The Quiet Road

Note: This essay was about twice as long as it currently is. Unfortunately (depending on your point of view) there was a big cut’n’paste farrago resulting in the second half getting deleted. This means there’s a whole chunk of the argument just missing, as well as the dissection of much of Reid’s speech. It’s way too late to rewrite it tonight, and I’m almost certain I’ll not have the enthusiasm for a rewrite in the near future… so you’ll have to make do with half an essay. I think I made a couple of relevant points in the first half though.

The blogosphere… or leastways, the bit I flap about in, has lately been buzzing with talk of John Reid’s recent speech to the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI). The mainstream media (MSM) have covered it of course, but predictably with little gusto. Thankfully, as the MSM become less and less relevant – all parroting the same corporate line, shifted slightly left or right depending upon the pretensions of the editor – it provides space for truly fine writers to fill (rather than truly adequate copywriters). Unpaid writers who are willing to spend the time and energy to genuinely educate and inform their readers. To critique and analyse an issue, rather than providing a 500 word puff-piece in return for a paycheque. Bloggers who – by virtue of having a smaller, but more interested readership – don’t have to dumb down a point or follow an editorial policy that always has one eye on advertising revenue. So on the issue of the Defence Secretary’s disturbing speech, I recommend you check out the following pieces…

• Worrying about asymmetrical warfare means never having to say you’re sorry
• Gutting the Geneva Conventions II: This Time It’s Personal
• Aggression Pre-Emption
• John Reid And The Burdens Of Morality
• Reid: Waffen SS “not so bad”
• Brave Boys and Petty Legalisms

Dr. Reid has responded to the mild criticism he received from some elements of the MSM by pathetically mewling about being taken “out of context”. This was a familiar cry up until a few years ago. But since the late 1990s, it’s generally been possible for anyone interested to get hold of a complete copy of a recent speech within a few minutes. The internet has – in some respects – turned soundbite culture on its head. Context can be fully restored by those who choose to do so. Sadly, I’m not sure many people do. Anyways, it clearly isn’t a lesson that John Reid has learnt too well. The full text of his speech is – by itself – more damning than anything being said about him in the MSM.

Now, the speech is quite long and – by and large – pretty dull. But I still feel it’s worth a read-through for those interested in the topic. Because the juicy bits are really juicy. He clearly – albeit euphemistically – calls for torture and internment to be accepted as valid weapons in The War Against Terror. That a man with such beliefs is Defence Secretary tells you all you need to know about the current British government. This is a morally bankrupt regime and – viewed objectively – bears chilling similarities to the recently deposed regime in Iraq.

Both are willing to kill (and support the killing of) non-combatants en masse in order to achieve their stated political aims. Both are willing to wage pre-emptive war against another nation to further their political agenda. And now it seems, both will use indefinite internment without trial and even torture to achieve ends it deems as worthy of such tactics. Reid wants to be able to legally rip out fingernails and teeth. To legally boil people alive. And what’s more, he wants to be able to choose who merits such treatment without fear of any consequences to himself.

Dr. Reid begins his lecture by pointing out that he’s not a lawyer…

I am not myself a lawyer but, as a practising politician, I understand how law continues to evolve in response to real changes in the world.

John Reid | Speech to RUSI, April 3rd 2006

This immediately got me thinking; “If he’s not a lawyer, then I wonder what he is? What’s he a doctor of?” A couple of clicks later and it turns out that he’s an historian. BA and MA in history, PhD in Economic History (I valiantly resist the urge to go off on a tangent about how “economic history” is a redundancy).

The guy is a comic genius though… moments after drawing my attention to the fact that he’s an historian, he launches into some of the most absurd historical revisionism I’ve ever heard. It seems he takes his own maxim seriously…

I always believed socialists, or indeed any rational person, should be revisionist on principle.
– Dr. John Reid

Can anyone tell me exactly why the following analysis of where The Geneva Conventions (the basic international laws which cover warfare) came from might be considered a tad opportunistic…

For centuries conflict between tribes, cities and states was completely unbridled and savage. Very gradually, mankind developed a range of conventions that they applied to constrain and moderate what is in essence a brutal activity.

Eventually, these agreements became rules, which became laws. Much has been achieved in current legal frameworks. But warfare continues to evolve, and, in its moral dimensions, we have now to cope with a deliberate regression towards barbaric terrorism by our opponents.

John Reid | Speech to RUSI, April 3rd 2006

Uh-huh… subtle isn’t it? Despite his protestations, politics has clearly made the man more lawyer than historian. Reid is – I believe deliberately – casting The Geneva Conventions as simply the latest iteration in an ongoing process to define the rules of warfare. He is drawing an imaginary line from Sun Tzu through Hugo Grotius in the 1600s and then to the first Geneva Convention in 1864. It’s incredibly misleading. And, as I say, opportunistic. By spinning this web of false history, Reid paints The Geneva Conventions as merely a set of rules which require constant updating as war evolves.

It is true that they are that. But they are not “merely” that. The first Geneva Convention was drafted and signed thanks to the work of the remarkable Henry Dunant, founder of The International Red Cross. It essentially laid out rules for the treatment of injured or sick people during wartime. Later conventions covered the treatment of civilians during wartime and the treatment of prisoners of war.

These are not merely iterations of the rules of war. They constitute both a moral and legal code. A vital difference. And it places a strict obligation on those who wish to act in a legally and morally responsible manner.

Furthermore, what Dr. Reid chooses to overlook is that the modern Geneva Conventions aren’t merely a further iteration of the codes of behaviour which preceded them. They are the result of a four-month long convention in 1949 in which the nations of the world; horrified by the recent world war and the Nazi regime’s treatment of certain groups, and perhaps equally horrified at the thought of a future filled with nuclear bombs; gathered together and set down the moral code by which all future conflicts had to be settled.

This wasn’t “tweaking the rules” in order to take into account the new technology of warfare, or the particular tactics employed by The Enemy. This was an understanding that the barbarism of Germany in the 30s and 40s must never be allowed to occur again. It made a clear statement of right and wrong. The rules Dr. Reid seeks to have tweaked, amended or weakened are precisely those rules put in place by humanity to stop people acting like the Nazis.

Reidy then uses a transparent bait and switch. Of course, says he, “our values – of law, democracy, restraint and respect – are at the core of our national beliefs, and even if – as some suggest [yes, you John, you suggest] – they create a short-term tactical disadvantage, they represent a long-term strategic advantage”. Got that everyone? Even though our laws against boiling people alive may present short-term difficulties for those who wish to boil people alive; in the long-term, it’s a good thing we have them.

But within two paragraphs he’s saying…

Historically, of course, laws have always been adapted to better suit the times. When they have become out-dated, or less relevant, or less applicable to the realities of the day they have been modified or changed. This is true of all laws, domestic or international.

John Reid | Speech to RUSI, April 3rd 2006

See it? See the switch? The first paragraph talks about “our values – of law, democracy, restraint and respect”. The second one is only talking about “laws”. All we’re doing is changing a few “less relevant laws”. It’s as if he’s saying that a law permitting state torture would have no effect on “our values – of […] democracy, restraint and respect”. Surely he’s not that stupid is he? One of the classes I took when studying philosophy was “Discourse”… Dr. John Reid (an anagram of “John did err” incidentally) would have been laughed out of the room for that one.

That is why I pose three questions about the international legal framework. Put simply, in today’s changed circumstances are we convinced that it adequately covers:

• the contemporary threat from international terrorists?
• The circumstances in which states may need to take action in order to avert imminent attack?
• Those situations where the international community needs to intervene on grounds of overwhelming humanitarian necessity in order to stop internal suppression — mass murder and genocide — as opposed to external aggression?

John Reid | Speech to RUSI, April 3rd 2006

Before I go any further I want to tackle one of the phrases used by Dr. Reid in the above snippet. Can you guess which one? That’s right…

“today’s changed circumstances”

When Reid says “today’s changed circumstances”, he doesn’t literally mean “today” of course. That would be silly. No, he means “September 11, 2001”. He even says so later in the speech. “September 11, 2001 was”, apparently, “a date which exposed how much [our view of the world] needed to change”. Except it really wasn’t. We’re certainly living in changed times since that day, but entirely thanks to the reaction of western governments. Al Qaeda launched a deadly attack on several buildings and aircraft in the United States. That much is true. But it was us who changed the world. Try not to forget that. As Einstein once remarked, “The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”

To me, September 11, 2001 represents a terrible missed opportunity. The problem of radical Islamic terrorism existed prior to 9-11. On 9-12, however, I’d argue that it was at its lowest ebb. Sympathisers are the lifeblood of terrorist organisations. On September 12th 2001, the sympathy of the entire world was with New York. The images we all saw on our screens hit at an emotional level that negated politics for most of us. Those photographs of the young firemen rushing up the stairs into – what we know to be – certain death… I cried my eyes out.

I don’t know what America could have done to best capitalise on the immense goodwill shown towards it by the world back then. But it’s safe to say that what they did do was horribly counterproductive. Islamic terrorism hit British shores as a direct result of UK involvement in US policy. The same is true for Spain. Both Iraq and Afghanistan are in flames and global anti-American feeling is higher than it’s ever been. The people who declared and are running The War Against Terror are patently doing it wrong. They’re making matters far worse. And when those same people suggest that the changes they have wrought in the world require the abandonment of “our values – of law, democracy, restraint and respect”, then it’s probably a bad idea to give them free rein.

Besides, it’s probably a wee bit dodgy for Dr. Reid to be bandying around Geneva Conventions. After all, he may be itching to change them to better suit his desires to rip the fingernails from suspected terrorists, but as of now they are still a legal force to be reckoned with. Leastways in theory. The 4th Convention (the one dealing with the treatment of civilians) states the following…

Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

Convention IV | Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 12 August 1949.

It’s really quite specific with all that “shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever”. So a prize to the first person who can square that clause with the use of cluster bombs.

Like Reid, I am not myself a lawyer but, as a practising human being, I understand that a society which condones torture is a society that has lost its way. The man has clearly spent too long fighting monsters and didn’t heed Nietzsche’s advice to ‘take care lest he thereby become one’.

As Defence Secretary it is John Reid’s job to defend the country and – by extension – its values. It is not acceptable that he seek to alter those values so he can better protect them. Anyone suggesting such a plan is clearly unable to do the job, and must be removed from it as soon as possible.

Aaaaargh!

Or words to that effect. After negotiating Dublin’s shamefully inadequate public transport system and reaching the venue (the Mansion House in Dawson Street) for the Energy Futures seminar with almost 10 minutes to spare, I put my hand into my back-pocket to retrieve my wallet, and the 25 euro entry fee.

It was at that point that I realised I’d left my wallet at home and the change in my pocket was just sufficient for the bus out of the city and back to Rathcoole. So there will be no report on the seminar from me… no feedback on Dr. Campbell’s doubtlessly fascinating lecture… and no contribution to the discussion group, which even as I type is probably getting underway.

Bugger.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (her parents named her after an oil tanker, or so I’ve been told) visited the UK last week. According to one news source, the visit was a “PR nightmare”. What truly staggers me is the idea that UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw – who hosted the visit – could have expected anything else.

The UK government is in power by default, not because they are popular in any sense of the word. They are – in fact – deeply unpopular. Not only that, but the current US administration, of which Rice is a well-known figurehead, is easily the most reviled that there’s ever been. On top of all that, Blackburn – Straw’s constituency and location of the visit – has a very substantial Islamic community; many of whom – rightly or wrongly – view the current American government as waging a war on Islam. Anybody living in the real world would see the inevitability of “a PR nightmare”.

I’m also bemused that – given all this background – Straw would choose BAE systems fighter-jet factory as the first stop on this diplomatic visit. It’s the sort of touch you’d add to a political satire that would tip it over the edge and make it feel ham-fisted…

Secretary of State visits UK in current political climate. First stop… fighter-plane factory. Gaze lovingly and approvingly at weapons of death recently used to drop bombs on Iraqi people. Next stop… deliver speech in which you admit to “thousands” of “tactical errors” during the war in Iraq. Final stop, meet some Muslim community leaders and get reported as “shrugging off” the anti-war protests.

Rice is often listed as one of the intellectual heavyweights of the Dubya administration. Of course, one only has to look at the company she’s in to realise this could be being said in jest. Y’know, the way you’d point at a mentally feeble aunt in a family known for its stupidity and call her “the intellectual heavyweight of the bunch”.

If it’s not a piss-take though, and she really is one of the sharper tools in that particular shed, then maybe she could answer this question… “what, in practical terms, is the difference between a regime that outlaws all protest and a regime that ignores all protest?” Being told that we are “lucky” to live in a democracy and have the right to protest is easily the most patronising thing a politician can say. It ignores the fact that “luck” has nothing to do with it, and that the “right to protest”, like all such rights, has been wrestled – spilling blood, sweat and tears – from those in authority by the protesters. She is paid by the people in order to serve the people. It’s time she thought about how lucky she is that we, the people, have given her the right to step down from power without the aid of a guillotine. The protesters are lucky to have their rights? I think not. Especially not when members of the ruling class feel comfortable patronising or ignoring them. Let them eat cake, eh Condi?

Much is said of her childhood prodigiousness… the fact that she graduated from university whilst still a foetus. And then people say that she’s a “concert pianist”. But they forget to point out that’s actually one and the same point. She went to university on a piano scholarship.

Don’t get me wrong… I’m a music geek, and excellent musicians impress the hell out of me. I have a deep and abiding respect for anyone who can make genuinely beautiful music. But it doesn’t automatically make you an “intellectual heavyweight”. And it certainly doesn’t mean you’re a good choice for Secretary of State. I believe, for instance, that Prince is one of the handful of most talented musicians to have ever lived. I would nonetheless question the wisdom of putting him in charge of US foreign policy.

I suspect he’d do a better – albeit weirder – job than is currently being done, but I still don’t think Sign ‘O’ The Times merits that level of power. Call me old-fashioned, but there you have it.

Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure Condoleezza isn’t a one-trick pony. No doubt her intellectual talents extend beyond good keyboard skills. But they clearly can’t extend much beyond, given the complete shambles being made of the world by herself and her mates. To be wrong-headed is one thing… but Rice and her gang (and I include Straw, Blair and all the other nuLabor running-dogs in that) aren’t merely implementing the wrong policies / policies I disagree with, they are doing it with truly historic incompetence.

Maybe the world would be worse if smart, competent people were implementing the bad policies. But it wouldn’t be half as frustrating. Watching complete morons do a dreadful job is excruciating for most of us with half a brain. Watching them do it knowing that your personal safety may depend upon the quality of their work makes it that much worse.

For Rice to heap praise (as I’m certain she did) on weapons makers, and then introduce the world to a new euphemism for murdering innocent people with those weapons* whilst “shrugging off” those who object, is almost as incompetent as conducting a war on an abstract concept; the repercussions of which have been wholly disastrous. It displays a complete inability to grasp the consequences of her actions, or else – more chillingly – a psychotic disregard for those consequences.

Either way it must surely, in a sane world, be grounds for excluding her from power. Her and all her incompetent / psychopathic friends. Sadly, the American people are the only ones who can possibly do this… the only ones who can get rid of the people currently raining death and destruction down wherever they choose, using the money and the legitimacy conferred by the US population. I say “sadly”, because the American people really aren’t doing a great job of holding their politicians to account. Dubya can get away with all those dodgy electoral shenanigans in Florida, then lead America into an illegitimate shambles of a war and still get returned to power.

It beggars belief.

Of course, the UK re-elected nuLabor and here in Ireland we’ve had an eternity of centre-right corporate politicians running the show. So this isn’t unique to the American people in any way. But the bigger you are, the harder you fall. When America is run by imbeciles or crazies, then tens of thousands of innocent people, half a world away, die horrible deaths. It’s just not acceptable. And there’s a moral responsibility to put an end to it.

Energy Futures is an organisation which describes its primary objective as “raising public awareness regarding the scale of our fossil fuel dependency and the impact of a possible global energy shortage on the Irish economy”.

It is due to be launched on Wednesday this week (April 5th 2006) at two events; a business forum and a public seminar. I plan to attend the public seminar and will doubtlessly have something to report later in the week. One of the speakers is Dr. Colin J. Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), and one of the main drivers of the peak oil debate.

I’d recommend anyone who might be in Dublin on the evening of April 5th to attend what will undoubtedly be a fascinating seminar. It takes place at:
The Round Room,
The Mansion House,
Dawson St.,
Dublin 2.

It starts at 7:30pm, runs until 10pm, and costs €25 on the door. Maybe see you there?

Tony Blair has just called me “mad”. What a bastid. And talk about your pots and kettles!

Also, I notice he flew all the way to Australia to do it. Clearly decided to put some distance between us before unleashing the insults. Probably afraid I’d lamp him. And lamp him I would if I were ever within arms-length of the freakin’ psycho.

Y’know, when Orwell was asked – soon after the publication of Animal Farm, and his subsequent leap in fame – why he’d changed his name from Eric Blair, he is quoted as replying that he had “a premonition” that “one day the name Blair will be associated with infamy”, likening it to “… Hitler or Stalin. And what writer would like to see his work beneath the name Eric Hitler?”*

Many moons ago, on a blog not unlike this one, I wrote a piece entitled “Why I’m anti-American”. I shall reiterate the main points of that, as I feel they bear repeating on a day Tony Blair dismisses those who disagree with him as clinically insane (and presumably in need of sedation) rather than worthy of engaging in debate.

Firstly, let’s make it clear what being anti-American is not about. It isn’t about disliking Americans. There’s already a word for that… “bigotry”. Disliking or discriminating against someone because of their nationality or skin colour just means you’re an obnoxious tosser. It doesn’t make you “anti-American” in the sense I’m using the phrase.

And because anti-Americanism isn’t about disliking people, there’s thankfully no danger of it ever manifesting as a desire to murder a whole bunch of Americans indiscriminately. So I utterly reject the idea that anti-Americanism of itself has a logical extension in what happened on September 11th 2001. What you had there was anti-Americanism mixed up with a whole bunch of other stuff. The anti-Americanism chose the target, but it was the other stuff that chose the tactics.

Needless to say, I favour different tactics, and I’m just as opposed to the other stuff; the stuff that justified thousands of murders in the eyes of extremists; as Dubya Bush and Tony Blair are. But that “with us or agin us” crap? It doesn’t wash with me. My enemy’s enemy is not always my friend.

“Anti-American”ism / Anti-“Americanism”

Most people would agree that there is a genuine difference between being anti-Islam and being anti-Islamist. No such distinction currently exists in our language between anti-American and anti-Americanism. Though perhaps one should.

Whatever the intentions of the Founding Fathers and a succession of constitutional scholars may have been; in the eyes of much of the world the United States no longer stands for what most Americans are taught it stands for in school. Schoolchildren throughout the days of Empire in Britain were taught that colonialism was all about bringing “civilisation” to the savages. The savages saw it as rape, murder and the theft of their land and resources. These days it’s America and not Britain, and it’s “democracy” and not civilisation. The savages still use the same words though.

And that’s very much part of the problem. The whole “we confer upon you lesser people the right to rule yourselves” thing. It’s so much bullshit. And it’s transparently bullshit. There’s no moral high ground here.

The Iraqi people know that for half of Saddam Hussein’s rule he was supported by exactly the people who ousted him. And the Iraqi people, more than anyone, know just how brutal he was during that time. The Iraqi people also know that when – after the first Gulf War – they were urged to rise up against the regime, those who did were left dangling by US forces ordered not to help. And finally, after more than a decade of crippling economic sanctions causing poverty, misery and death; reducing a once-functioning nation to a “failed state”; these same erstwhile friends of Hussein decided that Shock And Awe, followed by a three year occupation – launched from corrupt and compliant dictatorships next door – was the best way to help the poor Iraqi people who can’t run their own affairs… and shepherd them towards democracy.

If I were Iraqi, I’d probably mutter something about how if you’d only left us alone 100 years ago, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. And how being carpet bombed and subjected to a further period of occupation is probably NOT WHAT WE NEED RIGHT NOW! Although that said, the average Iraqi is probably too busy trying to track down enough fresh drinking water without being blown up or having his head chopped off to be thinking very much about historical context. Life in Baghdad is probably focussed very much on the next few minutes, rather than the last hundred years.

What Tony Blair is unwilling to admit or too thick to understand is that the vast majority of people who he’d describe as anti-American are actually anti-Americanist. They may have American friends and love a lot about America but they are against what America has come to stand for. Not what it says it stands for; but what its actions demonstrate.

Americanism is a kind of rapacious, aggressive capitalism willing to ignore all ethical concerns in the desire for global dominance. Americanism is a willingness to unilaterally use a military machine unrivalled in all of human history to reduce entire nations to rubble which it designates, falsely, to be a threat. Americanism is the arrogance of power… “freedom is occupation”… “democracy is compliance”. It’s all a bit You Know Who.

And speaking of Orwell, can I just cite a short passage from Politics and The English Language to better illustrate this point…

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

George Orwell | Politics and The English Language

I wonder has Tony Blair ever read that essay? I don’t imagine Dubya Bush has, but you’d think someone might have sent a copy to Blair by now. After all, it was written in 1946.

The point being that when Blair accuses anti-Americanism as being “mad”, he’s essentially saying that anti-Americanism translates as anti-freedom and anti-democracy. But the freedom being exported by America is the freedom to have US corporations make billions off the back of Iraqi misery. And the democracy is limited to electing those approved by America.

It’s Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay for crying-out-loud. It’s secret “rendition flights” shipping suspects to central Asia for torture. And because these are not ‘blips on the radar’ or ‘a few bad apples’, but instead clearly represent the policies of modern America, then it is necessary for all those who believe in a world without state torture, secret police and “the military option” to label themselves anti-American.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things [… that] can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

George Orwell | Politics and The English Language

* That paragraph is a lie.

I must admit to having mixed feelings to the news that former Liberian president Charles Taylor is being repatriated to face war crimes charges. This is despite the fact he’s almost certainly guilty of widespread atrocities in two nations in West Africa. Despite the fact that when Desmond de Silva, chief prosecutor of the war crimes court in Sierra Leone, describes Taylor as “one of the three most important wanted war crimes suspects in the world”, there’s probably not a lot of hyperbole involved.

My family lived in Nigeria for a couple of years, and I tend to take a slightly greater interest in news involving that nation than I might take in news from other places. There’s nothing particularly unusual about that… for a period of my life, events in Nigeria affected me directly. Much more than events in – say – Angola or Ecuador or New Zealand. So I kept abreast of the Nigerian news, and as happens with a politics junkie like myself, I became quite interested in the subject so that even now – after my family have left the country – I tend to keep an eye on the major developments.

Also, the fact that Nigeria is a politically unstable major oil exporter puts it on the map for anyone interested in energy issues.

Anyways, a brief summary of the Charles Taylor situation for those who aren’t familiar with recent West African affairs: Taylor led a rebellion against the government of Liberia throughout the 1990s. By 1995 the nation was in a state of all-out civil war. By mid-96 the government could no longer be described as “governing” in any sense, and – with the backing of the major regional power, Nigeria – called elections. In 1997 Charles Taylor was elected. The poll was a sham. It’s hard to say which side did the most voter-intimidation… though in the end Taylor seemed most effective at it.

Which brings us to Taylor’s tactics, and the fact that during the entirety of his Liberian rebellion, Taylor was spending at least as much of his time plundering diamonds from neighbouring Sierra Leone (a nation in a near-permanent state of civil war thanks, largely, to the diamond mines). During his longtime involvement in the conflict diamond trade (which dates back at least until 1991, but probably started even earlier), Taylor inspired fear by ordering his fighters to hack off the hands and feet of anyone in an area suspected of collaborating with his enemies.

This often extended to entire villages.

Needless to say, the international war crimes tribunals currently in session with regards to Sierra Leone consider Charles Taylor to be their most important suspect. He, more than anyone, escalated the civil war in Sierra Leone… in order to fund his civil war in Liberia. He, more than anyone, is associated with the committing of widespread atrocities. And his involvement in his neighbour’s war didn’t end when he’d seized power in Liberia either. For the next half-decade, until French-led international forces intervened and things degenerated into all-out civil war at home again, he continued to plunder diamonds and fan the flames of conflict.

So it seems rather perverse to hold mixed feelings about his extradition to face these charges. And I should point out that I’m not suggesting that there’s some kind of ‘stitch-up’ of Taylor in the Western media. There’s not much doubt that this is a man guilty of some truly terrible crimes.

However, and here’s where I have the problem, the long civil war in Liberia would almost certainly still be going on had Taylor not agreed to exile in Nigeria. Certainly he had lost his grip on power by then, but there’s no reason to imagine he wouldn’t simply have become a rebel leader again – a role he exulted in for more than a decade – and continued to spread conflict throughout the region. Indeed he threatened as much… demanding a cushy exile in exchange for a promise not to plunge the area in further chaos.

And despite the arrest warrant from the Sierra Leone tribunal, the Liberians and Nigerians agreed that – from a purely pragmatic standpoint – letting the man live out his years in silent exile was the best option. They didn’t want him to return to being a rebel and probably didn’t much relish the idea of giving him an international platform like the tribunal either. So they made a promise. Taylor got a lovely villa in Nigeria and all the imported luxuries his ill-gotten diamonds will buy.

And for the first time in almost two decades the conflict in both Liberia and Sierra Leone began to ease off. To describe the situation in either country as far from perfect is akin to describing the sun as far from cold. But it’s getting better. Slowly, painfully it’s getting better.

I certainly don’t think that Taylor deserves to get away with it. And yes, it is a staggering injustice that he should live out his life lighting cuban cigars with burning hundred dollar bills, when he helped cripple two entire nations in order to do so. And I agree fully with the argument that such a fate for Charles Taylor sends all manner of destabilising messages to the region and the wider world.

Yet part of me still believes that a deal is a deal. And when the outcome results in progress towards ending two terrible conflicts, then perhaps there’s an obligation to hold up your side of the bargain?

Biofuels are the fuel of the future claims the Green Party of Ireland. Let’s hope they’re wrong.

I was heartened to see that the Greens are an influential force in Irish politics. While the latest polls suggest they’ll only get 7% of the vote in the next General Election (probably next year, though theoretically it could be called early), Ireland’s proportional representation system means that they could very well – given current party alliances – find themselves holding the balance of power. Whichever of the major blocs wishes to form a government for the next five years will have to offer the Greens something significant in order to do so. A genuine bidding war between the two major centrist parties over who can offer the most environmentally sound policies would be nice to see.

Hardly revolutionary I grant you. But it’s a step in the right direction.

I just hope the Greens don’t squander the opportunity by demanding support for the biofuels strategy. Environmental organisations in Ireland, and throughout the world, need to be attacking private car use as the absurd and obscene waste of resources that it is. What they shouldn’t be doing is reassuring people that the future can be business as usual, just by different means. It may be a less popular message, but it has the advantage of being the truth.

Though perhaps it’s foolish to believe that should count for anything.

According to Nationmaster (a godsend for those of us who habitually like to pepper our writing with statistics) who cite a 2002 World Bank report, Ireland comes 18th in a survey of car-ownership in developed nations. There are 272 cars per 1,000 people in Ireland which is significantly below the developed nation average of 437.3 per 1,000.

However 272 cars per 1,000 people still amounts to almost 1.1 million cars in a nation of 4 million people. And it’s a pretty small island.

Now, if we are to believe the RAC, the average distance travelled per car per annum in Ireland is 16,000km, with an average engine efficiency of 10.55km per litre. So Ireland’s private automobile fleet gets through – back of the napkin calculation – 1,650,000,000 litres of petrol per year. 1.65 billion litres. Which is a lot of fuel for a pretty small island. And that’s private automobiles (Ireland has 359 motor vehicles per 1,000 people; I’m concentrating only on cars here).

How many litres of biofuels would be required to replace 1.65 billion litres of petrol? And how much arable land would be required to grow all that biomass? Have the Green Party worked out these numbers? I suspect not. Certainly they don’t publish them on their rose-tinted website. And where do the Greens stand on the subject of biodiversity Vs monocultures? Championing biofuels would suggest a side of the fence I’m not comfortable on.

Plus, rather importantly, the ERoEI of biofuels isn’t well-established. There’s been few studies, and fewer still large-scale experiments. David Pimentel (a professor at Cornell) published a study in the Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology (a peer-reviewed journal) which created significant controversy by claiming that ethanol from corn (one of the most widespread biofuels) has an ERoEI of less than 100%. In other words, claims Pimentel, the planting, harvesting and conversion of corn into ethanol uses more energy than gets generated by burning the end product.

Note: Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) is sometimes referred to as Net Energy Ratio (NER). Although the two have slightly different definitions, with one being expressed as a percentage, the other as a decimal ratio; they are nonetheless similar enough to consider them the same thing in all but the most technical of discussions. I’m pointing this out because I’ve noticed both terms beginning to crop up in the mainstream media for the first time, and I figured some of you might want to know that they’re near-as-dammit interchangeable (though I’ve encountered pedantic scientists who fly into quite colourful rages for suggesting such a thing).

Anyways, quite apart from Pimentel’s study – which is still causing some consternation and throws the averages right out the window – I’ve read a few papers on the subject, and even contributed my number-crunching skills to one of them. It wouldn’t be out of order to suggest that ethanol can be generated with an NER of between 1.38:1 and 2.62:1. Plus the US government has a new study underway which it believes will give a return of 5:1 (though it concedes in that case “much of the energy gain comes from generating electricity by burning the co-product lignin, rather than from the ethanol itself”, so it should be discounted as a great leap forward in liquid fuel production).

But let’s say we pretend to be optimists for a moment and take that 2.62 and roll it in a little bit of the US government’s 5.0. Let’s say, given optimum conditions and efficiency, you can regain 3.5 units of energy from ethanol for each unit you input into growing and producing it. That’s still a long way off crude oil’s 40:1 to 100:1 (depending on the well). So far off that I’d hesitate to suggest one as a substitute for the other even without calculating the arable land required. You just know it’s not going to be good, right?

Pimentel’s study suggested that 97% of all of America’s arable land would be required to fuel the private automobile fleet of that country (again leaving aside freight, air travel, military and government usage, etc etc). And while America has a lot of cars… it’s also got a lot of arable land. What would it be like for Ireland?

Well, if you were to do a genuine like-for-like comparison, and insist that the biofuel industry pay for itself energy-wise in the same way as the fossil fuel industry does, then we should scale up the number of litres of fuel required by the same amount as the NER is scaled down, even though the energy contained in the ethanol isn’t necessarily quite that much less than that contained in petrol. In which case, let’s use the government 5:1 (as we can assume that the electricity generated by the co-product can be channelled into biofuel production in some way).

So using the optimistic biofuel NER of 5:1 and the most pessimistic crude oil NER of 40:1, it suggests that Ireland would require the production of 13.2 billion litres of bioethanol to fuel the current private automobile fleet. I’ll also use the most optimistic litres per hectare number I can find (an Indian company, Ammana Bio, has claimed 7,000 litres per hectare from sorghum; far more than the 1,500 litres / hectare that is often quoted when discussing UK / Northern Europe biofuel production) in order to get a highly conservative estimate of 1.88 million hectares.

Again using Nationmaster we discover that Ireland has a total of 1.05 million hectares of arable and permanent cropland. This suggests that if Ireland were to make the transition to biofuels without a significant parallel reduction in car usage, we’d need to dedicate the entire arable surface of the nation to growing high-yield stock for bioethanol, and still import 45% of our fuel. Quite how this squares with the Green Party’s insistence that “the poverty of two-thirds of the world’s family demands a redistribution of the world’s resources” is anyone’s guess.

Let’s stop talking about biofuels. Start talking about fewer cars.

Hallo folks. Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet this week (I promise, by the way, never to use this blog’s title as a jokey excuse for lackadaisical productivity… y’know, some kind of crass remark like “Well what did you expect from the QUIET road, eh? eh?”). I’ve had one of those weeks where you think to yourself on Friday afternoon, “Haaaang on a second; wasn’t it Sunday just now? What in the name of god happened to the week?”

My great fear is that I’ll be lying on my deathbed and I’ll think “Haaaang on a second; wasn’t I sixteen years old just now? What in the name of god happened to the last fifty years?” Something tells me though, just as the light finally fades forever, we all think that.

So what have I been thinking about this week?

Well, I was going to write something about how publicly listed corporations, through having a legal obligation to maximise the return for their investors, are forces for evil in the world. It’s a common theme in my writing, and this week the thought was sparked off by reading about Body Shop being taken over by L’Oreal. However the impetus was mollified (for this week) by reading Merrick’s excellent piece on the subject. So on that subject… “what he said!”

And talking about Merrick, you should probably read Iceland: Greenpeace’s Shameful Silence for news of a new spin on an old environmental issue… hydroelectricity and the uses to which we put this so-called, self-styled “green” energy.

Which brings me onto the topic of today’s sermon… wind power. Y’know, I’m scared witless that someone’s going to discover some great environmental problem with wind power. Turns out that wind-turbines slow down the earth’s rotation… killing all the bees or something. In my view, that’ll be the final message from this planet that we’re just not wanted anymore.

Oh, and those of you who object to the things on aesthetic grounds can piss off. Sorry, but there you have it. I think they look lovely. But then, I think power pylons look lovely too… and I don’t hear anyone objecting to them as long as they can watch Big Fricking Brother on Satellite Television! So when the wind-farm protesters start demanding the removal of the pylons (starting with the ones connecting up their towns), I’ll start listening to their objections about aesthetics.

And no, the “bird deaths” thing doesn’t wash either. Clearly there will be certain areas where a wind farm would be particularly destructive to migrating birds (Altamont in San Francisco turned out to be one such area), and they should be avoided. But then you hear about a wind farm located – many would say foolishly –

… at the San Gorgonio Pass […] near Palm Springs. A 1986 study found that 69 million birds flew though the San Gorgonio Pass during the Spring and Fall migrations. During both migrating seasons, only 38 dead birds were found during that typical year, representing only 0.00006% of the migrating population.

Mike Sagrillo | Putting Wind Power’s effect on birds into perspective

There will be those who say that 38 dead birds is 38 too many. But when you do put that number into perspective, it becomes a no-brainer. I have to wonder where the people who say “38 is too many” stand on the issue of the 130 million killed by power lines in the US alone each year? Or the estimated 1 billion globally that die simply from colliding with glass windows? Do they still drive cars despite the 70 million or so birds that are killed by US automobiles each year?

And let’s not forget the toll from those oil spills and other fossil-fuel pollutants that gets replaced by the wind farms. Mike Sagrillo (from whom I stole all the stats, read his article) points out that even the heavily criticised Altamont farm would need to operate for up to 1,000 years to kill as many birds as one oil tanker spillage.

There are huge issues with wind power of course. It’s inefficient when compared with fossil fuels (but it does pass all the ERoEI tests… in simple terms, wind farms produce more energy than it takes to manufacture and maintain them). It’s not an “always-on” energy source. But frankly, we’re going to have to start understanding that the way we treat energy usage has to change.

And here’s my proposition (or part of it)… I’m concentrating here on Ireland and Northern Europe… other parts of the world will need other solutions. It’s all about localisation.

Simply put; we need a two-tier electricity grid.

The first tier is for essential services. Hospitals obviously. Plus public transportation. Also I propose some kind of facility which would provide – among other things – refrigeration for the local community, plus other non-essential but useful electricity services (charge points for mobile phones and laptop computers; that sort of thing). This tier will be kept going – using a combination of tidal, existing hydro, sustainable biomass, and batteries charged during times of “wind surplus”. Which in northwest Europe will be pretty frequently.

The second tier is for the rest of us. Once there’s more electricity in the system than is required for essentials, then – for those not in a position to have their own small home wind-turbine (tens of thousands of which will be feeding their own surplus into the grid during windy days) – lights and televisions can start coming on across the country.

It will require a huge investment in infrastructure, but we’ve probably still got a few years of cheap oil left if we decide to manage it sensibly. And it will require a huge shift in attitude, a huge change in lifestyle, a revolutionary approach to the next two decades. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Orwell of late, but as he would say; there’s no question that we have the physical tools at our disposal… all it requires – and I use the word ‘political’ in its broadest sense here – is the political will.