1. China’s burgeoning economy is powered largely by cheap coal.
2. If it can keep growing like this, China becomes the biggest superpower of them all.

Which means that China is not the biggest fan of strict emissions targets.

Lynas concludes:

China knows it is becoming an uncontested superpower; indeed its newfound muscular confidence was on striking display in Copenhagen. Its coal-based economy doubles every decade, and its power increases commensurately. Its leadership will not alter this magic formula unless they absolutely have to.

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China’s century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower’s freedom of action.

But let these quotes clarify my viewpoint.

War

"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."
– Adolph Hitler

"In time of war the loudest patriots are the greatest profiteers."
– August Bebel

"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
– Aesop

"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one."
– Agatha Christie

"Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
– Hermann Goering

"Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived."
– Abraham Lincoln

"Warmaking doesn’t stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago."
– Colman McCarthy

Religion

"At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols."
– Aldous Huxley

"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion."
– Steven Weinberg

"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it."
– Albert Einstein

"Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is."
– Richard Feynman

"Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits."
– Dan Barker

"There is in every village a torch – the teacher; and an extinguisher – the clergyman."
– Victor Hugo

"If you want to be happy, have faith. If you want the truth, enquire."
– Unknown

So, why is it important to see things as they are? You do it to make it harder for others to manipulate you, guide your choices, influence your behaviour.  What dignity is there in being someone else’s puppet, even if you are happy?  And what kind of happiness is it really if it demands your uncritical faith in some authority figure’s propaganda, be it a subtle white lie or a flagrant untruth?

You can find happiness, but you have to work for it. Never trust the politician or priest who offers it to you. They will demand that you pay for it with your independence of thought. And even if you think the price is worth paying, I hope that through you this article finds its way into the hands of someone who doesn’t.

Image by inju via Flickr

Internet freedom is a great concept.  What better place than the Internet to expose official lies and produce massive groundswells against the abuse of power, right?  Except that sometimes one’s enthusiasm for this kind of liberation from corrupt authority shines brighter than the reality. Sometimes, the bullies actually use the Internet to their own advantage.

This is the argument in a powerful article by Nick Cohen for Standpoint Magazine. First he sets the scene:

In 1996, the Electronic Freedom Foundation encapsulated the libertarian enthusiasm the internet had generated when it responded with imperious disdain to an attempt by the US to control web porn. Its Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which tens of thousands of websites endorsed, roared, "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

These are of course noble sentiments, but they are utopian and unrealistic, says Cohen. For starters, Internet censorship is not that hard (think Iran and China; there are more), and, just as bad, political debate in the age of the Internet has devolved into rabid mud-slinging. Truth is a matter of opinion.

Cohen goes on to provide one example after another of the Internet’s irrelevance in the face of tyranny — how exactly did Twitter change anything in Iran? — as well as China’s Great Firewall and its imprisonment of dissident bloggers, and he concludes his article thus:

Dictatorial governments — "those weary giants of flesh and steel" the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace dismissed with such complacency — have life in them yet and more coercive power at their disposal than libertarians imagine. The most persuasive is the oldest known to man. Throughout history in most dictatorships most of the time, when the authorities say, "stop this or we will hurt you," people stop.

Web utopianism is as deluded as Fukuyama’s dreams of an end to history and Marxist delusions of the unstoppable rise of the working class, because it assumes inevitability. The mere existence of the internet is meant to be enough to bypass the struggle for liberal constitutions and bills of rights. The freedoms previous generations had to fight for are now to be won with a click of a mouse.

Whether they are communists in China, mullahs in Tehran or censorious libel judges in London, all opponents of freedom of expression must be grateful for the cover such empty-headed determinism provides. They can carry on as before, while their deluded citizens believe that the mere fact that they can blog and tweet is enough to free them from the long, grinding and often dangerous tasks of political reform.

The bottom line is that if it seems to easy to be true, it probably is. The Internet is a brilliant breakthrough that still holds great promise in terms of providing a public domain for the human race to converse, debate and make decisions about matters that affect us all — but to date that promise is only partially realised, if at all.

via Is the Internet a Tool of Tyranny?.

Oh, and not only is the sound polished and tight, but it’s grand and evocatively garnished with the occasional Middle Eastern melody.  I’m new to death metal, but even I can tell that Nile wipes the floor with other death-metal bands. And on hearing their latest album, Those Whom The Gods Detest, I’d go so far as to say that they stand out in the metal genre per se.

And I’m not alone in this opinion.  Chris McDonald of Metal Review says:

… from a band we’ve already recognized as leaders in their field, Those Whom the Gods Detest is almost startling in its all-around excellence. It somehow feels like the band’s most complex and accessible work all at once, and the amazing talent that spews from every pore of this album makes it a necessary venture for anyone with even a passing interest in death metal.

When you listen to the first few minutes of this album, chances are you’ll think its sonic onslaught is merely very tight.  But a little further in, you’ll start appreciating the careful attention to detail and the unremitting focus on, let’s call it “quality noise”.  Not to mention a real sense of ancient, operatic grandness.  Seriously, this shit is extremely well executed, and beyond that it benefits from stellar production standards.

If Nile doesn’t excite you, then clearly you have already departed for the great pyramid in the sky.

Related articles by Zemanta

I know there are many musicians who feel betrayed by fans who download their music without paying for it.  But would they care to bet that torrents have not contributed to their current fame?  And is there any clear indication of declining sales, if any, being linked to online piracy?  These questions won’t go away.  Not that I have any answers I can be sure of, but it does seem clear that some adapting is needed here.

The Easy Way To Install PHP on Windows [Server Side Essentials].

Watch out! Mickey is angry

Disney Will Give Mickey Mouse a Makeover – NYTimes.com.

Carrie Fisher and stunt double

Princess Leia and stunt double sunbathing on Tatooine.