Deep history of the “Second World War”

I’ve long wondered about the roots and causes of the Second World War. The standard narrative I was brought up with was that it was the evil, expansionist Japanese. (Of course, no English-speaking country is ever evil and expansionist – they just try to do business, which is of course good for everyone, and use military force only in the legitimate defense of their interests …)

A 5 Dec 2009 oped in the New York Times (James Bradley, Diplomacy that will live in infamy), however, comes up with a new person to blame for Japan’s actions in WWII – Theodore Roosevelt, US president from to 1908. Bradley’s starting point is wondering “why did the Japanese attack us in the first place?”

When Theodore Roosevelt was president, three decades before World War II, the world was focused on the bloody Russo-Japanese War, a contest for control of North Asia. President Roosevelt was no fan of the Russians: “No human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant — in short, as untrustworthy in every way — as the Russians,” he wrote in August 1905, near the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese, on the other hand, were “a wonderful and civilized people,” Roosevelt wrote, “entitled to stand on an absolute equality with all the other peoples of the civilized world.”

What happened next?

All in a day’s run

The great thing about running trails is that you get to see more – and when you’re not being hounded by competitors or impatient fellow runners, the delight of stopping to consider the multitude of large and small wonders encountered along the way is also there. This was a day spent getting from Thendele camp (where I was visiting with family) in the Drakensberg Royal Natal National Park, to the top of the world’s second or third highest waterfall, the Thukela Falls, via Witsieshoek, and back again. (That was January 2009.)

Diamond dust in the Eifel

In mid-December, I visited a friend in Aachen, who drove me across the now non-existent border between Germany and Belgium (how remarkable and wonderful – let’s just trash all borders, everywhere, their only purpose is maintaining inequality), to walk in those low mountains, what the Belgians call the Ardennes and the Germans, the Eifel. It was extraordinarily cold — minus 13 — particularly for a South African from Cape Town where winter temperatures rarely drop below five degrees. But it was a beautiful day, despite the temperatures, and made all the more remarkable by the constant presence of tiny ice crystals in the air, catching the sunlight. This was, research reveals, ‘diamond dust’. The name captures the phenomenon, and is the last poetry in the Wikipedia entry which goes on to describe it as ‘a ground-level cloud composed of tiny ice crystals [which] generally forms under otherwise clear or nearly clear skies, so it is sometimes referred to as clear-sky precipitation. It is most commonly observed in Antarctica and the Arctic, but it can occur anywhere with a temperature well below freezing.’ I feel very fortunate to have seen it.

Fog harvester (no-knead) bread

[This post was written at the end of August, and has just been retrieved from a pile of drafts.]

Riebeek Kasteel, 90 mins north of Cape Town, is good for wine, and for olives. But not so hot when it comes to bread or cheese. I left Cape Town on Sunday with a loaf of gorgeous wholewheat bread from the Olympia Bakery in Kalk Bay. But come Wednesday, I’d finished it, and was adrift in the bread desert of the South African hinterland. (That’s a desert roughly contiguous with the vegetarian/healthy food desert.)

In the bread desert, all you find on the wire racks at the back of the fluorescent-lit dismal small town superettes is the preservative-riddled gluten foam produced by the price-fixing food combines according to the process of “Mr Chorleywood“, my leading candidate for time-travel assassination. Why they bother to put preservatives in this stuff is beyond me – it never lasts any longer than good artisanal bread.

While out for an evening run on Monday I’d nearly had what would have been a very scary collision with a petrified wild pig

How Highbury Safika dupes journalists into writing advertorial

About a year ago, I first wrote for a magazine, African Communications, in the Highbury Safika stable.

The editor, James Retief, requested that I contact and interview particular people for my articles, which I initially took as being conventional editorial suggestions.

But when I saw the published articles, I realised that the people I had been asked to contact were advertisers.

Which meant, as far as I was concerned that, that I had been duped into writing advertorial. But only been paid editorial rates.

I was furious. I objected , and secured a higher word rate from Highbury, and an assurance that if I were to be published again under similar circumstances, that I could use a pseudonym, as I objected to having my name attached to advertorial.

Now I have been contacted again by James,

“The climate change bottom line”

Article I had published in the Weekender, 24 October:

THERE’s a widespread and significant misconception about the likely effects of strong action to cut or “mitigate” greenhouse gas emissions: that it will hurt economies.

The chair at a recent climate debate in Cape Town summed up popular perception and prejudice when he said that those calling for a switch to a low-carbon economy are asking for a “huge sacrifice”.

It’s a twofold misconception. First , the damage to gross domestic product (GDP) is usually exaggerated, particularly in the US by conservative opponents of the proposed, and rather modest, Waxman-Markey climate bill.

350 on Signal Hill, Cape Town

The 350 event on Signal Hill was a brilliant and most encouraging morning. Originally planned for the top of Table Mountain, mist forced us to relocate to the “rump of the lion”, and all of the roughly 250 people who’d gathered at the lower cableway walked for an hour or so to get to the parking on Signal Hill. The mist persisted – and so did the people. We rehearsed at 10am, but it still did not clear. The parking lot began to fill up, and we moved to a nearby grassy hillside – but still the mist did not clear. So people began to chant, “We want sun! We want sun! We want sun!” And by some synchronicity, the planet finally cooperated, the last wisps of vapour blew away, and a small helicopter rose at last from the Waterfront to swoop around and photograph us. After nearly two hours of waiting, I don’t believe a soul had given up and left early. Human beings really can be as amazing and wonderful as we can be selfish and shortsighted.

All photos but the aerial shot are mine. From the 350.org page on Flickr: “Climate Action Partnership volunteers form up on Signal Hill in Cape Town to make up the number 350, signifying 350 parts per million (PPM) CO2 in the atmosphere, 350 PPM being the maximum safe limit of CO2 concentration. WE ARE CURRENTLY AT 390 PPM!”

Richard Goldstone – Justice in Gaza – NYTimes.com

Richard Goldstone writes in the New York Times, about his experience investigating the Israeli assault on Gaza:

I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.

In the fighting in Gaza, all sides flouted that fundamental principle. Many civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt. In Israel, three civilians were killed and hundreds wounded by rockets from Gaza fired by Hamas and other groups. Two Palestinian girls also lost their lives when these rockets misfired.

In Gaza, hundreds of civilians died. They died from disproportionate attacks on legitimate military targets and from attacks on hospitals and other civilian structures. They died from precision weapons like missiles from aerial drones as well as from heavy artillery. Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.

Israel is correct that identifying combatants in a heavily populated area is difficult, and that Hamas fighters at times mixed and mingled with civilians. But that reality did not lift Israel’s obligation to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.

His commission’s report can be downloaded here.

What you always wanted to know about nitrous oxide

If you want to see the latest figures for the state of our atmosphere, the Global Monitoring Division of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory is a good place to start. They consolidate data from a huge global network of monitoring stations.

Select your greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide – CO2, methane – CH4, nitrous oxide – N2O) and watch the graphs climb. We’re perhaps used to seeing graphs for carbon dioxide, so for the sake of a little variety in your gloomy global warming news, here’s a graph for increases in nitrous oxide.

Otherwise known as “laughing gas” or “happy gas”, nitrous oxide is somewhat less amusing in increasing concentrations in large swaths of atmosphere. Over a hundred year period, it is 298 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. At the moment, it apparently accounts for 6% of the human-related warming effect. It’s released by industrial activity, burning coal for example. Also released by tropical soils and from the oceans, human activity has till recently been thought to account for 30% of what’s now in the atmosphere. But it appears releases from nitrogen-based fertilisers may have been greatly underestimated. Overall, atmospheric levels have increased 15% since 1750. It’s also an ozone-depleting gas – in fact, it’s now the key ozone depleting gas.

Arms deals, gambling, Saddam Hussein – and Apple

I started to wonder the other day just why Macs are so much more expensive in South Africa than elsewhere.

As I write, an entry-level white MacBook is advertised in the US at $999, or R7,300. They’re more expensive in the UK, for example, R8,700. No doubt tariffs and taxes play a role here. But if I want to buy the same MacBook here in Cape Town, though, I must pay … R12,000. No less than 64% higher