Leaves caution behind

Though oil companies BP and Shell both acknowledge the reality of climate change, both continue to support industry associations that are lobbying against climate change legislation:

“BP maintains its membership of the API through paying substantial fees based on the large size of BP’s business. It is our concern that these fees are used by the API to undermine US government action on climate change and that BP’s membership of the API contradicts its position on the issue,” writes John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, in a letter to Tony Hayward, the BP boss.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/19/oil-firms-warned-over-us-lobbying

It is difficult to say how much climate change denialism is funded by US industry, but amazingly, the long-term campaign against it seems to have begun as much with the tobacco industry Read the rest of this entry »

Not enough days in the meek

!Freedom Day!
National Women’s Day.
Heritage Day.
Worker’s Day.
Youth Day.
Day of Goodwill.
Day of Reconciliation.
Human Rights Day.
Day of Truth and Reconciliation.
Day of Audited Goodwill.
Gays and Lesbians Day.
Workers with Children in University Day.
Gays and Lesbians Acknowledged by their Parents Day.
Heritage of Good Manners Day.
Day of CEOs Trading Down Their 4×4s For Workers’ Children With Chronic Illness.
Day of Not Screwing our Children’s Heritage with Carbon Emissions.
Read the rest of this entry »

Because 10 years on, evidence suggests that the number of people living in poverty has increased.
– Njongonkulu Ndungane, Business Report, 21 August 2008.

The only time I have heard [Western Cape premier] Ebrahim Rasool speak was at the launch of a book of Sufi philosophy I had helped edit.

The launch was in a museum in the Bo-Kaap. Rasool was on his home turf, comfortable amidst his community. He was confident, humane, urbane, knowledgeable and deeply impressive.

The now notorious refugee camp called Soetwater is a few kilometres from where I live. Three thousand people have been living there in bitter cold, increasingly wet tents for two weeks, tortured by uncertainty. They were wrenched from their homes and businesses by violence and terror. Overnight, the patient, painful work of years was plundered, burnt or crumbling behind them. The response of the authorities, and the UN, to their plight has been to insist that they must return to the communities that turned on them so suddenly and brutally. In other words, preserving the illusion of national harmony and tolerance is considered more Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just visited Namibia, and really enjoyed the experience, despite mild official harassment for being a journalist. I had a very strong sense of it being a smoothly functioning nation, which is particularly notable for its being lodged in Africa, and having recently been prone to serious attempts at plunder and depredation by Germany and South Africa.

The capital, Windhoek, is neat and clean, far cleaner than many European cities.

Then I stumbled on this article in the New York Times, which tells us San Marino (pop. 30 000) has only one prisoner, giving it the world’s lowest incarceration rate.

The Guardian publishes a wonderful article on Iceland, which in turn sounds like a remarkable place: happy people, well-developed health system, successful movement away from oil-based energy to renewable energy over the last 50 years, no standing army for the last seven hundred years.

What about Costa Rica, which has, like Iceland, abandoned a standing army, and resolutely resists exploitation of its oil resources, avoiding the dismal fate of other petrocracies?

Clearly, small states work very well. When society is so closely knit that citizens and politicians work practically alongside each other, it’s difficult for the former to feel too awed, or the latter to feel too self-important. Namibian politicians were, in my brief experience, remarkably self-deprecating, commenting on the tedium of their own speeches, and addressing (with merciful brevity), a conference dinner gathering with words along the lines of, “Ladies and gentlemen, ambassadors, and everyone who’s been elected.”

The same proximity makes for administrative efficiency. Walking into Namibian Home Affairs, one discovers that the minister’s office is in the same drab corridor as the clerks who issue visas. No South African minister would deign to share such modest accommodation. (Though, it must be admitted, the Namibian government has recently constructed a large new official residence for the president, State House, a vulgar monstrosity on a Windhoek hilltop – which the president is rumoured to be reluctant to actually occupy.)

That’s what we need, a world of small, happy states, flying under the radar. Let’s tear down the borders and throw up thin fences, and celebrate the micro-state. After all, small states are what democracy was “designed” for.

Fired by Mbeki, but Nozi is still in office, according to at least two government websites, the GCIS and the Maniacal Beetroot, Drunken Kleptomania and Inadvertent Genocide Ministry Ministry of Health.

“Deputy Minister of Health of the Republic of South Africa since 29 April 2004″, the GCIS tells us in its potted profile, noting as its own source, the “Deputy Ministry of Health”.

The Ministry of Health, meanwhile, also still lists Nozi as Deputy Minister of Health.

Evidence of a hidden cabal of Nozi supporters within government? More likely, evidence that those attempting to wrestle the sprawling, increasingly tired-looking hydra of government websites are losing their grip on the behemoth.

How do you fix elections in a first-world country? Quite openly, it seems, because you know that the desperate (and inaccurate) collective fantasy that “we’re the world’s leading democracy” will end up outweighing the facts.

Al Gore for president. But will they let him win? Read the rest of this entry »

The Economist deems South Africa to be the world’s 29th most democratic country, and puts us at the top of its list of “flawed” democracies, in its latest “Democracy Index”.

I think the rankings themselves may be a touch flawed. No, I’m not rushing to defend South Africa. If anything, I think the rankings over-estimate our democratic credentials.

A couple of points:

• Respect for human life: Ours is not a country that sets great store by the value of human life. This manifests itself in crime, in the high numbers of people who support the restoration of the death penalty, and in the government’s apparently limitless contempt for the rights and lives of those who are HIV positive.
• One of the five areas in which different countries are ranked is “functioning of government”. We score 7.86 – the same as Japan. I would not argue that our bureaucracy is abysmal overall (the quality varies wildly from department to department, and area to area) – but I do find it extremely hard to believe that it’s anywhere near as effective as that of the Japanese.

The index ranks Sweden most democratic, and North Korea least democratic. The US and UK make it to positions 17 and 23. Both are considered to have problematic and declining rankings in respect of civil liberties. Other notable flawed democracies include South Korea, Italy, Israel and Brazil.