“Top five greenest nations on the planet.”

Naturally, whenever you read something like that, your bullshit detector should be beeping and flashing, because apart from the fact that such a thing is essentially impossible to rank, generally the media will take something like a study, over-simplify it in order to break something complex down into bite-sized chunks that the masses can easily digest, and then declare it in such a way that it sounds like “fact”.

I checked out the article, linked through to the study itself, conducted by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. Called the 2010 Environmental Performance Index, it left me troubled by one thing: the study almost completely ignored what is perhaps the biggest contributing factor to “greenness”: consumption.
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Read the rest of Consumption counts for nothing? (971 words)

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Post tags: environment, geopolitics

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Anyway, I am only three chapters in, but I understand the gist of what he’s arguing for: a conversion of the energy system into a hydrogen-based, distributed network, and so on and so forth, which my mother correctly points out is being touted as a plausible option only because it keeps the cartels in the game…as peddlers of hydrogen instead of oil.

But I don’t intend to comment on his main thesis at this point.

Instead, I was struck by the grim picture he painted in the first three chapters. Namely, the seriousness of the impending oil shortage. It seems, according to his figures, that we can expect world oil production to top out at some point between now and 2020…probably after 2010.

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Post tags: energy, geopolitics, technology

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I would say it’s an improvement over the television coverage during the Gulf War, in that at least we are able to see images from inside Iraq, but CNN, Fox and MSNBC are clearly being heavily censored in terms of what they can film, and, without getting into a huge philosophical rant right now, are arguably acting as part of the U.S. government propaganda machine.

Actually, my biggest criticism of the American networks right now has to do with the fact that they aren’t reporting anything besides the war. The Bush administration is also active at the moment on domestic fronts, and the networks are playing into the hands of the administration by not even reporting what they’re up to (budget votes, etc.).

Luckily, at least here in New York, we don’t have to watch CNN anymore unless we’re feeling masochistic. I have been watching the coverage mainly on TV5, which comes from France. They have alternated between their own news program, Le Journal, as well as broadcasts from TV2 (also French), as well as Swiss and Québecois news.

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Post tags: geopolitics, news, war

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I mean, really, come on….they’re governed by an asshole. (Yes, I’m only calling Saddam an asshole…the Hitler references are really a bit much.)

As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve lived under awful economic conditions partly caused by horrible sanctions from the West that the Clinton *and* Bush administrations (1 and 2) stubbornly refused to ease. (I blame Clinton more for this, actually; after all he was in office for EIGHT YEARS, during which time somewhere between 500,000 and a million Iraqis died.) They wouldn’t even allow things like syringes and antibiotics to be imported into Iraq, claiming they could be utilized in a biological weapons program.

And now, the Iraqis are once again just pawns in a game.

And who’s playing the game? Well, Saddam, the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, China and Russia.

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Post tags: geopolitics, war

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“Security for the United States, as for other countries, lies only in a satisfactory solution of the world peace problem.”

The gist of his little essay was that, by virtue of our geography, American schools had the opportunity to teach children peace (since it’s unlikely for our country to be attacked), but that we ought not teach that isolationism is a way to achieve peace.

I wonder, while observing the reaction of our government, if we have yet realized that the terrorist threat, that threats to our safety, come directly from the status of peace in the world.

Oh, wait, I already have the answer to that question. It’s obviously “no”.

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Post tags: geopolitics

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Now that my neighborhood is open again to traffic, it feels more normal, but there’s something different about this place now.

Most of my friends and I walk around, and we still all stop every now and then, looking south, I guess in a feeble attempt to will them back, but the towers are still very much gone.

The rescue workers, who are quickly becoming more of a cleanup crew, must feel completely demoralized. it’s pretty obvious that no one’s alive in that pile, and basically, now they’re just cleaning up the mess.

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Post tags: 9/11, geopolitics

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They’ve become an untouchable ethnic group – considered above reproach – simply because there was a highly public, disgusting perpetration of evil against them.

Read this:

Unfortunately, the UN’s conference on race in South Africa has been undermined by…well…racism. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

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Read the rest of You can’t say anything bad about the Jews (384 words)

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Post tags: censorship, geopolitics, racism

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