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Two rather depressing news items burst onto our screens recently. Initially, neither one appeared to bear any relationship to the other.

The first concerned two man-made satellites in earth orbit that collided, spreading space debris over a a wide area.^[1]

Even that doesn’t seem too great a disaster. No lives were lost; one satellite (Russian) is believed to have been defunct, the other (US), is part of a group of sixty-six operated by Iridium Satellite LLC, a communications company.

This is the first collision between two intact satellites, but it’s unlikely to be the last:

To date, around 17,000 man-made objects are orbiting the Earth, but more are joining them, in ever increasing numbers.

This is Lonesome George:

Lonesome George is so-called because he is the last remaining Giant Tortoise of his sub-species. He lives on the Galapagos Islands, is around eighty years old, and when he dies there will never again be any Pinta tortoises of the sub-species Geochelone abigdoni – anywhere.

George and his fellow Pintas were specific to Galapagos, like so many of the various species of animal and bird life still to be found there, but human intervention has done for the Pintas, and other species are following suit at an alarming rate.

Take a moment to consider these two news stories, and study the accompanying images. Hopefully, it won’t take too long before you recognize there is a relationship between them – and the one factor that irrefutably links them together.

^{[1] “Sat collision highlights growing threat” BBC, February 12th 2009}

^{[2] “Meet the world’s rarest tortoise” BBC, February 10th 2009}

Filed under: What the hell are we doing?

Now that the Israeli elections are just about over, it seems congratulations are in order for Tzipi Livni and her Kadima party………

Now that the Israeli elections are just about over, it seems congratulations are in order for Benyamin Netanyahu and his Likud party………

Now that the Israeli elections are just about over, it seems congratulations are in order for Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party, who is “really the King” after the voting is counted, according to media sources.

With both major parties claiming victory, and neither able to govern without the cooperation of Mister Lieberman, Israeli politics has yet again fallen victim to its own longtime military strategy: divide and conquer.

Allowing Avigdor Lieberman any position of power will surely send shudders down the spines of Arabs everywhere, but particularly in Gaza and the West Bank. He is the hardest of hardliners. So much so, that even old warriors like Shimon Peres have been known to take him to task for unwarranted remarks about Palestinians.

At 8am we’ll bomb all the commercial centres… at noon we’ll bomb their gas stations… at two we’ll bomb their banks…… “

………he once said, while discussing policy in the Knesset. To which Peres responded:

And at 6pm you’ll receive an invitation to the international tribunal in The Hague.”^[1]

Of course, that was back in 2002. Word has it, Lieberman’s not softened his stance over the years. He was originally a night-club bouncer in Moravia before emigrating to Israel in 1978, at the age of twenty.

One really must wonder why Israelis bother going to the polls at all. For years now, the same old faces appear and reappear, until eventually carted off to jail by the police on corruption charges or forced to resign like Ehud Olmert, or ex-President Moshe Katsav who “stepped down” last year following accusations of raping a subordinate and other sexual harassment charges.

Can the Palestinians expect anything other than ‘more of the same’ from this election?

The most likely result will be, perhaps, even more of “more of the same”.

If we examine the three main players more closely, it may seem the most accommodating scenario for the Arabs would be if Tzipi Livni led the next government. After all, she’s a woman, and maybe less hard and entrenched than her male counterparts.

When one learns that both her father and her mother were active members of the Israeli terrorist group, Irgun………

………and Livni herself worked for the Israeli secret police, Mossad, for two years before resigning to complete her law studies, that hope tends to dissolve away as swiftly as early morning mist over the Golan Heights.

Neither Benyamin Netanyahu, nor his parents, served in Irgun, but he has been vociferous in defending that organization (the same one as bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem [92 dead] in 1946 and was responsible for the Deir Yassin massacre of around 115 Palestinians in 1948).

It’s very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military action…..”^[2]

……… he once said, in a 2006 speech commemorating the King David bombing, declaring that “the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas.”

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, or so the saying goes.

Palestinians will draw no comfort from these Israeli election results, but that won’t come as any surprise to them.

Israeli elections are only ever about inflicting more suffering on Arabs, not less.

^{[1] “We risk charges of war crimes, Peres tells Cabinet” The Independent, March 7th 2002}

^{[2] “British anger at terror celebration” TimesOnLine, July 20th 2006}

Filed under: Political farce

One of the frequent threads that run through emails found in my inbox, is the expressed desire to “change the system”. Capitalism isn’t working, so why can’t we find something better?

For many years this was my own view. The idea of a relative few, privileged, people holding all the wealth and power is anathema to any sane individual, and a system that allows it to happen is surely one to be turfed out with alacrity?

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to devise an alternative that would work. Communism, the great theory of equality of the masses, has been introduced in various guises, all of which have either eventually failed, or gradually metamorphosed into some form of dictatorial powerbase, with the most ruthless holding all the cards, and the money.

The reason no fair financial system can be devised is actually quite simple once one realizes the fault is not with the system, any system, but with those who use it, namely ourselves.

The species, Homo sapiens, for whom all financial systems on the planet are devised, have an inherent defect that prevents any system designed to provide equality for all, from functioning efficiently.

It’s called greed.

We tend to regard greed as a vice – indeed, it’s religiously immortalized as one of those seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride, that the early Christian fathers were so keen to remind us of while themselves indulging the vices to excess – but that doesn’t stop us from acquiring material wealth at every opportunity. The problem for Homo sapiens is that we can’t all acquire it uniformly.

Competition rears its ugly – or, perhaps, reptilian – head almost from the moment we’re born. Nowhere is this more patently obvious, of course, than in the land that lauds competitive capitalism as its greatest triumph – if you ignore the atomic bomb.

Americans prize winning more than anything else. One only has to watch TV during the Olympic Games to understand this, or feel the gut-wrenching misery of the sports commentator when a famous baseball, or football, player is discovered using steroids. The competitive edge is the engine that drives the American Dream, opening up the road that eventually will allow a tiny minority to reach the very tip of the wealth pyramid that is modern day American capitalism.

In fact, to call it ‘American capitalism’ is misleading. Like a disease, it has spread unchecked around the world, and is now more accurately described as ‘International capitalism’.

Even if a new system could be devised that was foolproof and would ensure a fairer, and more efficient, means of distributing wealth, Homo sapiens would be incapable of making it work.

We might stand a chance if we had God on our side. Creationism and intelligent design, were they true, would simply allow us to ask God to revoke the damnation placed upon us by the harlot, Eve, for daring to eat a forbidden apple, and lo, our vices would be removed, allowing us all to live in financial fraternity for evermore.

Unfortunately, Darwin has the edge when it comes to evidence of our origins, and anyone foolish enough to try and argue that point here will find themselves on dodgy ground.

Our reptilian brains evolved with one primary function – to assist survival, not just against other species, but in competition with our own. Natural selection may have been a theory of Darwin’s, but science – that’s the discipline that doesn’t rely solely on one not-so-very-old and rather dubious book for all its facts – has now determined it to be far more than just a concept.

We are the product of millions of years of evolution, whatever William Jennings Bryan may have believed back in 1926 (Scopes trial), or Ted Haggard preached (until recently) at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

We are hard-wired to individually survive. It’s those primitive and deeply-entrenched instincts that drive the greed and avarice responsible for corrupting the systems we set in place to run our societies efficiently, whether they be capitalism, communism, or any point in between.

At this stage in our civilization, attempting to ‘change the system’ appears a hideously complex challenge, and it would seem there’s little point until we change ourselves.

And that is much, much, more difficult.

Filed under: Blame the dinosaurs