Voyage Of The Beagle, Part 2  

The Independent has an article on an exploratory voyage to the Galapagos to experiment with seeding phytoplankton blooms with iron. Sounds like one more mad scientist geoengineering experiment to me - what unexpected side effects will be discovered ?

A research ship is about to begin a project around the Galapagos Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, that will highlight the importance of marine plankton in the fight against global warming and climate change. Waterbird II, the research ship of an eco-restoration organisation called Planktos, is on a "voyage of recovery" to "seed" the oceans with the iron in the hope of stimulating blooms of phytoplankton, the microscopic marine plants that soak up the energy of the Sun to convert carbon dioxide into organic matter.

The organisers of the venture hope to shine a spotlight on the critical role that plankton plays in maintaining the carbon dioxide balance of the oceans and the atmosphere with the help of several tons of iron dust. Scientists have long postulated that it may be possible to speed up the rate at which the oceans soak up atmospheric CO2 by stimulating the growth of plankton in the oceans with added iron - an essential nutrient for photosynthesis. ...

Noel Brown, a former director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said that the pilot project to fertilise the oceans with iron filings is important in terms of raising awareness of the huge potential the oceans have in mitigating rising levels of atmospheric CO2. "I cannot overstate the importance of these Planktos pilot projects. If their applied science works as well as the early research indicates, this work will both help restore the neglected oceans and give everyone concerned about global warming truly meaningful hope," Dr Brown said.

Normally plankton forms vast blooms at certain times of the year that can be seen from space. But this occurs only under certain conditions, such as adequate mineral availability - iron is often the limiting factor.

Scientists established in the 1990s that adding iron to the oceans causes plankton to multiply in areas that would not have seen a bloom at that time of year. This led to the idea that seeding vast areas artificially with iron dust could stimulate the plankton to draw down more CO2 from the atmosphere, where it might be sequestered for many centuries when the organic matter formed by photosynthesis sinks to the seabed.

The "iron hypothesis" was first suggested by John Martin, an oceanographer at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory in California, who died before his idea could be properly tested. In order for it to work, however, it was important for the phytoplankton to sink quickly to about 300 metres, beyond the range of the zooplankton - the tiny animals that also live within the same surface layers, feeding on other plankton.

A number of small-scale trials tested Martin's idea but it soon emerged that zooplankton multiplied as quickly as the phytoplankton, with the result that the animals quickly ate the organic material formed as a result of adding the iron. Instead of the carbon sequestered by the phytoplankton sinking to the seabed as planned, it was emitted to the sea and air by the feeding zooplankton.

Nevertheless, the Planktos team believe that the Waterbird II mission will raise greater awareness of what the oceans can do in mitigating the effects of climate change. "Planktos is working to ensure the ocean's enormous natural carbon dioxide sequestration potential is recognised and prioritised in any future federal climate change laws, and we are finding real enthusiasm for this powerful green approach," said Kyle Hence of Planktos.

The bee colony collapse disorder story continues to permeate through the major media - in varying degrees of detail. Hi to you readers from Monsanto and Bayer - care to point the finger at one another ?

Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation’s honeybees could have a devastating effect on America’s dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Honeybees don’t just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being “stuck with grains and water,” said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA’s bee and pollination program.

“This is the biggest general threat to our food supply,” Hackett said.

The "bread and water diet" might be reduced to just a water diet (well - unless you live in a place suffering intensifying drought conditions) if the spread of black stem rust fungus ends up badly...

“This thing has immense potential for social and human destruction.” Startling words - but spoken by the father of the Green Revolution, Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, they are not easily dismissed.

An infection is coming, and almost no one has heard about it. This infection isn’t going to give you flu, or TB. In fact, it isn’t interested in you at all. It is after the wheat plants that feed more people than any other single food source on the planet. And because of cutbacks in international research, we aren’t prepared. The famines that were banished by the advent of disease-resistant crops in the Green Revolution of the 1960s could return, Borlaug told New Scientist.

The disease is Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust fungus (Puccinia graminis), discovered in Uganda in 1999. Since the Green Revolution, farmers everywhere have grown wheat varieties that resist stem rust, but Ug99 has evolved to take advantage of those varieties, and almost no wheat crops anywhere are resistant to it.

The strain has spread slowly across east Africa, but in January this year spores blew across to Yemen, and north into Sudan. Scientists who have tracked similar airborne spores in this part of the world say it will now blow into Egypt, Turkey and the Middle East, and on to India, lands where a billion people depend on wheat.

There is hope: this week scientists are assessing the first Ug99-resistant varieties of wheat that might be used for crops. However, it will take another five to eight years to breed up enough seed to plant all our wheat fields.

WorldChanging has a post on "Greening The Desert".

Because we focus on new and emerging solutions at Worldchanging, we don't talk too often about permaculture, because while it's a beautiful and brilliant tool for sustainable gardening and food production, it's been around for quite a while. But a story passed through today about a recent project by the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, which uses permaculture to turn a barren, arid Jordanian desert into a fruitful garden and orchard, and suggests that the process can be a powerful solution to some of our most pressing global problems.

This video tells the story of a seemingly impossible feat achieved by permaculture designer, Geoff Lawton, in which he trained a group of locals in the principals of permaculture, and together they transformed the "hyper-arid" land until it bore fruit, desalinated water, and created fertile ground which requires very little water to be productive. If it can be done there, argues Lawton, it can be done anywhere, and it can become a real tool for addressing pollution, desertification and global warming.

WorldChanging also has a roundup of collabarative information building projects called "Green Chips, Blood Logs, Sickis and Folksonomic Futurism" (see the original for lots'o'links).

Title: World Without Oil

What It Is: A distributed, citizen-media project blending people's stories about rising fuel prices with anticipatory journalism about peak oil.

Why It Matters: Because as the bedrock assumptions of our lives shift more and more rapidly, being an expert doesn't necessarily make you a better predictor of the future. Sometimes, lots of "average" people swarming a problem makes for a better and more attuned discussion of change (think about out-collaborating a pandemic, or using open source futurism methods). Even when what we might call folksonomic futurism goes astray, it often does so in interesting ways.

Quote:"Over the weekend, my father and I converted all of our family's cars to run on any blend of gasoline and ethanol, up to 100% ethanol. It cost about $650 per vehicle. This way, we can at least still afford to drive when necessary. My father and I also spoke to some close friends about putting together an ethanol still, as ethanol prices are high, but not as high as gasoline. We purchased plans for one that can produce 10 gallons of fuel per hour, and is capable of 24 hour operation. At 240 gallons per day, we can supply about 30 local families, or 20 local families and some farm equipment. If we purchase all of the parts new, it will cost about $40,000. Some parts my father will be "borrowing" from work...others will be used...so hopefuly we can push the cost down to $30,000, allowing $10,000 in spare parts. I know there will be additional costs and we have lots more work to do before jumping in."

Title: Chips With Everything

What It Is: Worldchanging Ally #1, Bruce Sterling, laying out some smart rants about how the word "computer" means less and less, as Moore's Law and miniaturization suffuse intelligence through the physical world.

Why It Matters: Because precision (knowing where things are) and remote sensing (knowing how the environmental flows are changing) are powerful tools for all sorts of worldchanging approaches, including walkshed technologies, product service systems and ways of knowing nature through technology...

Quote: "Knowledge is power, data is power—but power is power too, and in 2007 electrical power is the planetary crunch issue. The iPhone will have its little dock where it slots in, gasping for fossil voltage. The Microsoft Web robot will clank over and plug itself into the wall, and woe betide the competitor who gets in its way. Every other wireless chip still needs battery power; otherwise the Internet of Things becomes one giant lethal macramé of power cords. Putting chips in everything is the fast track to a greenhouse doom: you’ll be in an automated town that wirelessly watches itself catch fire and wash away in high tides.

"Except, what if there were wireless chips so small and clever that they sucked renewable energy right out of the environment? To survive as truly native components of the actual world, wireless computers would have to become power plants so nifty and thrifty that they’d live off free ambient energy: the heat in a hot-water pipe, the passing glow of sunlight. Being so small yet fiercely capable, the tiniest chips need only a fleabite of power to thrive. Green chips: the smaller they get, the closer they are to a zero-footprint.

"It’s still only 2007. Apple has not yet shipped a single iPhone. We don’t have Windows with Wheels and Eyeballs either. But self-powered green chips? The Germans, in the unlikely global stronghold of wind and solar, are very busy on ambient power: unlike Apple and Microsoft, nobody’s ever heard of EnOcean. It’s a start-up specializing in wireless doodads that can harvest and store the tiniest traces of environmental energy: a flux in daylight, a change of air pressure. Green-powered ­micronetworks—no more batteries.

Title: Google-mapping the sick

What It Is: A look at online mapping applications of contagious illness, like Who Is Sick? and other ways in which Web 2.0 is taking on the flu. Distributed House M.D.? Wiki + illness = Sicki?

Why It Matters: Because it's extremely clear that years of neglect have left the global public health system in extreme disrepair, precisely at the same time as some potential pandemics (hello bird flu) are revving up and climate change and ecological distress is opening new territories for others. Using infotech to fight pandemics offers powerful possibilities -- important ones, according to Larry Brilliant

Quote: "The National Institutes of Health's information page on meningitis (a potentially fatal illness) illustrates the problem well: who hasn't had some of the symptoms on that list? The decision on whether to seek medical attention can be made more intelligently if you have some sense of whether there's a nonlethal virus that triggers similar symptoms going around.

"This question hit home for founder P.T. Lee when his wife fell ill while on vacation, and couldn't decide how worried to be about it. Although some information regarding the spread of illnesses is available, sites like the CDC focus on specialized information and don't break things down on a fine scale, geographically. Most people aren't even aware of these resources, and tend to rely on friends and coworkers, who may not be available or have good information. Since he was on vacation, Lee had no access to these sorts of resources; after a drawn out visit to the local ER, he wound up convinced that there was a need for something better. To fill that need, he created WhoIsSick."

Title: Global Timber Smugglers—and How You Can Stop Them

What It Is: A really great summary of the ways in which the black market trade in timber (largely from tropical countries) hurts honest foresters, funds evil-doers, destroys irreplaceable rainforests and generally sucks.

Why It Matters: Because only you can stop forest thieves. Don't buy blood logs.

Quote: "In a grainy undercover video the smuggler stands surrounded by stacks and stacks of lumber, large bales of freshly milled planks held together with steel bands. His gold watch glints as he begins counting money, methodically placing each bill on a desk. Sitting nearby, his partner watches through Coke-bottle glasses. They both appear to be in a good mood, laughing and joking with their clients.

"'This smuggling,' the money counter says, 'is better than drug smuggling.'

"After all, trafficking a rain forest wood such as ramin through Singapore can be just as profitable as running heroin, but it doesn't carry the mandatory punishment of death."

Title: UK home energy meters

What it is: Ministers in the UK announced this week that they will be providing free home energy meters to residents throughout the country. By giving people the ability to monitor their energy use in real-time, they hope to achieve drastic reductions in CO2 emissions.

They point out that this is not a smart meter in the original sense, in that it can't be read and calibrated by one central, external source. This is a real-time reader that functions inside the home, in order for the people living there to be self-regulating.

Quote: The government recently committed itself to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60% from 1990 levels by 2050. Households in the UK are responsible for about one third of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. They hope "real-time monitors" will help cut greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of energy wasted by appliances being left on standby.

Title: CO2 Saver

What it is: Online energy use and emissions calculator for PCs
CO2 Saver is a free, downloadable app for PCs that puts a special energy-saving system on your computer which automatically launches when your machine's been idle for 30 minutes. Once the program's been installed, a small box appears on the desktop which lets you know how much energy you're using and how much CO2 you're saving (it also gives the same information as an aggregate sum from all CO2 Saver users). Alas...those of us in the Apple clan can't use it. At least not yet.

Quote: One of the FAQs you might ask: How exactly do you calculate how much energy CO2 Saver saves?

A: Because each computer is different, we currently use averages. CO2 Saver detects the type of computer you're using (for example, desktop vs. laptop) and uses that information to help calculate how much energy it normally uses (and how much the program will save). In the Options menu under "Computer Details," you have the ability to enter more information about your computer and monitor(s) so this can be taken into account, as power consumption also varies widely across monitor types and sizes. In the future, we plan to allow more precise measurements, and we're working on those features now.

The SMH reports on major party efforts to buy the green vote in the lead up to the federal election.

THE Federal Government will move to gazump Labor in next week's federal budget by offering extensive rebates for installing energy- and water-saving measures in homes. The Government has already pledged to retain its rebate for solar energy, but the Herald understands the program will be expanded in scope and size. As part of the battle for the green vote in this year's election, the current $4000 rebate for installing solar energy is expected to be at least doubled.

Whereas Labor is offering loans of up to $10,000 for households with incomes of up to $250,000, the Government offer will not require money to be paid back. Labor's loans would be interest free, but the inflation rate would be applied to repayments. An analysis by the Herald shows those on low incomes would pay more interest on the loans because it would take them longer to pay off. The Treasurer, Peter Costello, ridiculed Labor's plan because it would increase household debt, while the Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull, said it would be too complex to administer.

Last October, under pressure on climate change, Mr Costello reversed a decision to abolish the solar rebate on June 30 this year. The scheme began in 2000 and was renewed two years ago at a cost of $11.4 million. Those wishing to install solar energy for a house, school or public building can claim up to $4000, while those upgrading an existing system can claim up to $2500. The old maximum rebate was $8000.

Rebates will also be available for other measures covered by Labor's loan plan, which included rainwater tanks and grey water recycling systems. The $300 million "green loans" plan announced by the Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, would deliver typical home owners savings of up to $1400 compared with borrowing commercially to improve the energy efficiency of their houses. But repayments of the loans would be fixed at 2 per cent of a household's income. Repayments would be collected through the tax system.

The SMH editorial today says that government policies send the "Wrong message on greenhouse".

ON THE slick website of the federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the news is good. Australia steadies greenhouse emissions, announces a headline. Greenhouse gas emissions are just 2 per cent above 1990 levels. Australia is on track to meet its Kyoto targets until 2012. And all this while the economy has grown 61 per cent. However, before you congratulate Mr Turnbull, the Federal Government - and, of course, yourself - on your admirable collective restraint, pause to read the fine print.

At the bottom of Mr Turnbull's statement are alarming figures on Australia's greenhouse gas production since 1990. The electricity generators' emissions are up 42.6 per cent; transport's have risen 30 per cent, and industry's are ahead 16.5 per cent, amid smaller rises by other sources of pollution. How can this be? By what miracle or sleight of hand can such big increases in greenhouse gases be converted to an almost static national increase in those very same gases over the past decade and a half? The answer is offsets. By clearing less land, planting more trees and the like, Australia earns credits which almost completely offset its otherwise rampant increase in greenhouse gases. The net effect is almost no change. So the Government can truthfully claim we have been meeting Australia's Kyoto targets, and should continue to do so. However, such truths are perilous.

The Federal Government's repeated emphasis on how well Australia is performing against the yardstick of Kyoto is an invitation to a dangerous complacency - a licence to continue in the finest traditions of she'll be right, mate. That licence extends not just to individuals, but to industry and to governments. For example, it makes it that much more comfortable for the NSW Government as it perversely promotes private motoring ahead of less-polluting public transport.

The bottom line remains that, on a per capita basis, Australia is among the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the world. The Australian Government is addressing this by programs to develop renewable energy and cleaner energy. Yet the quickest and cheapest way to cut greenhouse gas emissions is to cut consumption. Not just of electricity, not just of petrol, but of just about everything, because almost everything we consume contributes to the accumulation of greenhouse gases. So the Australian Government should be frank with Australians and insist that complacent consumption will have to give way to at least a modicum of self-sacrifice.

Jamais at Open The Future has a post on micro offsets. He also continues his series on The Lost Hegemon which made me think of Wal Mart for some reason.

The argument isn't over about the utility of carbon offsets (although the various argumentative parties have since wandered off to other subjects), but my take is that, on balance, they do a little bit of good and -- more importantly -- train people to think in terms of the carbon footprints of their actions. Most of the offset providers, however, deal with the big impacts: a year's worth of energy, a trans-Atlantic flight, that sort of thing. But what about smaller purchases? How hard would it be to provide carbon offsets for one's everyday life?

Think of them as micro-offsets, in parallel to the various micro-finance projects underway across the developing world.

Micro-offsets offer a chance to do something big by doing something very small. Imagine a small amount -- say twenty-five cents to a dollar -- that could be added to the price of commonplace consumer products and services, from cheeseburgers to phone bills, in order to pay for a carbon offset. Importantly, such fees would be optional, but even a small amount would likely pay for more carbon than was actually produced by the product or service. The multitude of tiny amounts, added together, would be used to purchase traditional carbon credits, probably by an offset aggregator.

This idea is starting to appear in various forms. Chris Messina, for example, talks about "Carbon Offsetting Web 2.0," optional fees for web hosts and other web service providers, tacked on to (over-)pay for the carbon footprint of the energy used for the servers & such. Messina's idea demonstrates the utility of the micro-offset concept: by adding on to existing subscription services, consumers don't need to pay yet another bill; the price is low enough (Messina suggests around $1/month) that it's well within what a growing number of people would feel guilty enough to pay; and the offsets purchased by these fees enough to cover not just the server footprints, but ancillary carbon costs for the service providers. Imagine if Second Life -- or World of Warcraft -- made this kind of offer.

It's likely that online shopping systems of all sorts, not just subscriptions. would be simple platforms for micro-offsets; imagine every purchase at Amazon or eBay including a checkbox that reads, "Add $.50 to my bill for carbon offsets."

But if you're going to be tagging an extra amount onto the price of something to pay for its carbon, why not just institute a carbon tax?

Because no matter how useful such a scheme would be, there are few politicians willing today to stand up and say, "I want to impose a carbon tax!" The political will simply isn't there. That doesn't mean the social will isn't, however. We've seen plenty of examples of companies, communities and individual making decisions about environmental sustainability that go far beyond what Washington DC has been willing to do. Similarly, the existence -- and, hopefully, success -- of micro-offsets would be an existence proof that people are, in fact, willing to pay a bit more to shrink their carbon footprints.

Micro-offsets offer a bottom-up way to get people to pay more attention to their greenhouse gas impacts, and not just in the obvious, marketing-friendly shape of hybrid cars and compact-fluorescent bulbs.

The main downside of the basic micro-offset concept is that the offset cost is not tied to actual carbon impact; as a result, they don't provide the information transparency that would allow people to easily change behaviors. There's no reason why micro-offsets couldn't be linked to carbon impacts, of course -- once we get carbon labels that let people make informed choices. In the meantime, basic micro-offsets could still provide value. As they became more common, they would lead to both a small overall carbon footprint reduction, and a large step towards a carbon-conscious society.

Todd the Green Wombat from Business 2.0 has a look at "The Apple Mac: Now Available in Green". Bruce also has a post (or two) on this story.

Steve Jobs's green manifesto is bubbling about the blogosphere and much is being made over whether waived the white flag under pressure from a Greenpeace campaign, which labeled the company an ecotard - as Fake Steve might put it - for its past "failure to take a green initiative." Of much more interest to Green Wombat than the pissing match between Jobs and the enviros, or the not-so-veiled jabs he made at rivals, is how Apple has raised the bar on environmental disclosure.

Ironically enough, given Jobs's obsession with keeping secrets, he detailed the amount of various toxic chemicals present in Apple's computers and iPods and disclosed future manufacturing plans to remove them. Of course, all this served to show that Apple, despite its previous opaqueness, is greener than its competitors. Still, for all the press releases issued by Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) trumpeting various environmental initiatives, few have discussed in detail such topics as the arsenic, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium content of their products and specific plans to eliminate the chemicals.

For instance, Jobs said Apple will begin to sell mercury-free Macs this year that use LED backlight technology for their screens and will also begin using arsenic-free glass. And he revealed that Apple phased out the use of some hazardous materials in recent years thanks to innovative design. Jobs pledged to completely end the use of others by the end of 2008. Apple has been slammed for its e-recycling polices and the fact that its flooding the planet with millions of iPods that will soon be discarded for the latest model. Jobs said the company this summer would expand its free take-back policy at U.S. Apple stores to all outlets worldwide. He also noted that Apple makes its computers with high-quality materials in demand by recyclers. "Few of our competitors do the same."

"We apologize for leaving you in the dark for this long," Jobs concluded, promising to provide updates on the company's green deeds, including an examination of its products' carbon foot print. "Apple is already a leader in innovation and engineering, and we are applying these same talents to become an environmental leader." Coming from another company that might just be a standard-issue feel-good line. If Jobs's becomes as obsessive about the environmental design of iPods and iPhones as he does their look, feel and function, then other consumer electronics makers are about to face some real competition on the green front.

Why Apple left increasingly eco-conscious customers unenlightened about what appears to be years of work to remove toxic chemicals from its computers and gadgets remains a public relations strategy best plumbed by bloggers like David Swain at Clean PR.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article on the rise of car free zones in American cities.

Every Saturday starting May 26 through Sept. 30, bicyclists, joggers, and pedestrians will have free rein on almost a mile of John F. Kennedy Drive, the main drag through Golden Gate Park. The usual denizens of the road – autos – will be banned, detoured elsewhere.

Vehicles are already prohibited in parts of the park on Sundays, and the decision to "go carless" on Saturdays as well concludes a heated seven-year debate. In the end, arguments that such road closures promote family activities, more active lifestyles, and tighter-knit communities carried the day.

The auto's demotion at Golden Gate Park follows dozens of similar moves in at least 20 American cities in the past three years. It's a trend that is gaining ground rapidly in the US, say urban planners.

• New York is proposing to shut down perimeter roads of Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park all summer long.
• Atlanta plans to transform 53 acres of blighted, unused land into new bike-friendly green space.
• Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and El Paso, Texas, are planning events to promote car-free days in public parks, most in the hope that the idea will become permanent or extend for months.

"Cities across America are increasingly declaring that parks are for people, not cars, ... and closing roads within parks is one result of that," says Ben Welle with The Trust for Public Land's Center for City Park Excellence, in Washington. ...

The model city for road closure is Bogotá, Colombia, which in 1983 embarked on a program called ciclovia (bike path), in which designated streets were closed to cars every Sunday but open for jogging, biking, dancing, playing ball, walking pets, strolling with babies – anything but driving. One-and-a-half million people now turn out each week for ciclovia. Other cities in Latin America followed suit, closing parts of parks or whole urban districts to cars – some intermittently, some permanently. A result: revitalized neighborhoods and an influx of people.

The BBC has a report on a solar thermal power project in Spain - the first installment of the "deserts of gold" program.

There is a scene in one of the Austin Powers films where Dr Evil unleashes a giant "tractor beam" of energy at Earth in order to extract a massive payment. Well, the memory of it kept me chuckling as I toured the extraordinary scene of the new solar thermal power plant outside Seville in southern Spain. From a distance, as we rounded a bend and first caught sight of it, I couldn't believe the strange structure ahead of me was actually real.

A concrete tower - 40 storeys high - stood bathed in intense white light, a totally bizarre image in the depths of the Andalusian countryside. The tower looked like it was being hosed with giant sprays of water or was somehow being squirted with jets of pale gas. I had trouble working it out. In fact, as we found out when we got closer, the rays of sunlight reflected by a field of 600 huge mirrors are so intense they illuminate the water vapour and dust hanging in the air. The effect is to give the whole place a glow - even an aura - and if you're concerned about climate change that may well be deserved.

It is Europe's first commercially operating power station using the Sun's energy this way and at the moment its operator, Solucar, proudly claims that it generates 11 Megawatts (MW) of electricity without emitting a single puff of greenhouse gas. This current figure is enough to power up to 6,000 homes. But ultimately, the entire plant should generate as much power as is used by the 600,000 people of Seville. It works by focusing the reflected rays on one location, turning water into steam and then blasting it into turbines to generate power.

As I climbed out of the car, I could hardly open my eyes - the scene was far too bright. Gradually, though, shielded by sunglasses, I made out the rows of mirrors (each 120 sq m in size) and the focus of their reflected beams - a collection of water pipes at the top of the tower. It was probably the heat that did it, but I found myself making the long journey up to the very top - to the heart of the solar inferno.

I met one of the gurus of solar thermal power, Michael Geyer, an international director of the energy giant Abengoa, which owns the plant. He is ready with answers to all the tricky questions. What happens when the Sun goes down? Enough heat can be stored in the form of steam to allow generation after dark - only for an hour now but maybe longer in future. Anyway, the solar power is most needed in the heat of summer when air conditioners are working flat out.

Is it true that this power is three times more expensive than power from conventional sources? Yes, but prices will fall, as they have with wind power, as the technologies develop. Also, a more realistic comparison is with the cost of generating power from coal or gas only at times of peak demand - then this solar system seems more attractive.

The vision is of the sun-blessed lands of the Mediterranean - even the Sahara desert - being carpeted with systems like this with the power cabled to the drizzlier lands of northern Europe. A dazzling idea in a dazzling location.

TreeHugger has a post on Ilisys - a carbon neutral ISP from WA.

Ilisys is an Internet Service Provider (ISP) based in Western Australia, who grind through about 200,000 kWh of electricity each year to keep their 18,000 Australian business customers connected. They also believe they are the first Aussie ISP to become carbon neutral. To achieve this they buy 100% of the juice that runs their data centre and headquarters from Synergy Energy’s Natural Power program. This government accredited GreenPower energy reseller, in turn sources the power from wind and solar projects in WA, charging an extra 3 cents per unit. Even after coughing up for this, Ilisys still figure they pump out another 30 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year as staff commute to work and jet about the country. So they also contribute to the Carbon Neutral program run by the Men of the Trees conservation group, who figure On average, over 30 years, a tree planted in Australia will absorb 230kg of CO2. And in this case it really doesn’t matter a hoot if carbon offsetting via tree planting, in temperate climes, is of dubious value or not. Because Western Australia has a severe soil salinity problem and needs as many trees as it can get, as soon as it can get them. Good on Ilisys for making an effort

TomDispatch has an article from Michael Klare on the Persian Gulf - "Warships, Warships Everywhere, and Many a Bomb to Drop".

Looking down from the captain's deck some six stories high, the flight deck of the USS Nimitz is an impressive sight indeed: 80 sleek warplanes armed with bombs and missiles are poised for takeoff at any minute, day or night. The sight of these planes coming and going from that 1,100-foot-long flight deck is almost beyond description. I can attest to this, having sailed on the Nimitz 25 years ago as a reporter for Mother Jones magazine.

Today, the Nimitz is rapidly approaching the Persian Gulf, where it will join two other U.S. aircraft carriers and the French carrier Charles De Gaulle in the largest concentration of naval firepower in the region since the launching of the U.S. invasion of Iraq four years ago.

Why this concentration now? Officially, the Nimitz is on its way to the Gulf to replace the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is due to return to the United States for crew leave and ship maintenance after months on station. But the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which exercises command authority over all U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf area, refuses to say when the Eisenhower will actually depart -- or even when the Nimitz will arrive.

For a time, at least, the United States will have three carrier battle groups in the region. The USS John C. Stennis is the third. Each carrier is accompanied by a small flotilla of cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and support vessels, many equipped with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles (TLAMs). Minimally, this gives modern meaning to the classic imperial term "gunboat diplomacy," which makes it all the stranger that the deployment of the Nimitz is covered in our media, if at all, as the most minor of news stories. And when the Nimitz sailed off into the Pacific last month on its way to the Gulf, it simply disappeared off media radar screens like some classic "lost patrol."

Rest assured, unlike us, the Iranians have noticed. After all, with the arrival of the Nimitz battle group, the Bush administration will be -- for an unknown period of time -- in an optimal position to strike Iran with a punishing array of bombs and missiles should the President decide to carry out his oft-repeated threat to eliminate Iran's nuclear program through military action. "All options," as the administration loves to say, remain ominously "on the table." ...

President Bush keeps insisting that he would like to see these "diplomatic" endeavors -- as he describes them -- succeed, but he has yet to bring up a single proposal or incentive that might offer any realistic prospect of eliciting a positive Iranian response.

And so, knowing that his "diplomatic" efforts are almost certain to fail, Bush may simply be waiting for the day when he can announce to the American people that he has "tried everything"; that "his patience has run out"; and that he can "no longer risk the security of the American people" by "indulging in further fruitless negotiations," thereby allowing the Iranians "to proceed farther down the path of nuclear bomb-making," and so has taken the perilous but necessary step of ordering American forces to conduct air and missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. At that point, the 80 planes aboard the Nimitz -- and those on the Eisenhower and the Stennis as well -- will be on their way to targets in Iran, along with hundreds of TLAMs and a host of other weapons now being assembled in the Gulf.

Later on in the same page, there is a little history lesson.

Twenty stark years ago, on May 17, 1987, a double act of Exocet missiles skimmed through the air and slammed into the American Perry-class frigate the USS Stark.

The first Exocet antiship missile punched into the warship "at 600 miles per hour and exploded in the forward crew's quarters." The warhead failed to detonate but managed to smash through seven bulkheads and spit 120 pounds of blazing rocket fuel into the ship's bunks.

Half a minute later, the second missile exploded, creating a 3,500-degree fireball that turned most of the 37 American victims of the attack into ash. The ship burned for two days, according to the celebrated British war reporter Robert Fisk, who replowed the soil of the incident in his fine memoir, The Great War for Civilization. "Even after she was taken in tow," wrote Fisk, "the fires kept reigniting."

"Memory is a complicated thing," says Barbara Kingsolver in her novel Animal Dreams. "It's a relative of truth but not its twin."

The deadly missile attack on the USS Stark was unleashed by a Mirage F-1 jet -- flown by an Iraqi pilot who mistook the U.S. warship for an Iranian vessel. At that moment, Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran were in the seventh year of a war that had begun in 1980 with a surprise Iraqi invasion.

The act of aggression that claimed the lives of the Stark's precious men and women in uniform elicited a fierce barrage of angry denunciation from the United States. The assault was despicable, villainous, and depraved. These were the words of a bellicose U.S. establishment and they were aimed -- at Iran.

Glory to the gospel of perpetual dividends. This was the 1980s, after all; a time when the Reagan administration was still busy fondling Saddam Hussein.

There would be no counter-strike at Iraq, of course. Not then. And the angriest criticism would come from Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger, who described the attack as "indiscriminate." "Apparently," said Weinberger, the Iraqi pilot "didn't care enough to find out what ship he was shooting at."

"We've never considered them hostile at all," was the way President Ronald Reagan described Saddam's military. "They've never been in any way hostile... And the villain in the piece is Iran."

The Iraqi attack on the USS Stark and the loss of American lives proved an opportunity, which America's high and mighty, Democrats as well as Republicans, immediately seized upon. Responding to the great loss of lives "in a spasm of rage at the one country that had nothing to do with the American deaths," Republican Senator and ex-Secretary of the Navy John Warner denounced Iran as "a belligerent that knows no rules, no morals." In language that hinted of military action, Democratic Senator John Glenn slammed Iran as "the sponsor of terrorism and the hijacker of airliners."

It was the first and only successful cruise missile attack on a U.S. Navy warship. Iraqi officials determined that the American frigate was inside their "forbidden zone" and never produced the plane's pilot. The captain of the USS Stark was relieved of his command and his executive officer was disciplined for "dereliction of duty."

A little over a year after the attack, on July 3, 1988, two surface-to-air missiles are fired by the USS Vincennes, an Aegis-class cruiser, reportedly inside Iranian territorial waters at the time, at Iran Air flight 655. The first missile cut the civilian airliner in half. All 290 passengers and crew aboard the Iranian airbus were killed.

In her coffin, reported Fisk, who, at the time, was in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas where the human remains of flight 655 were collected, Leila Behbahani was still in the same garments and bracelets that she had worn when she was fished out of the water minutes after the Vincennes brought down the passenger plane -- a green dress and white pinafore, two bright gold bangles on each wrist, white socks, and tiny black shoes. Leila was three-years old. There were 66 children on board the aircraft.

The Pentagon claimed that the Vincennes shot down the Iranian plane because it appeared the pilot was attempting to fly it into the warship -- even though the USS Sides, a frigate in the area, recorded the airliner climbing, not diving.

Glory to the Homeland.

When the Vincennes returned to San Diego, its homeport, the ship was given a hero's welcome, while the members of the crew were "all awarded combat action ribbons." The air warfare coordinator of the ship won the Navy's Commendation Medal "for heroic achievement" for the "ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire." Citizens in Vincennes, Indiana, raised money to build a monument -- not to the dead Iranians but to the ship that shot them down.

The Columbia Journalism Review reports that the US Army has a new enemy - the US media. Foreign media working in Iraq could probably explain what this means - the ones who haven't been blown up anyway...

It looks like it's official: the United States Army thinks that American reporters are a threat to national security. Thanks to some great sleuthing by Wired's "Danger Room" blogger Noah Shachtman, the Army's new operational security guidelines (OPSEC) hit the Web in a big way yesterday, and the implications they have for reporters -- who are grouped in with drug cartels and Al Qaeda as security threats to be beaten back -- are staggering.

Make no mistake, this is a very big deal, and every American citizen, not just reporters and soldiers, needs to understand the implications of the Army's strict new policy, because it directly affects how citizens receive information about their armed forces: information that it has every right to get.

Shachtman reproduces a slide from the new "OPSEC in the Blogosphere," document, which lists and ranks "Categories of Threat." Under "traditional domestic threats" we find hackers and militia groups, while "non-traditional" threats include drug cartels, and -- yes -- the media. Just to put that into some perspective, the foreign "non-traditional threats" are listed as warlords, and Al Qaeda. In other words, the Army has figuratively and literally put the media in the same box as Al Qaeda, warlords, and drug cartels.

While snake oil salesmen like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would surely rank the American press up there with Bin Laden and his homicidal ilk, for the Army to do so is shocking, displaying a deep ignorance on the part of at least some segments of the uniformed military over just what the media's role in a democracy is, while sending the unambiguous message to soldiers and DoD employees that reporters are to be treated as enemies.

Under the new rules, all Army personnel and DoD contractors are told to keep an eye on reporters and anyone seen speaking to the press, and that they should "consider handling attempts by unauthorized personnel to solicit critical information or sensitive information as a Subversion and Espionage Directed Against the U.S. Army (SAEDA) incident." ...

Getting close to the end of tonight's post, here is Lew Rockwell, who has a column on "The War The Government Cannot Win" (any socialist readers: avert your eyes now and scroll for a while - whereas Libertarians who want more, click on the link - its a lot longer than this quote...).

I would like to discuss the broad topic of the war on terror. Terrorism is not something that any of us likes. We would all like to see a world without violence and bloodshed. This hardly distinguishes our generation from any that preceded. What is unique about our moment is that we live under a regime that has come to believe that the government itself can produce this result for us if we only give the government enough power, money, and managerial discretion to accomplish this goal.

We associate this view with the political right. This might be something of a misnomer since the right was very much against the wars of the 1990s. It was the right that made the case against nation building, and it was Bush who earned the support of the American middle class by promising a humble foreign policy. It was the conviction back then that Clinton's wars had been waged at the expense of the life and liberty of Americans here and abroad, and had failed to accomplish their ends.

A similar critique of left-wing wars was offered by the right in the interwar period. It was clear that World War I had diminished American liberty, regimented the economy, inflated the money, slaughtered many people, and failed to accomplish its goal of bringing about self-determination for all peoples of the world. The right applied its political logic of the need for freedom at home to issues of foreign policy. Small government and non-intervention applied to domestic as well as foreign affairs, for reasons both practical and moral. The left, in contrast, saw war as yet another application of the principle that government can accomplish great things for us, and they saw how war provides the great pretext for expanding the power of the state to do these things.

But these days, the political roles have changed. The left is the major voice criticizing the war on terror, while the right, much to my dismay, has enlisted in ways I could not have imagined back in the 1990s. The right has led the call for war abroad, and called for speech controls, domestic spying, and more power to the president to arrest, jail, and even convict people in military courts without the slightest concern for human rights and liberties. Countless times I've had to explain to people who otherwise are suspicious of government that it is not a good thing to give the US government the power to overthrow any government in the world or torture people abroad or pass out trillions in reconstruction aid.

When the left makes a case for total government management at home and yet nonintervention abroad, while the right argues for free markets at home and a global war on terror abroad, there is some sort of political schizophrenia alive in the land. People who have doubted the power of government to do much at home seem to take leave of their senses when it comes to war abroad. And it is hardly a surprise that they have been proven wrong.

Four years ago, Bill O'Reilly said: "I will bet you the best dinner in the gas-light district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week." Tony Snow said: "The three week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptic's complaints." Morton Kondrake said: "All the naysayers have been humiliated so far…the final word on this is, hooray." Fred Barnes said: "The war was the hard part…and it gets easier."

Well, it hasn't gotten easier. Bush says that we should stay in Iraq as long as necessary. A poll that came out today says that only 23 percent of soldiers in Iraq agree with him. Seventy-two percent say that the US should leave completely within a year. Nearly a third say that all troops should leave immediately. When the troops themselves are willing to tell pollsters this sort of thing, a war is completely doomed.

War supporters at home are starting to see the light. Let me read to you a note I received this morning. ...

Such notes no longer surprise me. The feeling is widespread. The lie noted in this letter concerns the supposition about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But that is not the most egregious lie. The worst lie is the big one: that government can accomplish wonderful things if we give it enough power, money, and discretion. No matter how many times we hear it, or in what context, it is always and everywhere a lie. A leader who says this is the equivalent of the snake in the garden who promises that glorious knowledge comes with just one bite of fruit. And yet we as a people keep being lured into accepting it.

The debates about the war on terror have typically involved great detail about the validity of intelligence reports, investigations of terror networks, discussion of the reliability of this or that foreign regime, and the like. But none of this is really necessary if you want to make a sound judgment about whether to support the war in question. What we really need is more general knowledge about the nature of government and its limits. If we understand how it will lose the small wars against things such as cigarettes and liquor, we can more clearly understand how it loses the large wars.

The attempt to ban liquor led to a vast increase in liquor distribution and consumption through black-market means. The campaign to wage a war on poverty resulted in more poverty. The war on literacy has created generations of illiterates. The wars on cigarettes and drugs have been spectacularly unsuccessful, and for proof you need look no further than prison, an environment that government fully controls and which is predictably swimming in cigarettes and drugs of all sorts.

There are some things that a state just cannot do, no matter how much power it accumulates or employs. I'm sorry to tell this to the American left, but the war on warm weather is not going to be any more successful than any other of these wars. And I'm sorry to tell this to the American right, but there is no way that the American government can kill every person on the planet who resents US imperialism. The attempt to do so will generate more, not less, terrorism.

We are now more than half a decade into this war on terror. The State Department now says, based on its own data, that the results of the war are "mixed." In government parlance, the admission of mixed results means, in regular language, total failure. The number of terror-related incidents increased 28.5 percent from 11,153 in 2005 to 14,338 in 2006. The number of people killed in terror-related incidents went from 14,618 in 2005 to 20,498 last year. Most occurred in Iraq but the number in Afghanistan also nearly doubled from 491 to 749. The number of children killed in bombings has increased 80 percent to 700 killed kids and 1,100 wounded.

Let us compare to the year 2001, when the war on terror really got going. Including the New York and Washington attacks, there were a total of 531 attacks, with a total dead of 3,572 dead and 2,283 wounded. The number of attacks went down slightly in 2002, a fact which the government trumpeted as proof that the war was working. But this link between cause and effect was quickly deleted. By the next year, the problem began to grow steadily worse, with 208 attacks and 625 people dead and 3,646 wounded. In 2004, the number of incidents shot through the roof to 3,259 and it suddenly became far more difficult to obtain the data. The old reports that had made it crystal clear became totally reformatted and replete with propaganda instead of facts. The number tripled the next year, but the data on this was nearly impossible to find.

Gone was the rhetoric from 2002 about the great success. It was replaced with frenzied attacks on ever-increasing numbers of terror groups. Instead of 10 or 20, there were hundreds and hundreds of them taking the lives of ever more people. Incredibly, the State Department decided to not make public the 2005 figures since attacks rose yet again. Officials had to be hauled before a Congressional committee before they would give any specifics.

Now they can't get away with hiding the numbers but you still have to look very hard to find them. The bottom line is that since the war on terror began, the incidents that qualify as terrorism have increased by an incredible 26 times. For every one incident in 2001, there are now 26 incidents. For every person killed by terrorism in 2002, 23 people were killed in 2006. Meanwhile, the polls reflect the perception that the world is more, not less, dangerous since the war on terror began. Indeed, among those polled, 81% now believe that the world is becoming more dangerous.

Are we going to call this a job well done? It depends on what you call a good job. It fits precisely with what we might expect government to do: its wars always and everywhere make the problem worse, and not better. ...

But surely this money is going to more than just war. What about the effort to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure? Well, if you know anything about government building projects, you know there is not a record of success. Pick any Section-8 housing project anywhere in the country and you will find a long record of mismanagement, misallocation, and waste. So it is in Iraq. These reconstruction projects that war supporters have heralded have amounted to little or nothing.

At the Baghdad airport, for example, your tax dollars paid for $11.8 million in new electrical generators. But $8.6 million worth of them are no longer functioning. The problems with generators in Baghdad are legendary: low oil, broken fuel lines, missing batteries, and the like. The water purification system for the city is no longer working. At the maternity hospital in Erbil, an incinerator for medical waste was padlocked and officials can't find the key. So syringes, bandages, and drug vials are clogging the sewage system and contaminating the water.

Now, how did we get all this information? A federal oversight agency went to inspect a sample of eight projects that US officials in Iraq had declared to be a success. Of these eight successes, seven of them were not actually functioning at all due to plumbing and electrical failure, poor maintenance, looting, and just general neglect. Keep in mind that these are the projects that the US government declared successes! The failures must be abysmal beyond belief.

So too with myriad state programs, among which is the Global War on Terror. There is no standard by which it can be considered a success. But as we know, data only get you so far. If you ask the people who the establishment considers to be experts in terrorism, they are united in one belief: we aren't spending enough money on the effort. Every agency needs more power and money, they say. The reason for the failure is a lack of resources. If we would just fork over more, all will be well.

It is precisely this rationale that led socialism in Russia to last 70 years and drive the entire country into the ground. Those of us who watched this calamity from a distance were astonished that a failure could last so long. Can't the government look around and see what a disaster they have created? Can't they see that while their people were lining up blocks for a scrap of bread and dying at the age of 60, ours were shopping in massive department stores and living to 70 and 75? Why isn't it obvious what a failure socialism has been?

Well, one thing is clear in the social sciences: nothing is obvious to the experts. The reason has to do with their perception of cause and effect. The supporters of socialism always believed that more money and better management would take care of the problem. Every failure was caused by something outside of the system that a perfection of the management system would correct.

So it is with the war on terror. All the experts counsel more spending and power. It never occurs to them that the war itself is the problem. All problems are blamed on some other factor: sectarianism, outside interference, a demagogic new leader, poor management, or what have you. The excuses can be manufactured without end.

And then there is the overwhelming factor that the war on terror can only be considered a failure from the point of view of the stated aims. It is not a failure for those who directly benefit from the increased funding and power. And it is an indisputable fact that the government has benefited massively from the war on terror.

It is essential that we look at this war in light of history. At the end of World War II, the government and its elites were quite desperate for a massive global cause to keeping spending high and the government in control. Communism was picked, and so our former allies in the war became our sworn enemies.

Ten years ago, with communism gone, the American warmongers had little to do, other than intervene in small skirmishes. Finally they hit on a great idea: demonize Islamic radicalism. Here is a nation without borders that is terrifying to the American people, just like communism. Despite all the appearance of sadness and anger after 9-11, the elites also understood that it meant the continuation of the old war apparatus. And for that, they were not entirely regretful.

At last there was a pretext for war preparedness and war itself that rivaled the old communist threat. So off we went into this structure. There has been no shortage of rhetoric. No expense is spared on arms escalation. There is no lack of will. The effort has the support of plenty of smart people. It is backed by threats of massive bloodshed.

What is missing in the war on terror is the essential means to cause the war to yield beneficial results. Of all the billions of potential terrorists out there, and the infinite possibilities of how, when, and where they will strike, there is no way the state can possibly stop them, even if it had the incentive to do so.

Behind terrorism is political grievance. This is not speculation. This is the word of the terrorists themselves, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama Bin Laden to innumerable suicide bombers. They are not acting randomly. They have goals. The goal is, first, get the US government and its troops out. And if history teaches us anything it is that no country wants to be ruled by a foreign power, whether that foreign occupation takes the form of colonialism or outright military dictatorship. People would rather run a country badly than have it run well from the outside. No one should understand this better than the American people, whose country was born in a revolt against foreign rule.

The second goal of the terrorists is to gain access to the levers of power. In many cases, the US created these, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq. We insist that there must be a single governing power. Then we are surprised when groups appear that are determined to control it. It would have been much better for everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan to have left them without states at all.

The longer we continue in the failures of our war on terror, the more problems that we generate. The pool of actual terrorists (like the poor in the War on Poverty) is limited and can be known, and they are the ones the state focuses on. But the pool of potential terrorists (and potential poor people) is unlimited, and unleashed by the very means the state employs in its war.

Hence, not only does the state not accomplish its stated goals, it recruits more people into the armies of the enemy, and ends up completely swamped by a problem that grows ever worse until the state throws in the towel. In the meantime, the target population is able to make a mockery of the state through sheer defiance.

The means of conducting war has all the features and failings of every form of central planning. There is an overutilization of resources, and, when the results are the very opposite of the promise, they overutilize some more resources. They do not account for the possibility of error, even though error is more common than anything.

Rather than admit error, the war planners shift the blame. The war planners do not account for basic traits of human nature, such as the will to resist. They assume that the world is theirs for the making and never confront the fact that there are forces beyond their control. The people who planned the war on Iraq dismissed suggestions that perhaps not everyone in Iraq is going to be overjoyed at the prospect of gaining freedom through bombing, destruction, and martial law administered by a US military dictatorship or a puppet regime.

But can't the state just kill more, employ ever more violence, perhaps even terrify the enemy into passivity? It cannot work. Even prisons experience rioting. The theorist who first saw the collapse of the ideology of the nation-state, Israeli historian Martin van Creveld, was asked about this in an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was refreshingly blunt: "The Americans in Vietnam tried it. They killed between two-and-a-half and three million Vietnamese. I don’t see that it helped them much."

Without admitting defeat, the Americans finally pulled out of Vietnam, which today has a thriving stock market. To a notable extent, the war on poverty has ended its most aggressive phases and poverty is declining. What does this experience tell us about the War on Terror? The right approach to this program, as to all government programs, is to end it immediately.

But wouldn't that mean surrender? It would mean that the state surrenders its role but not that everyone else does. Had the airlines been in charge of their own security, 9-11 would not have happened. Bin Laden would have a hard time gaining recruits. Muslim fundamentalism would be dealt a serious blow, for no longer would US policy seem specifically designed to feed the madness of its lunatic fringe.

In all the talk of war on Iraq, I've yet to hear anyone recently claim that taking out Saddam or bringing about a regime change made the world a more peaceful, happier place. No one really believes that. The 1990 war on Iraq gave rise to al-Qaeda, led to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, and emboldened an entire generation of Muslims to devote their lives to fighting America. The new war in Iraq has done the same. And where did these fanatics come from in the first place? They were subsidized in the 1980s by US policy. We believed that they were good guys because they were fighting communism. Some of the same groups that we are now bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq we were wining and dining in the 1980s in the pursuit of the Cold War.

Thus has one bad intervention led to another, precisely in the way that Mises spelled out in his 1929 book Critique of Interventionism. He explained that interventionism is not a stable policy. It creates imbalances that cry out for correction, either by abandoning the policy or pursuing it further to the point of collapse. For this reason, the War on Terror is impossible, not in the sense that it cannot cause immense amounts of bloodshed and destruction and loss of liberty, but in the sense that it cannot finally achieve what it is supposed to achieve, and will only end in creating more of the same conditions that led to its declaration in the first place.

In other words, it is a typical government program, costly and unworkable, like socialism, like the War on Poverty, like every other attempt by the government to shape reality according to its own designs.

Now let us look at the flipside of the impossibility thesis. If government wars are impossible, what is possible? The answer was provided by the old liberal school: freedom. Society contains within itself the capacity to self-organize. There is nothing that government can do to produce a better result.

This is true in domestic and foreign policy.

"The idea of liberalism starts with the freedom of the individual," Mises wrote. "It rejects all rule of some persons over others; it knows no master peoples and no subject peoples, just as within the nation itself it distinguishes between no masters and no serfs."

The war on Iraq has enjoyed some measure of public support based on the desire for revenge. Even though Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11, people wanted someone to suffer. What we tend to forget is that this is an old motive for war, and it can lead to calamity.

World War I had ended with many resentments stewing and the old longing for empire had not entirely gone away. Germany in particular was ripe for bamboozlement by a leader who could tap into the resentment concerning lost territories. The leader would convince the people that the urge for justice can only be satisfied by re-creating an empire, and only the strongest possible leader could manage to accomplish this against all odds.

Mises wrote with an impassioned desire to stop the course of events. "It would be the most terrible misfortune for Germany and for all humanity if the idea of revenge should dominate the German policy of the future," he wrote. "To become free of the fetters that have been forced upon German development by the peace of Versailles, to free our fellow nationals from servitude and need, that alone should be the goal of the new German policy. To retaliate for wrong suffered, to take revenge and to punish, does satisfy lower instincts, but in politics the avenger harms himself no less than the enemy. What would he gain from quenching his thirst for revenge at the cost of his own welfare?"

Americans have a deep-rooted attachment to the ideal of liberty, which is a glorious thing. But it is also why American leaders have always justified foreign wars in the name of liberating the oppressed people of the world. The mistake is thinking that freedom can be achieved by means of force. The Cold War originated with the idea that the US should do whatever was necessary to roll back the very Soviet client states that the US worked to establish at the end of World War II. Then the US pursued a series of wars in far-flung places that cost lives and liberty and did nothing to stop the spread of communism.

The more implausible the imperial war, the more a variety of rationales becomes necessary. Iraq has been justified on grounds of security, safety, religion, vengeance, and economics, each rationale carefully tailored to appeal to a certain demographic group. All that is necessary is that the state convinces a slight majority, however temporarily.

What must a person forget in order to believe in the unity of interest between US foreign policy and the American people? They must forget that the US was born in revolt against not only the British Empire but also the very idea of empire itself. They must forget that the only way the US Constitution was adopted was the promise that it would not act imperialistically at home or abroad. They must forget the warnings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many presidents of the 19th century. They must forget about the history of failure of our own imperial wars in the 20th century, in which guerilla armies have consistently beat back our regular troops.

To believe in the war on terror is to adopt a posture that forgets everything that is truly American: our history, our belief in human rights, our hatred of despotism, our opposition to international meddling.

The US has no business attempting to run a war that involves the entire world and the whole human race, and certainly we can't be surprised when those we rule call us the evil empire. Americans are all rebels in our hearts. Anyone who longs for freedom must be. Empire is contrary to the American ethos. The American people have made exceptions in this century. But there is no threat on the world scene to our families and property greater than that posed by the U.S. government itself.

And finally, I see Rigorous Intuition has returned - aptly enough on May Day - with a tinfoil counterpoint to some of the argument expressed above...

I'm not going to argue the case here that Cho Seung-Hui was a mind-controlled assassin. Kevin at Cryptogon has already done it. I won't say, this is what happened, but I will say, especially thanks to what else we know of America's shadow history (and not just America's), that this is a plausible scenario.

So, admitting this account into our circle of probabilities, let's then ask, Why? What could be the motive here? And perhaps not just here, but for other eruptions of violence that may only appear random.

The most frequently cited I've seen - usually from theorists on the right who like to say left and right is a NWO hoax - has been provocation for crackdown. (Or, Look out - they're a-comin' for our guns!) In this scenario, Dennis Kucinich is one unlikely head of the Beast. "Kucinich is seemingly willing to entertain the notion that 9/11 was carried out by a ruthless gang of bloodthirsty Neo-Fascists within our own government," writes Paul Joseph Watson, "yet he thinks we should all hand in our only means of defense against such thugs when the men in black ski-masks come knocking." To some, Kucinich represents confirmation: "Conspiracy Planet's previous assertion that gun control extremists will use the latest so-called 'school shootings' to move along their anti-American agenda to disarm US 'civilians' has proven to be correct."

I don't see that. But then, neither do I envision the Libertarian's American nightmare of over-governance, martial law and mass detention. What I see instead is federal authority withdrawing from civilian oversight and replaced by for-profit contractors because it has better things to do than improve the lives of its subjects; things which usually make them worse. And maybe not incidentally so.

The occasional slaughter and ineffectual response of authorities presents portraits of order breaking itself down, and creates the impression We're on our own. Such episodes provoke the purchase and the secreting of firearms by citizens, and not their removal by the state, however scary Dennis Kucinich may seem. So perhaps, as in New Orleans, the point is not a crackdown, but a crack-up.

Why? America is an unsustainable venture, but its ruling class means to survive well beyond the exhaustion of its public wealth, oil and water. This may now depend upon how well it induces and exploits the misery of its people, even as it extricates itself from the expectations of its alleviation.

Just a scenario.

To which the Cuttlefish chimed in in the comments :

We are forced to speculate on what the hell is going on because we know we're not getting the straight story from our crooked media. The interesting thing to me about the resultant conversation between Jeff, the rightwing conspiracy theorists and our little pod of doubters is that we're so entranced by the duelling narratives that we've lost sight of the real question: How will we survive?

Jeff's latest suggestion, that we're being left to our own devices while the elite look to their own (or hand over the reins to the Blackwater system of governance) is certainly novel, but it doesn't ring true for me because there's too much at stake. Why would the worldkillers go to all the trouble of suppressing the emerging sustainable world (free energy in its many forms & the path toward reinheriting the earth through a harmonic restructuring of how we live, learn, work and think), only to turn their backs on the frightened hobbits before the flaming eye reclaimed the ring? That's just leaving too much to chance.

We have the solutions to all of our ills right now and still the fat lady's dirge has not been broadcast. (Or is it dystopia that will not be televised?) Sure, implementing those solutions won't be easy, at least not while the Owners are pressing their advantage through their serial, interlocking monopolies (energy, raw materials, Big Pharma, insurance, chemical combines, for-profit "medicine," etc) and their agencies of control (corporate under-written fake politics, tightly controlled monotone media, compliant lapdog scientific orthodoxy, untouchable secret police arms of the National Security State, etc, etc), but if they just let their guard down now, just when significant percentages of the spoonfed are gagging on their daily gruel, the truth might just set us free after all.

Maybe it's just a question of not bothering with the meta-narrative anymore--if the individual pieces of the Machine are working so flawlessly, who needs the embarrassingly stupid official story anymore? Free market, spreading democracy, the march of scientific progress...who really believes that shit anymore? Certainly not the dispossessed. Or even the casually intuitive, much less their more rigorous cousins....