Seems Worth Thinking About All Of This Rather Carefully

From: agerard@omaralbachir.org [mailto:agerard@omaralbachir.org]

Sent: 25 August 2010 21:15

To: hotline_undp@yahoo.ca

Subject: JOIN THE COALITION OMAR EL BECHIR


Dear Leon,

As a Angolan writer, We will appreciate, you join THE COALITION OMAR EL BECHIR. I'm suggesting you to accept a to be a member of the Coalition . As mentioned in Coalition Statutes, your travel fees and charges regarding Coalition activities, as a member are paid by the Coalition. Our next meeting will be held in Khartoum or Accra by mid-september 2010.

Please have a look on all details of what's going on in Sudan and What the Coalition is for. Please get back to me as quick as possible.


For any further information, please visit our website:


www.omaralbachir.org

www.omarelbechir.org

www.coalitionomaralbachir.org

And send us your profile or resume and photo.

Best Regards!

Armand Gerard OBOU



From: Leon Kukkuk

Subject: JOIN THE COALITION OMAR EL BECHIR

To: agerard@omaralbachir.org

Received: Saturday, August 28, 2010, 2:23 PM

Dear Mr Armand Gérard Obou,

I am very flattered to be invited to join the THE COALITION OMAR EL BECHIR.

Unfortunately I will not be able to accept.

I am largely in agreement with the stance of the African Union, League of Arab States, Non-Aligned Movement, and the governments of Russia and China in regarding the warrant as unwarranted. I also feel that it demonstrates a selectivity and double standard with concern to war that could hamper, rather than help, efforts to bring peace to Sudan .

However people are complicated, and I very, very rarely support individuals, especially those in positions of power, as wholeheartedly and uncritically as membership of a coalition would demand.

I am more than happy to join any coalition that support principles that I believe in such as pan-African humanism, a commitment to overall human development of Africa, the full independence of our continent and the promotion of democratic values through ongoing dialogue with opposition, universal suffrage, free expression, freedom of religious practices and gender issues.

Within such a coalition I would be in a much better position to support President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir to the extent that he upholds the above principles, through action rather than rhetoric, and still be able to speak out in the instances where he does not.

Thank you again for the offer.

Best wishes

Leon Kukkuk

The Image and the Pseudo-event

Human: Characteristic of people as opposed to God or animals or machines, especially susceptible to weakness, and therefore showing the qualities of man.

Just a brief interlude.

After the chaos following the overthrow of a murderous American-backed dictator there had been a terrible famine. By the end of 1992 it was virtually over. Red Cross supplies were getting through to the people. The situation appeared to be under control. It was at that point George Bush (Papa Bush not Baby Bush) decided to make a spectacular show of “humanitarian aid.”

Marines were sent in. Naturally all the news networks were notified. What would be the point otherwise? There was a night landing in front of TV cameras waiting for them. It was so comical that even the television teams couldn't take it seriously. But the marines with their night vision equipment were blinded by the camera lights and the crews had to be ordered to shut them off. Of course, there was no resistance.

Then followed a tragicomedy in which some lives were saved by humanitarian aid but many were lost by heavy-handed military tactics. All of this was later blamed on the United Nations. It was a fiasco, and it was all under American military control. Almost all their most elite troops were there. The Americans estimated that between 7 000 and 10 000 locals were killed. Fewer than a hundred Americans lost their lives. They seemed to accept that for what it was worth. Specialists who have worked in the area estimated that about as many people were saved by the humanitarian intervention as were killed by the military operation. They could even have been the same people. It was felt that the whole matter may even have proceeded better without the military. It also appears that the whole thing was done mostly for Public Relations purposes. It was at any rate promoted that way. That's only the beginning.

Genuine offers of assistance and subsequent intervention in other peoples’ lives would often be considered a good thing. It is often quite easy.

There is much soul-searching and a lot self-flagellation on why we so often get it wrong.

As a result of this shambles and the subsequent soul-searching, the Americans refused to get involved in the Rwandan genocide. When they refused, all in the West also decided not to intervene to stop it.

Today Rwanda is often mentioned as an example of the failure of the United Nations, and it was that indeed. But what is possibly even worse is the failure to mention that the UN failed because the United States kept UN peacekeepers from being reinforced, cut off their supplies, and pushed ceaselessly to have them removed. Or the failure to mention that the State Department deliberately covered up its clear knowledge that what was happening was genocide.

For 100 days, people were killed at the rate of about 8 000 a day. It is the same as about a third of the number of children who die every day in the world from easily treatable diseases, not for 100 days, but every day.

This is far easier, but not very glamorous, to stop than sending troops to Rwanda. All that is required is to spend a small amount to bribe drug companies to produce the required remedies. It would require them to do something different than that which they are required to do by law: maximize profits at all costs, often by making medicines only for the rich.

That should be enough to stop ongoing Rwanda-style killings, and stop this not just for one hundred days, but constantly.

Is anyone doing it?

What does that tell us about the alleged humanitarian concerns over Rwanda?

Or Darfur? Or Aghanistan? Or Iraq? Or the Congo?

What it does tells us, very clearly, is that humanitarian concerns are wonderful so long as it's someone else's crimes and we do not have to do anything about them apart from striking heroic poses.

It also tells us a lot more.

Much of the formal structures on which we depend, and told that we have to depend upon, are simply a motley collection of institutions, a few individuals that had conferred upon themselves a series of mandates of their own choosing, and now function as a mutual backslapping society, giving one another high office and all the power, influence and prestige that go with it.

Ponder for a moment upon the savagery and criminality of a society that is based on institutional structures so utterly insane that in order to stop, not only genocide but permanent Rwanda-style killings among children of the world, there are no tools available except to bribe unaccountable private tyrannies to pretend to save them.

Paradoxes of Rationality

Once upon a time, in 1988 in fact, on 03 July, the USS Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner. It killed 290 passengers.


George Bush, on his presidential campaign at the time, was asked for an explanation. He emphatically stated that, “I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are.”

Although the story is old, and completely irrelevant in this context, I like it. It tells us something important about how politicians think. It is for them more important to follow their own agenda. The truth is often seen as some inconvenient impediment. Yet there are always the more troublesome individuals amongst us, who do care what the facts are and who will demand explanations.

All of which brings us to the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference held in December 2009.

It involved some 193 nations getting together to discuss the threat that global warming poses to our planet. It consisted for a large part of the same motley mix of individuals and assorted do-gooders that has persistently failed to do anything about such things as poverty, AIDS, Malaria and an assorted range of human ills.

The objective of this huge talking shop was to create a global agreement that extended and expanded the Kyoto Protocol. They were concerned about what can be done about an apparent and uncontrolled rise in global temperatures.

There is absolutely no doubt that human beings will need to adapt to such a thing if indeed the temperature is to increase dramatically. There would be a number of practical implications for human beings; some good, some bad. But temperature data is generally such a mess of random fluctuations that with enough manipulation you could derive any bogus trend you please. So the fact is that nobody probably really knows if it is rising, and if it is, by how much it will rise, or for how long. The climate has been comfortably uniform for thousands of years. The only sudden changes in the earths’ temperature – sudden such as in over hundreds or thousands of years – tend to be a sudden drop in temperature causing ice ages. Normally the temperature tends to go up for a while – over a few decades or so – and then down for a while. All of this happens within a comparatively narrow temperature range.

Were any of these issues discussed at the Copenhagen Conference?

No. Amidst the apocalyptic talk – how it could be calamitous for the human species - they waffled on about Greenhouse gas emissions. The real connection between greenhouse gasses and the climate, much less any effect human production of greenhouse gasses can have on the climate, was not discussed. Or it was, but was discussed by politicians, do-gooders and people who obviously slept through their high school physics classes. Then the final Copenhagen deal did not even manage to establish any greenhouse gas emission targets for anybody.

They waffled on about how nations – humans in other words - must limit temperature increases to no more than 2o Celsius. Then they lamented on the failure of the representatives of these 193 countries to clinch the “real deal” on how exactly to achieve this.

They did agree that CO2 emissions should be measured, reported and verified by . . . well, they were a bit vague about that one. Apparently some global organization would influence and monitor all nations' efforts to reduce their CO2 emissions. Would it be similar to the multitude of global organisations that monitor and influence all nations’ efforts to reduce poverty? Or promote democracy? Or spend public money properly?

Is it expected that this organisation have the same record of success?

If human beings are to suddenly start messing around with the climate in order to make the planet a more convenient and predictable place to live, why limit human interference only to the climate?

Why not go the whole hog?

Although the Copenhagen commitment to limit a global rise in temperature to two degrees is laudable, there are a number of other equally deserving causes that are being completely ignored:

1. Stopping continental drift. The current arrangement of continents is just fine. Humans have gotten used to it over the last few millennia. Besides airfares are likely to get completely out of hand should continents continue to drift apart unchecked. The negative impact on an already fragile airline industry will threaten to disrupt a whole way of life, dependent on easy and cheap international travel.

2. Limiting volcanic eruptions to one major eruption per millennium. Volcanic eruptions, especially, are really disruptive events. These eruptions tend to spew billions of tons of dust into the atmosphere, playing all sorts havoc with the climate as well as with the comfortable visual familiarity of sunsets and sunrises. Small eruptions, however, should perhaps be increased due to the tourist attraction value.

3. If global temperatures are indeed rising, then the warming effect of the Gulf Stream on some remote North Atlantic islands and the west coast of Scandinavia would become redundant. It would be much more sensible to reverse the direction of this oceanic current. It can then flow south-westwards from the comparative cold of the sub-arctic to cool down the Caribbean. Since this would be in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a global organization could be established to have this rather silly law annulled. This organisation can then also influence and monitor all sorts of other laws of nature that have become dated or inconvenient. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, for one, springs to mind. Imagine the possibilities for human invention if scientists are no longer obliged to work their way around all sorts of uncertainties as is the case under the current laws of nature.

The possibilities for international conferences, first class international travel, pompous reports and general scaremongering are endless. And making money. What makes these causes any less deserving than the climate from being under human control rather than that of nature?

The problem with defining and discussing the challenges that face human beings is that it is not done through elected governments that may become unelected if they loose touch with reality. Defining and discussing the challenges that face human beings nowadays tend to be the domain of a bunch of unelected power brokers, who always pop up just where the action is. Under a variety of different guises, they press their agendas on all manner of things. The majority of these they also invent and define themselves. The prime movers in a complex new system of power and influence, this shadow elite make public decisions without consulting the public. They make decisions about everything - from the economy, to national policy of countries of which they are not even citizens, to foreign policy and financial rules. Ultimately, they answer only to each other.

They make no distinction between the weather and climate. No distinction between our responsibility to take care of our natural environment and controlling the climate.

Having defined CO2 as the great evil facing all of humanity they are now preparing to do with carbon what they have done with a number of other things: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. Carbon-related financial products are just about ready to be sold to investors.

Banks will apparently allow a mandatory carbon-trading system to save the planet at the lowest possible cost. In this manner a completely new U$D2 trillion market can be created by turning climate change into yet another commodities market. Derivatives, by the way, are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity. In this case it is CO2 and other greenhouse gases (the most common of which is water vapour).

Selling fluff in the truest sense of the word . . .