Manuela Picq has just completed her time as a visiting professor and research fellow at Amherst College.
Today's political ethics are surprisingly similar to the doctrine of discovery set by the Vatican back in 1452.
Al Jazeera, 04 Apr 2012
New York, NY – One does not think of archaic papal bulls when witnessing democratic states like Brazil or the United States building dams on Amazon rivers or drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean. Yet today's political ethics are surprisingly similar to the doctrine of discovery set by the Vatican back in 1452.
Fifteenth-century papal bulls that declared war against all non-Christian peoples also encouraged the conquest and exploitation of enemy territories throughout the world. European explorers like Columbus took possession of newly “discovered” non-Christian lands with the express authorisation of the Catholic Church.
This internationally recognised doctrine allowed claims to be made on “empty” invaded lands outlasted European absolute monarchies and has become enshrined in secular nation-states. In the US, for instance, Chief Justice John Marshall used the right of discovery in 1823 to invalidate native claims over their land and to assert the authority of the US government over land titles.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) recently disowned the doctrine of discovery, perhaps in light of its centrality at the 11th session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues this coming May in New York. Better late than never.
The discourse that rationalised the colonisation of the Americas in the sake of Christianity is the same that justifies protecting human rights in Iraq or privatising water supplies for the sake of development.
Every once in a while, there is a flash of intelligence at The Washington Post. This short blog illuminates both the true costs of various options around carbon emissions, and the importance of considering “360 degree” trade-offs.
Humanity is making dismal progress on curbing its greenhouse gas emissions. That’s led some scientists to dream up zany geoengineering schemes to avert drastic climate change. One promising idea involved sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. Alas, new research suggests, this isn’t very practical:
You can strip CO2 from the air with chemical filters or by boosting reactions occurring as rocks weather. Colin Axon of Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK, and Alex Lubansky at the University of Oxford estimated what it would take to remove the 30 gigatonnes of CO2 we emit every year.
That would mean processing 75,000 Gt of dry air. Scaling up proposals to filter air would use 180 Gt of clean water per year, depriving 53 million people of water, on top of the 66 per cent of the world’s population who will face water shortages by 2025.
To make matters worse, mopping up carbon dioxide with chemical filters would use an enormous amount of energy and be prohibitively expensive. A study last year in Nature pegged the cost of carbon dioxide removal at about $600 per ton, which is about seven times more pricey than even the high-end estimates of carbon taxes deemed necessary to curtail the world’s emissions.
Phi Beta Iota: This is a long and interesting presentation of two points of view. In short, the US political system, the upper reaches of the US government, and the US military “clerk-leaders” are an incestuous self-sustaining circle of corruption. We do not have an “Obama” problem. We have an Israel / Goldman Sachs / Fed / Wall Street / two-party political tyranny problem. If Mitt Romney is elected, that just puts the drug cartel side of Wall Street in charge, instead of the Israeli rope a dope side of Wall Street. There is nothing honorable or useful about the two-party political system in the USA. That we should even be having this discussion of coups etcetera is a sign of how far from a Republic we have fallen.
The non-violent alternative has been clearly presented at We the People Electoral Reform Coalition (and is still viable), but not a single presidential candidate now running has the integrity to see the logic of supporting the Constitution instead of running their own one-man show. We project that Obama will win again with the lowest voter turn-out in history (i.e. the Independents will not vote for Romney, or vote), and that the US economy will implode in 2013 with major social disruption in 2014.
Marcus Aurelius Sends:
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: I assess that the current crop of key military leaders will never revolt in any way against the President, the Commander in Chief. I see it as beyond the realm of the possible.
Here's why:
FIRST, you can take it to the bank that every key three or four star leader appointed since POTUS was inaugurated in 2009 has already pledged personal obedience to him. Count on it as being a part of the screening process for these “Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed” (PAS) positions.
All O-9 and O-10 (Lieutenant General/Vice Admiral and General/Admiral) positions are PAS. Count on it being done very slickly, with the candidate being asked to confirm something like that, if nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, he/she will be and perform as a full member of “the President's team.”
SECOND, if the firing of GEN McChrystal and the passover of GEN Petraeus for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn't trigger a coup, nothing is likely to.
THIRD, if you observe what the Chairman, the Service Chiefs, and other key leaders are saying in public and writing, it's pretty clear that they've pledged their full support to DoD as the principal bill payer for Federal deficit reduction, even though that imposes military and strategic risks on the Nation.
FOURTH, uniformed military leaders are moving expeditiously to execute POTUS' will in such strategically questionable areas as withdrawal from Afghanistan. They are doing what their training and centuries of developed ethos have conditioned them to do: subordinating themselves to civilian masters.
FIFTH, at least for the Army, our 237-year old Service culture is such that we never protest anything. Soldiers, enlisted and officer, are the ultimate obedient servants. GA MacArthur was a clear aberration and everyone knows his efforts didn't work out well for him personally or professionally. We Soldiers lead all other Services in “yes sir, yes sir, three bags full”. No matter how much a President or a Congress abuses American citizens, American Soldiers, or the Army as an institution, the Army will quietly suck it up and come back for more. Check out Carl Builder's Masks of War if you want to explore this dimension further.
So, to recap: I dispute Mr. Perry's assessments and assertions and counter-assert that POTUS is absolutely safe from a hard or soft coup attempt by any element of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Below the line: the original article quickly removed from the original site.
If the OWS movement had only gotten behind the Electoral Reform Act of 2102, it could have worked to their advantage in a way they may not have considered. If they could have gotten Washington to take action and get behind the act, it would have been a foot in the door for the OWS movement that would have enhanced their prestige and increased their power. In other words, once the act was in the works it would have allowed the OWS movement to coast a little without looking like it was running out of steam. Because how can a movement be running out of steam when Washington insiders are working to meet the demands of the movement? And if OWS had succeeded in getting Washington to pass the act, if would have turned the OWS movement into a force to be reckoned with. A lot of it would be based on illusions of perception. But illusions of perception can be very powerful.
The failure of the OWS movement would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. While they were wasting time having encounter groups and “playing house”—-creating makeshift libraries and giving “teach ins” about consensus building techniques, etc.—-time was passing them by. Opportunity got tired of knocking on their door and walked away to find some other door to knock on. There's nothing wrong with teaching consensus building techniques. But there's a time and a place for everything. And the learning curve was so slow that the OWS movement wasn't able to stay ahead of unfolding events and capitalize on their momentum. It was a breakdown of efficiency; it's as simple as that. Indecision, inaction, lack of clear objectives, lack of resolve, all led to squandering the moment. If the OWS movement still hasn't learned this lesson, they're living in fantasyland.
The Electoral Reform Act of 2102 had a real chance of working. Why? Because virtually every voter would like to see electoral reform and because the act is based on common sense. And because it was based on common sense, politicians would've had a very hard time fighting it once it became part of mainstream awareness. Being against electoral reform would be like being against God, mother, country, and apple pie. What politician could have resisted it without looking like an ass?
In the end, I'm not sure the OWS movement proved anything except that trying to get anarchists to agree on anything is like trying to herd cats. OWS had politicians right where they wanted them, and they decided to take a nap. And when they woke up the politicians were gone. They knew the heat was off and they got back to business as usual. Or maybe the OWS movement is still napping. It's hard to tell. Anyway, the politicians have moved on.
Is it too late to make an issue of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012? I don't know. I don't think anyone can say. But if the OWS movement ever regains momentum, I wish they would consider making it one of their demands. It may work to their advantage in ways they can't predict. It may get the public back on their side, and it may serve notice to the politicians that the OWS movement still has a few tricks up their collective sleeve and aren't quite ready to be tossed on the trash heap of history. Here's hoping.
Following is circulating among military circles via email.
From: REDACTED [USMC O-6 Retired]<
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress & the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, But overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
Abraham Lincoln
“… there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither, Safe, nor Politically Correct, nor Popular, but one must take it, because its RIGHT!!”
Common Sense
Upside-down Land
You know you live in anUpside-down Land if…
A Muslim officer crying “Allah Akbar” while shooting up an army base is considered to have committed “Workplace Violence”while an American citizen boasting a Ron Paul bumper sticker is classified as a “Domestic Terrorist”.
“Some people spend their life watching the tube, but Daryl Oster is spending his trying to get people to travel in one.”
“To be fair, Evacuated Tube Travel might be even bigger — Oster is proposing uisng magnetic levitation to send car-sized capsules through giant long vacuum tubes at speeds of up to 4,000 miles per hour.”
“The passenger vehicle is pressurized and has plenty of air, but moves through the airless tube on a magnetic track and all movement is controlled by manipulating the magnetic forces that are at play between the track and the capsule, according to Discovery.”
“Oster and his team are selling licenses for the rights to build the tracks and tubes, but says the ultimate network will need both private and public funding. He also plans to start a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising funds for a documentary about ETT.”
Phi Beta Iota: We are long overdue for putting ground transport as well as utilities deep underground but this will require greater intelligence with integrity about structural resilience and human early warning in the face of earthquake potential. This could also spawn greater attention to underground small cities, with the surface areas gradually redirected to recovering agricultural land and localized renewable energy platforms.
