≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAYS: THE OUTBRAKE OF WAR BETWEEN THE ISRAEL AND PALESTINE WAS INEXHAUSTIABLE INAUDIBLE AND INEVITABLE.
( Three minute read)
The dangers of the situation exploding is a result of the continued occupation [and] the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights.
Most of the world condemned the attacks on Israel by Hamas but the truth is that this war comes after nearly two decades of the US and world leaders overlooking the more than 2 million people living in Gaza who endure a humanitarian nightmare, with its airspace and borders and sea under Israeli control
Israel’s extreme-right government over the past year has escalated the already brutal daily pain of occupation. Instances of Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers antagonizing Palestinians through violence are on the rise, from the pogrom on the city of Huwara to a new tempo of lethal raids on Jenin.
Israeli far right government ministers have been pursuing annexationist policies and sharing raging rhetoric; both incite further violent response from Palestinians and appear at a time when new militant groups have emerged that claim the mantle of the Palestinian cause.
The now-regular presence of Israeli Jews praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, have further pressurized the situation.
The question must thus be asked to the Israeli government, the Biden administration, and Arab leaders: How did they forget about Palestinians? How did they so brazenly ignore Gaza?
The last time there was a prolonged clash between Israel and Hamas, in May 2021, the conflict lasted 11 days, resulting in the deaths of about 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel.
Yet within hours of the surprise attack launched early Saturday by Hamas against Israel, hundreds had already been killed.
This fight will have far more ramifications than previous clashes.
Image’s of resistance to the occupation will be widely circulated in the Arab world, and will endure long beyond this war. Its symbolic power cannot be underestimated.
Negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization have been frozen since 2014, so the symbolism of Hamas breaking through Israeli security barriers and wreaking havoc on Israel — including the kidnapping of at least one Israeli soldier as well as civilians — will resonate across Palestine, the Arab world, and beyond.
No Arab army has entered the territory of Israel since the 1948 war.
Israel and the United States have wished away Palestinians.
The terrible bloodshed of today’s attacks underscores the cost of doing so.
Because the US has long designated Hamas, the Palestinian militant political group with an Islamist worldview, as a terrorist organization, US officials can’t contact them and must work through third countries. It means that the US knowledge base and expertise on Gaza is not just low — it’s absent.
Gaza is in essence a refugee camp (about 70 percent of those living in Gaza come from families displaced from the 1948 war) and an open-air prison, according to human rights groups.
The United Nations describes the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.” Israel has blockaded Gaza since Hamas assumed control of the territory in 2007, and neighbouring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.
The current Israeli government has aggravated these realities, by increasing pressure on the Palestinians on multiple fronts: in Jerusalem, squeezing Gaza, assaults on Palestinian villages by settlers, with settler-politicians leading ministries in the Israeli government; and with annexationist policies like the recent major policy change putting the Israeli civilian government (not the Israeli military) in charge of the occupied West Bank.
Hamas’s attacks on Israel won’t change life for Palestinians, and Israel’s government will now use the full force of its advanced military in response. And given Israel’s state of emergency, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now in talks with the opposition parties to pull together a unity government for the country.
But even if some of the most extreme settler voices currently in the Israeli cabinet are replaced by more mainstream Israeli voices, harsh policies against Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza will continue.
The dread Israelis are feeling right now, myself included, is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, and under the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza,”
The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality.
In my opinion just like Northern Ireland there is no two state solution.
The state of Israel was established in 1948 on land that was at that time part of the British mandated territory of Palestine.
Northern Ireland emerged in 1920–22 as a constituent part of the United Kingdom with its own devolved parliament. There are differing views because of the history of conflict over the decision to divide up the island of Ireland, a political and cultural argument which is still going on today, with a one state for all, with equality, the only solution.
It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT RACISM: All LIVES MATTER IS TRUE OR FALSE?
( Ten minute read)
I often wonder if I was of African decent what I would think or feel hearing a raciest song sung in support of the English RUBGY team – Swing Low swing Hight, while the other game Football is taking the knees to say black lives matter.
Nobody is born racist, but if you grow up in a society where you have advantages over people from other groups, the like hood is that you will become raciest not even know you are being racist in how you are acting.
Racism is built into society and is “the product of centuries of history.”
We to day focus on the individual racist attitudes rather than the bigger problem because it’s harder to pin down the wider problem. However the twentieth century is termed the “century of genocide” because of the high number of cases of genocide. The genocide of the Armenians, the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda are the three genocides of the twentieth century.
The Rwandan Civil War—in which armed militias of Hutu people had slaughtered members of the Tutsi ethnic minority at least 800,000 are thought to have been murdered in just a hundred days.
It is a modern idea that everything can be measured and classified, even a “race” and its character (Bauman 1989: 68). This classification of races, coupled with the modern idea of a constantly improvable society, leads to Social-Darwinist ideas of the survival of the fittest (Kaye and Stråth 2000: 15).
An important indicator for the potential of future genocide is a difficult life condition, such as war or an economic crisis. migration. People were transformed into commodities, a condition in which a “surplus population” could simply be eliminated.
As with war, during times of a recession, people are inclined to find someone to blame for their misfortune. Humans feel the need to blame an out-group and eliminate that threat to society.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has rekindled modern debates about the definition and prosecution of genocide. The existing laws of war are inadequate to handle the new forms of political violence afflicting the world. Crimes against humanity, meanwhile, can take place in times of peace and include murder, enslavement, and persecution based on factors like gender, ethnicity or religion, race.
Racism can not be most simply understood as someone behaving differently to another person based on the colour of their skin or culture. For example, Islamophobia is when Muslims are the victims of attacks just because of their religion.
Racism reflects an acceptance of the deepest forms and degrees of divisiveness and carries the implication that differences between groups are so great that they cannot be transcended.
At least 24 million Africans were sold to slave traders around the world.
The word Nigger can be traced back in history to slavery, but it is far from the only word to describe racism. The full word was a nickname British scientist Charles Darwin and his wife Emma used in their letters to each other in the 1840s.
It was also the name given to a black Labrador which was the mascot of the Royal Airforce 617 Squadron – famously known as the Dam busters – during World War Two. In July this year, the name of the Dam busters’ dog was removed from its gravestone as RAF Scampton “did not want to give prominence to an offensive term.
After World War Two, the racism directed at black and Asian people who had emigrated to the UK from Commonwealth countries saw the word come to be used as a racial slur in everyday life – and politics.
At the 1964 election, Conservative MP Peter Griffiths won the Smethwick seat in the West Midlands after a campaign which used the slogan: “If you want a [N-word] for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour. The slogan spelt out the full word. That election was more than 50 years ago – but the word is still used in that derogatory way today.
The word survives is an act of redemption by black folk. The word survives on the conditions that black folks have inscribed for it and nobody else can take that. And it becomes violent when other people try to take it and use it.
I would hope most people would understand why that is deeply offensive and problematic because it still is used in that context now.
For that reason, most human societies have concluded that racism is wrong, at least in principle, and social trends have moved away from racism, but there are many dimensions to racism.
We have to understand the connection between slavery, colonialism and racialised capitalism, which creates the conditions for the climate crisis.
Why climate change is inherently racist.
Climate change and racism are two of the biggest challenges of the 21st Century. They are also strongly intertwined. Climate change is a multiplier of all forms of social disadvantage, with divisions along class lines, gender, age, and much else besides.
There is a stark divide between who has caused climate change and who is suffering its effects.
Climate change is often understood as an environmental issue, one that we are all in together, and therefore not something that could be in any way construed as racist.
However the Global North is responsible for 92% of all excess global emissions, while the Global South is responsible for only 8%. The nations of the Global North have effectively colonised the atmospheric commons. They’ve enriched themselves as a result, but with devastating consequences for the rest of the world and for all of life on Earth.
Here is where energy use and resource consumption are highest – and therefore where carbon footprints are largest. It is not difficult to see that a racial disparity is at play here. The European colonial powers, and the European settler colonies, are disproportionately responsible for causing excess emissions.
Centuries of unequal power relationships have embedded this structural injustice, so that climate change echoes the power relationships of colonialism and empire.
Independence may have brought political freedom, but many structural injustices remain.
The flow of wealth is the same as it was under empire, with rich white countries extracting what they need from other countries. People from ethnic minorities are more likely to have persistent low incomes and among young people unemployment rates are high.
Without taking into account those most affected, climate solutions will turn into climate exclusion and there is worse to come.
For example the home of slavery in the USA the Mississippi River basin because of drought is now filling with salt water.
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The most visible is inter-personal racism, which is ugly and all-too familiar. At its most obvious, this would include racist graffiti, online abuse, or racist chanting at football matches. Much of it is less overt than that, a matter of prejudice and stereotyping.
There are deeper levels to racism.
It can be institutional, where people of colour receive an inferior level of service or care. When dealing with institutional racism, there may not be any one specific event or person that can be identified as the problem. The difference in how people are treated is buried away in processes and systems – “racism without racists” as it is sometimes described.
When racism becomes structural in this way, it can operate without obvious intent.
This is certainly the case with climate change – there is no secret committee of white people plotting to impose climate disaster on the Global South. And yet people of colour still find themselves at a disadvantage, and experience differences in outcomes that are visible in the statistics.
Coming from a colonial past means it is from a period when one country invaded another, took control and forced their laws on the native people in order to exploit them. An example of this is that Britain colonised India, Ireland and North America, to name a few.
The idea of race was invented to magnify the differences between people of European origin and those of African descent whose ancestors had been involuntarily enslaved and transported to the Americas.
In North America and apartheid-era South Africa, racism dictated that different races (chiefly blacks and whites) should be segregated from one another; that they should have their own distinct communities and develop their own institutions such as churches, schools, and hospitals; and that it was unnatural for members of different races to marry.
Despite constitutional and legal measures aimed at protecting the rights of racial minorities the private beliefs and practices of many remained racist, and some group of assumed lower status was often made a scapegoat. That tendency has persisted well into the 21st century.
By the 19th century, racism had matured and spread around the world.
Those seen as the low-status races, especially in colonized areas, were exploited for their labour, and discrimination against them became a common pattern in many areas of the world.
It is quite challenging to determine if a person is racist or not based on a simple questionnaire.
In fact modern evolutionary biology is making enormous contributions to our understanding of how our ideas of race, racism, gender and sexism arise.
There is absolutely no basis for thinking in terms of “races”; The theory has been disproved in genetics, biology, anthropology (the study of human societies), geography and all of the sciences.
Racism is a social construct, which means it was created by people.
It was essentially propaganda to justify mass enslavement and dehumanisation. It also exploited fear that people can have of others who look or behave in ways they view as dissimilar to them.
Historically Irish people were “racialised” through the process of British conquest and colonialism in Ireland, although they have the same skin colour as the British. British colonial writing has labelled Irish people as drunken, as animals, treacherous, primitive, and illiterate. Today, many other groups of people (mostly “non-white” and non-European, but also including white-skinned groups like Irish Travellers or eastern European migrants in Ireland) still experience similar processes of racialisation.
In many parts of the world, migrants are racialised for being migrants. Jews are racialised for being Jews and Muslims are racialised for being Muslims.
Racism is one of many expressions of our evolved capacity to live and work in groups. Religious bigotry, ethnic mistrust and even an intense dislike.
A recent example is a group of fundamental Jews spiting at Christian in Israel. The world could wake up on Tuesday to a more religious-nationalist, belligerent and less tolerant Israel, turning into a democtatorship. The Jewish state will be more corrupt, religious-nationalist, less tolerant and liberal, and more belligerent at the expense of the Palestinians.
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How we might use an improved understanding of the origins of racism to elevate societies when we often conceal our attitudes and biases from others – and even from ourselves?
We all know that with the coming climate change people (not immigrants) are on the move and will do so in their billions as their homes become un – liveable.
The Question therefore is with the emerging understanding of race is it likely to lead to a more equitable society.
Not on your nelly – I am alright Jack is already prevalent, with Walls, Barbwire fences, Deportation to Rwanda, It’s really its tied into the idea that people aren’t really human beings.
The problems, in short, are not about race: they are fundamentally social and economic, better seen in terms of social class and economic inequality than in racial terms.
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The main question posed by immigration is whether you are comfortable living near neighbours of a different race.
India ranks as the most racist of the countries. India has little immigration and few international residents. As a result, most of its people are of Indian descent themselves. This detail is considered to be a major contributing factor to racism in India.
Lebanon is another country comprised primarily of people who share a similar ethnic background. This low level of diversity means Lebanon’s citizens are typically opposed to mingling with people of other races for the sole reason that they are not used to doing so in a day-by-day setting.
Italy has a serious problem with racism. The racism isn’t restricted to right or left, old or young, rural or urban: it is noticeable everywhere.
The conundrum of Italian racism is that Italy, ever a country of contradictions, is also a place of remarkable generosity and hospitality.
Britain has made huge progress in countering discrimination against black people. No landlord any more could put up a sign in his window saying ‘No blacks or Irish’. In 1993, a black teenager called Stephen Lawrence was killed by a group of white men in an unprovoked racist attack in London.
The killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white American police officer has sparked outrage and protest in the United States and throughout the world.
Qatar the most racist country, a “de facto caste system based on national origin.
It’s this: why it is that black lives don’t seem to matter so much.
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What is the abiding poison of white privilege, and for which blacks themselves have no responsibility?
How worried are you about the prospect of racial polarisation on our streets? And what’s your answer to the underlying question: Is Britain racist?
It’s starkly evident that major ethnic and racial inequalities persist in employment, housing and the justice system.
Exploitation of ethnic, religious and cultural hatreds is probably the most universal feature of fascism/ with racism difficult to eradicate.
In other words, racism is when an individual, group, structure or institution intentionally or unintentionally abuse their power to the detriment (meaning to have a negative impact) on people, because of their actual or perceived “racialised” background.
Defines racism as any action, practice, policy, law, speech, or incident which has the effect (whether intentional or not) of undermining anyone’s enjoyment of their human rights.
Indeed, minds cannot be changed by laws, but beliefs about human differences can and do change, as do all cultural elements.
Black and Muslim minorities have twice the unemployment rate of their white British peers and are twice as likely to live in overcrowded housing. They are also much more likely to be stopped and searched by the police. We could also add to the list the alarming ethnic differences in deaths from COVID-19.
That disparities of the kind demonstrated by the website do not, in themselves, prove that racism and discrimination are the driving forces behind the inequalities. But, when combined with other direct evidence, it’s hard to avoid concluding that they play a role.
Racism is too often used as a “catch-all explanation” for disparities and impediments for people from minority groups. Social media enormously amplifies racist views, to current modern immigration.
African voices are not well represented in climate summits, leaving climate justice out of the equation.
Without a doubt, racism influences the likelihood of exposure to environmental and health risks.
Whether by conscious design or institutional neglect, communities of colour in urban ghettos, in rural ‘poverty pockets’, or on economically impoverished area’s will face some of the worst environmental devastation.
Take wildfire vulnerability it is spread unequally across race and ethnicity.
If you want to understand why 40 years of climate diplomacy has failed to bend the curve on temperature rises, you have to go back and understand racialised capitalism – how race is codified to justify the exploitation and subjugation of people.
Climate justice, social justice and racial justice are all interconnected.
Even though some exploitative practices may be in the past, the legacy of their unjust structures remains, and carries through into decision-making about climate change today.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE OPEN LETTER TO THE DELEGATES OF THE COP28 MEETING IN DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES(UAE).
( Four minute read)
The 2023 UN Climate Change Conference will convene from 30 November to 12 December 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
This the 28th meeting with the UNFCCC Secretariat announced that Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and UAE Special Envoy for Climate Change, has been appointed to serve as COP 28 President-Designate.
Al Jaber has been Group CEO and Managing Director of ADNOC since 2016. Founded in 1971, it is one of the world’s largest energy producers, with a current production capacity of four million barrels of oil and 11 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The group comprises nearly 19 businesses with operations in exploration, production, storage, refining, trading, and petrochemical products development. Al Jaber is also a member of the U.A.E.’s Federal Cabinet, the country’s Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, and the U.A.E.’s special envoy for climate.
Dr. Al Jaber has previously served on the United Nations Secretary General’s High Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All. He has received various awards including the United Nations flagship award “Champion of the Earth” in 2012, given to outstanding visionaries and leaders in the fields of policy, science and entrepreneurship.
Of course if you Google him (from the info known) you will see that he is no ordinary individual but mandated by his position of Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology to increase industrial competitiveness and help drive economic growth by catalysing the diversification of the UAE’s economy.
So his appointment to serve as COP 28 President-Designate, a vital role in the annual climate talks, acting as an “honest broker” among bickering governments, and with a large degree of latitude in determining the direction of the talks and what issues are given priority and negotiating time is either a breath-taking conflict of interest or is it just what is required, a deep understanding of energy systems.
Remember that the UAE is one of the 10 largest oil producers in the world.
Their state oil company pumped 2.7 million barrels of oil per day in 2021, its Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) aims to expand to nearly double output to five million barrels per day by 2027 – a target date brought forward from 2030 two months ago by Jaber.
Is it the equivalent of appointing the CEO of a cigarette company to oversee a conference on cancer cures? He will surely tout the UAE investments in renewable energy but the reality is that the climate talks will be run by the CEO of a company betting on climate failure.
So the Conference will open the floodgates for greenwashing and oil and gas deals to keep exploiting fossil fuels.
These are the worst possible credentials for an upcoming Cop president.
Dear Delegates.
In an era of international tensions, governments need to separate climate from geopolitics..
It is academic to the Climate, whether its a Sultan or a defrocked priest whom presides over the conference. Climate change is indifferent in its causes and its effects.
You dont have be told, that climate has no borders it is a global problem.
You dont have to be told, no matter what is agreed it is going to require trillion annually.
You dont have to be told, that the key actions required to bend the emissions curve sharply downwards by 2030 are well understood,
You dont have to be told, to achieve aglobal pathway to keep the 1.5°C temperature goal alive requires the world to come together quickly with greater ambition, improved implementation, and stronger international cooperation are critical in helping countries achieve global climate goals..
What matters is emissions, regardless of which country produces them, calling for leadership on collaborative efforts to tackle them.
So I would like to underscore that net zero by 2050 globally doesn’t mean net zero by 2050
for every country.
To recognizes the importance of supporting an equitable transition that takes different national circumstances into account, with advanced economies reaching net zero sooner will require trillions, not invested in to greenwashing carbon credits, or profit seeking algorithms, etc.
To deliver a successful COP 28 that drives global transformation towards a low-emission and climate-resilient world, fosters ambitious climate action and facilitates implementation, including the related support let me suggest the following: (Against the back ground of July 2023 which was the hottest month on record – serving up severe wildfires, droughts, floods and storms all further underlined that the climate crisis is with us and that the costs are mounting.)
Today much of the momentum is in small, modular clean energy technologies like solar PV
and batteries, these alone are not sufficient to deliver net zero emissions.
Its all comes down to common sense.
Climate change actions will follow where the money goes.
Clean energy investment is paid back over time through lower fuel bills.
The publication of the first Net Zero Roadmap by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in
May 2021 was a landmark moment for the energy and climate world, setting out what would
need to happen in the global energy sector in the years and decades ahead to limit global
warming to 1.5 °C..
It quickly became our most viewed and downloaded publication ever, a sign of the
strong demand for clear and unbiased analysis, translating the temperature goals of the Paris
Agreement into practical milestones for the global energy sector.
Above all, this needs to be a unified effort in which governments put tensions aside and find ways to work together on what is the defining challenge of our time. All of us, and in particular future generations, will
remember with gratitude those who act upon the urgency of now.
This year, more than ever, unity is a prerequisite for success.
If we do the right things now and take them to scale, we will create vast economic potential for everyone.
All countries will need to act, all elements of the energy system will need to be addressed, and we must have an honest conversation about what it will take to deliver a responsible and just transition that empowers climate-positive development everywhere, in particular across the Global South.
Finance is a critical enabler of climate action. But to unleash its power, climate finance must be affordable, available, and accessible to developing countries.
We need to enable the formation and deployment of new private capital to help countries take a path of private sector and technology-led growth that is consistent with the Paris Agreement. To accelerate progress, we need to reform and harmonize regulatory systems, including agreeing on definitions for transition finance and disclosure of climate-related data, and unlock voluntary carbon markets.
So why not all agreed on repayable grants, that could be made available, funded by a Perpetual World Commission of 0.05% on all activities that are not sustainable. ( See previous posts)
There are more than 25,000 pieces of space debris measuring over 10cm long orbiting the earth, if we continue destroying the Earth there will be billions of human’s roaming what left.
IT WON’T BE LONG BEFORE WE NEED TO REINVENT WHAT A STATE/OR COUNTRIES BOARDERS MEANS.
(Fifteen minute read)
It is absolutely essential that we use common sense in many situations, particularly when trying to understand and deal with other human beings. We cannot leave millions of displaced people and their hosts to face the consequences of a changing climate alone.
Just five countries produce 68% of all refugees displaced abroad: the Syrian Arab Republic, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Yemen and the Ukraine.
There are more than 60 million internally displaced people – this has risen to 200 million at the end of 2023.
While there is a general consensus that global warming impacts us all, the role it will play in future human migration is often underestimated. Climate change disproportionately impacts developing countries, and more specifically fragile states.
It is estimated that, by 2050, between 150 to 200 million people are at risk of being forced to leave their homes as a result of desertification, rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions.
Disinformation doesn’t need to be sophisticated to be successful, because disinformation travels faster online than the truth.
This is why we have a plague of greenwashing from both governments and manufacturing industries both using social media and advertising to promote almost every thing as good for the environment.
The last few years may well go down in history as the golden age of greenwashing, but it’s not until very recently that this practice has truly taken off.
Greenwashing is our Pied Piper to climate doom.
Everything, (thanks to the advertising industry) has gone from Non Bio to ECO, BIO and ORGANIC all forms of Greenwashing, when in fact there is no such thing as Bio. (The terms eco, bio or organic denote a product with a mass of at least 95% organic ingredients. The remaining 5% is left in the case of atmospheric pollution.)
The term greenwashing itself seems to have first appeared back in the 1980s, at a time of major environmental disasters and climate science going mainstream.
Having put down the climate denial playbook, many oil and gas firms reached for the greenwash spray gun to create the false perception, that planet-critical problems are and were being tackled, even solved, when they are not.
Greenwashing also comes with an additional twist:
Under this mass hypnosis, public pressure on polluting companies evaporates and the tough decisions needed to cut carbon emissions are kicked into the long grass.
The most recent example of this. Is the UK government granting the go ahead to the development of The Rosebank Oil field, under the pretence that producing Oil rather than importing it, saves Co2 admission.
A single new oil and gas field in the North Sea would be enough to exceed the UK’s carbon budgets from its operations alone. The emissions from Rosebank’s operations alone – not counting any emissions from burning the oil and gas it is likely to produce – are likely to reach 5.6m tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The UK government cannot allow big polluters to use offsetting as an alibi to carry on fuelling the climate emergency while pretending that they’re tackling the problem.
It’s riddled with flaws.
“Morally obscene” and we should worry about it.
Sadly, the way out of the climate emergency is just not simple.
The aim is pretty much obvious. To delay or avoid action to avert catastrophic climate change.
Offsetting schemes provide a good story that allows companies to swerve away from taking meaningful action on their carbon emissions. Offset schemes also serve to make fossil fuels more palatable to increasingly eco-conscious consumers.
If big polluters like oil giants and airlines can have their “carbon-neutral” petrol and flights, what about that other major source of planet-heating emissions, the meat industry?
Why can’t they have their net-zero bacon?
Greenwash is raining all around us, sprayed by an out-of-control garden sprinkler of profit seeking algorithms, before sustainability.
Is there anything we can do to stop it?
And what about the law? Is greenwashing legal?
There’s no specific law banning greenwashing.
If we’re serious about tackling climate change, there is only one answer to the problem: these companies and industries need to put people and planet over profit by completely overhauling their business models.
The threat posed by climate change and its social repercussions dwarf those surrounding national security.
It is a problem that is going to brake the camel back, the redistribution of the world population.
It could not be more global in nature.
No Cop meeting is going to solve this problem.
With up to three billion people expected to be displaced by the effects of global warming by the end of the century, should it lead to a shift in the way we think about national borders?
If we dont unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards, wars will be the net result.
No one country can tackle them on their own no matter how large their population, how strong their economy or how feared their military.
The challenges threatening global cooperation are as clear as the need, which makes it one of the most serious issues of the day. Already record numbers of people are being forced to flee their homes with each passing year. In 2021, there were 89.3 million people, double the number forcibly displayed a decade ago, and in 2022 that number reached 100 million, with climate disasters displacing many more people than conflicts.
Back to Borders:
Borders define our fate, our life expectancy, our identity, and so much more.
Our borders don’t exist as immutable facets of the landscape, they are not natural parts of our planet, and were invented relatively recently. Most of these imaginary lines with our soaring populations, dramatic climate changes and resource scarcity are not fit for the world of the 21st Century.
The conditions are changing.
An estimated 279 million people are packed into a thin band of land, which cuts through countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, the United States and Mexico.
On average, climate niches – the range of conditions at which species can normally exist – around the world are moving pole wards at a pace of 1.15m (3.8ft) per day.
As global temperatures increase, causing climate change, sea level rise and extreme weather over the coming decades, large parts of the world that are home to some of the biggest populations will become increasingly hard to live in. Coastlines, island states and major cities in the tropics will be among the hardest hit, according to predictions by climate scientists.
With so many people on the move, will this mean that invented political borders, ostensibly imposed for national security, become increasingly meaningless?
Today just over 3% of the global population are international migrants. However, migrants contribute around 10% of global GDP or $6.7tn (£5.9tn) – some $3tn (£2.6tn) more than they would have produced in their origin countries.
The main barrier is our system of borders – movement restrictions either imposed by someone’s own state or by the states they wish to enter.
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Close to 193 million people were experiencing acute food insecurity, which is an increase of almost 40 million since 2020.
The World Bank updated the International Poverty Line from $1.90 to $2.15. This means anyone living on less than $2.15 is in “extreme poverty.” 62% of the global population lives on less than $10/day.
And we wonder why we are having problems with migration.
The conversation about migration has become stuck on what ought to be allowed, rather than planning for what will occur.
Everyone could be offered an official form of United Nations citizenship in addition to their birth citizenship.
For some people, such as those born in refugee camps, lacking papers, or citizens of small island states that will cease to exist later this century, UN citizenship may well be their only access to international recognition and assistance, even though citizenship is a human right.
Passports could be issued on the back of this.
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The main problem with refugees and migrants is identification and this problem is only going one direction.
What if refugees and migrants were issued with a Digital United Nations Statues Cards ( allowing temporary residence till its feasible to return to their countries of origin.)
Green for Genuine refugees, Red for Economic migrants.
Such a card could record the date of entry, date of birth, name, country of origin, and be used as Id.
Each card has a ping number, that has to be activate yearly TO ADVOID AN EXPIRY DATE, also in order to received any service or work.
After all lots of countries need migrant labour’s, it being one of biggest economic resource.
With the card it could be managed far more effectively and efficiently.
THEY WOULD GO A LONG WAY TO HELP TO ADVOD A HUMANITY ARMAGEDDON DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE / MIGRATION.
There are, however, true human borders set not by politics or hereditary sovereigns, but by the physical properties of our planet. These planetary borders for our mammal species are defined by geography and climate. Humans cannot live in large numbers in Antarctica or in the Sahara Desert, for instance.
The war in Ukraine has sparked the fastest-growing refugee crisis since WWII.
Combined with current war’s all undermine global efforts to combat climate change the possibilities that any one conflicts can spin out of anyone’s control remains high.
The greatest danger to humanity came from nuclear weapons” if NATO stepped in to help Ukraine.
The continuing stream of disinformation about bio weapons laboratories in Ukraine raises concerns that Russia itself maybe thinking of deploying such weapons.
Compounding this, the global population is still growing. and with the advent of social media Global democracy is eroding. Rapid digitalization comes with many issues like the world is becoming complacent about the potential risks to the plant.
Restoring trust and fostering cooperation within and between countries will be crucial to addressing the challenges from cybersecurity threats to humanitarian emergencies, to protecting democracy.
Strong cooperation between countries, preventing the world from drifting further apart.
So where are we.
Today, we are experiencing a planetary crisis and I believe it is time to see ourselves as members of one globally dispersed species that must cooperate to survive. The scale of the climate crisis requires new global cooperation and, I believe, new international citizenship with global bodies for migration and for the biosphere – new authorities that are paid for by our taxes and to which nation states are accountable.
Try, if you will, to clear from your mind the idea of people being fixed to a location they were born in, as if it affects your value as a person or your rights as an individual. As if nationality were anything more than an arbitrary line drawn on a map. See instead these lines as fusions of cultural richness, transitions rather than barriers across the possibilities that Earth’s lands offer us all.
Currently, the United Nations has no executive powers over nation states, but that may well need to change if we are to bring down global temperatures, reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and restore the world’s biodiversity.
When it comes to addressing poverty, climate change, healthcare, gender equality, and more, corruption gets in the way. Because corruption is a global problem, global solutions are necessary. Reform, better accountability systems, and open processes will all help.
Science/ Technology’s must pair with equity or they will actually make inequalities worse.
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It will take work to reinvent the concept of the nation state so it becomes more inclusive so that it strengthens local connections while forging greater and more equitable global networks.
The Green New Deals proposed in the European Union and the US are examples of policies aimed at restoring economies, providing jobs and boosting dignity while helping unite people in a bigger social project of environmental transformation.
Finally the debt crises will become one of the most pressing issues over the next decade
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≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHY IS ENGLAND IN SUCH A MESS?
The grim reality for Britain as it faces up to 2024 is that no other major power on Earth stands quite as close to its own dissolution.
Given its recent record, perhaps this should not be a surprise..
In 2016, when the country chose to rip up its long-term foreign policy by leaving the European Union, achieving the rare feat of erecting an economic border with its largest trading partner and with a part of itself, Northern Ireland, while adding fuel to the fire of Scottish independence for good measure.
And if this wasn’t enough, it then spectacularly failed in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, combining one of the worst death rates in the developed world with one of the worst economic recessions.
If you ask the question why is this the sorry state of England?
The answer is that it has never put its people before profit – Mrs Thatcher – privatisation.
It seems to me that Britain’s existential threat is not simply the result of poor governance—an undeniable reality—but of something much deeper: the manifestation of something close to a spiritual crisis.
At the heart of Britain’s crisis is a crisis of identity. Put simply, no other major power is quite as conflicted about whether it is even a nation to begin with, let alone what it takes to act like one.
The United Kingdom is more than Britain and the British.
Some of its citizens believe themselves to be British, while others say they are not British at all; others say they are British and another nationality—Scottish or Welsh, say. In Northern Ireland it is even more complicated, with some describing themselves as only British while others say they are only Irish.
Brexit—an apparent spasm of English nationalism that has broken the social contract holding Britain’s union of nations together, revealing the country’s true nature as an unequal union, of the English, by the English, for the English.
If anything, Brexit revealed the scale of the problem that was already there. An anachronistic country, one destined to break up into its old component parts.
We tend to think of the world’s most powerful nations as unshakable actors on the world stage, but of course they are not. Yet the truth is that the Englishness of Brexit only matters if people see themselves as something other than British.
One of the problems in Britain is that the loss of faith in the country is now so pervasive that it is hard to know whether it can be rebuilt.
It seems to me that if Britain is to survive, it has to believe that there is such a thing as Britain and act as though that is the case.
Outside the European Union, Britain’s collective experience becomes more national by definition. Its economy diverges from the EU, with separate trading relationships, tariffs, standards, and products. It will have its own British immigration system, border checks, and citizenship.
Britain is bottom of the 14 nations for biodiversity, having lost more wildlife than any other G7 country and been shown to be one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet.
Its vital memories are dying. To survive, it must be more than empty pomp, singing a slave song in support of its rugby team or a national anthem that glorifies a king rather than a country.
This reflects a widespread cultural indifference to its mixed population and is a staggering reality as possibly mental handicap in solving its problems.
London houses more than 8 million citizens who communicate via different languages. It is estimated that more than 300 languages are spoken in the city.
The UK has an unwritten out of date constitution. Instead, it is largely written in different documents but has never been brought together.
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Once we pass a certain threshold, physics takes over.
We have had summit after summit and we still unable to except the consequences.
Why?
Because we put money before people.
Scientists have and are warning that Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health.
Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient and air pollution and ‘novel’ chemicals – human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste – are all out of whack, and the planet is losing resilience.
Once a tipping point is crossed it will be irrelevant as who contributed or who did not.
The 2015 UN Paris Agreement set a target to cap the global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
However, the current reality on the ground paints a worrisome picture, with governments not able or unwilling to comprehend the consequences.
The truth is that we live in a world that is incapable of any mean full collective action, in order to avert the coming decades of uncertainty and fragility.
The magnitude of the challenge calls for bold collective actions.
The Covid crisis and the war in Ukraine have combined to shake up the global economic and social system and increase uncertainty, bringing lower growth and triggering higher inflation.
As a result we see countries roiling back on their commitments to achieve net zero carbon admissions.
If damaging tipping cascades can occur and global climate tipping points cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization.
Experts don’t agree on exactly where the limits are, it’s more likely that we’re burnt toast.
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These include the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, eventually producing a huge sea level rise, the collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic, disrupting rain upon which billions of people depend for food, and an abrupt melting of carbon-rich permafrost.
They don’t exist in isolation, they are all intermingle.
This sets Earth on course to cross multiple dangerous tipping points that will be disastrous for people across the world.
To maintain liveable conditions on Earth and enable stable societies, we must do everything possible to prevent crossing tipping points.
These boundaries “determine the fate of the planet, with the consequences impossible to predict.
No amount of economic cost–benefit analysis is going to help us.
Perhaps its beyond our collective intelligence to drive any tangible action on key global issues.
Unfortunately we are still yonks away from any global understanding of just what is a risk.
Take the UK Environment Act that became law during the UK’s hosting of the COP26 summit in Glasgow is totally ignored when granting hundreds new offshore oil licences, or opening a coal mine in Wales.
Rishi Sunak said: We’re choosing to power up Britain from Britain so that tyrants like Putin can never again use energy as a weapon to blackmail us. And just the other day announcing sweeping U-turns that could have catastrophic effects on our climate is one thing.
Delaying the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK from 2030 to 2035, more than anything sounded like an admission of the government’s failure to implement climate policy in a way that brings people with them while showing the benefits of a more sustainable future.
You dont need to be Climate Scientist to understand that we need to change our approach to the climate problem.
Take the Oceans.
Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface. The heat-holding capacity of the ocean is mammoth.
Every year about 134 million atomic bombs of heat is being trapped by the ocean.
The effects of ocean warming include sea level rise due to thermal expansion, coral bleaching, accelerated melting of Earth’s major ice sheets, intensified hurricanes*, and changes in ocean health and Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing ice. lost completely, both ice sheets contain enough water to raise sea level by 66 meters (217 feet).
How much heat is that?
Ninety percent of global warming is occurring in the ocean. with most of the added energy stored at the surface.
Scientists have calculated it is the equivalent energy of more than 25bn Hiroshima atomic bombs.
The atmosphere has held on to about 2% of the extra heat caused by global heating since 2006.
Oceans are a vital climate regulator. It is not a free service. Adding that heat has come with ocean acidification, rising sea levels and changes in the frequency of extreme weather.
The first thing to understand is, nowhere or anyone on the planet is going to be spared the impact of climate change.
Here are a few facts.
The Antarctica is losing 151 billion tonnes of ice per year, roughly equivalent in weight to the rock that makes Mount Everest,
More than 200 million people in the world will live below the tideline by the end of this century if levels continue to rise.
Wild fires devastated roughly 30 million acres of land from 2018-2020.
83 of 252 natural World Heritage sites are at risk.
A chilling number of Earth’s other denizens, including 40 percent of all amphibians known to science (about 3,200 species) is under threat.
Each year, more than 12 million hectares of land are lost to desertification.
The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is estimated to have lost half its corals since the 1990s as a sustained rise in ocean temperatures bleached them white and made them uninviting to its colonising organisms.
Plastic production and use is forecast to double over the next 20 years, and quadruple by the early 2050s, warns the Heinrich Böll Foundation, despite the fact that greenhouse gases, such as CO2 and methane, are released at every stage of plastic’s lifecycle – from the extraction and refinery of oil to the manufacturing process and end-of-life disposal and incineration.
At least 155 million people, 2.3 times as many as live in the UK, were pushed into acute food insecurity in 2020 due to extreme weather.
During the past 20 years there has been a 53·7% increase in heat-related mortality in people older than 65 years.
The amount of sea ice five years old or above dropped from 30% to 2%.
Climate change is accelerating the spread of infectious diseases.
Between 1990 and 2015, the richest 1% of the world’s population were responsible for more than twice as much carbon emissions as the poorest 50% of humanity.
Electric cars may emit zero tailpipe emissions, but they still have a sizeable carbon footprint from their manufacturing process. One manufacturer’s electric SUV has to drive anywhere between 29,000 miles (47,000km) and 90,000 miles (146,000km) – depending on whether it is recharged with wind power or a ‘global energy’ mix that includes electricity generated from fossil fuels – before its greenhouse gas emissions are lower than the petrol model.
Take planting trees would require 1.6 billion hectares of new forests.
The Jet Stream.
The jet stream is a large band of strong winds between five to seven miles above the Earth’s surface, blowing from west to east. The North Atlantic jet stream are likely to have drastic weather-related consequences for societies on both sides of the Atlantic.
As it flows overhead, it causes changes in the wind and pressure at that level and affects things nearer the surface such as areas of high and low pressure, shaping the weather.
Variations in the jet stream can have severe societal implications, such as floods and droughts, due to its impacts on weather patterns and so, in terms of thinking about the future, we can now begin to use the past as a sort of a prologue.
Natural variability has thus far masked the effect of human-caused warming on mid-latitude atmospheric dynamics across annual and longer timescales.
Continued warming could cause significant deviations from the norm. Such migration could render the jet stream significantly different within a matter of decades, with huge implications on the types of weather that people might experience at a given place, with trickle-down effects affecting national economies and societies.
The jet stream accounts for between 10% and 50% of variance in annual precipitation and temperature in both regions. However, little is known about how the jet stream varied during the past, or how it might change in the future.
The jet stream could migrate outside of the range of natural variability by as early as the year 2060 under unabated greenhouse gas emissions.
Heat waves are a silent and invisible killer.
We all know what is needed – clean energy.
There is no reason that governments could not make repayable grants available to their populations, to install green energy – such as solar – wind turbines – tidal.
Once installed and the grant re payed, the energy produced should be owned by the house hold , village, factory, our community, who would have free energy, with any surplus suppling the Grid. At a lower cost than other forms of carbon dioxide removal.
Until we listen to what the natural world has to tell us about our place in it, not the other way around, will we be able to take any mean full action.
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Because CAPITALISM turns everything into a product including us.
Global warming is rooted in an economic system that has a parasitold relationship with the Earth upon which we live.
Capitalism is simply incompatible with social justice and living in harmony with the Earth, so it has to be changed, and changed quickly. The clock is ticking.
We are entering a new era of profound challenge ― and free market capitalism cannot dig us out.
Economies that rely on the power of markets, don’t even recognize the problem as they’re too focused on short-term profits to take account of longer-term issues like climate change and environmental destruction.
Trusting that the free market capitalist dynamics will get us to net Zero, that of course is not going to happen.
The question now is the relationship between policy, mass movement and how radical we need to go to save the planet.
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Capitalism as a system is highly exploitative of both people and planet. It is driven by a desperate need for profit and accumulation. It is apparent that left on its own, our economic system will continue to destroy the basis for life on this planet until it is too late.
Why?
Because capitalism allows to much wriggle room, impeding effective action. As long as our economy chases after profit it will seek ways to circumvent any regulation.
If adequate policies had been adopted 30 years ago, we would be well on the way to achieving a zero-carbon economy at a very low cost. The fact that we did not is, in part, capitalism’s fault.
Merely regulating the private sector rather than making deep inroads into socialising capital and businesses.
Private property doesn’t remove the profit motive from the economy, it only seeks to constrain it in various ways.
State-led investment is fine, but on its own it does not particularly challenge capitalism as a socio-economic system. Indeed at its worst it props it up and helps overcome aspects of capitalism’s inherent instability. Venture capitalists financing brilliant technological breakthroughs have been matched by industry lobby groups successfully arguing against required regulations or carbon taxes.
All developed economies should commit to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
And zero must mean zero, with no pretence that we can continue burning large quantities of fossil fuels in the late twenty-first century, balanced by equally large quantities of carbon capture and storage.
Once clear prices and regulations are in place, market competition and the profit motive will drive innovation, and economies of scale and learning-curve effects will force down the costs of zero-carbon technologies. And if we do not unleash that power, we will almost certainly fail to contain climate change.
We consistently hear the need to rapidly phase out all fossil fuels.
“A green industrial revolution expanding public, democratic ownership as far as necessary for the transformation”
“As far as necessary”. What is meant by that, only time will tell.
It is in the ambiguity of such phrases that you can read anything you like.
It could be read to mean a radical nationalisation plan which takes energy, transport, logistics, retail and all the other sectors that are heavy carbon emitters into public ownership to introduce plans to reduce their carbon footprint.
Or
It could mean a far more modest limited plan of taking bankrupt industries into temporary public ownership in order to ‘green’ them.
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How to square the circle of the increasing need for socialised and democratic global solutions in a world of nation states and jealously guarded private property?
This is where a serious fight against climate change that tries to get to the root of the problem of capitalism is going to clash head-on with our political and legal system.
Of course if you see climate change from a revolutionary perspective then you rip up those capitalist laws that are protecting the ill-gotten gains of the rich who are plundering our natural environment until we are on the brink of social collapse.
The question is going to be both the interpretation of “as far as necessary” and also the political will to drive through the changes that will be necessary to start to plan our economy.
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People are increasingly feeling the effects of rapid climate change. Cities boil in more than 120-degree heat, California burns and the Arctic thaws, thousands dyeing.
Meanwhile, biodiversity loss is reaching terrifying levels, with animals going extinct at about 1,000 times the natural rate. In addition, as societies, we’re facing increased inequality, unemployment and soaring personal debt levels.
Faced with these interconnected crises, “It can be safely said that no widely applicable economic models have been developed specifically for the upcoming era.”
In other words, we are at an ecological crunch point and we don’t have the economic tools to deal with it.
We are past this discussion of should we have capitalism or should we have something else.
Do we aim for more consumption or do we aim for liveable environments in the future?
All these changes require concerted political action.
There must be a comprehensive vision and closely coordinated plans. Otherwise a rapid system level transformation towards global sustainability goals is inconceivable.
People are starting to genuinely worry about their future security and looking for collective action.
These kind of things might actually start to matter quite a bit more than caring about a new iPhone.
Sovereign governments cannot run out of money, thus debunking the argument that economies cannot afford to make the transformations needed to address climate change.
Humanity has lost the battle against climate change.
If we are to be honest we can’t blame climate change anything but ourselves.
All actions now need will have an effect on how the world goes into any future of adaptation.
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One of the greatest problem in tackling climate change is every thing has been turned into a product to be sold. including climate change.
“Capitalism is incompatible with the fight against climate change” and greenwashing is a prime example of this.
Greenwashing delays or stops the action we need to move to better systems for people and the planet. A false eco-branded product or carbon offsetting may make us feel we’re doing well.
Carbon Credits. A way to try to make up for the pollution you cause, instead of trying to reduce it. Usually it’s done by paying others to reduce carbon emissions or take carbon out of the atmosphere. It’s greenwashing because it still means lots of carbon goes into the atmosphere.
When businesses use terms such as ” environmentally friendly ” and “green” they are often meaningless.
Greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or misleading information about how a company’s products are environmentally sound.
Greenwashing involves making an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company’s products are environmentally friendly or have a greater positive environmental impact than they actually do.
Greenwashing is a PR tactic used to make a company or product appear environmentally friendly, without meaningfully reducing its environmental impact.
Performed through the use of environmental imagery, misleading labels, and hiding trade-offs, greenwashing is a play on the term “whitewashing,” which means using false information to intentionally hide wrongdoing, error, or an unpleasant situation in an attempt to make it seem less bad than it is.
Greenwashing is an attempt to capitalize on the growing demand for environmentally sound products, whether that means they are more natural, healthier, free of chemicals, recyclable, or less wasteful of natural resources.
More recently, some of the world’s biggest carbon emitters, such as conventional energy companies, have attempted to rebrand themselves as champions of the environment.
Products are greenwashed through a process of renaming, rebranding, or repackaging them. Greenwashed products might convey the idea that they’re more natural, wholesome, or free of chemicals than competing brands.
Of course, not all companies are involved in greenwashing. Some products are genuinely green.
How can it be curtailed.?
Packaging and advertising should explain the product’s green claims in plain language and readable type in close proximity to the claim.
An environmental marketing claim should specify whether it refers to the product, the packaging, or just a portion of the product or package.
A product’s marketing claim should not overstate, directly or by implication, an environmental attribute or benefit.
If a product claims a benefit compared with the competition, then the claim should be substantiated.
This can include use of terminology such as “eco-friendly” or “sustainable,” which are vague and not verifiable. Imagery of nature or wildlife can also connote environmental friendliness, even when the product is not green. Companies may also cherry-pick data from research to highlight green practices while obscuring others that are harmful. Such information can even come from biased research that the company funds or carries out itself.
Whether you are filling up at the pump, booking a flight or simply browsing supermarket shelves, you are being targeted by marketing campaigns trying to persuade you that everything is fine.
This is, in a nutshell, what greenwashing is and why it’s now everywhere.
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≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS IT NOT TIME FOR THE IRISH RUBGY TEAM TO SING SOME ROUSING WORDS. SET TO SOME WONDERFUL UPLIFTING MUSIC.
( Seven minute read)
The RUBGY world cup is well on its way.
At the sports theatre we interpret and stage social life in ways that can help set the public agenda and that can change the life course of communities and individuals. Sports are not mere bread and circuses, but is also transformative.
Various sports in different cultures shape delicate and radically diverse life worlds.
It takes a special set of lenses, and interests, too, perhaps, to clarify the polyvalent capacities of sports.
This is structured around several questions.
First, how do we learn to cope with and learn from failure?
Losing is an essential part of sports. No one likes to lose and, yet, we all do.
Clearly, sports is a substantial aspect of the world we live in.
The business of sports is a $500-billion industry worldwide, and growing.
It could and should do more, far more, than just winning cups /medals.
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For anyone concerned with the symbolic dimension of social life, sports offer a laboratory par excellence, but also as the ludic modalities that beat the pulse of our civilizations.
Despite its universality, the world of sport is magnificently, yet often subtly, playful, and diverse. At the same time, sports’ ubiquitous presence in many of our lives is thoroughly mundane and a spectacle of ritual-like proportions. Again and again, sports, with their familiar seasonal patterns, are created and recreated as cultural systems gravitationally bound by our play to familiar symbols, myth, codes, and narratives.
I argue that we should flesh out the cultural structures of sports—their codes, myths, and narratives, as well as their modalities of play, games, fun, and sports themselves—with empirical data.
This will then allow us to show how empirically verifiable symbolic processes within and about sports shape social life.
It is always phatic to see any sport been used for political purposes but sport and politics are intricately intertwined. Like any other facet of life, Sport is inherently political.
Ireland is the only team participation in the world cup that does not sing its countries anthem ( Amhrán na bhFiann written by Peader Kearney and Patrick Heeney somewhere around 1909 or 1910.)
Are you wondering why?
Because Phil Coulter from Northern Ireland, was commissioned by the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) in 1995 to write a song for the national rugby team. He composed Ireland’s Call a piece of shit a song in order to appease the Unionists of Northern Ireland.
Unionists have long recoiled at Amhrán na bhFiann, an expression of Irish nationalism sung by republican rebels during the 1916 Rising.
With Brexit and demographic shifts in Northern Ireland putting a united Ireland – and the need to woo unionists – on the political agenda, of course this is a contentious issue because Amhrán na bhFiann speaks of Irish independence from the King.
This national anthem is God Save the king, that has nothing to offer to a country aspirations.
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There is something about sport as a symbolic universe, a microcosm’s, cut off from but nested within the broader social universe that, to culturally oriented sociologists, makes it good fodder for thinking.
As aesthetic renditions of social life, sports twist and turn our myths and realities, at times predictable and sometimes surprisingly artistic, to hold our attention in their own reality, and make leaps of faith that not only change sporting identities, but our social being.
While sport is often regarded as an equaliser, it can only work this way if a conscious effort is made to ensure that all have equal access.
Sport is universal. It is an invaluable treasure that has the power to unite the world through emotion, even if we are apart, speak different languages, or come from different cultures.
To become a vehicle for peace, to achieve peace, it must be designed in a way to do so.
Narrow nationalism is unhealthy and contrary to the cause of world peace and tolerance.
Sports is mass first – mass participation is needed to build elite athletes, sport teams etc.
As so, to my mind sport, should always be above any political aspirations of a nation.
One of the most symbolic and important parts of the Olympic is the oath taken by the athletes, the coaches and the judges, underpinned by the idea the Games can bring fresh hope and encouragement to people around the world – both through the active appearance of athletes and through the power of sport.
In light of the difficulties the world is now facing perhaps its time that the singing of national anthems are replaced with a common song like- Always look on the bright side of life. Indeed it is precisely out of respect to preserving many of these things that give us life that I believe the time has come to consider the question.
Should the singing of national Anthems be replaced by a song that unifies us as equals, supporting the Greening of the earth.
Back to Ireland’s Call.
It’s a terrible tune, with banal lyrics.
After 114 years, we have different enemies, and I humbly propose it’s time we had a new anthem.
Most national teams in Ireland solely represent the Republic.
For example, both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have separate soccer teams.
Before the introduction of Ireland’s Call, only the national anthem was played for the Irish rugby team. Ireland’s national anthem, the Soldier’s Song, is like most national anthems around the world.
It has a militaristic theme with references to bullets and gunfire.
Before Irelands call Ulster players stood tall during the Soldier’s Song but kept their mouths firmly shut.
The beauty of the Irish rugby team is that there’s a lot of respect, uniting the best players from the four clubs/ providences of the country. Don’t tell me that in the above picture Irelands Ulster Captain Rory Best an Ulster farmer while handing off was thinking that he was representing the four provinces.
Not on your nelly he playing for Ireland.
(The “four proud provinces” refer to the four quarters of the island of Ireland.) are Ulster, Leinster, Munster, and Connacht. Each have a professional rugby clubs under the overall management of the IRFU (Irish Rugby Football Union).
I do not think Ireland’s Call fully personify the diversity and vibrancy of contemporary Ireland.
Wouldn’t it be great if it had a line or two from each of our national languages – Gaelic -English, aspirational, but also recognisable a song that even the tone deaf have a chance of singing effectively.
I’d point to Advance Australia Fair.
“Australians all let us rejoice / For we are young and free / We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil; Our home is girt by sea; Our land abounds in nature’s gifts / Of beauty rich and rare / In history’s page, let every stage / Advance Australia Fair”.
The message is all about sharing and working together, the tune’s unquestionably stirring, and it has that great refrain. It’s cheesy, but it’s top-quality cheese. No wonder the Aussies voted for Advance Australia Fair to replace God Save The Queen back in 1977.
La Marseillaise sounds marvellous, and brings a tear to the eye. In other words, it is does the job of a national anthem, which is rallying “les citoyens”, superbly.
Let’s overlook the fact that the lyrics are very gory, full of impure blood soaking fields and tigers mercilessly ripping their mother’s breast.
The English Anthem is not the bloodthirsty lyrics or boasts of empire that require replacement but the simple fact that no man should surely be truly glad at heart and ready to fight the foe, sporting or otherwise, when he has to sing of his desire to be the subject of a monarch and bellow his need to be reigned over for ever. How cringing is that?
To sing the praises of such a family simply because of an accident of their birth should be a subject of ridicule in a developed nation in the Western world. That an educated nation such as England can be so obsequious and genuflecting is surely a matter for shame.
It’s a wasted opportunity to celebrate what’s great about Ireland.
Even Sinn Féin has signalled openness to changing the flag and anthem.
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Trends in sports tend to mirror broader trends in society, such as shortening attention spans,
How is a sport evolving, for example, and what shape is it likely to take 20 years from now?
We might think about what it means to be a good team player in a virtual world, where online gaming participants team up virtually with other players they have never met or otherwise interacted with.
To finish I would like to say that I am neither a republican, nor an atheist nor an Irish nationalist.
I’m a patriot.
To quote George Orwell: “By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.”
We should have a competitive telethon to decide which of these options offer the best lyrics and tune to represent the Ireland for the next century or so. We would be in tune with our times.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Society is already wrestled with the consequences of genetic engineering, fiddling with genomes, but synthetic biology poses a number of practical risks.
68% of biodiversity has been lost since 1970, and the amount of human-made material including concrete, plastic and bricks now outweighs the total mass of biological matter on the planet.
The likely truth is that technology might be the only clear way out of future disasters given the terrifyingly short timescales involved.
Humans have been manipulating the genetic code for thousands of years, by selectively breeding plants and animals with desired characteristics.
As we have learned how to read and manipulate the genetic code, we have started to take genetic information from one organism and transfer it to another. This process we call genetic engineering, and it has enabled researchers to develop different varieties of plants and animals.
However for instance this technology could produce devastating biological weapons, or escape, mutate and cause unforeseeable damage to the ecosystem.
The ethical concern, rest not with the tool itself, but the hand that wields it.
In a rapidly changing world, that is facing major global challenges, the potential uses of synthetic biology are far reaching, and the impact of these uses could be profound.
From climate change to pandemics, synthetic biology can provide the tools to engineer biological processes that can deliver targeted, rapid and sustainable solutions. From monitoring and remediating environmental contamination, managing invasive pests and pathogens, reviving endangered species, and engineering resilience against climate change, to enabling new strategies to store data.
Humanity is already on the path to decoupling from natural systems – so if we want to avoid the worst scenarios of this trajectory, what might we do about it?
The ability to learn from and leverage technology that has already made the living world offers seemingly endless opportunities.
We use recombinant DNA technology already to have cells to synthesize medical antibodies, insulin, and other things like the hormone Epo. (a hormone produced by the kidney that promotes the formation of red blood cells by the bone marrow.)
Or.
In the future. A ‘self-healing’ paint that consists of microscopic organisms that could repair itself over the lifetime of a ship, and tanks or armoured vehicles that could wear a coat of organisms that self-heal and change their colour on command.
How far could it go?
The potential impact of this area of science is astonishing; From bacteria that could generate energy, to creating food without the need for large organisms we might instead genetically integrate ourselves with the biosphere, such that both human and natural are transformed, acting as biological arks into the future, or as a form of beautiful annihilation into a future weird ecology.
This is an area of research described as the design and construction of artificial biological entities that previously did not exist, or the redesign of existing natural biological systems.
Rather than seeking to preserve natural systems.
In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature – how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures?
Can humanity leave nature behind?
Imagine a future where humans have transcended their current state to combine with technology – in the most extreme cases, evolving into uploaded digital beings.
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The recent achievement of scientists in manufacturing the genome of a bacterium from off-the-shelf chemicals, and placing it in a related bacterium which is now happily reproducing under the control of the manmade DNA, holds fantastic promise.
A team of researchers in the United States and United Kingdom say they have created the world’s first synthetic human embryo-like structures from stem cells, bypassing the need for eggs and sperm. These embryo-like structures are at the very earliest stages of human development: They don’t have a beating heart or a brain, for example.
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Humans do not need to insert themselves into controlling life processes in every corner of the world, down to the very strands of DNA, to force the Earth system to absorb the shocks of our presence. If the Earth is not to be irreversibly degraded and unbalanced, we need some equal and opposite pull in the direction of replenishing natural complexity.
If the metaphorical “umbilical cord” connecting human survival and the biosphere is well and truly cut.
The threat of an exclusively human-technological world would not be a dystopia to many.
If severe environmental degradation continues, a plausible path is one where humans will, through necessity, decouple from a biosphere that ceases to function.
It is no longer science fiction.
Because trillions of organisms are utilised as food and broken down to fuel human bodies.
Creating synthetic life that is useful to us will probably involve learning a lot more about what the code actually does.
For example, scientists have begun devising ways to synthesise “ecosystem services” – such as pollination or other natural processes that benefit human society.
The newly touted “metaverse”, for instance, promises a form of spatial, workplace and recreational departure from the “meat space” of the physical world: why visit a polluted forest or lake when you can access a near-perfect digital simulation of a clean one from your home?
If the human-biosphere umbilical cord is to be cut, it should leave mother Earth in peak health, and in service to both parties.
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