THE PRICE IS NOT RIGHT
The price of standard crude oil on NYMEX was under $25/barrel in September 2003. By 11August 2005, it had risen to over $60/barrel. Through most of 2006, the price showed a bumpy plateau, with a summer peak, falling for the early part of 2007 to between $50 and $60/barrel, before rising again. By October 2007, prices had reached $92/barrel and reached a high of $99.29/barrel for December futures in New York on 21 November 2007.
These values are rapidly approaching the inflation adjusted maximum of 1980, which was equivalent to a price of circa $95–$100/barrel in mid-2007 dollars, contributing to fears of a similar economic recession to that of the early 1980s. Commentators have attributed the increase in prices to a variety of factors, including North Korea’s missile launches, the Israel and Lebanon situation, US brinkmanship concerning Iranian nuclear energy, and to reports from the US Department of Energy and others showing a decline in petroleum reserves.
There are many reasons for the slow-down in oil supply growth, which is the most permanent factor leading to increased prices. Turbulence in the Middle East, the world’s largest oil-producing region, has led to decreased exports and continuing political instability in Saudi Arabia. Outside the Middle East, other oil producing nations have experienced problems, such as the strikes and political unrest in Venezuela, and disruption and dispute in West Africa.
In view of tighter supplies worldwide, (so-called) terrorist and insurgent groups have increasingly targeted oil and gas installations to maximise both mayhem and political gains. Sometimes, such attacks are perpetrated by militias in regions where oil wealth has produced little tangible benefits for the local citizenry, as is the case in the Niger delta. The terror factor adds an additional premium, including insurance costs, to the price of oil.

ADDICTION AFFLICTION
When the modern oil industry was born 145 years ago in Titusville, Pennsylvania, few worried about just how long petroleum would keep flowing out of the ground. However, since production peaked in the United States in 1970, a growing number of geologists, economists and industry analysts have been pondering the question of just how long worldwide supplies will keep up with growing demand, with some predicting a global production peak as soon as next year. The outlook is muddied by the data, for estimating oil reserves (or how much is left in the ground) is a precarious business at best. This task is further complicated by the secrecy of OPEC producers, who are reluctant to disclose just how much oil they’ve found.
In 2007, global demand for oil, currently at more than 80 million barrels per day and climbing, has come closer than ever to exceeding the world’s known production capacity. Disruptions in oil supply due to wars or market forces like OPEC embargoes are nothing new, but with producers pumping as fast as they can, there is little cushion for temporary supply interruptions or heightened demand from industrialising countries such as China and India.

JUNKIE’S FIX
The United States has the largest demand for oil by far, using around 25% of the world’s total oil production and 40% of the world’s gasoline production with only about 5% of the total world population and 28% of global GDP. Due to falling domestic production (current production is about half as much as at its peak in 1970) and expanding demand each year, approximately two thirds of the oil consumed by the US is imported from foreign countries. This dependency leaves the US highly vulnerable to any supply disruption.
This, of course, brings us back to the criminal occupation of Iraq. To many it is now considered a fiasco or political quagmire, but from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is neither of those things. Indeed, the US is precisely where it wants to be, which is probably why there is no exit strategy.

After all, Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves, which is more than five times the total in the US. What’s more, because of its long geo-political isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations, with only two thousand wells having been drilled across the entire country, as opposed to the state of Texas that has over a million. It has been estimated by the Council on Foreign Relations that Iraq may have a further 220–300 billion barrels of undiscovered oil. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.
Therefore it comes as no surprise that in early 2007, Iraq’s massive oil reserves were thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law approved by the Iraqi parliament. The US government was, of course, involved in drawing up the law, which gives big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allows the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.
In 1999, the US Vice-President Dick Cheney, but who was at that time chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, suggested that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. When asked where these increased supplies would come from, he replied: “The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies”.

Obviously a man of vision.

“What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.”
– Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor AD 121–180 AD)

Pollination is the process by which plant pollen is transferred from the male reproductive organs to the female reproductive organs to form seeds. In flowering plants, pollen is transferred from the anther to the stigma, often by the wind or by insects.
The sudden mysterious loss of honeybees across the US and around the world is highlighting the critical link that the bees play in human food and crop production. The syndrome is referred to as ‘colony collapse disorder’ (CCD) and growers are becoming worried about the capability of the commercial bee industry (and dwindling wild bee populations) to meet the demand for crop pollination. It has been said every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food.

NO ISOLATED INCIDENT
Bee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the US west coast with beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent. Three of the UK’s 25 wild bee species are already extinct and European beekeepers have observed similar phenomenon in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain; with initial reports coming in from Switzerland and Germany to a lesser degree. Possible cases of CCD have also been reported in Taiwan since April 2007.
The causes of the syndrome are not yet well understood. Theories include environmental change, malnutrition, disease, mites, pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops with pest control characteristics, such as transgenic maize. Some claim that bee disappearances have not been reported from organic beekeepers, suggesting to some that beekeeping practices can be a primary factor as well.

TOO DRY, TOO STRESSED?
One of the patterns reported by the group at Penn State was that all producers in a preliminary survey noted a period of “extraordinary stress” affecting the colonies in question prior to their die-off, most commonly involving poor nutrition and/or drought. To date, this is the only factor that all of the reported cases of CCD have in common. Accordingly, there is at least some significant possibility that this phenomenon is correlated to nutritional stress, and may not manifest in healthy, well-nourished colonies.
It could also just be that the bees are stressed out. Bees are being raised to survive a shorter off-season which most likely lowers their immunity to viruses. Mites have also damaged bee colonies, and the insecticides used to try to kill mites are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many worker bees. In addition, the queens are living half as long as they did just a few years ago. Researchers are also concerned that the willingness of beekeepers to truck their colonies from coast to coast could be adding to bees’ stress, helping to spread viruses and mites, and otherwise accelerating whatever is afflicting them.

FRANKEN-BEES?
Walter Haefeker, a German beekeeping official, has speculated that the fact that genetically modified, insect-resistant plants are now used in 40 percent of cornfields in the United States (as opposed to 0.06 in Germany) could be playing a role. From 2001 to 2004, a research team examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called ‘Bt corn’ on bees. A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests. The study concluded that there was no evidence of a toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations. However when the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, a significantly stronger decline in the number of bees occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.

CLIMATIC CONTRIBUTIONS?
Some beekeepers think the culprit may be climate change, in which the Earth as a whole is warming but regional and local temperatures may drop much lower or higher than normal. Erratic weather patterns caused by global warming play havoc with bees’ sensitive cycles. For instance, an unusually dry and warm winter can alter the flowering cycle of many plants, and a sudden blast of hot temperatures as plant buds and pollen grains are beginning to form can create sterile pollen. Flowers are also blooming earlier than in the past, and plants such as red maples and pussy willows – typically the first pollen sources for honeybees – have been blossoming weeks before the bees are ready to fly in the spring.

EMERGENT BEHAVIOUR
The term ‘synergy refers to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that what can be predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents. Ecology is all about synergy: synergistic patterns, synergistic interactions and synergistic-related consequences.

Honeybees are disappearing, and the salient point is that the bees in the colonies appear to have lost their immunity to viruses, bacteria and disease. The loss of resistance to disease may be caused by parasites, pesticides (both applied and present in GM crops) or climate change. There appears to be no concrete evidence to link the CCD syndrome with any of the aforementioned theories individually. However if you factor them in all together, you get a lethal combination of environmental factors hitting the bee colonies all at the same time.

A quote which has appeared in many of the news features about CCD is: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” This quote has often been attributed to Albert Einstein, but the original source for this quote has never been acknowledged, and the earliest known use of the quote is from 1994, 39 years after Einstein’s death.

Nevertheless…

“Our waste problem is not only the fault of the producers. It is the fault of an economy that is wasteful from top to bottom, a symbiosis of an unlimited greed at the top and a lazy, passive, self-indulgent consumptiveness at the bottom and all of us are involved in it”.
– Wendell Berry

MAKE, PARTAKE, THEN REGURGITATE
Our consumption of goods is a function of our culture. Only by producing and selling goods and services does capitalism in its present form work. The more that is produced and purchased, the more prosperity is generated. After all, the single most important measure of economic growth is the Gross National Product (GNP) – the sum total of goods and services produced by a given society in a given year.
However the by-product of this ongoing production and consumption in society is waste.
Waste, rubbish, trash, garbage or junk is unwanted or undesired material. Although generic terms, they do have more specific meanings: rubbish or trash is meant to designate mixed household waste including paper and packaging, whereas garbage, junk or scrap is generally considered to be metallic or industrial material. There are other categories of waste as well, such as sewage, ash, manure, etc, but whatever the designation, we are producing more and more of the stuff every year.

THE PIONEERS
The US Environmental Protection Agency reports the United States produces approximately 220 million tons of garbage annually. This is equivalent to burying more than 82,000 football fields six feet deep in compacted garbage. Every day the inhabitants of New York City throw away approximately 26,000 tons of trash.
Since the landfill at Ano Liosia, northwestern Athens, reached full capacity in late December 2007, the authorities have not known what to do with the 6,000 tons of trash produced daily in this city of four million people. The 100-hectare landfill, said by environmental groups to be the largest in Europe, is a 160-metre mountain of partially-treated sewage, toxic hospital waste, rubble and household trash, besieged by a horde of disease-ridden seagulls and rats.
In July of this year, US and European embassies in Rome warned their citizens of the potential health risks in visiting Italy’s southern Campania region due to a garbage crisis that has filled the region’s streets with piles of rubbish. Since May, the streets of Naples and nearby towns have been piled with household waste that has nowhere else to go, apparently the fault of political mismanagement, conflicting self-interest and organised crime.

THE NEWBIES
Not to be outdone, the emerging economic powerhouses of Asia are catching up in the smelly world of waste production. In Jakarta an estimated 70% or 1,200 cubic meters of the Indonesian capital’s daily waste gets dumped into the city’s canals, most of which lead to the Angke River estuary in the north; a reeking drainpipe for a city of 10 million people. It has been described as a broad, black and noxious channel, moving with the viscous sloth of an oil spill; pushing all the jetsam of 21st century life before it. Apparently, the trash is so dense in parts that the river can actually be walked across.

The Vietnamese capital Hanoi, which is a key beneficiary of the nation’s economic boom, is a perfect example of the environmental challenges exacerbated by success. The average resident of Hanoi throws out 1kg of trash per day, up from .05kg in 1996. By the end of this decade, the figure is forecast to jump to 1.5kg as rising wealth spawns greater consumption. Yet the statistics from China are the most daunting of all. The world’s most populous nation produces 150 million tons of trash annually, with the volume of garbage from its cities surging by almost 10% a year since 1979 and by almost 20% in a metropolis such as Beijing. Today, most of the Chinese capital’s refuse of 5 million tons a year is sent straight to the city’s 490 landfills. Of these, 231 were recently found to pose a medium- to high-level health risk to surrounding areas, triggering increased rates of cancers and respiratory illnesses.

FLOSSING THE JETSAM
In recent years, recycling has become the preferred choice of waste disposal for many industries. The British government set a target of recycling 25% of all household waste by the year 2010. Likewise, the proportion of household rubbish recycled in Germany increased from 12 to 30 percent between 1992 and 1995. Around 75% of the average European car is already recycled, largely because the metal can be sold as scrap. However, electrical scrap accounts for merely 2% of waste produced in the European Union, and car scrap even less.

Each method of waste disposal has its drawbacks. Reusing glass bottles can require more energy than their initial manufacture as they have to be sterilized. Incineration is a source of greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals such as dioxins and lead. Landfill sites are a possible source of toxic chemicals and produce large quantities of methane gas. They must be managed so that pollutants do not seep into groundwater and should therefore be kept dry, but this slows down the rate of decomposition. Industry and business are responsible for most of this waste, but consumer product packaging accounts for about 15% of what’s discarded. When you purchase a frozen dinner, you are paying not only for the meal but for the outer paperboard box, the plastic or foil tray that holds the meal, and the covering over the food. You pay again for packaging, directly or indirectly, when your garbage is picked up and disposed of in a landfill or incinerator. Some communities are moving toward ‘pay-as-you-throw’ fees for every bag put out at the curb, so it makes sense to reduce household waste. Composting, recycling and reusing items all help, and by shopping carefully you can reduce excess packaging that you would throw away. Yet ultimately the most effective solution would be to commit the ultimate sin in today’s global economy.

Instead of ‘shop till you drop’, ‘stop… and then drop the shop’. AF Keck

China is one of the world’s oldest civilizations, consisting of states and cultures dating back more than six millennia. It has the world’s longest continuously used written language system, and it is the source of some of the world’s great inventions, including the Four Great Inventions of ancient China: paper, the compass, gunpowder and printing.

Since 1978, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government has been reforming its economy from a Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented economy while remaining within the political framework provided by the Communist Party of China. This system has been called “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” and is one type of mixed economy. The People’s Republic of China now has the fourth largest economy in the world when measured by nominal GDP. Its economic output for 2006 was $2.68 trillion USD, and although its per capita GDP in 2006 was approximately only US $2,000 (quite low by world standards) it has been rising rapidly. As of 2005, 70% of China’s GDP was in the private sector. The smaller public sector is dominated by about 200 large state enterprises concentrated mostly in utilities, heavy industries and energy resources.

China’s mercurial rise to economic power has been the fastest industrialisation in history, with the past six years of growth equating to double the total annual economic output of India. This growth has taken close to 400 million people out of poverty in China, but the environmental impacts have been nothing short of devastating.

More than half of China’s 1.3 billion population, including 278 cities, live without any form of sewage treatment, and eight of those cities have populations of more than 500,000. It has become the world’s top emitter of acid-rain causing sulphur dioxide and many analysts expect it to overtake the United States this year as the biggest greenhouse gas emitter. This pollution has taken on greater urgency as Beijing tries to clean up its notoriously toxic air before hosting the 2008 Olympics next August.

Pollution is hitting the two major Chinese rivers (the Huai and the Yangtze) as well as all of their tributaries. Control points stretched along the waterways reveal a level of pollution equal to 5 (on a scale of 7) or worse: in many cases, the waters are so polluted that physical contact is advised against. According to Mao Rubai, chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC) environment and resources protection committee, the volume of waste pumped into China’s rivers is “enormous”. This situation is directly related to the fact that water pollution standards for the country’s industries are either too low or nonexistent, and the sheer volume of toxic waste pumped in far exceeds the capacity of the river basins to replenish themselves.
Either way, whatever controls and limits imposed by the government are generally completely ignored by the industries. The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong cites as an example the Jinyuan chemical company on the banks of the Han River. Operating since the 1970s, it has collected numerous official complaints from local authorities, which have frequently ordered the cessation of all production and the application of government standards for waste treatment. Yet Jinyuan has never stopped production, not even for one day.

Exports in Exhaust

Another of China’s lesser-known exports is a dangerous brew of soot, toxic chemicals and climate-changing gases from the smoke stacks of coal-burning power plants. In April 2007, a dense cloud of pollutants over Northern China sailed to nearby Seoul, sweeping along dust and desert sand before wafting across the Pacific. An American satellite spotted the cloud as it crossed the west coast. Researchers in California, Oregon and Washington noticed specks of sulphur compounds, carbon and other by-products of coal combustion coating the silvery surfaces of their mountaintop detectors. These microscopic particles can work their way deep into the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer.
The sulphur dioxide produced in coal combustion poses an even more immediate threat to the health of China’s own citizens, contributing to about 400,000 premature deaths a year. It also causes acid rain that poisons lakes, rivers, forests and crops. Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming gases from China’s coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialised countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.

Everybody’s Problem?

Already, China uses more coal than the United States, the European Union and Japan combined, and it has increased coal consumption 14 percent in each of the past two years. Aware of the country’s growing reliance on coal and of the dangers from burning so much of it, China’s leaders have vowed to improve the nation’s energy efficiency. No-one thinks that this effort will be enough. To make a big improvement in emissions of global-warming gases and other pollutants, the country must install the most modern equipment – equipment that for the time being must come from other nations.
Seeing as the Chinese are merely following in our own toxic footsteps. industrialised countries need to help by providing loans or grants, as the Japanese government and the World Bank have done, or by sharing technology. Unfortunately, many of China’s utilities have in the past preferred to buy cheap but often antiquated equipment from well-connected domestic suppliers instead of importing costlier gear from the West. The Chinese government has been reluctant to approve the extra spending. They feel that asking customers to shoulder the bill would set back the government’s efforts to protect consumers from inflation and to create jobs and social stability.

A familiar, but dangerously flawed logic that may end up making corpses of us all. AF KECK

The fossil fuel lobby (particularly in the US) has focused its efforts to obfuscate the issue of global warming with four major arguments:

1. There is no real evidence that global temperatures have risen as a result of human activity.
2. Computer models of climate change have predicted far more warming than satellite records actually show.
3. Responding effectively to climate change is simply too expensive. It will cost the US economy billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
4. There’s no point in the industrial world doing anything to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases, since developing countries like China and India will produce most of the heat-trapping gases in the future.

However as the science has firmed up during the 1990s through today, and better datasets have become available, the first two arguments have effectively collapsed. They are only used for public posturing before poorly briefed audiences while being effectively abandoned within the negotiations themselves. The scientific consensus around climate change is now essentially unshakeable.

The abandonment of effective scientific dissent has forced the fossil fuel lobby to switch from promoting junk science, to pitching junk economics. They fervently conjure up extreme visions of industrial collapse and widespread unemployment (600,000 job losses annually is the favoured figure of the Global Climate Coalition) but show little grasp of real-world economics.

Their models also simply ignore the massive potential job implications of developing renewable energy technologies and increasing energy efficiency. Any business activity that can thrive without fossil fuels is simply discounted. Additionally, the fossil lobby consistently fail to predict the economic losses that would follow from inaction on climate change, for instance the numerable studies by the insurance industry of mounting losses from climate-related disasters.

In February 1997, 2,000 economists, including six Nobel laureates, signed a statement arguing that the US should join other nations to take measures to slow climate change and agreed that “preventable steps are justified”. The economists, who were from across the political spectrum, argued that: “Economic studies have determined that there are many potential policies for which the benefits outweigh the costs.”

Despite the failure of many governments to give significant incentives to bring about a green-tech revolution, some smaller European nations such as Iceland, Denmark and Sweden have decided to try and buck this trend on their own. Iceland’s stated goal is to become the first nation run on an entirely hydrogen economy by 2050. They are endeavouring to power the bulk of its transportational infrastructure with hydrogen produced by electricity from surplus renewables such as wind, geo thermal and hydro electricity.

Denmark lies on the eastern margin of the North Sea where ‘wind’ is a prevailing factor. With a population of 5.5 million, the country produces the highest per capita amount of wind energy in the world, some 16% of its total needs. They pioneered this large scale uptake of onshore wind energy by giving people tax breaks to install their own turbines and therefore entire communities an incentive to invest.

Sweden has the lofty ambition of completely weaning itself off oil within 15 years, without having to resort to building new nuclear power plants: quite a bold assertion for a cold northern nation of 9 million people and almost as many cars. The Scandinavian country, which was hard hit by oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets the majority of its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power. However, by 2003, 26% of all its energy already came from renewables, compared with an EU average of 6%. In addition to geo-thermal and some solar, its main future source of local renewables is its many hectares of boreal forest. This is a domestic renewable energy resource that can create many jobs, especially in rural areas. Furthermore, bio-fuel from the forest is considered to be carbon dioxide neutral, and as such does not contribute to increasing the greenhouse effect.

All the technologies to change the way we live and still ‘keep the lights on’ fortunately already exist. All that is lacking is the political will to modify and develop these systems to make them economically competitive. The right incentives could promote large-scale production of renewable energy technologies to make them mainstream industries, effectively negating the advantage of heavily government-subsidised fossil fuel (and nuclear) cartels.

Governments and vested interest power companies insistently push for a single global energy solution for all communities and nations. “If its not going to be oil, then it has to coal!” ”OK, you don’t like coal either, well then it’ll have to be nuclear” – a uniform or ‘mono-crop’ sticking plaster for everyone across the board. Instead, perhaps we should consider a more bio-diverse approach, one with many possible solutions which are site and regionally specific. Wherein which technologies are used would be based on local climate, resources, energy requirements, etc. If you live in the desert, bring on the solar panels and the wind turbines! Strong tidal bores and volcanic activity? How about some geo-thermal and hydroelectric action? Better yet, how about a diverse combination of them all?

Generally speaking, most centralised power plants are so far away from their customers that up to 10–15% of power generated is lost in transmission. With solar panels, fuel cells, small scale hydro-power and wind turbines installed in individual homes, the distance for transmission can be metres, instead of miles. Solar power and combined heat and power plants do not need a grid, so all the power produced is either used directly, or by neighbours.

Arguably the best thing about renewable energy is that the raw materials – energy from the sun, wind, waves or heat from the ground or oceans – are there for the harvesting, gratis.

This is probably why many governments and the oil, coal (and uranium mining) corporations don’t like it.

Because if you can’t own the resource, how can you control it?

Meanwhile, in Baghdad….

Early Development

The first cities we know of were located in Mesopotamia, such as Eridu, Uruk, and Ur, and in Egypt along the Nile, the Indus Valley Civilization, and China. Before this time it was rare for settlements to reach significant size, although there were exceptions such as Jericho, Çatalhöyük and Mehrgarh. It is estimated that ancient Rome had a population of about a million people by the end of the first century BC, after growing continually during the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st centuries BC. It is generally considered the largest city before 19th century London. Alexandria’s population was also close to Rome’s at around the same time. Historians estimate a total population close to a million based on a census dated from 32 CE that counted 180,000 adult male citizens in Alexandria. Similar administrative, commercial, industrial and ceremonial centres emerged in other areas, most notably Baghdad, which to some urban historians later became the first city to exceed a population of one million by the 8th century instead of Rome.

Viva La Revolucion!

The industrial revolution from the late 18th century onward led to massive urbanization and the rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of migrants from rural communities into urban areas. In the United States from 1860 to 1910, the invention of railroads reduced transportation costs, and large manufacturing centres began to emerge, thus allowing migration from rural to city areas possible. However, cities during those periods of time were deadly places to live in, due to health problems resulting from contaminated water, air and disease. In 1950, 30 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2000 this proportion grew to 47 percent, and it is predicted to rise to 60 percent by 2030. Urbanites earn more income than rural residents, due to the fact that city living facilitates learning, innovation and specialisation. Richer workers can afford to purchase more energy-intensive durables such as cars and household appliances.

As a consequence, urban populations consume 75 per cent of the world’s natural resources while simultaneously producing 75 per cent of the planet’s waste. Nearly 200 years ago, London was the only city in the world with more than one million people. Today, across the globe, there are more than 400 cities at least that size. Modern cities have indeed become so large that they actually create their own micro-climates. This is due to the large clustering of hard surfaces that heat up in sunlight and that channel rainwater into underground ducts. As a result, city weather is often windier and cloudier than the weather in the surrounding countryside. Conversely, because these effects make cities warmer than the surrounding area they also cause significant knock-on environmental effects such as global warming.

Deforestation and Dustbowls

According to the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, 47% of the Earth’s land surface was covered with forests prior to the modern industrial era; today the planet is left with only 10% of that. Every day, thousands of rural poor in India move to big cities where there are few environmental policies in place. Though they have come in search of a better life, many eventually end up living in slums, with no access to safe water or sanitation facilities. Yet, they add to the increasing demands of the city population for food and energy. According to UN population surveys, India is likely to have 700 million rural poor moving to its cities by 2050 if the current trend is not reversed in the next few years. With 45,000 plant and nearly 90,000 animal species, India is considered one of the world’s most mega-diverse countries. Experts say the continued growth in its urban population could lead to enormous loss of biodiversity.

In China, a human population of 1.3 billion and a livestock population of just over 400 million are weighing heavily on the land. Huge flocks of sheep and goats in the northwest are stripping the land of its protective vegetation, creating a dust bowl on a scale not seen before. Northwestern China is on the verge of a massive ecological meltdown. Desert expansion has accelerated with each successive decade since 1950. China’s Environmental Protection Agency reports that the Gobi Desert expanded by 52,400 sq km (20,240 square miles) from 1994 to 1999. With the advancing Gobi now within 150 miles of Beijing, China’s leaders are beginning to sense the gravity of the situation.

The strong winds of late winter and early spring can remove literally millions of tons of topsoil in a single day – soil which can take centuries to replace. For the outside world, it is these dust storms that draw attention to the deserts that are forming in China. On 12 April 2002, for instance, South Korea was engulfed by a huge dust storm from China that left people in Seoul literally gasping for breath. Schools were closed, airline flights were cancelled, and clinics were overrun with patients having difficulty breathing. Koreans have come to dread the arrival of what they now call “the fifth season” – the dust storms of late winter and early spring. Japan also suffers from dust storms originating in China. Although not as directly exposed as Koreans are, the Japanese complain about the dust and the brown rain that streaks their windshields and windows.

Urban Solutions or Urban Myths?

However some argue that urban growth offers some beneficial trends. For instance, since urbanites have fewer children than rural households, cities generally have slower aggregate population growth than rural nations. Also since cities are often deemed hotbeds of innovation, urban nations are more likely to develop green technologies such as hybrid vehicles and alternative fuel sources.

Technological advance can certainly help to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions per dollar of national income. But if technology is to come to the rescue, economic factors– including countries, firms and individuals – must have sufficiently strong incentives to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.

On 15 May 2005, Mayors from around the globe took the historic step of signing the Urban Environmental Accords in the rotunda of San Francisco City Hall in recognition of United Nations World Environment Day 2005. Delegates from 50 of the largest industrialised cities on the planet drew up a charter that they claimed to be a new and bold course toward urban environmental sustainability.

Let’s hope these so-called historic accords and protocols result in producing more than just additional bureaucratic ‘hot air’.

BUCKING THE TREND FOR TRENDY BUCKS

The Lucrative Science of Climate Change Denial

‘THIS IS JUST CONTRADICTION!
’ – ‘NO IT ISN’T!’

An e-mail from the desk of Dubya, 4 February 2004: 
”When dealing with the tricky subject of global
 warming – deny, and deny aggressively.” This was sent 
to the press secretaries of all Republican congressmen
 advising them what to say when questioned on the
 environment in the run-up to that year’s presidential 
election. It elaborates: “Tell them everything’s rosy, 
tell them global warming has not been proved, air
 quality is ‘getting better’, the world’s forests are
 spreading, not deadening, oil reserves are
 ‘increasing, not decreasing’, and the ‘world’s water 
is cleaner and reaching more people’.

“We can’t stress enough that extremists are screaming 
’Doomsday!’ when, in fact, the environment is actually
 seeing a new and better day.”

Among the memo’s other assertions are such gems as 
“links between air quality and asthma in children 
remain cloudy”, and “the US Environmental Protection 
Agency is exaggerating when it says that at least 40
% of streams, rivers and lakes are too polluted 
for drinking, fishing or swimming.”

It gives a list of alleged facts taken from 
contentious sources. For instance, to back its claim 
that air quality is improving, it cites a report from
 one Pacific Research Institute, an organisation that 
has received $130,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998. 
Indeed, being a ‘contrarian’ when it comes to climate
 change has become big business. There are sixty
 organisations identified in America alone which 
receive money from the fossil fuel industry to debunk
 climate change science and to campaign against any 
action taken to curb the burning of coal or oil.
 Europe and Australia have their lot as well, again 
most sponsored directly by the CO2 industry.

Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest energy company, has 
alone funded up to $18 million since 1998 to
 organisations which oppose the Kyoto protocol.

HEY C’MON, IT’S A GOOD THING REALLY!

The fossil fuel lobby’s first attempts at rubbishing 
climate change science was original to say the 
least. An individual by the name of Fred Palmer, then 
head of Western fuels (the world’s largest coal 
producer) conducted a campaign in 1990s to triple
 the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. An
 accompanying film by the aspiring director called ‘The 
Greening of Planet Earth’ proposed that this 
man-induced CO2 increase would boost crop production 
from 30-60%. Hunger would therefore be abolished and 
the Earth could then bask in the golden sunshine of an 
eternal summer.

This view is widely rejected by scientists. They 
attest while Canada, Alaska and Siberia might
 demonstrate a mild biomass increase, parts of Europe
 will probably see a decrease due to shifts of the Gulf
 Stream. The heavily populated tropical belt on the
 Earth’s equator is expected to be rendered a scorching 
desert, with Sahara expansion into the southern 
Mediterranean region, and the engulfment of China by 
the Gobi.

Not to mention problems with a rising sea level…

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Undaunted, the well funded ‘alternative’ climate
 change brigade includes The Cooler Heads Coalition, formed “to dispel the
 myths of global warming by exposing flaws in economic,
 scientific and risk assessment data”;

The Alliance for Climate Strategies, which includes 
the American Petroleum Institute as a key member; and The Centre for the study of Carbon Dioxide and Global
 Change, formed “to disseminate factual reports and
 sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide 
scientific quest to determine the climatic and 
biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the 
air’s CO2 content”.

The afore-mentioned Center’s magazine and website ‘CO2
Science’ includes articles both questioning the 
existence of climate change as well as touting the
 benefits to the biosphere from CO2
 enrichment. All aspects of climate change and its
 predicted effects – from melting ice caps to species 
extinction, to more severe weather – are criticised by 
the Center and either refuted or presented as 
beneficial. Fred Palmer (that rascal from Western
 Fuels again) says: “The Center’s 
viewpoint is a needed antidote to the misleading and 
usually erroneous scientific claims emanating from the
 Federal scientific establishment and adopted by 
leading politicians, such as Vice President Al Gore”.

The Center has since tried to distance itself from the 
Western Fuels Association, however it does happen to 
be run by the Idso brothers Keith and Craig along with 
their father, Sherwood. All of them have been on the 
Western Fuels payroll at one time or another.

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global
 Change has received $90,000 from Exxon-Mobil since
1998.

VESTED INTEREST, MOI?

Exxon-Mobil, of course, deny any bias, yet the fact
 remains that it is the world’s third largest corporation 
with annual profits of about $17 billion. Does it come 
as any surprise that the company would use some of 
those profits to confuse the public discussion of
 global climate change with so much profit at stake?

That is what it’s all about, isn’t it?

“How long can men thrive between walls of brick,
 walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of
 coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly 
a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain,
 seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like
 quality of life?” — Charles A. Lindbergh, Reader’s
 Digest, November 1939

“We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned
 cheap.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

“What will the creature made all of sea drift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?” — Usula K Le Guin

By AF Keck
Illustration www.mothi.biz

“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to
forestall. He will end by destroying the Earth.”

Albert Schweitzer – German philosopher

“The first law of ecology is that everything is
related to everything else.”

Barry Commoner – American biologist

The Play

Global warming is the observed increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans in recent decades. The Earth’s average near-surface atmospheric temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 Celsius (1.1 ± 0.4 Fahrenheit) in the 20th century. The prevailing scientific opinion on climate change is that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities, mainly due to the increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases such as methane. These gasses are released by the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing and agriculture, and lead to an increase in the greenhouse effect, which traps more of the sun’s energy in the Earth’s atmosphere. The first speculation that a greenhouse effect might occur due to industrialisation was by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1897, although it did not become a topic of popular debate until today.

The Players

The United States emits more of these pollutants per individual than any other country in the world by far. When the Kyoto treaty was formed, the US originally signed and committed to reducing its emissions by 6%. However, since then it has pulled out of the agreement and its carbon dioxide emissions have increased to more than 15% above what it produced in 1990. For the agreement to become a legally binding treaty, it had to be ratified by countries that together were responsible for at least 55% of 1990’s total emissions reported by the industrialised countries and emerging economies that made commitments to reduce their emissions under the protocol. As the US accounted for 36.1% of those emissions, this 55% target was much harder to achieve without its participation.

All 15 European Union states ratified the Kyoto deal in May 2002. The protocol’s most enthusiastic supporter, the EU has pressured countries such as Russia, Japan and Canada to endorse Kyoto so that it could come into force without the commitment of the US. The EU has continually argued for a rigorous application of Kyoto, wanting to limit the use of so-called ‘flexibility mechanisms’ which allow countries to partially meet their emissions reduction targets by paying for improvements in other countries. The EU has also opposed widespread use of forests and other carbon ‘sinks’ to absorb pollution, but gave substantial ground on the issue at talks in Bonn in 2001. However, despite its tough stance on Kyoto, the EU is some way off its own target. It pledged to bring total greenhouse gas emissions to 8% below 1990’s

levels by 2008-2012, but by 2002 they had dropped only 2.9% – and CO2 emissions had risen slightly. Only four EU countries are on track to achieve their own targets.

China is the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but as it is considered a developing country it is not yet required to reduce its emissions. With China accounting for a fifth of the world’s population, increases in its emissions could dwarf any cuts made by the industrialised countries. China’s leaders apparently recognise that climate change could devastate their society and ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. In 2004 Beijing announced plans to generate 10% of its power from renewable sources by 2010. Yet despite all the political rhetoric and pledges, greenhouse gas emissions have shown no sign of abating, and as a consequence the temperatures continue to rise.

The Victims

Although industrialised countries produce the most greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, developing countries suffer the worst consequences. Poor countries and their people are most vulnerable to the increased risks from rising water levels, more frequent and intense weather events, desertification, water scarcity, failing agricultural crops, species extinction as well as the spread of infectious disease. For instance, malaria is spreading increasingly in highland areas in Africa. Before the 1970s, cold temperatures became freezing at high altitudes and thus limited mosquito populations to lower areas. Today, increased warmth has caused mountain glaciers to shrink in the tropics, permitting some mosquitoes to migrate higher in the mountains. For 1999, the report estimates that in sub-Saharan Africa, the total cost of malaria can be valued at between 5.8-17.4 percent of Gross National Product. Malaria has also been shown to decrease economic growth in some countries by 1.3 percent per year.

The decline of the world’s coral reefs are yet another example of the impact of climate change on poor
people. Coral reef decline began in 1980 and some 27 percent of reefs worldwide have been degraded by bleaching, while another 60 percent are deemed highly vulnerable to bleaching, disease and subsequent overgrowth by micro-algae. If unchecked, climate change could lead to the collapse of reefs and their supported fisheries entirely within several decades.

This would obviously disrupt the livelihoods of fishermen and coastal communities relying on the reefs for their income and main source of protein, undermine the tourism industry, and remove the storm protection provided by the reefs.

And the Catastrophe

As all things are related, we in the developed world are of course not immune to effects of these meteorological changes. As resources become scarce in the developing world, and millions upon millions of people continue to go without and starve, we will see an increase of repressive regimes, war, insurgency and terrorism. This will in turn increase levels of refugees seeking asylum and succour throughout western Europe and North America, severely taxing our own diminishing resources while overburdening our already strained socio-political systems.

The costs of climate change fall disproportionately on developing countries, but money to cope with these challenges is scarce. The developing world depends heavily on their ecosystems. If there is a drought, the developed nations can buy food from elsewhere, whereas in the developing world, if there is no food or water, people die en masse. These people have the least resources to adapt to the climatic changes that we are causing. We can build storm barriers and strong shelters, we can implement emergency support and warning systems, they cannot. We in the west know what is going on, and we also know how to put things right, but we do not. Political rhetoric, dismissive ignorance, empty promises, exploitation, aggression and lies are all we have to offer our dying world and our impoverished brethren.

But in the end we all lose, for extinction is the ultimate equaliser.

By AF Keck
Illustration www.mothi.biz

Definition of sedition?
In this ‘Post-9/11 World’ in which we are living, it seems trite to say that few words are as politically or emotionally charged as is the term ‘terrorism’. Yet definitions vary widely. For instance, a study conducted in 1988 by the US Army found over 100 definitions of the word used throughout global media networks. With such a broad interpretation, many news sources (discounting the US president, his administration, Republicans in general, and FOX News) try and avoid using the term, opting instead for less accusatory words such as ‘insurgent’ ‘extremist’ or ‘militant’.

Terrorism is considered a crime in many countries and is defined by a respective nation’s judicial statutes. The so-called common principles among legal definitions of terrorism are meant to provide an emerging consensus of the term in order to foster cooperation between law enforcement personnel around the world. Among these definitions there are several which do not recognise the possibility of legitimate use of violence by civilians against an invader in an occupied country and would, thus, label all resistance movements as terrorist groups. Others make a distinction between lawful and unlawful use of violence, therefore the designation appears solely to be one of political judgement.

Currently in the US and Europe, the term is used to describe the systematic use, or threatened use, of violence to intimidate a population or government and thereby effect political, religious or ideological change. Acts of terrorism are not intended to merely victimise or eliminate those who are killed, injured or taken hostage but rather to intimidate and influence the societies to which they belong. Modern terrorism has come to be defined in part by the influential power of the mass media that terrorists co-opt in their efforts to amplify and broadcast feelings of intense fear and anger. As a type of unconventional warfare, terrorism is designed to weaken or supplant existing political landscapes through capitulation or acquiescence, as opposed to subversion or direct military action.

In November 2004, a UN panel described terrorism as any act “intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act”.

Don’t know, don’t care
On the 5th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York, George W Bush (never an aficionado of the art of subtle nuance) lumped all definitions and thereby various disparate terrorist and militant groups under one vast, doggone umbrella of evil. During the course of his week-long 9/11 memorial histrionics, he quoted extensively from Osama bin Laden and other ‘celebrity’ terrorist leaders to remind Americans that the threat from terrorism remains potent.

He described the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 as “men without conscience but not madmen”. As “men who kill in the name of a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs that are evil, but not insane”. “Fanatics who are driven by a radical and perverted vision of Islam that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women and children in the pursuit of political power.” Bush went further still, claiming that the terrorist evil-doers’ ultimate goal is (and I quote) “To establish a violent political utopia across the Middle East, which they call a ‘Caliphate’”. Apparently, (according to Dubya) this Caliphate would be a totalitarian regime in which all of humanity would be ruled in darkness and fear, under an insidious, all-encompassing turban of hate. Thus he sent a message to the world that America was still committed to defeating terrorism and winning “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century”. Hence, the continued occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and subsequent terrorist attacks in London, Lebanon, Bali, Gaza, Madrid, etc.

The war on terror marches on terror
According to a recent survey conducted by the UK’s Independent on Sunday, this self-styled “war on terror” has directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth. But this would appear to be a low estimate, for the study concluded that if estimates of deaths of insurgents and the Iraq military during the 2003 invasion (not recorded individually by Western media) or those dying from wounds were to be included, then the toll could reach as high as 180,000.

Unfortunately the numbers are continually growing, but at the date of the published survey, the numbers of lives confirmed lost were: 4,541 to 5,308 civilians and 385 military in Afghanistan; 50,100 civilians and 2,899 military in Iraq; and 4,081 in acts of terrorism in the rest of the World. The new figure on civilian deaths from Iraq Body Count, a group of British and US academics, is especially telling. Just two and a half years ago, its estimate of the number of civilian dead in Iraq passed 10,000. Today, it says, that figure has gone beyond the 50,000 mark, a huge leap largely attributable to terrorist acts and the breakdown of civil authority. Iraq Body Count’s careful methodology of recording a death only when it appears in two independent media reports almost certainly produces a substantial underestimate. Even the Iraqi Health Ministry reports a slightly higher figure, and President Bush’s much-quoted figure of 30,000 civilian dead dates from December 2005, when it tallied with the then IBC figure. Insurgent deaths are not included in the IBC figures, and neither are those of Iraqi police when engaged in combat-style operations. Estimates of the former are, together with the number of Iraqi military killed in the battle phase of the Iraq occupation, the biggest unknown of the conflict. One US news report guessed the insurgent dead in Iraq at 36,000 since 2003, while the number of Iraqi military killed during the invasion phase remains unknown and unknowable.

Therefore these numbers were not included in the Independent on Sunday’s figure of 62,006 confirmed directly killed. Nor does it include any figures for people later dying from wounds received, or the increased mortality owing to the wretched state of health care in Iraq. In March 2006, the campaign group Medact reported that 18,000 physicians have left since 2003, while an estimated 250 of those that remained have been kidnapped and, in 2005 alone, 65 killed. Medact also said that “easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness caused 70 per cent of all child deaths”, and that “of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four have been completed and none has been opened”. In May, a survey by the Iraq government and Unicef reported that a quarter of all Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition.
In Afghanistan, the most reliable recorder of civilian deaths is Professor Marc Herold, whose latest figures range from 4,541 to 5,308. He does not include those who die subsequently from their injuries or in refugee camps. These indirect deaths have been put at anything from 8,000 to 20,000. In July 2006, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said there were 2.2 million Afghans who had fled abroad and at least 153,200 displaced internally. For Iraq, there were 888,700 external refugees, and 1.3 million people displaced inside the country. An estimated 40 per cent of the Iraqi middle class have left Iraq.

Cause and effect?
Winning hearts and minds?
This is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century?

By AF Keck
Illustration www.mothi.biz

The Big Bang Gang
In our ever-troubled, ecologically impoverished world, there are currently seven states that have successfully developed and detonated nuclear weapons. Five are considered to be ‘nuclear weapons states’, an internationally recognised status conferred by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). They are, in order of development, the United States of America, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France, and the People’s Republic of China. However, since the creation of the NPT, India and Pakistan have also joined in on the fun, but they have refused to sign the treaty.

The United States developed the first atomic weapons during World War II out of the fear that Nazi Germany would get there first – a justifiable concern. It tested its first nuclear weapon (called Trinity) in 1945, and remains the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against another nation, i.e. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US also has the distinction of being the first nation to develop the hydrogen bomb (called ‘Ivy Mike’), in 1952.

The USSR tested its first nuclear weapon (’Joe-1’) in 1949, in a project developed partially with espionage obtained during and after World War II. The obvious motive for their weapons development was to maintain a balance of power during the Cold War. It tested a primitive hydrogen bomb in 1953 (’Joe-4’) and a megaton-range hydrogen bomb in 1955 (’RDS-37’). The Soviet Union also tested the most powerful explosive ever detonated by humans, ’Tsar Bomba’, which had a yield of 100 megatons but was intentionally reduced to 50. After its dissolution in 1991, its weapons entered officially into the possession of Russia.

The United Kingdom tested its first nuclear weapon (‘Hurricane’) in 1952, drawing largely on data gained while collaborating with the United States during the Manhattan Project. Their motivation was an independent deterrence against the USSR, while retaining a military relevance in Cold War Europe. It tested its first hydrogen bomb in 1957.

France tested its first nuclear weapon in 1960, also as an independent deterrence and to retain perceived Cold War relevance. It tested its first hydrogen bomb in 1968.

The People’s Republic of China tested its first nuclear weapon in 1964, much to the surprise of Western intelligence agencies. It had long sought assistance in becoming a nuclear power from an uneasy USSR, but assistance stopped after the Sino-Soviet split and the weapon was developed as a deterrent against both the USA and the USSR. It tested its first hydrogen bomb in 1967 at Lop Nur. The country is currently thought to have had a stockpile of around 130 warheads, potentially less.

As previously stated, India is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but tested what they called a peaceful nuclear device (known as ‘Smiling Buddha’) in 1974. It was the first test developed after the creation of the NPT, and created new questions about how civilian nuclear technology such as nuclear power generation could be diverted secretly to weapons purposes. Their project development appears to have been primarily motivated as a deterrent against China. It tested weaponised nuclear warheads in 1998, including a Hydrogen Bomb. In July 2005, it was officially recognised by the United States as a responsible nuclear state and agreed to full nuclear cooperation between the two nations.

Pakistan, the sworn enemy of India, is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty either. Pakistan covertly developed its nuclear weapons over many decades, beginning in the late 1970s. It is commonly believed that Pakistan began its nuclear development programs in response to India’s nuclear device. No-one knows for certain when Pakistan began its nuclear development projects, but by the 1980s it was suspected of having successfully developed nuclear warheads. However, this was to remain speculative until 1998 when Pakistan conducted its first nuclear tests at the Chagai Hills, a few days after India conducted its own tests.

The Silent Partner?
There is one nation, however, who is neither an official nor unofficial signatory member of the NPT, but which few international experts question its nuclear capabilities, and that is the nation of Israel. Its nuclear programme is arguably the most secretive weapons of mass destruction programme in the world. Unlike Iran and North Korea, two countries whose alleged nuclear ambitions have recently come to the fore, Israel remains inexplicably immune to economic and political pressure to allow inspections by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The extent of Israel’s nuclear capability has been the subject of often wildly inaccurate intelligence estimates since the 1960s, when the country’s nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev desert came online. However, it is believed that Israel is in the possession of up to 200 nuclear warheads, unlike India and Pakistan which are thought to have as little as 20 warheads each.

There is no evidence that Israel has ever carried out a nuclear test, but there is speculation that a suspected nuclear explosion in the southern Indian Ocean in 1979 was a joint Israeli-South African test. Post-apartheid South Africa has since dismantled its nuclear weapons program.

The Arc of Irony
Obviously other states in the Middle East, many of which of are in direct opposition to Israel, and thereby strong supporters of the Palestinian cause, have expressed deep concern about the existence of an Israeli nuclear weapons programme. This consternation is fuelled by the perception that the United States is operating a regional policy of double-standards, ignoring Israel’s weapons programmes while insisting that others (notably pre-war Iraq, Iran and Syria) are a threat to peace because of their alleged weapons of mass destruction and “fundamentalist, undemocratic governments”. Both the UK and US demonstrate unwavering support for Israel’s right to defend itself against these hostile “rogue states” which they claim are little more than havens for terrorists. Recently, the UK and US appear to suggest that they and Israel are the only paragons of peace, moderation and democratic stability in the region against what Tony Blair describes as “an arc of extremism” which pervades the Middle East.

It’s a remarkable point of view which must be poignantly clear to anyone currently living in Baghdad, Beirut or the Gaza strip.