis” that somehow has managed to keep the planet’s “temperature, at a relatively stable level“. What stable temperatures? Global temperatures have been swinging widely for billions of years, and just a few thousand years ago ice sheets were covering plenty of the Northern Emisphere

Climate Change Propaganda? No thank you

Today’s TCS Daily (Europe) sported my article on the sinister side of Climate Change propaganda, a commentary on the recently-published report ““Warm Words: How are we telling the climate story and can we tell it better?”

global-warming pessimists […] are now being encouraged to make-believe their own reality, building for all of us an almost certainly gloomy future. Armed with propaganda rather than rational persuasion, they are advocating an orthodoxy reminiscent of some past Communist States. […]

[The authors of the report] go as far as to implicitly recognize that possibly climate change catastrophism is “another apocalyptic construction […] perhaps a figment of our cultural imaginations”. […]

Is the terrain being prepared for zealot eco-revolutionaries soon to remove most freedoms and a wide range of technological achievements, imposing us a future “eco-friendly” life of pain, illness, manual labour and struggle, with the belief that human ingenuity is an evil that will destroy the planet instead than improve our lives? […]

I am still waiting for a single weather pattern to change due to Global Warming. Feel free to point that out when (and if) it happens

Idiotic, Suicidal Terrorism Is Bound To Destroy Itself

News come and go. What if Scotland Yard comes back in a few weeks’ time apologizing to everybody and anybody ever accused of masterminding a bogus terror plot? 

Much more important for most of us, what is the long-term perspective of present-day suicidal terrorism?

It’s that there isn’t much to fear about, because suicide-based terrorism is peculiarly idiotic, bound to destroy itself (unless we do anything egregiously wrong)

• For the law of diminishing returns, either attacks get bigger and bigger, or the targeted population will feel habituation rather than increased fear. It’s like opening (the proverbial bonfire) with the stakes too high, and having to destroy one’s forest simply to keep up

• There’s millions of potential victims, and one day they will surely come up with novel solutions to prevent the killings, making further attacks quite hard to organize: think the Israeli wall, think the changed tactics of the US Navy after the first round of Japanese Kamikaze pilots

• Just like then, “the best and the brightest” in the terror organization are bound to blow themselves up. They can be substituted, but it does take around two decades to make another terrorist. In the meanwhile, ranks will be increasingly fuller of coward weasels that couldn’t stomach the suicide they themselves require of the others

• Those people want to die whilst the rest of the world wants to live. Guess who’ll be sticking around the longest? On average, both aspirations are bound to be fulfilled

• In the fight against relatively well-organized societies, for the terrorists the only way to victory is to get hold of weapons of mass destruction.  But even in that case, the only thing a suicidal terror organization will succeed in doing, is to eliminate itself

Instead of making the life of the many increasingly more difficult, the best thing we can do is first and foremost to get on with our lives (unless of course one is professionally involved in the prevention of terror attacks and other criminality)

Limits to Front-End Beneficiary Participation in the Development Process

Prepared for the course “Development in Practice”, Birkbeck College, London March 2006

Introduction

The global sustainability debates, a turn towards a deliberative/communicative academic approach to Development [15], disillusionment with traditional blue-print planning [9]: these are some of the reasons behind the ongoing popularity of Front-End Beneficiary Participation, i.e. the involvement in a project, long before its design stage, of the people that are going to benefit from it (the Beneficiaries, communities and individuals).

With a group approach, FEBP can in theory encourage self-reliance among Beneficiaries [3][16][9], guarantee wider reach and involvement, and achieve “higher production levels“, a “more equitable distribution of benefits” and a reduction in recurrent costs “by stressing decentralization […] and self-help” [16], apart of course from helping in the adoption of innovations and even supporting social peace [12].

However, to fulfill its potential, FEBP must allow Beneficiaries to move up the Ladder of Citizen Participation, beyond tokenism [2] to let them have an effective say in the definition, control and verification of what is done, and how. But who really has that “power“? For example, what are the consequences of internal power dynamics [9] among Beneficiaries? With the above in mind, FEBP’s limits are evaluated here with the help of published literature and an analysis of the experience of Concern.

A Development Organization: “Concern“

Started by Irish priests after the Biafra famine of 1968, Concern is a “non-governmental, international, humanitarian organization dedicated to the reduction of suffering“, with as goal the “elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries” [8]. Its Beneficiaries are typically living in extreme poverty in States in the bottom forty of the UN Human Development Index; often in a rural setting, dependent on agriculture, lacking essential services in health and education and denied fundamental rights [1]. Emphasis is on lifestyle improvements sustainable without “ongoing support from Concern” [6], and on the promotion of gender equality [8].

Projects (covering Health, Basic Education, Livelihoods, HIV/AIDS and Emergency Response) focus more on matters of necessity than efficient use of resources [1]. The work is organized “directly with beneficiary groups“ or “a wide range of intermediate organizations” [5] in alliances such as FairTrade and MakePovertyHistory. Usually, research is carried out by answering questions such as ‘Does this [proposal] fit our mandate?’, ‘Can we intervene?’ (security, skills, funds, relationship with host government), ‘How much should we spend?’ and ‘How should we intervene?’ [4].

Results: The Limits of FEBP

FEBP at Concern – For Concern, FEBP is fundamental, “not only important but imperative” [1]. As stated in the Project Cycle Management System and several policy papers [1], any analysis “should include the involvement of those living in poverty” [4]. The actual implementation depends on targeting –scale, level and mechanism of involvement [6] – and is usually achieved through the following tools [1]:· Participatory Rural Appraisal, with local knowledge, analysis and plans [17]· Participatory Learning and Action, with local people learning their “needs, opportunities, and […] the actions required to address them” [14]· Community-Based Participatory Development, i.e. engaging existing structures

· Gender and Development (GAD), seeking the “participation of women and women’s groups at every stage of the process” [1]

· Goal Oriented Project Planning (ZOPP), with the involvement of all stakeholders

· Rapid Rural Appraisal, interdisciplinary teams with local involvement [11]

· Other tools of best practice depending on appropriateness and skills

Methodological Limits – Concern’s attention to GAD reveals how important issues of power are in the techniques of FEBP. In fact, Participation runs paradoxically the risk of disempowering people “already without a voice” [7], for example if the Development Organization approaches the Beneficiaries just as yet another “interest group” lobbying its way to being listened to and catered for [10]. Additional problems relate to on Development workers’ lack of awareness of participatory principles and methods [1], combined with a plethora of not-easy-to-select available tools. There are also the usual difficulties with “issue remoteness” (Beneficiaries don’t get involved unless policies/actions have an immediate impact in their lives) [9]; and “consultation fatigue” (projects ask too much and too often to and from their participants) [10]. Any implementation of FEBP is also bound to the particular Organization that is sponsoring it, to the Project that will be designed [9], to the Community whose participation is requested; and by the natural, human resistance to change of the Development workers, their cultural baggage and their linguistic abilities. FEBP may also suffer from uncertainties on “what is a group” and the “group’s” internal cohesion / homogeneity (the “myth of community”) [9].

Beneficiary-side Limits – The outcomes of FEBP approaches are in fact greatly influenced by complex psychological group dynamics [9], such as exchanges (between the community, its members, the Development Organization and other “actors”) of their “relative power”, the capacity to control, influence, and decide. For example, as FEBP is done through groups, certain individuals may feel less prone to fully participate, if they don’t see that as part of their contribution to the society. The community itself could feel inclined to express its “needs” in terms of what the particular Development Organization is expected to deliver.

Poor, poorly educated, poorly skilled, subsistence-farming beneficiaries may also not have enough time or other resources, to become fully aware of participatory principles and methods, and to dedicate the appropriate amounts of time to FEBP. And on top of the usual cultural/linguistic barriers, Beneficiaries have to deal with the unfamiliar terminology of institutional language and the jargon of Development [9].

Mitigation – The shortcomings of FEBP restrict its possibilities, leading at times to “formulaic”, “religious” [9] applications of “rigid” methodologies [1]. Participation could transmutate in political co-option: “talking” a previously-neglected community (often, its already overburdened female members), into providing cheap labor [9].Good Participation evidently depends on Good Governance of FEBP, starting from lessening the consequences of power dynamics: by giving due consideration to the “relative bargaining power” of the Participants, Beneficiaries included [9]; by delegating decision-making to a local level [1]; and by building close personal relationships with individuals, not only communities [9].

Knowledge, effectiveness and flexibility can be improved via a “Lessons Learned” process: with FEBP appraisals and improvements as ongoing tasks; with their results pushed out to the whole Organization; and with the replication of successful participatory programmes [1]. “Lessons Learned” must also include the spreading of the awareness of the limitations of FEBP itself, and lead to the exploration/investigation of alternatives [9].

Conclusions

In the face of its many advantages Front-End Beneficiary Participation has specific limits and is no panacea for the efficient and effective development of communities:

· Limits of FEBP come both from the approach taken by the Development Organization; and from the conditions of the Beneficiaries themselves

· Issues include Power, Awareness/Information, Flexibility, and Culture

· When limitations are native to FEBP, improvements or alternative approaches should be considered

· A continuous re-evaluation of methodologies an increased attention to individuals may help overcome some of those constraints

Bibliography

[1] Deering, K. (UK Head of Partnership Development at Concern Worldwide UK) (2006) Personal correspondence with the author.

[2] Arnstein, S. (1969) A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 34: 216-225

[3] Chambers, R. (1984) Putting the last first. London: Longman

[4] Concern Worldwide (2000) How Concern Targets Countries for Poverty Elimination. Dublin

[5] Concern Worldwide (2001) Capacity Building Policy. Dublin

[6] Concern Worldwide (2002) Concern’s approach to emergencies. Dublin

[7] Concern Worldwide (2004) Programme Participant Protection Policy. Dublin

[8] Concern Worldwide (2005), Policy Statement. Dublin

[9] Cooke, B., Kothari, U. (2001) “Introduction”, in Cooke, B., Kothari, U. (Eds.) Participation: the New Tyranny. London: Zed Books Ltd.

[10] Croft, S. and Beresford, P. (1996) “The Politics Of Participation”, in Taylor, D. (Editor) Critical Social Policy: A reader, London: Sage, pp175-198 (cited in Cornwall, A., and Gaventa, J. (2000) From users and choosers to makers and shapers: Repositioning Participation in Social Policy. IDS Bulletin 31 (4): pp 50-62)

[11] Crawford, I.M. (1997) “Chapter 8: Rapid Rural Appraisal”, in Marketing Research and Information Systems. (Marketing and Agribusiness Texts – 4). Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

[12] De Soto, H. (1989) The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism. New York: Basic Books

[13] Healey, P. (1997) Collaborative Planning: shaping places in fragments societies. Basingstoke: Macmillan

[14] International Institute for Environment and Development (2003) What is Participatory Learning and Action?. London: IIED

[15] Mbiba, B. (2006) Participation: The ladder of citizen participation and limits to participation. Lecture Notes

[16] Van Heck, B. (2003) “Why Participation and What are the Obstacles?”, in Participatory Development: Guidelines on Beneficiary Participation in Agricultural and Rural Development. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

[17] World Bank (1996) The World Bank Participation Sourcebook, Appendix I: Methods and Tools. Washington, D.C.

Ethics and Coal

Is this sad or cool? I just had my seventh published letter on the pages of the International Herald Tribune (June 28, 2006)

“Coal’s False Promise”

Jeff Goodell indulges in circular reasoning when he writes that the biggest problem with coal is “what it does to our minds. It preserves the illusion that we don’t have to change our lives” (“Coal’s false promise to America,” Views, June 24).

If coal is abundant and available, as Goodell reports, surely there are fewer reasons to worry about the end of cheap oil? And if coal causes environmental problems because of antiquated extraction and burning practices, isn’t the problem one of improving those technologies and processes, rather than abandoning coal altogether? 

One is left with the impression that the campaign against coal is just another moralizing enterprise, taking advantage of purported shortages to corral us into living a “more ethical” life.

Maurizio Morabito Orpington, England

I will blog about the other six letters published so far (and all the ones never printed), but for now a list is available by searching for “maurizio morabito” at this link

Free the Poor from Social Housing

Why would the poor remain poor?

Surely even they must be able to understand the obvious advantages of being rich? And so is it right to treat them with condescension, as a fellow member of a mailing list once wrote “If they're born into and stay there, then they stay there by choice”?

Choice? What choice?

People born in squalid conditions, "educated" in squalid conditions and inhabiting in squalid conditions…aren’t they obviously less likely to take advantage of opportunities for the mere fact that they simply cannot see them?

Because they have seen few of them in the past, have been "taught" to live in squalid conditions, have had little exposure to people that "made it" (apart from successful drug traffickers and other gangmasters)

Not to mention the fact that "opportunities" are hard to take advantage of when the daily struggle is how to avoid having one's apartment taken over by crazed drug addicts

There is some data showing that in the UK the people of Afro-Caribbean descent less likely to be poor nowadays are the ones whose families were unable to get a flat in those gigantic housing complexes for the poor (that have since then turned in labyrinthine no-law areas)

For more than a decade after blacks began to arrive in Britain in large numbers, they were excluded from public housing and occasionally from private rented accommodation too. By 1971, 44% had bought properties. Fortunately for them, many of those properties were in central neighbourhoods that have seen enormous price increases. […]

Many of those who fought their way into public housing, on the other hand, have become stuck in the inner city. Having been placed disproportionately in high-rise blocks, surrounded by criminality and malfunctioning schools, they lack the means of advancement. Black women's finances are not helped by a rate of lone parenthood that is more than twice the national average.

I say, let’s destroy asap all old-style social housing projects. Redistribute the people in the real world, as intermingled with other social strata as possible. And especially at the beginning, help their children 24/7 to find a way out of what life has taught them so far.

A tragic result that should make us think twice about the bovine application of simplistic socialist ideals

London Metropolitan Police’s secret Gillette Squad

London, 14 Jun (MNN) – In an unexpected turn of the events, Sir Ian “Shoot-The-Innocent” Blair, London's Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has admitted today that a special, ultra-secret police squad codenamed “Gillette” has been behind the botched anti-terror 4am intervention of security forces in the house of honest, beard-sporting Londoners

During the course of the interview, Sir Ian repeated several times that, although weeks of controls had not revealed anything more suspicious in that house’s kitchen than pepper-enhanced Vindaloo sauce and broccoli, still the two men targeted by the operation were grooming the wrong kind of facial hair

 

They had to be stopped and shot^H^H^Hgently interviewed in nice secret service prisons^H^H^Hfirst-class hotels, if only to protect the purity of the English maxillar landscape, and the sale of razors..

In unrelated news: an unidentified Metropolitan Police Commissioner has defended the proposal to offer a Caribbean holiday to anybody remotely suspected of being a terrorist, because caught while either preparing a bomb, or threatening to sue the Police, or not shaving appropriately, especially from the lower lip downwards

Pizza parlors vs. Child pornography

What is more important: investigating "terrorist" leads in pizza restaurants, something with only the tiniest of chances of being anywhere relevant, or fight child pornography?

Why, in an increasingly more distorted world, pizzas come first, of course! 8-(

Opinion: Why NSA spying puts the U.S. in danger

[…] FBI agents working real and pressing investigations such as organized crime, child pornography and missing persons are being pulled away from their normal law enforcement duties to follow up on NSA leads. Nobody wants another 9/11, of course, but we experience real crimes on a daily basis that, over the course of even one year, cause far greater loss of life and damage than the 9/11 attacks did.

There are children abused on a daily basis to facilitate online child pornography, yet I know of at least two agents who were pulled from their duties tracking down child abusers to investigate everyone who called the same pizza parlor as a person who received a call from a person who received an overseas call.  There are plenty of similar examples.[…]
 

What’s wrong with Development Studies?

It is hard to think “Development Studies” (“DS”) as a proper “science” at the moment.

In fact, the one thing that comes out clearly of a rapid analysis of the evolution of DS thinking, is that most if not all “Development Breakthroughs” look much like a “flavour of the decade” list rather than solid processes valid most of the time

Here’s a quick review:

• 1950s “Development” substituted colonialism as a way for Western countries to keep control and a presence, also against the Communist threat
• 1960s “Rising income with own growth”. Huge investments in infrastructure. Large loans from private sources, but growth did not take into account distribution
• 1970s Focus on poverty and “basic needs” with redistribution. Further borrowing
• 1980s Switch to aid as poverty of people and States became entrenched. World Bank and IMF pushed for Structural Adjustment Programs. Start of NGOs
• 1990s “Development” started to include non-financial indicators (Freedom, Democracy, Environment Damage). Focus on participatory programs.
• 2000s Idea of the State back in focus. “Development” as power dynamics, considering also Women and Universities

What shall then we make of today’s mantras of DS such as Beneficiary Participation, Gender Issues, etc etc?

Obviously I am not suggesting they are not worthwhile and appropriate.

But what’s out there to indicate they will not simply be substituted by new fads, in a few years?

And of course the big counterpoint is that the one and only thing that has changed, ever, is the “Own Interest” of the most powerful countries, ready to defend it no matter what (and no matter what their stated intentions on getting people out of poverty)

This is doubly disturbing, if we consider that at the end of the day enormous resources will keep being wasted in following the latest fashion, rather than in making people get out of a life of poverty and high risk

A thorough rethinking of the whole field of Development and Development Studies is in order

Grant Lotteries to Nurture Innovation

Wouldn't it make much more sense if scientific/development/other kinds of grants would be partially allocated via an open-to-everybody lottery?

I am talking about setting aside, say, 10% of the yearly budget and get it assigned on the basis of a lottery, instead than around policy guidelines

Such a lottery would be open to any applicant for whatever project, no matter how "logical" or "mainstream". I would only make restrictions against past winners that obviously mishandled the money

Why that? On the one hand, current "rational", "impersonal" committee-based decision-making processes can only encourage conformism.

And naturally so: if every decision must be carefully weighed and justified, committees will prefer to finance stuff that is well-accepted, and almost sure to show something in return for the expenditure

In other words, anything that is solidly within the limits of our collective knowledge.

Current grant application selections are also too biased in favour of those good at writing them, rather than good at conducting the research

One should finally not forget that a considerable percentage of the work financed, turns up to be a waste of time and money, either as it is a mere repeat of previous research/activity or simply a failure

Hopefully nobody in their right mind really believes that a Government's every expenditure is completely justified?

By setting up a Grant Lottery, we can recognize that an uncertain potential for discovery is better than a certain waste.

Otherwise, we will keep missing the possibility to courageously innovate beyond the boundaries of the tried-and-tested.

Petition to the EU Parliament – unfair, double-taxation of UK working families

Dear Committee on PetitionsI am an Italian citizen, in England since 1997, writing to you now to highlight the unfair treatment of working families, by the United Kingdom's tax system.

Since both I and my wife work (employees) for most of the week, to fulfill our natural aspiration to provide our son with the best possible conditions we decided early on to have him taken care of by a nanny, during day time.

We have strived to follow all rules and regulations. That means I am effectively the employer of my son's nanny, and I pay all her tax and national insurance contributions.

The unfairness of the system is in the fact that the money my nanny is paid with, comes out of my salary as full-time employee, in other words the nanny's _gross_ salary is money that has already been taxed .

Indeed, despite me being an employer, I do not have any right to detract the nanny's gross salary from my total income for tax purposes.

As the situation stands, that money is effectively taxed twice, as the nanny then has to pay income tax of her own.

This is a blatant case of the UK's Inland Revenue taking advantage of my situation as full-time employee to tax my income two times.

I repeat: I do not have any trouble in paying all contributions ought to the nanny, her national insurance, etc.

The system should be re-assessed, with for example a simple mechanism introduced, with the nanny's employer getting taxed on his/her gross salary MINUS the nanny's gross salary, and not regardless of it.

Unfortunately this is far beyond the means of the "little guy", if only because a legal fight with the mighty Inland Revenue would be long and costly.

But the fact that I don't want to risk the financial ruin of my family to fight this particular injustice, does not detract from the fact that thousands of UK families are taken advantage of by the current system.

Is there any way you can help redress the situation? Please do let me know