by Richard Gowan | Dec 3, 2007 | Conflict and security
Having previously suggested that the academic community should explore the semantics of the Italian Defense Minister’s description of Afghanistan as “stable in its instability”, I would also like to suggest they follow up on John Negroponte’s verdict on the Surge:
“It’s one thing to have brought the violence under some semblance of control,” Mr. Negroponte said during a news conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone here, after meeting Iraqi officials in Baghdad and seven other provinces in Iraq’s north, south and west. “But it’s another matter now to follow up with the necessary reconstruction and stabilization projects that will safeguard regions and protect them from this type of violence.”
There has to be an IR specialist out there ready to work up a piece entitled “From a Semblance of Control to Stable Instability: A New Framework for Peacebuilding”. I look forward to it. In the meantime, those seeking some respite from the grim news from Darfur, the Congo and Chad may at least get a hollow laugh from the all-time winners of the Worst Revolutionary Acronym Award, Chad’s United Front for Change (FUC):
The FUC posed a grave danger to the government of President Idriss Deby in April 2006 when they launched an attack on Ndjamena that was stopped only after French army stationed there intervened, according to many sources. Deby later made Nour defence minister on the condition that he integrate his FUC fighters into the army.
by Alex Evans | Dec 3, 2007 | Influence and networks
Those of our readers based in the UK (and many who aren’t) will already know of the Eden Project: an extraordinary sustainable development centre built around massive geodesic domes in a disused clay pit in Cornwall, now one of the top ten tourist attractions in the UK.
This week, the final round of a contest called The People’s £50 million is being held, to choose which of four major projects will received (you guessed it) £50 million of lottery cash. One of the four finalists is a project designed to be Eden’s next stage. It’s called The Edge – there’s a short film about it here. Eden’s creator, Tim Smit, has this to say:
I believe that if we get it right, the Edge could be one of the most important buildings ever built. Not because of its structural form, but because of its ambition to create a setting for asking big questions of interest to all of us: What makes humans content? What lessons from the past can inform the future? And what might great look like? The answers to most of them lie not in the realm of technology, but in the building of healthy, safe and inspired communities drawn together by a narrative for the future they can believe in. In truth it is the theatre for the development of this story that we are wanting to build.
I went to Eden last year to meet Smit and his team, and was awed by their enthusiasm and vision – and totally convinced of the worth of this project, then in a much earlier phase of gestation. Having an iconic space in Britain in which to think about big picture issues and long wave historical trends would be a fantastic prize. So: please vote for it.
by Alex Evans | Dec 3, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, East Asia and Pacific
More interesting post-election goings on in Australia. Since April, a Stern-esque Review of climate change has been underway, headed by Professor Ross Garnaut, an economics expert from the Australian National University – and former boss, twenty years ago, of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
While the Review was initially commissioned by Australia’s states and territories, they extended a standing invitation to the national Government to join the Review. Following his landslide election victory and return-of-the-prodigal-son on Kyoto, Rudd has done just that.
Last week, Garnaut delivered a lecture setting out his thinking on international climate policy. He starts by calling for a quantified stabilisation target and a global emissions budget – and then continues:
What sorts of principles might guide the allocation of a global emissions budget across countries? To be widely accepted as being reasonable the principles will need to be simply, transparent and radily applicable. In the end, they will need to give much weight to equal per capita rights of emissions. They will need to allow long periods for adjustment towards such positions – within the over-riding requirements to stay within an environmentally responsible global emissions budget. One possible way of bringing these two elements together would be the “contration and convergence” approach that has been discussed favourably in Germany and India at times in the past.
Now that is interesting. Obviously, I think he’s spot on (his position being exactly the same as the one I called for in my paper on The Post-Kyoto Bidding War, published here a few weeks back). True, Garnaut is (as an op-ed in today’s edition of The Age notes) not the government’s only climate change adviser. But still: who’d have guessed that we’d see the Australians, of all people, flirting with this line of thinking?
by Alex Evans | Dec 3, 2007 | Conflict and security
Saturday’s Guardian magazine had an excellent article about airport security, quoting Bruce Schneier (whose blog should be on your must-read list):
The security expert, Bruce Schneier, is fond of pointing out that there are several fairly straightforward ways to hijack or bomb an aeroplane. Garottes can be made from fishing line or dental floss, and the snapped-off handle of a wheeled bag makes “a pretty effective spear”. Alternatively, you could buy some steel epoxy glue from a hardware store: it comes in two tubes, one containing steel dust and the other hardener, which can be combined in-flight and moulded into a stubby steel knife, using a metal teaspoon as a handle. (Neither steel epoxy glue nor metal teaspoons are prohibited in hand luggage on flights departing from the UK or the US – unlike, say, snow globes, which are banned under US rules.)
If you would rather use liquid explosive, simply label the bottles “saline solution” and board in the US, where you are allowed to travel with as much saline solution as you wish. Or you could risk it at a British airport: when security staff find liquids in volumes greater than 100ml – and they have been known to seize an estimated five tonnes nationwide in a single day – all they usually do is place them in an open bin and let the offending passenger continue unpenalised. Nor is it a problem if you’re on the US “no-fly list”, the register of people deemed too dangerous to fly (“But too innocent to arrest,” as Schneier puts it). Just target a flight for which you don’t need photo identification, and no one need ever know you’re on the list. Schneier tested this recently, taking a domestic flight from Minneapolis with no photo ID and little hassle. The terms and conditions of at least one British budget airline suggest the same may be possible here.
“There are precisely two things that have made air travel safer since 9/11 – locks on cockpit doors and teaching passengers that they have to fight back,” says Schneier, who is chief technology officer for the security consultancy Counterpane, owned by BT.
The whole article is terrific.
UPDATE: while we’re on Schneier, here’s a story from his blog this morning:
Someone drove a truck through the front gate of the Guinness brewery in Dublin, loaded the trailer with 450 kegs of beer, and drove out the gate. Security presumed it was just another legitimate contractor coming to pick up beer for distribution, and ignored him. Moral: look like you belong.
by Alex Evans | Dec 2, 2007 | Global system
In another bold demonstration of their innovative approach to public diplomacy, senior lawyer for the US government has announced – in a British court, no less – that it considers itself to have the right to “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the US. The Sunday Times has more:
A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it. […]
Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects. The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.
Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.
And here’s the best bit: “the US Justice Department declined to comment“. Wow… faced with public relations this effective, we can but bow our heads with respect.
