Friday, March 26, 2004
Who owns Palestine ?

To whom did god give Britain? The Romans, the Saxons or maybe the Celts? Britain, is pretty much like anywhere else: it has been subject to waves of successive migrants. Some have been some conquerors, some civilisers and some conquerors and civilisers. Some were even invited in. Others have been economic migrants resulting from state policy, others have slipped clandestinely in.

No god (if there was any such thing) has given the land that is now Britain to anybody. Just as no god has given anybody an exclusive right to the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. To reduce the occupation of Samara/West Bank to the status of some divine right is deterministic, fatalistic and downright dangerous.

Zionism understood that the land of Israel was given to the Jews, forever: on a global scale, a fairly small and insignificant ethic group, when compared to say, Mandarin Chinese, Anglo-Saxon, Japanese, Arab, Malay or Black African. Surely no one can begrudge a small part of the Middle East to small ethic group?

But this discounts any concept of flux in how humanity has now spread to every part of the globe. And then how once settled, warring tribes, exploration, conquest, slavery and migration have all generated an even far more complicated picture. Every piece of Earth has been subject to this flux. The Polynesians are now outnumbered in the Pacific (taking account of NZ and Hawaii), few Mayan people now survive, Tasmanian Aboriginals have been wiped out and emancipated slaves have created a hugely different ethic mix in the West Indies and USA.

People have long migrated from their homelands voluntarily. For perhaps the best example of this we need not look any further than the Jews. But now there are more Irish descendants living in north east USA than there are in the nation of Eire. Should this relinquish their right to return? In most cases it has. Most have taken on citizenship of their new found homes. The Norman Conquest of Britain was so complete that it become modern Britain. Britons may the right now to visit Denmark and Sweden – by both being members of the European Union, but there is now no general right of Britons to claim ownership over Norway, though they may claim a Norse (Norman) heritage.

But we have seen the spread of settlements across the West Bank and into Gaza. Settlers, not all of them Uzi toting ‘crazies’ living in caravans on a desert hillside. Some have formed whole cities in the occupied territories – whitewashed Mediterranean villas, boulevards of street cafes, air-conditioned gymnasiums and bowling alleys – to house returning Jews. As is their right, as god has said so: this is non-negotiable. Arab residents, representing generations living there for many hundreds of years, which have not chosen to migrate, to whom the land has been given by divine right have been pushed aside to the marginal lands not required by the settlers.

But at least they get a good view of these gleaming cities from their refugee camp. Envy plays its part in the struggle for reconciliation. While economic activity has effectively been shut down in Occupied Territories (and lets face it, who would invest in a factory when you could not guarantee that your work force could make it to work each day, or for that matter, that it would not be arbitrarily razed to the ground, alongside your house) Palestinians have been shunted into a life of poverty, poor health and a plummeting life expectancy.

Basic social services - police, water supply, education, medical treatment - have all but but closed down.

And now a wall¹ has been built to keep out the suicide bombers and to physically divide the land like never before. For this Sharon will pay a price. There will be many of settlements behind this wall; although all the best ones, the most whitewashed and sprinklered ones - have been incorporated onto the Israeli side). The building of the wall has incorporated huge tracts of the West Bank, illegally annexing land, cutting communities in half, putting agricultural land beyond reach, displacing 200,000 Palestinians caught ‘outside’ the wall and evacuating Jewish settlers out of pockets of hope such as Qalqilya.

This has occurred despite widespread international condemnation (with 2 notable exceptions²) and 44 nations filing papers at the International Court of Justice.

This will kill any two-state solution. Suicide bombers will still operate and still spread their terror and hatred and seek to drive out the nation that occupies them, Palestinians will be forever locked into their own cesspool of poverty ‘until they can learn their lesson!’, settlements will continue to spread into the Israeli occupied West Bank in front of the wall and when construction reaches Jerusalem, greater amounts of blood will be spilled. No viable state can exist behind such a convoluted and oppressive wall; no economic activity can flourish to bring an end to the desperation and IDF personnel will be able to control the movements of the occupied people like no other occupation before – Soviet Union, Nazi Germany included.

This nihilistic future will happen. The conflict is now so entrenched into ceaseless and more bloody retaliation that no side is now willing to compromise. Sharon’s admittance that ‘some’ settlements in the Occupied Territories will have to go is not going to convince moderate Arabs who have reconciled the existence of Israel, let alone the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad – both groups now contemplating how best to recruit into active service the 200,000 men, women and children that lined the streets at the funeral service of Yassin.

A divided Israel and a divided Palestine simply will not earn peace and will not thrive economically or culturally. Roadmaps are dead, peace processes are defunct – now is the time to turn the looking glass the other way. Start with the finished product – a single state – and work back from there. Take that as given and establish the mechanisms to get there and get the international observers in too. The rest of the world has already opened up to realise that division of humanity behind borders and walls is the not the final state of human organisation, but just a passing phase.

1. The American Administration called it a ‘security fence’. Please go away and come back when you have something useful to say.
2. Both the USA and Australia have failed to condemn it. Oh yes, and Ethiopia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau.
   

From

nicholsoncartoons.com.au who comments in the Australian:

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Thursday, March 11, 2004
You're a GM Nation Now

Whatever the original motives behind the UK government’s GM Nation? public debate, it has vividly demonstrated that consultation is not straightforward and can cause you problems when its results are contrary to want you wanted all along.

The aim of consultation is to listen, engage in dialogue and give competing interests room to mobilise opinion. It is not a public veto and the conclusions should not necessarily be indicative of any policy decision as they can easily be skewed by a small, but focused minority.

However, consultation should at the very least inform governments of the level public support on an issue.

Additionally, in a subject as complex as genetic modification consultation should also take on the role of educating the public, to attempt to remove irrational fears and allow more informed judgements. Importantly, the final decision made by government on GM was likely to be something of a watershed – once ‘frankenfoods’ are here, there’s no turning back.

So if the aim of the GM Nation? debate was to ‘educate’ the public, it may well have succeeded. People are generally more informed than before. If, as one suspects, it was to be an exercise in public relations - selling genetically modified crops to a benign public - it has failed in its entirety.

A key theme picked up from the focus group used in the campaign was a deep suspicion that the public debate was merely ‘window dressing’ to a secret agreement already reached between government and the biotech industry.

In light of the final report and the government’s recent announcements, this healthy scepticism seems right on the money. Contrary to the opinions of a large majority of British people, the UK government has given the green light to the commercialisation of GM cropping.

In the announcement, Trade and Industry Secretary Margaret Beckett claimed that the government had made taken a ‘precautionary’ and ‘evidence-based’ decision. She could rightly argue that the precautionary route has been taken (although some groups have disputed this, science thankfully, will always be contested) and there has been no evidence of any malign interference by GM crops with the local environment. Indeed the biotech companies have not had it all their own way: where the pesticides used on herbicide-resistant crops have proven to have a greater impact on biodiversity than control groups, licences have not been granted. More testing and monitoring are required.

But nowhere in her announcement did she say that the government had made a decision based on broad public opinion – on what people actually wanted!

The GM Nation? debate was perhaps the broadest and most interactive consultation exercise undertaken by any government. It cost A$1,500,000, lasted over 12 months, involved facilitated public workshops, invited and stimulated numerous open discussions around the country and, of course, had its own interactive web-site. All of this delivered a greater public understanding of the issues.

However, none of this greater understanding swung public opinion in behind the biotech companies. Often their most effective defence “if only people could understand the science” worked against them. Where there was little understanding there was wary concern, but where there was a greater awareness of the issues (although this may still not be based on true understanding) there was strong rejection.

This scepticism increased with awareness. During the consultation, the focus group was asked to go and research the issues independently. On questioning for the second time most attitudes had hardened even further against GM rollout.

This focus group was designed to represent the ‘silent majority’ – that mysterious constituency that sensible politicians could one day mobilise against such timid bias as political correctness and revisionist history - if only these people were not so busy earning an honest crust for their families. This time, the silent majority could not even be coaxed into indifference.

None of this must stop the UK government continuing on its course of accommodating business interests over the broader wishes of the population.

It is at this point that justice and democracy collide. One suspects that a plebiscite would clearly come down in favour of an outright ban on any GM foods. But to use John Stuart Mill’s critique, ‘the tyranny of the majority’ would prevail and the liberty of individuals to pursue their own ends, take risks and make profits would be curtailed – to the long run detriment of all. Invention and technological development need tolerance and classical liberalism as bedfellows.

But does this make it right to roll out GM crops? Should it be acceptable to see GM as just the inevitable by-product of the march of progress? To stand in the way risks being labelled as a Luddites, refusing to comprehend the benefits. Somehow, wishing to stop GM foods is likened to be anti-progress, a greenie, an extremist.

The biotech industry’s trump card is always consumer choice: ‘let the people decide through their shopping habits’. If the consumer is not ready for GM products, they will switch off; the invisible hand of the market will naturally direct investment away from a GM future.

That said, the consumer does not have an exemplary record as the ultimate arbiter of what is good for them and good for the environment. The consumer has chosen to become obese by eating at hamburger restaurants and has chosen to despoil Scottish coastal waters with effluent by buying cheap, farmed salmon, manipulated by advertisers and retailers into an early grave and towards ecosystem destruction. The consumer is too far removed from the impact of their buying trends to genuinely consider the consequences. GM gene sequences would have long cross-fertilised and entered the environment before the whole show could be closed down.

The British public continues to believe in the adage: necessity is the mother of invention. Where they see supermarket shelves well stocked with a broad range of produce (just what is a ‘Jack-Fruit’?), a growing organic sector now providing greater choice and all this at a less than inflationary price, they ask themselves why do we need GM crops? Demonstrating this, they are generally more understanding (though still not broadly supportive) of the special role that GM crops could play in developing nations.

But we live an age where invention is the mother of necessity, especially where biotech companies are involved. The GM industry is dominated by handful of mammoth firms. Where sterile GM seeds can become industry standard by offering even higher yields, shareholders become happy as farmers return year after year to the biotechs to purchase next season’s seed stocks. The billions of dollars spent on research is finally realised.

Popular will, democracy if you like – has been put in hock to business interests once again. You didn’t want it; the government gave it to you anyway. Even more education is not the panacea, the government gave that to you too and then still ignored you. Surely the time has come to resurrect the referendum.

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Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Howzat? 40 degrees, Not Out*

Our weather in Queensland is driving us to distraction.

Just three weeks ago we were sweltering in the mid-40s: if you didn’t have air-con at home and didn’t fancy the shopping malls you had to plan your escape to the coast early to avoid the traffic jams.

Not long prior, we experienced the coldest February day on record. It wasn’t really cold (22 degrees), but it was still a record. Last week we watched a tropical cyclone first threaten and then fizzle off-shore merely to drop a whole month's rain in one hit.

Much like cricket commentators, meteorologists revel in records. And like their cricket brethren, they will keenly partake of this information to their listeners at every opportunity. Viz: TMS: Bill Frindall would pipe up from the background to calmly explain that this score “is the highest by a Sri Lankan number 6 batting second at Trent Bridge”.

Weather presenters have taken their cue and are now ready with a constant stream of new records to report.

I recall the excitement of last August in the UK as the mercury pushed at the ‘all time highest temperature, ever in the UK’ and to make sure we understood the significance ‘…..anywhere’. It was news before it was even news – headlining the lunchtime bulletin in mere anticipation of the record falling, a full two hours before.

Needless to say, the record tumbled and we were all excited and relieved for we could one day ask of others: “where were you on the day Kennedy was shot/the all-time record was broken?*. (*delete as appropriate).

Not content with absolute records (no matter how spurious some cricketing ‘absolute’ records can be), meteorologists even feed us with records within parameters: ‘the hottest/coldest/darkest day for 10 years/5 years/since last week.

This means that the weather can be constantly newsworthy, perfect for today’s saturation media coverage and a boon for broadcasters.

And why not? Weather is ubiquitous, it is ever changing and also it is a safe subject to kick off conversations with complete strangers or people with whom you feel uncomfortable. And the records allow us to sound knowledgable and more interesting too.

“Jeez, it’s gonna be a hot one” can be heard most mornings waiting for a train in the sunshine at Nundah Station.

“Yep, they say its gonna be the hottest March weekday for 5 years.” you can acknowledge with conviction.

Our climate is certainly getting warmer and on a global scale. Global warming ? Most probably. The science supporting this remains more persuasive than the well-funded minority cheerleaders attempting to refute it.

Glaciers are retreating in Patagonia at an alarming rate, the Coral Sea is 2 degrees warmer and is now bleaching the Great Barrier Reef and the tundra-ice in Siberia is melting with the run-off reducing the salinity of the Artic Ocean, threatening to divert the North Atlantic Drift and freeze western Europe.

Cricket records will constantly be broken. It is part of what drives the athlete’s ambitions to win and create enjoyment for the followers of the game. We will all cheer on Warne and Muralitharan, both locked in a battle to secure the ultimate accolade for a bowler: the most Test wickets in a career.

But let’s not cheer on George Bush and John Howard for their lack of ambition in not signing up to the principles of the Kyoto Protocol; for opening up Alaska for oil exploitation; for subsidising the export of oil-shale; for reducing investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. They may bring new meteorological records, but they should not be welcomed.

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Tuesday, March 09, 2004
The rural-urban interface?

It is often claimed that there is a huge canyon of misunderstanding between the urbanite liberals and the salt-of-the-earth rural types (the true Australians).

Nowhere is this misunderstanding more acute than in the rapid clearance of remnant natural vegatation and regrowth areas in freehold Queensland.

The Beattie Government has pledged to stop broadacre clearing and regulate what people can do to natural eco-systems on their own private land - often huge tracts of it.

While regulation of private land is instituted the world over (in treaties such as RAMSAR), it has created a good deal of misunderstanding in Queensland: mainly do the absolute polarisation of opinion between city dwellers (who do their shopping at Coles/Woolworths and take their lead from the opinions of the Wilderness Society) and those that live in rural areas (growing the food and regurgitating everything that the Property Rights Association tells them).

Where does the 'truth' lie ? Nowhere really. It is always going to be contested and will never be decided objectively by 'experts' and scientists coolly informing public policy making.

Alas it will be decided at the level of politics. People make their informed judgements from the opinions they read, the news stories in the paper and how it is reported, friends and groups with which they empathise. It is never empirical decision, but one where subjectivity is filtered through values and prejudice, played out in power politics.

Fortunately, in Australia, this power politics is played out through democracy and a free press (free, if you own one, that is). Decisions can be reversed as quickly as they can be implemented. Beattie may win this battle (albeit, no doubt, with huge concessions along the way), but that will not protect Queensland's remarkable forests forever.

These two cartoons from The Australian very sharply portray one view (also my view) of forest policy in Queensland. (Bear in mind, Queensland is big, but remnant vegetation clearance is increasing year on year. Last year, an area the size of Devon was cleared, net.)

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Saturday, March 06, 2004
Forests that ‘gobble’ CO₂?

After reading this a number of thoughts struck me. (Sadly, I missed the TV programme.)

I would have thought it was obvious to any ecologist……

Matter can neither be created or destroyed – this is the first Law of Thermodynamics. It is also, according to Garrett Hardin, a fair assumption to make in relation to ecological systems.

Mature forests neither net generate or absorb CO₂. All things being equal biomass is being created in photosynthesis (and held in trees and plants) and destroyed in respiration (by microbes and fungi) in equal measures at any one time. It is when further factors (some natural, some man-made) such as cyclones, reduced rainfall, soil erosion and introduced bio-pests are added into the mix that any natural balance is throw out of kilter.

The El Niòo Southern Oscillation has been particularly high in most of the last 12 years, causing drier than average conditions for Australia. The last three years rainfall figures have been particularly bad for NE Queensland (see charts) which would presume a lessening (all other things being equal) of biomass in the Daintree/Atherton Tablelands area.

However, in addition, all other things are not equal. Native vegetation clearing continues in NE Queensland (albeit, much slower than in the past), which would have the effect of increasing soil erosion and reducing fauna concentrations that have the beneficial impact on improving flora pollination and seed dispersal and further improving the genetic stock.

It is doubtful (as the programme implies) that the Daintree Rainforest is generating its own dynamic in global warming by being a carbon producer rather than retainer. The rate of carbon release from the burning of fossil fuels, reduced CO₂ concentrations in the world’s seas from the warming oceans and global climate change driving such things as the melting of permafrost are probably far more important in increasing rates of global warming and drying the forests of NE Queensland.

It is known (from studies in Amazonia) that higher concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere have driven forests into becoming more efficient carbon sinks - presumably by becoming denser and tying up more biomass than the conditions of normal rainfall/temperature/soil type would otherwise allow.

However, these studies did not imply that if we continued to release carbon into the atmosphere at the (increasing) rates we currently are doing, existing forests would simply absorb it. We are simultaneously releasing CO₂ at an unsustainable rate and reducing forest cover on the globe.

The TV programme’s narrator suggests that the carbon release of the forest was a localised problem for Daintree and the forest itself is not helping Australia’s efforts to reduce its increasing production of CO₂. (Australia’s non-signatory status with the Kyoto Protocol is a whole new story.) What should we do ? Cut it down ?

The forest is now producing CO₂ due to the impact of mankind. Don’t blame it for this.

The work of the Canopy Crane Project (not withstanding the ABC journalist’s interpretation of it) is very interesting. It is a shame that most of its most interesting publications are not for open source. Still, science doesn’t come for free – ask Timberlands West Coast Ltd of New Zealand.

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