Aaron Thomas

Genesis: human dignity and responsibility, creation's wellbeing, and humanisation in care

2011-04-19T14:11:00.003+02:00

Interesting quotes from Claus Westermann's commentary on Genesis:

"'according to our image, like ourselves'.... does not mean a particular human quality; it is not an isolated assertion about human beings, but rather concerns the purpose of their creation. The Creator wants to create a being analogous to himself, to whom he can speak, who will listen and speak to him. This remains true despite all human differences; every person is created in the image of God. Humanity is given a special task.... responsibility; human dignity ... are inseparable." (pp. 10-11)

The use of the verb 'subjugate' does not mean 'exploit', but rather 'rule with responsibility for wellbeing'. (This in contrast to the human role in Babylonian and Sumerian myths of being the forced labourer of deities.) "When this is exemplified by rule over the animals (cf. Ps 8:6), then it is because the personal element in humanity is most involved here; humanity can remain most fully human through ruling animals, as we see in passages describing the shepherd (Ps. 23, John 10)." (p. 11)

"... because [creation] is good in God's sight, joy in God's creation (as it is expressed in the praise of creation in the Psalms) is set free in human beings." (p. 12)

Review of Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God

2010-11-23T15:29:00.000+01:00

Recently I had the opportunity in Gösta Hallonsten's Kristen troslära course here at Lund University's Centre for Theology and Religious Studies to write a review of a set course book by Elizabeth Johnson of Fordham University, Quest for the Living God: mapping new frontiers in the theology of God. My brief review is available here.

Theory on super coherence

2010-05-31T12:22:00.000+02:00

"Super coherence" is a theory that tries to formalise what people have described in common language as "virtuous circles", "vicious cycles", etc. I first published about this idea here in an article, "Cultures of life, beyond economics" (14 May 2010).

Theory on freedom sharing

2010-05-31T12:20:00.000+02:00

Senian optimality is my playful title for an alternative to the theory taught in elementary neoclassical economics, called Pareto Optimality. I published a short description of this alternative idea here in an article, "Unsustainable undevelopment" (27 April 2010).

"Children held naked in isolation cells"

2010-05-24T15:06:00.005+02:00

Swedish news service TT reports today that such practices are combined with forcing children in detention centres to clean up their own vomit and urine in the isolation cells that lack toilets. (Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 24 May 2010, p A7; internet version with modified headline from print edition). The original reporting appears to have been done by the Swedish Radio programme Kaliber (link to story).

Barbaric practices carried out on children in the Swedish justice system are not an isolated problem. Isolation of children in detention is used systematically as a penalty in Sweden, despite it being illegal, according to a 2009 report by Swedish Radio, "Isolation used as punishment against children" ("Isolering används som straff mot barn", 24 June 2009, see quote below).

It is not only children who are treated inhumanely. In her 2002 book Flickan och skulden (The Girl and the Guilt), journalist Katarina Wennstam describes the utterly shocking and atrocious outcomes of residual patriarchy in Swedish legal institutions, among juries, judges, prosecutors, police. Reports on Sweden by the Council of Europe's Anti-torture Committee have repeatedly described pervasive practices of barbarism in Swedish prisons/detention centres, most acutely the use of long terms of isolation, a form of torture that causes extremely serious forms of suffering and injury.

A translation of the introduction to Swedish Radio's report on isolation punishment of children in Sweden:
"There are huge failures when children are locked up in isolation cells in the state's institutions for detained children and youths. [Swedish Radio news programme] Ekot's investigation of nearly 500 cases where children from age 11 have been isolated shows that the method is used as a punishment despite it being illegal. 'A justice scandal', says the Children's Ombudsman."

Cultures of life, beyond economics

2010-05-14T16:14:00.008+02:00

Peaceful and nonviolent cultures of life reproduce themselves. That is a hypothesis and a theme I've been looking at in a few discussions at this website.

For my studies of environment and sustainability at Lund University in Sweden, I have been struggling to find ways to prove and to describe the advantages of, and the general viability of, walking towns (no injurious transport), one form of a nonviolent culture. I think I have made some progress, as texts published here (between October 2009 and December 2009) and at Carbusters may show. There are extraordinary numbers of advantages when we organise our settlements around walking. From personal health from walking, to more efficient use of space, to social contact, public safety, carbon-free transport (cutting much of the cause of climate change), better personal economy and public economy, etc etc etc. There are extraordinary correspondences between different systems that are linked through the choice of transport.

It even led me to ponder a theory of "super coherence", an idea that key qualities of a system or culture reproduce themselves throughout that system/culture. For example, in a walking town, the nonviolent form of transport appears to lead to a lot of other nonviolences.

When I speak of "super coherence", really it is just a theoretical extension of an idea that people have been talking about for a long time: virtuous circles, where one good action, one virtue, gives rise to more virtues, or where virtues support one another in a symbiosis.

Virtuous circles are the opposite of vicious cycles, where something bad leads to something else bad, or where bads co-exist in symbiosis.

I wonder: have others already tried to understand why such cycles or circles exist? Why is there reproduction of qualities throughout a culture? Can we know that such cycles or circles do exist? Is there is a tendency toward cultural reproduction?

Now let me turn to a different question. Why did I title this post "Cultures of life, beyond economics"? Because I wished to discuss the problem of describing how wonderful a nonviolent system is, such as a walking city (the primary form of towns for many thousands of years). Economics cannot describe all these wonders, all these additional qualities of nonviolence and peace, that come from the initial choice to limit our transport to only nonviolent forms (walking). But if we think in terms of economics, we might only produce systems and cultures that conform to those words and boundaries.

We can hardly describe love properly. How could we describe the flourishing of love in a culture of life (that promotes life through peace, nonviolence, and love)?

Cultures of life via walking and cycling

2010-05-14T14:14:00.006+02:00

I live in a university town with limited motorised road traffic (cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, mopeds, etc.). And it is wonderful. The town is very low stress, it is nice to walk around even the busy centre, etc. To understand the spatial relationships of this town, we can listen to one of its most famous citizens, the comedian-actor Anders Jansson of Hipp-Hipp. He did not get his driver's license until nearly 40 years of age (and fame/fortune?), because "in Lund, if you can't cycle there, it's not worth going," he explained in his 2005 Swedish Radio sommarprat.

How is it possible to "prove" that non-injuring transport is better for a settlement (town, village, etc.)? I have looked at this question for some years, beginning with the problem of health-damaging air pollution from cars, in Stockholm. In October-December 2009, I posted articles here (republished by Carbusters' blogsite) on the advantages of carfree, and even of purely walking towns, because bikes also injure, even lethally at high speeds. The key relationship I found is that as speeds get higher, and the risk of injury gets larger, more and more space is destroyed, because it cannot be used safely. So by going slowly, we don't need to go so far, because spaces contain more of what we need. For example, consider meeting your needs (for food, social interaction, etc) on foot in a medieval walking town, like Siena, where even reaching the countryside takes only minutes. Or meeting your needs in an automobile-centric town, where you travel more quickly and farther through near-empty space to each destination.

The needs for very large settlements, e.g. cities, megacities, are not proven, in my view. The usual purposes of very large settlement size are, from my understanding of history, connected to the concentration/monopolisation of power/resources, e.g. the dominant market city, the dominant imperial city. But if proven on acceptable peaceful/nonviolent grounds, the needs for larger settlements could be met by networks of walking towns connected by safe methods of transport.

Smaller university-centric towns may indeed be a key to transition cultures toward real sustainability, for example the sustainability of our environment. Firstly, there are many humanity-promoting values of learning/knowledge/cultures/communicative action that are potentially the primary action of the university; democracy is one such value, another is the low-consumerism inherent when people spend their time learning, creating culture, etc. Secondly, in a smaller university town one can walk and cycle, thus cutting a lot of problems like climate change emissions, and adding a lot of benefits (the cultures of life that come from interaction, a point I am trying to explore here). Thirdly, a walking/cycling town can keep the surrounding/embracing ecosystems intact, creating settlements within them. This solves many serious problems (e.g '20 problems solved' by eating local and organic).

The learning centres of such towns can be "grandmothers universities" on the Vandana Shiva model, or community colleges of the Nordic model, not only the standard/homogenised(/-ing) type. The study circle is a popular form for culture/learning in Sweden, and it is essentially free, democratic and equal.

Giving priority to learning centres and cultural centres can be very important. Such centres can be compared to trees, seeds, and the charka, the cotton-cloth spinning wheel that Gandhi made central to his movement for dignity and independence. Let's consider each in turn. Trees can bring a large number of varied benefits, as Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement have shown. The seed like the charka that most people can use to spin cloth, is a simple thing and is a way to promote peace and life against the oppression of corporate biotechnology, as Vandana Shiva has pointed out and made real in her seed-saving farmers' movement, Navdanya. Similarly, the oppressiveness of mass media and homogenisation of knowledge/culture/life can be side-stepped with the organisation of culture of diversity and learning. Again, it is itself a culture of life, to interact and share.

If you will bear with me in trying to understand these issues at an abstract level: the cultures of life may often or always require peaceful/nonviolent interaction. There are several interactions we've looked at in this article already: the interactions of people with each other according to the kind of transport used, the interactions of settlement with ecosystem, the interactions of creating cultures and learning.

Some of the ideas explored are: first, by removing injurious transport forms from a settlement, we obtain more space for such peaceful/nonviolent interaction. Second, we have discussed how one very positive form of peaceful/nonviolent interaction is the interactivity of culture centres and learning centres.

These are two very different patterns. One is highly destructive, the other is highly creative. The destructiveness of motorised transport spaces involves millions killed and injured every year, climate destruction, etc. The creativity of culture/learning centres involves many dimensions also, from self-expression, to community creation, needs meeting, etc.

Sharing food

2010-05-13T15:15:00.004+02:00

Reading this morning that people in Haiti during the recent years resorted to eating mud to quell the pain of hunger, and having read already that 100.000 people daily from preventable hunger, I feel that I cannot wait to open a discussion on what actions/changes we can make today, and every day, to end hunger. Some ideas to discuss:
1) Tithing to prevent hunger: donating 10% of income to a responsible organisation, such as a trusted church, that will use the money only to provide food to people who are hungry now.
2) Soup kitchens: eating together from a large cooked soup and donating the saved money so that others can eat.
3) Vegan / vegetarian: huge amounts of food go to feed factory-farmed animals. It is a terrible waste of food, when vegetable-based food is more efficient, healthy and tasty, and peaceful, non-violent. If we eat vegan (and take the necessary B12 vitamins), we save food, land and climate for others to be able to meet their needs, along with ending the suffering of factory-farmed animals.
4) Eat local and organic: by eating local and organic food foremost, we "solve 20 problems", as Vandana Shiva has pointed out.
5) Fair trade if not local: what foods we cannot obtain get locally, we can try to buy fair trade, so that people have livelihoods and can feed themselves, their families and communities.
Universal-coverage programmes have historically been the most successful. Then:
6) Universal personal food grant: every person is guaranteed the means (money, food-stamps, coupons, etc.) every week to buy sufficient food. Sweden's Green Party has campaigned for a global universal child grant in a parallel idea.
7) Peace bank: a food-work exchange bank (I've described this more in a brief post here, "The Organisation of and for Radical Peace").

Chomsky warning of dangerous, fascistic movements today

2010-05-10T15:56:00.003+02:00

Noam Chomsky gave a talk recently, "The Role of the Radical Intellectual: Some Personal Reflections", where his main concern is the re-emergence of movements, such as the Tea Party movement, that bear disturbing parallels (for example, the demagogic channeling of social and economic despair into hateful, ahistorical, and wildly anti-factual rhetoric) with the Nazi movement that arose in Weimar Germany. Chomsky evidently tries to sympathetically understand and listen to the root causes of this particular wave of despair and its misdirection into hate. The talk is available at the website of the Havens Center where he received their award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship.

Some of the critical historical questioning about such movements is articulated in an earlier work by Noam Chomsky, namely his series of articles from the 1990s, "Rollback" (Z Magazine, 1995). An excerpt from Part 4:

"The masters of mankind [Adam Smith's term] understand very well that people must not be given opportunities to organize in a functioning civil society, which might enable them to pool limited resources and to take their affairs into their own hands. But when the limited admissible means are used to mobilize people to do such needed work as rolling back the social contract, 'intractable contradictions' arise. The problems are classic: they were recognized by German industrialists who had supported Hitler's forces as a way to destroy the labor movement, and found -- not to their pleasure -- that he and his followers had some ideas of their own. The Iranian merchants who relied on fundamentalist religious leaders to mobilize the public against the Shah faced the same dilemma shortly after. Some similar 'intractable contradictions' are arising right now as the rollback campaign gains force."

What form of dialogue with neoconservatism?

2010-05-07T11:58:00.007+02:00

In Stockholm I attended the Living History Forum's exhibit "Middag med Pol Pot", and was mortified. The historical methods on display there were deployed in a painfully crude manner to smear the entire Swedish left, and other usual targets like the Swedish public broadcaster (SVT), as associated with violent Asian crackpots. The use of the Living History Forum to perform such a smear can be associated with theories held by neoconservatives, such as that truth is only a construction to be used freely by the powerful. These are necessary corollaries of the far more terrifying claim: that history is to be made by the will of the powerful, i.e. rather than according with principles of humanity, justice, civility, communicative action, etc. Another related neoconservative corollary is that all spheres of truth-seeking must be made impossible/non-functioning, a problem that Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman discuss in works like Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, and George Orwell describes with 1984, i.e. practices of demagogy like "the two-minute hate". Dialogue is, however, possible, even with neoconservatism, when we try to maintain truth-seeking spheres.

Year 4-billion-and-something: love continues

2010-04-29T14:25:00.001+02:00

This title "Year 4-billion-and-something: love continues" is an homage to various people: to Noam Chomsky, whose book Year 501: The Conquest Continues is an outstanding work of critical history of colonialism's brutal project, continuing up to the present moment; to KG Hammar, whose contemporary Christianity course-discussions at Lund University included the ideas of theologist and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin and thus provided me with a framework to answer the question posed by Chomsky's book, and also Robert Young's book introducing postcolonialism (2003):

What are the spaces of re-empowerment, and preservation of life, in the face of the project of death (i.e. ongoing colonialism)?

The idea that it is love that is the primary power pushing back against death/hatred is not my own. The letters of Paul of Tarsus in the New Testament are a starting point there.

What I wish to do is witness this power of love in the ongoing story, today, of what is an organic whole of grassroots creation of cultures of life. De Sousa Santos describes this anti-hegemonic globalisation in his article "The Processes of Globalization" (2002). It is there in the grassroots work of Wangari Maathai (the community-based Greenbelt Movement), to name a well known example. Diverse cultures of living, of life, of loving, of love.

Chomsky's book provoked me to think of a parallel book, Year 501: Resistance to Unpeace Continues, to describe the forms that people have found effective for protecting life against the onslaught of violence.

Chomsky's own work points us to the importance of popular organisation as a major key to protecting rights and life. Apparently there is a strong correlation/connection between the level of labour-organisation and other indicators of the protection of life, e.g. poverty rates, homelessness rates, the level of healthcare provided to all citizens, etc.

But I think the main stream here is constituted by the history of religions, for example Judaism and Christianity, as projects of life-protection (often failing in serious ways) that have been ongoing for millennia. Reflecting on (or interrogating) the history of Christianity as a work of protecting life, it struck me that there are important tendencies to diversity, with many "authorities", many and diverse centres of organisation, and scriptures that undermine unipolar power and its tragic tendency toward abuse. The history of Martin Luther is a classic example of that, where I'm thinking of his wonderful exclamation in his book The Freedom of a Christian, "Christ is my teacher, I will not be speechless!"

References
Noam Chomsky, 1993, Year 501: The Conquest Continues, http://www.zcommunications.org/zbooks/year.htm
Boaventura De Sousa Santos, 2002, "The Processes of Globalization", http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2002-08-22-santos-en.html

The ubuntu worldview and a South African theology of reconciliation

2010-04-29T13:45:00.000+02:00

This is a paper I wrote recently for a course at Lund University's Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, for the course on Christianity today and in the future.

Shall truth get asylum?

2010-04-29T13:33:00.005+02:00

"Shall truth get asylum?" is a paper on systematic abuse in Sweden of asylum-seekers. I wrote this paper a few years ago for a course called "Making Change Happen" at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability. The paper was not, however, accepted and a re-write requested, based on a set of stated concerns regarding the structure of the paper.

The dialogue that brings peace into being - with Freire, Hammar, forgiveness, nonviolence, sharing

2010-04-29T12:03:00.006+02:00

When I joined the Institute for Contextual Theology in Sweden, it was a big moment for me. On the weekend that followed, I wrote two texts I wish to share:

Writing now in 2010 and looking with deep concern at the years to come, I would very much like to share some thoughts with you for discussion.

Firstly, bringing peace into being and providing all people with their basic necessities like food, culture and health-care is very simple, affordable and easy to do. These are basic actions of life that a child can understand and do most of.

Most of the "mystery", complexity, and failure in making peace and giving people necessities is due to lack of sincerity. Read Amartya Sen's works to see many historical proofs that even very poor countries have been able to feed and care for their populations when they decide to.

Peace is also a decision, as Gandhi explains and showed in his life. Destructiveness, greed, violence, unpeace, is also a force to reckon with. Jesus Christ teaches us to meet these forces with love, with peace, with kindness.

Today the process of destroying our basis of life on earth continues, along with the active refusal to provide basic necessities: please do not participate in it.

Let us do the opposite: bread and culture for all, peace for all, love for all.

The second text, that I wrote first, is a meditation on (and in, through, via) The Lord's Prayer, beginning with reference to Matthew 5: 11-16.
‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.'

Our Father in Heaven
I am concerned to talk about the voicelessness of children, the silencing of voices: the systematic use of torture in Swedish detention institutions [1], the systematic disregard of child abuse in Sweden [2] and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [3], the rights-less nightmare of millions upon millions of refugees and trafficked persons (who are also in Sweden) [4], the perverse domination of public discussion by limited, small groups [5], and so on. Systematic silencing. Jesus Christ and the Good News of John, Mark, Matthew and Luke teaches us to do the opposite. We can pray always and be heard. We must speak. Every child can address the one who listens and knows what you need before you ask him. With the Holy Bible I say to those who sit in darkness: God sees. To those who call to the Lord Almighty: you are heard. A few years ago I read in a book on public art in Sweden that when family dolls were introduced into Swedish pre-schools, so that children could role-play their family lives, the teachers found the experiences of witnessing so distressing that the dolls had to be abandoned. What would Jesus do? What does Jesus do? In the Gospels we hear Jesus doing the opposite, confirming the worth of children, welcoming them, centring his teaching on them:
I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants...
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Listening for the silenced can be guided by what Edward Said calls "contrapuntal reading", as I learned from Lennart Henriksson's work A Journey with a Status Confessionis (2010).

Hallowed be thy name
I remember from my own childhood and see now again as a new parent: children tend to place great worth in their names. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian who is a key name in Liberation Theology, adds to this in a wonderful discussion of God's name in his book The God of Life (p.11 onwards). "According to the Jewish mind, a name is not something accidental; it not only points to the person but captures the meaning of the person.... [T]he question 'What is your name"' is the same as asking 'Who are you?'... It is very probable that the much discussed name Yahweh ... means: 'I am he who is with you; I am life.' ..."
Not all forms of oppression have names yet. Active silencing seeks to prevent the naming. One name, however, is enough for all liberations, I believe with the New Testament that it lifts all forms of oppression: Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus our brother, Jesus our liberator. Like KG Hammar confronted by terrified students in Singapore [6], I may not always know or understand the particular phenomenon of oppression, as usual boldly deceiving in what Dietrich Bonhoeffer lamented in the late 1930s as the "great masquerade of evil", but I can like KG recall Christian teaching that Jesus is given authority over all in heaven and on earth. One name is enough: Jesus Christ is our liberator. Naming is not, after Adam, a solitary act. As Paolo Freire, the contemporary author of liberatory/emancipatory pedagogy explains, naming is done together, it is how we create and change the world. Jesus asked, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered, "The Messiah of God." (Luke 9:20)
Naming together, we are liberated together. Naming violent orders as utterly destructive and perverse, we might return the refugees and trafficked persons, we might stop catastrophic climate change, we might start speaking the truth, and so welcome the Helper whom Jesus promises us:
"And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, “Where are you going?” But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come." (John 16:3-13)

Thy kingdom come
When you walk around Lund, or Jerusalem, you might hear someone calling out Salaam! And another with joy, gush Shalom! They are saying the same thing. Peace, also a word that requires reflection and action to realise its whole content. Peace: recently speaking in Venezuela, Noam Chomsky used this one word to describe his eight decades of work on behalf of humanity. "I write and talk about peace...." Well, for soon two thousand years, nearly two hundred decades, people have been talking, writing and acting with reference to Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God. A lot of reflection and action is needed here too to start understanding, I mean, to say, although the child in me, believing without hesitation, says: it's already here of course. It is God's Kingdom, He can bring it in to being, and he answers our prayers for it to come in to being. His enemy, its opposition, its masking, is the single one: unfaith as the radical doubt and denial of God/Good that stops living life in faith, living in the Kingdom of God.

Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven
A rainbow tapestry of people and all life living together in listening, care, respect and whole-hearted love. That's my understanding of what our world would be and is when the will of God is done. How do you imagine it? What will the voices today silenced (to us) describe?

Give us this day our daily bread
EATWOT is the apt name of the association of third world theologians, recalling Jesus first commandment to his church and community of believers: Feed my sheep. There are twice as many Christians as undernourished and starving people in the world (with some overlap): we can end hunger - of all forms - today, tomorrow, any day we wish to start. Are we at all sure that God forgives our days of delay? I urge us to add this to our confession such as the Accra Confession of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

And forgive us our debts
Yes, let us pray that the Lord forgives us and have confidence in Jesus that we are forgiven.

As we forgive those indebted to us
The Law of God commands a Jubilee Year every seventh Sabbath Year, thus every fifty years, as Gustavo Gutiérrez helps us understand through a discussion in The God of Life (pp 8-9), where the return of land, the basis for life, to each and every member of society, is central. Today, our siblings around the world groan in chains of debt. The poorest countries of the world in Sub-Saharan African together pay some 25000 dollars a minute to the wealthy countries, eradicating their ability to prevent disease, treat disease, educate their children, etc etc.[7] Consider that Jesus' mission, proclamation and prayer enjoins us to perform a Jubilee Year every time we pray. Can you imagine if we lived by such a rule of life, God's eco-nomos, order for life?

And lead us not into temptation
The alternative to the God of Life is possibly unavoidably utterly horrible, utterly destructive, utterly evil. I am thinking of the paradigm of Molech, a child-sacrifice cult, an historically real phenomenon addressed in the Hebrew Scriptures, the First Testament: "A similar expression [to Moloch] existed among the Carthaginians, who were closely related to Israel's neighbours the Phoenicians, and who according to unambiguous archeological findings practiced sacrifice of children."[8] We read in Leviticus 20 that the utterly destructive and disobedient willfulness of sacrifice of children provokes God to limitless rage. Its real existence as a practice may be an explanation of the Isaac sacrifice story, i.e. where God explicitly shows that he does not sanction child sacrifice. It also can help us reflect on the sacrifice of Jesus, i.e. God allowing himself to be murdered to confound evil, by being the victim in a systemic practice of mercilessness, in order to focus our attention on mercy, justice, and love.

But rescue us from the evil one
It's not fashionable presently to theologise about the evil one, but it may be the most emancipatory theology: to be able to see evil as nothing human invented but instead the singular oppression foisted upon humanity. So that there remains no reason to hate one another or be enraged with one another (also forbidden in both testaments), but instead to see in others, whose actions we despair of or despise, another victim, tricked, misled, abused, silenced; another person to befriend and be liberated together with.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen.
The Accra Confession asks of us who live in the country-club-like global North for our confession, a question addressed wonderfully in Anna Karin Hammar's Globalisering - Ett problem för kyrkan? A post-colonial, feminist, liberationist, queer confession is surely called for also, on the same grounds: who gets to be a subject, and who must be an object defined by others? The objectification and commodification of the world - the world for use, abuse, and sale - and its enslavement to profit, leads unavoidably to greater and near-total unfreedom. This is even by definition: to maximise profit, nothing should be free. Giving unto Caesar what is Caesar's today is difficult guidance to follow when Caesar seeks ownership of everything, including consciousness, e.g. the "share of mind" that corporations openly seek in the standard textbook marketing practices. Sustainable development as a slogan cleverly masks what we do live with: unsustainable undevelopment of the human community and all-life community as subjects not objects. The basis of life is wantonly destroyed.
Two additional questions that I think we who witness Jesus Christ need to consider:
Is the Body of Christ sufficiently organised to support all of the life community, all God's children? Are people generally well enough organised to protect one another's basic needs and rights against those who abuse them? My personal answer is certainly 'no' to both questions. Radically peaceful and equal forms of organisation, like the Base Ecclesial Communities of Latin America and Africa for example, are good starting ways of organising for peace and equality, I believe.

References
Lennart Henriksson, 2010, A Journey with a Status Confessionis. Analysis of an apartheid related conflict between the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, 1982-1998. http://www.avhandlingar.se/avhandling/578028fa98/

Notes
[1] Preliminary observations by Council of Europe anti-torture Committee (CPT) after visit to Sweden in June 2009, http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/swe/2009-23-inf-eng.htm. Some excerpts: "[A] substantial proportion of remand prisoners ... had restrictions, some being subjected to long periods of isolation (from 6 to 18 months)." "The fact that juveniles as young as 15 are being subjected to restrictions akin to isolation is of particular concern to us." "[T]he delegation is concerned by the situation of prisoners held in isolation for prolonged periods (e.g. over a year in some cases).... Health-care staff at the prisons visited expressed concerns about the deleterious mental health consequences of prolonged isolation on the prisoners concerned.... The delegation considers that urgent measures should be taken to review the situation of prisoners held in isolation."
[2] Barbro Hindberg, Sårbara barn: att vara liten, misshandlad och försummad (Gothia) 2006. Barbro Hindberg, När Omsorgen Sviktar: Om Barns Utsatthet Och Samhällets Ansvar (Rädda Barnen) 2001.
[3] See for example Dan Josefsson's work in ETC on unemployment in Sweden for an insight into the active frustration of the right to employment that is given in the Declaration of Human Rights. http://josefsson.net/
[4] David Qviström, Välgrundad fruktan : om asyl, amnesti och rätten till trygghet, 2005
[5] For the anti-democracy concentration of media in Sweden, much has been written in the periodicals ETC and Fria Tidningar. Maria-Pia Boethius's books are good sources also here. More generally, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky have covered the problems of concentrated media in works like Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. More academic treatments of the problem of the domination of public discourse for democracy has been done Jürgen Habermas.
[6] KG Hammar & Ami Lönnroth, Jag har inte sanningen, jag söker den, 2004
[7] Democracy Now!, Filmmaker Philippe Diaz on “The End of Poverty?”, 2009, http://i3.democracynow.org/2009/11/10/filmmaker_philippe_diaz_on_the_end
[8] Bibel 2000, "Molok", Uppslagsdel, Bibel med noter, parallelhänvisningar och uppslagsdel samt hittlistan - en liten hjälp att upptäcka Bibeln, Svenska Bibelsällskapet, Verbum Förlag, Bokförlaget Cordia, 2001, (trans. from Swedish), pp. 2149-50.

A song to share - Tudo o que você podia ser

2010-04-28T13:37:00.000+02:00

Please see the album here by Milton Nascimento http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGmGMEVbTAY

A year later another group made another recording too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EV8rYiTeDY

Colonialism, Popperianism, Organicism

2010-04-28T11:01:00.006+02:00

One of my key concerns is the violent tendencies of a "knowledge society", as I mentioned briefly in my two most recent posts here.

Another concern is how to "prove" the advantages of a nonviolent constructive dialogue (as I find supported in the works of Chomsky, Freire, Hammar, Orwell, Russell, Sen, etc.). When I hurriedly wrote "Popperian refutation" in my post yesterday, it was related to this problem of proof. (Karl Popper wonderfully revealed that "Only the falsity of the theory can be inferred from empirical evidence, and this inference is purely a deductive one."[1] In plainer language, what Popper revealed is that facts, what we observe, cannot prove that a theory is true (because a new observation can happen later that disproves the theory). Facts can disprove theories. So when I want to prove that something is superior to something else, like peaceful nonviolent constructive dialogue is better than its opposite, can I use facts?)

Radical peace is my concern. How can I describe it? I can describe cases. The walking city has proved the advantages of organicism with now millennia of evidence - for example, Jerusalem, Rome, and many other cities that developed and continue to thrive in organic ways around the life-promoting transport of walking. The organic farming models developed in for example India also have millennia of proof of the advantages of "organicism", promoting life, the culture of life - i.e. nonviolent co-existence.

How can I "prove" the sustainability, the morality and truth of radical peace? From Popper, I understand that at best I must disprove the noll hypothesis, that the alternative to radical peace is amenable, acceptable. One way to do that is to prove that the alternative to life-culture promoting organicism is violent (and therefore, unacceptable). And that is why hurriedly I wrote yesterday that the knowledge society tends to violence because life itself develops its own knowledge. To put it simply: Imposed knowledge is violence. So, peaceful dialogue (the only alternative to imposed knowledge) is the only nonviolence. (That is what I think - what do you say?)

Vandana Shiva is, according to Robert J.C. Young's accessible introduction to Postcolonialism (2003), a person who, like Michel Foucault, recognises the violence that knowledge itself can involve. Shiva's work developed in praxis beginning with the Chipko movement where firstly women hugged trees to prevent their felling, extraction and the destruction of their bases of life in the Himalayan hills. In Young's well formulated summary: Vandana Shiva "has argued that national colonisation brought with it a colonisation of living natural resources such as the forests, and then a mental colonization in its prescription of technological and market-oriented responses to farming and environmental issues." (p. 100, emphases mine). Her books like Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, and The Violence of the Green Revolution, provide theoretical and evidence-based arguments for the peacefulness of non-violent knowledge production and structures, like organic farming. (MK Gandhi's emphasis on the peacefulness and sustainability of the village society gains support from this work by Shiva.)

As Tony Weis describes in The global food economy: the battle for the future of farming (2007), there is an ongoing, mass-scale immiseration of village-based cultures of life. Half (circa 50%) of the world population of people have until recently been living in agricultural cultures, i.e. on the land. The industrialisation and commercialisation of agriculture and the destruction of small-scale sustenance farming are promoted by institutions like the WTO and World Bank, with IMF as "enforcer" as Noam Chomsky cites the self-description by one of these global institutions' own officers.[2] The 25000 dollars per minute that the poor countries pay the rich countries, as pointed out by Susan George, is part of this gigantic immiseration project - "disappearing" farming support, health care, education, infrastructure, etc.

References/Notes
(1) John Polkinghorne, One World - the interaction of science and theology, 1986, London: SPCK, p. 18.
(2) "The IMF was accurately described by a U.S. Executive Director as 'the credit community's enforcer.' If a loan or an investment from a rich country to a poor country goes bad, the IMF makes sure that the lenders will not suffer. If you had a capitalist system, which of course the wealthy and their protectors don't want, it wouldn't work like that." This is an excerpt from the interview between Noam Chomsky and Samir Dossani, "Understanding the Crisis - Markets, the State, and Hypocrisy", Foreign Policy in Focus, 9 February 2009,

Unsustainable undevelopment

2010-04-27T11:42:00.013+02:00

The title I've chosen is from Noam Chomsky, who said in response to a question about sustainable development that what he sees being pursued in most instances is unsustainable non-development.
      Chomsky's phrase provides a good critical perspective to start a discussion on the pressing problem of the current trends of (un)sustainable (un)development, from catastrophic numbers of daily deaths from preventable hunger, to atmospheric pollution associated with catastrophic climate change and cancer epidemics.[1] These are among the most aggravating and serious representative examples of a gigantic range of forms of systemic violence.
      The title also points us to a practice used in propaganda of using what can be termed "precise-matching opposites". This is well observed by George Orwell in books like Animal Farm and 1984 and described by Noam Chomsky in an interview: "... words have simply lost meaning. ... The point that Orwell made [is that] one way of trying to undermine independent thought and creative approaches to the world is to simply destroy the way of talking about things. So the words literally almost have no meaning. In fact by now just about every word that's used in political discourse has at least two meanings, a literal meaning and its opposite. And it's the opposite that's normally used."[2]
      Thus, as many others have already noted, for example at LUCSUS at Lund University, the use of the term "sustainability" is a way to prevent understanding and discussion about the real possibility that what is being actively pursued is unsustainability (for the many). My first major point about sustainable development is that Chomsky is just about right: unsustainable undevelopment is the order of the day.
      The destruction of ways of talking about things is observed by fields like postcolonialism, feminism and liberation theology.
The liberation pedagogue and critical educational thinker Paolo Freire observed that people's sense of lack of power over language, their sense that their oppressors use language for domination, paralyses their learning to read and write. Freire developed his pedagogical methods to empower people to "name the world", to feel that they also can create cultures, cultures of freedom and gentleness instead of oppression. Freire seems to have been right - he achieved extraordinary learning results among people who learned to read and write in amazingly short time.
So we see with Orwell and Freire a real problem: the use of language to mask violence and cultures of death, done very effectively, and the learning to use language to create cultures of life, as for example the liberation theologist Gustavo Gutiérrez discusses with his book The God of Life.
      In a discussion of our world and these questions of cultures of life, radically equal creative discussion is a major part of the way forward. This is because structures tend to reproduce themselves. We need equality in our discussions if we wish to produce equality. We need peace in our discussions if we wish to produce peace, a point well explored by those who work with nonviolent communication. We wish for cultures of life: through cultures of life we can (re)produce cultures of life.
      A culture of life is of course the focus of ecology/biology. A culture of life must recognise what gives life. It must culture life, support life: this is related to the principles of equality and nonviolence and peace-seeking.
As I write here in a blog, and for credit at the university, the form is not automatically dialogue, something that I think is a major problem in the process of naming that is, following Freire and many others, the subjective work that re-creates the objective realities of the world. I do not know how to create real dialogue in an academic paper written by one person.
      Within the context of academic knowledge production, I have come across a range of ideas that I wish to respond to and develop. I simply describe them here in a very brief way to ensure they are "down on paper".
      (1) Bertrand Russell's ideas on educational development, cited by Chomsky in many instances, centred on the freedom for a person (especially a child) to develop according to their own nature, appears to relate well to Amartya Sen's ideas about "development as freedom", Freire's educational ideas about freedom in language ("naming the world together"), and theologians like KG Hammar's ideas about the (post-modern) freedoms of dialogue.
      (2) Thus, instead of Pareto optimality (of utilitarian exchange), I wish to imagine Senian optimality (of freedoms). I wish to imagine that there is a good or even optimal rate of freedom creation and exchange between and among people. If I can read and write, I can help another person to learn to read and write, and therefore there is a sharing or exchange of freedoms, and these freedoms of reading/writing lead to ever more freedoms, like being able to communicate over time and distance via writing. If I eat an apple and plant the seeds, that act itself has the potential to produce an infinite amount of food for an infinite number of beings, as Satish Kumar wonderfully pointed out. Again, cultures of life.
      (3) Senian optimality can be applied to human-all life relations (i.e. the relations between human beings and non-human life like animals, plants, etc., ecosystems).
      (4) Popperian refutation can be combined with Russell's developmental freedom, Senian freedoms, and Freire's and Hammar's ideas on constructive freedoms of dialogue. I think it is possible to
      (a) show that hegemonic techno-rational discourses are violent, inherently promoting unfreedoms,
and
      (b) begin to see the possibilities of dialogue among all life.
      Because new knowledge is itself created through life's own free development (e.g. new DNA sequences), our application of knowledge can only nonviolently be in dialogue with that process.
      When oriented toward a culture of life, nonviolence and radical (multi-dimensional) peace, such dialogue can reproduce itself and "create the world" of peace.
      (Adding as a person studying and working with theology, Senian optimality can be applied to the relationships between divinity and humanity.)

References
[1] Alison Katz, Le Monde Diplomatique, "The World Health Organisation and nuclear power: Chernobyl: the great cover-up", April 2008, http://mondediplo.com/2008/04/14who. "For 50 years dangerous concentrations of radionuclides have been accumulating in earth, air and water from weapons testing and reactor incidents. Yet serious studies of the effects of radiation on health have been obscured – not least by the World Health Organisation."
[2] Noam Chomsky, interview, C-Span 2 Book TV, video available at  http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/200016-1 . The quote is transcribed from the interview section running between 10:03 and 10:52 (min:sec). NB: the CSPAN transcript available at that webpage contains errors, e.g. "more well" instead of "Orwell".

Carbon shock and other ways to cut carbon

2010-04-08T19:08:00.000+02:00

Inspired by James Hansen's emphasis for a global carbon tax, covered brilliantly by Mike Davis, I wish to share a paper I wrote in 2007 at Lund University that considers wind potential in China, a “Chinese Lock” on energy, problems of policy integration and policy distance, and highlighted dynamics including “carbon shock” and “carbon pressure”, distributed responsibilities, need for emissions caps, and a “trade cap” model, all in reference to the carbon-intensity of China's energy systems.

Climate change stopped with better ways of living

2010-04-08T17:50:00.001+02:00

A prior post here, "Climate change stopped with good", took up the CaCC trade union group's thesis that stopping climate change can be done without sacrifice, and instead by creating jobs and investing in good things like public transport and renovation of housing and buildings.
Another way to stop climate change is to see that the ordinary goals that human societies are believed to pursue - life quality, etc - can be achieved, much more easily, with extremely low energy use and consumption of material goods. For example: people who live in a walking city and are engaged in culture primarily, would have very low energy use and consumption.
Putting the two strategies together - of good investments and low-energy/consumption - really could stop climate change.

What can't this technology do? The colonising powers of the car

2010-04-08T17:10:00.001+02:00

The colonising power of a technology can be extensive and overwhelming. I am thinking of the car, the automobile, as a technology that colonises - takes over, dominates - a wide range of areas: physical space, time, personal economy, public economy, culture, even the human imagination and human identities. The list presumably can be made longer.
The colonising and perverting effect on public morality is also extraordinary: human societies generally now accept that many people will be killed and seriously injured by a technology we think is necessary. We justify these deaths and losses because of a technology and the ideologies (the ideas, assertions, etc.) that accompany and support the technology.
Witnessing the colonising power of a technology like the car can help, I hope. Other technologies also need to be "revealed", looked at carefully. Consider Greenpeace's exposure of nuclear energy.

The phenomenon of "Motorway Man"

2010-02-15T11:56:00.001+01:00

The Observer reports [1] that Britain's political parties are being advised to cater to a key swing-voting group of people called "Motorway Man" because they "live near motorway junctions and... drive off separately in the morning to the different towns and business parks where they work," geography professor Richard Webber explains.
The article states: "The increasingly rootless nature of their lifestyle means old ties of community are no longer important. Instead, there is greater focus on material possessions, something that has major ramifications for the political process."

References:
The Observer, "Motorway Man holds key to general election victory" Sunday 7 February 2010

Climate change stopped with good

2009-12-18T11:41:00.000+01:00

The Campaign against Climate Change has a wonderful insight on how to stop climate change -- what is needed isn't sacrifice. Climate change can be stopped by doing good things -- like providing public transport, new jobs, housing renovation and clean energy.
The report, "One Million Climate Jobs Now!" is available to read here: http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/resources/green_workplaces/green_campaigns/one-million-climate-jobs-now.cfm

Love averts environmental and social catastrophe

2009-12-05T20:17:00.002+01:00

I wish to include in the discussion that Jesus Christ in the Gospel does teach an ethic that (in my estimation) averts or powerfully mitigates the environmental and social catastrophes that we are facing. Jesus teaches love: love for God, love for neighbour, love for enemy. Jesus' teaching of Love can be articulated as caring for Creation, caring for the well-being of all other people, caring for enemies (blessing, doing good for, and being kind to, them), taking help from the Spirit of truth.

IT to avert environmental/social catastrophe?

2009-11-21T21:37:00.001+01:00

The most rapid way to avert the environmental (and social) catastrophe may be to direct money away from environmentally and socially negative applications.
   We have to consider that 3 resources we have:
(1) electronic monetary flows (e.g. electronic banking, credit cards, etc.)
(2) information technology (e.g. computational, information processing)
(3) the internet (e.g. large numbers of users and authors)
can support a rapid re-direction of money flows.
   All monetary decisions could, via these 3 resources, be supported by information on the sustainability of the decision.
   Every decision for a purchase, for an investment, and even -- yes -- for political mandate (i.e. democratic voting) -- could be supported by information / certifications about sustainability.

A brief thought experiment on market size and transport

2009-11-11T09:34:00.002+01:00

The largest possible market, with the most possible buyers and sellers, is achievable when the entire world is immediately accessible, overcoming the barrier of distance. I.e. from any place, one can access all possible buyers and sellers.
But overcoming the barrier of distance requires transport (at least for physical access) at high speed and high range of vectors. That is, the greater the market size, the greater the transport speeds and vectors, and thus, according to our earlier thought experiment (31 October post), the more that bodies and their freedoms of movement are displaced.
But what would that "no distance" global market planet look like? It would tend to take the form of the Death Star of Lucas' film Star Wars: there would be no Nature to speak of, there would be extremely little free movement (e.g. limited to walking around one's desk or shopping malls), and there would be primarily movement that is constructed and coordinated in order to enable high speed and many vectors.

Mobility ~ capabilities over time

2009-11-10T09:36:00.004+01:00

In previous posts we've looked at critical problems of defining mobility in terms of speed or distance. For example, internal inconsistencies arise from at least two relativities with regard to mobility. Relativity 1: Each person's effective sphere of movement affects all other persons' effective spheres of movement. Relativity 2: Each person's potential sphere of movement has an effect on the contents of that sphere, or space, where that person is moving. (These are discussed in the posts of 31 October, 2 November, and 3 November.)
   It may be more consistent to define mobility in terms of capabilities* over time. We begin by stating a proposed definition that mobility varies with capabilities over time.
   This definition should enable us to plan transport according to what we reasonably wish to achieve. We can outline various reasons for this:
(1) It escapes the internal inconsistencies of the speed or distance definition of mobility. These internal inconsistences can lead, for example, to the absurdity of stating that mobility increases as people move around more, when they may be moving around more because their movement is displacing both each other (Relativity 1) and the contents of a space (Relativity 2).
(2) It overcomes the conflict of the "economic" (actually, monetary and utilitarian) positives of larger transport activity with the negatives from that transport activity, i.e. negative economic, environmental and social effects. Transport planning can, unfortunately, be primarily oriented to monetary measures (e.g. monetised transactions, the "size of the economy in money terms"). That is, transport planning can have the primary goal of increasing monetary transactions. We are led again to an absurdity: "successful transport" can be people travelling more and more, to spend more and more (also to travel), while all the time their capabilities (freedoms, choices among possible functionings) are going down.
(3) It clarifies and integrates ends and means.This is a problem generally for economics that Amartya Sen and many of his colleagues describe extensively, e.g. that money is only a means to an end, and cannot be an end (or aim) of economic activity, because money is only good for something else.[1] Capabilities can be defined as the real end goal with transport, if we accept the argument of Amartya Sen -- and Aristotle -- that what is good in human life can be described with respect to capabilities (e.g. achievable states and functionings). Transport planning that aims primarily to support monetary transactions is misguided, the argument follows. What happens when we plan transport to support capabilities?
   (a) We overcome the tension between the market-expanding aims of transport and other non-market aims. Capabilities as a concept can include both the capabilities that the market is enabling, and the non-market aims. Instead of using the market as the central standard -- requiring us to convert everything into money values, we can use capabilities as the central standard.
   (b) Transport is itself a capability. This is a parallel with Amartya Sen's construct of development as freedom and freedom as development, where freedoms, also termed capabilities, are both the ends and means of development, or human good.
   (c) Do we fall into the same problem as utilitarianism does, of seeking a single measure of all things? My initial answer is: it may, and with Karl Popper we cannot say that it would not, because other categories or qualities may not be understood by us. It is worthwhile, however, to understand that this is not Amartya Sen's answer. Sen argues that the heterogeneity (diversity) of capabilities is both its strength (in comparison to single-dimensional utility) and its weakness (the heterogeneity makes measurement and evaluations more difficult).
Notes
* Capabilities are the possible functionings we have. Another way to understand a capability is as a freedom with respect to something (e.g. doing something, achieving something, being something, etc.).
References:
[1] Amartya Sen has described this problem in many works, for example his book Development as Freedom (1999). With regard to sustainability, Amartya Sen authored several articles together with Sudhir Anand, for example for the UN Development Programme published here (see section 2.2 and 2.3), raising this problem of how to focus economic analysis, e.g. on wealth or development. A nice introduction to some of these issues is also in Sen's 2004 article for the London Review of Books, here.

A simple proof of the inverse relationship of mobility and speed

2009-11-09T16:11:00.000+01:00

There is a simple proof of the inverse relationship of mobility and speed.[1]
We can see this by going back to our original Einsteinian thought experiment. A person whose transport is a jet-pack that moves at infinite speed will have what level of mobility? The answer is: none, that person will have zero mobility, because although there is movement in a space (i.e. what we called non-relative mobility in the 3 November post), there can be nothing else in that space, so there is no effective or real (or meaningful) mobility. There is zero (relative) mobility.
With our new definition of mobility as "capabilities over time", we can say then here that with a transport moving at infinite (or near infinite) speed, there are no other capabilities over time, other than the actual movement itself.
Footnotes:
[1] Actually it is "force" rather than speed, but that does not make much of a difference when we are talking about transport of people or goods, rather than the movement of atoms or light.

No injury transport gives higher mobility

2009-11-05T21:05:00.009+01:00

In simple terms, the relativity of transport we learned about (via the posts from 31 Oct, 2 Nov and 3 Nov here) leads us to at least a few amazing results:
(1) As we allow higher speeds, we may be decreasing people's mobility, even by large degrees.
(2) Distance travelled, or speed (distance travelled over time), cannot be the basis of defining mobility. (They would be, if speed did not decrease mobility by a two-fold effect, (a) on other people's mobility, and (b) on the contents of a space, as we examined more in the 3 November post here.)
And most important of all:
(3) Non-injurious and non-deadly environments may achieve the highest mobility, in addition to the basic and essential goal of justice toward all who are at risk from transport-caused deaths and injuries.
(4) Mobility could be defined as capabilities over time (instead of distance over time), using the concepts of capabilities (also of functionings, and freedoms) that were developed by Aristotle in antiquity, and by Amartya Sen more recently. Does this open up for new findings?

Relatively speaking, mobility goes up as speed goes down

2009-11-03T21:50:00.003+01:00

We're ready to move along to new questions given what we've learned about relative freedoms of movement.
   First, let's define what a non-deadly and non-injury-causing environment is, with respect to transport. A non-deadly environment requires a limit to the speed of moving bodies. More precisely, a non-injury-causing environment requires a limit to the force of all moving bodies within that environment. To have an environment of non-deadly or non-injuring transport, then one must limit the force of bodies (their combined acceleration and mass, remember that Force = Mass * Acceleration).
   Then how much mobility can a non-injury-causing environment support? Does everyone have to walk or cycle slowly, and gradually starve?
   No, we are happy to say. There are two answers to the question of how much mobility that we can have in a non-injuring environment. The first is a non-relative answer, and the second is a relative answer (the second is more exciting):
   (1) The first (non-relative) answer is: the amount of mobility in the non-injuring environment depends on the set of non-injurious speeds a person can achieve, and on the set of vectors (or directions) that person can achieve. Together these two sets define how much people can move in certain time periods through a space.
   (2) The second answer is: mobility goes up as speed goes down!
   This is because mobility is not only (1) relative among bodies (as we saw in earlier posts). Mobility is also (2) relative to what a space contains. As we learned in an earlier post, because freedom of movement is relative among bodies, we can create spaces where a a lot of people can be, and do a lot of activities, by limits to the speeds*vectors of moving bodies. Thus, by limiting speeds, we can put more people and activities within a space, and thus the mobility of a person -- the ability of that person to move effectively within space -- goes up.
   Halleluja!

More about relative freedoms of movement

2009-11-02T17:18:00.001+01:00

Freedoms of movement are relative, as we learned by an Einsteinian thought experiment (posting of 31 October here). What does that help us with, in terms of planning transport?
   I think it can help us understand why walking cities are better than automobile-cities, among other things.
   When a certain amount of space enables higher freedoms of movements for more people, then it is more viable.
   Let's do another thought experiment! Imagine a walking street of 70 metres length with buildings on either side of a few floors. That entire space (only walking allowed!) can be packed with hundreds of people doing all sorts of things, from living, working, meeting, playing, reading, learning, etc.
   Then imagine that street being re-designed to support fast through-transit by car. Oh! Where did the people go, and all their activities? Inside the buildings? Maybe a small proportion, yes, if they don't mind the air and noise pollution, the confinement and restrictiveness of closed spaces, the physical risks outside the building, and so forth. The number of people and the number of functions, the overall freedoms of movement, shrink enormously, as the freedom of movement for a small group of car-users, expands.
   The relation among bodies, described in posting of 31 October, gives us the chance to describe why transport forms that are
   (a) high-vector and low-speed, e.g. walking and cycling
   (b) low-vector and high-speed, e.g. fast train
enable the use of overall space for more bodies.

An Einsteinian thought experiment about transport

2009-10-31T21:23:00.012+01:00

Let's remember how useful it can be to ask new questions, remembering how Albert Einstein asked himself questions that led to his discovery of the special and general theories of relativity.[1]
   Are there not many questions we need to be asking about how to organise our transport -- our systems and modes of transport? Our current system -- globally -- is massively destructive, killing millions of people every year, [2, 3] seriously injuring tens of millions of people, [2, 3] and is a leading cause of catastrophic global warming. [4] That is just the start of the list: it also destroys space and natural life, kills tens of millions of animals every year, [5] pollutes air, water and land, requires gigantic money costs, etc. We ought to change our transport system. How?
   Well, how can we think about transport? For example, what goals do we want to solve with transport? Simply put: where do we want transport to take us? Maybe there is an interesting physical relation to consider, and this brings us to a kind of Einsteinian thought experiment.
   An Einsteinian thought experiment. Imagine, for example, a transport, like a jet-pack, that enables people to move in all directions at infinite speed. Then no one can move or even stand safely anywhere! One person on a jet pack -- moving at infinite speed in any direction, prevents any other person from being safe wherever they may be.
   That is to say, some people travelling fast and freely (e.g. by car) means that others are limited, in their ability to move or even stand anywhere! The Einsteinian thought-experiment leads to the idea that: One body moving more means other bodies must move less. I.e. when one body moves extremely fast in a range of directions, other bodies must limit their freedom of movement (speed / direction). There is a safety limit in terms of vector/speed.
   This form or equation of the physical relation can describe the problems of cars, that combine (with roads) many vectors and high speed, and therefore, limit the speed/vector for other persons or bodies.
   Let me try to apply this general relation to ordinary examples: A child playing in the street, is at danger when other objects/persons travel in that space at injurious speeds. The child's range of movement (speed and vector), e.g. just bouncing a ball around, or painting on the pavement, is limited by these other moving bodies, to the extent that the child simply cannot play in the street safely. This is amazing: even extremely modest/limited movement by a child in the street is obviated (made impossible) by much more expansive (high speed/large vector range) movement by other objects. We see this historically in our societies, as children's freedoms of movement have become extremely limited, by the spread of the car, for example, but really it is any high-speed/high-vector moving object (even a bicycle, I'm sad to have to say).
   Gravity is an invisible force; and maybe what we're working with in understanding the physical relationships of transport is also invisible, to some extent.
- The effective sphere for the imaginary jet pack I described is gigantic; as a result, the effective sphere for all other bodies (that are vulnerable to that jet-pack) shrinks to near-zero, or even zero (there is no safe place at all!).
- The effective sphere for a car-user is large -- the car-user can move at high speeds along many vectors. As a result, the effective sphere for bodies that are vulnerable to the car, shrinks.
   How can we use this physical relation understanding?
   Movement is relative! One fast moving body means that other bodies must move slower or not at all -- if they share space!
   Vectors are important! If bodies don't move in the same space (i.e. along the same vectors), then the relation is not so large. A mundane example: segregating bicycle traffic from pedestrians enables higher speed for bicyclists, and more speed/vector range for pedestrians.
   We need to consider all movement in our world: it's not just human beings who need to move around! Animals, birds, i.e. non-human life also needs to move around. And non-animate nature needs to move around too: water, for example, as considering the hydrological cycle confirms. Consider a situation where a human transport system destroyed the hydrological cycle (the movement/cycling of water through various stages and phases): it wouldn't last long!
   Walking is amazing! Perhaps the relational idea about movement helps us understand yet again (from a new standpoint) why walking is so amazingly good, and beneficial! Well, at the slower speeds of walking, one can preserve more vectors of movement. Walking down a city street, one can do a million things (and one preserves others' freedoms also). Driving fast down that street, one cannot do much; and one limits others too. A city street only for walking (as transport) enables millions of activities -- is "convivial", lively, etc. A city street designed for moving at high speed, disables.
   At a global level, we can see that new questions arise: what forms of movement (human, non-human, non-animate), are important, necessary, sacred?
   Car-free is better:
   (1) Given a certain amount of space, like a town of 10 km diameter, the freedom of movement is far greater without the car than with the car. The space is usable in more ways.
   (2) When distances expand, and people wish to accomplish those distances rapidly, then the range of transport vectors should be limited. High-speed rail is an example of an extremely limited vector range (only the track), and so it can travel at high speeds, over large distances, without much impact on other people's freedoms of movement. (Japan's elevated high-speed rail tracks take it to another level!)
   (3) In a sense, the car is our world's real version of the imaginary jet-pack that I described above. It's a technology for a person to "enjoy" transport at high speeds on a wide range of vectors. The results are there for everybody to see: the range (or freedom) of movement for others shrinks.
   Cars have other wasteful/destructive qualities: among them, they have a very low density of passengers, relative to other forms of transport, like walking, cycling, buses and trains. One could have a car-free city of 50 km diameter, with high-speed motorised transport (bus, train), and be fairly safe, if the motorised transport forms were extremely segregated from other bodies.
References
[1] A nice summary of these processes of asking interesting questions by Albert Einstein is provided by the book from White and Gribbin, Albert Einstein, A life in science. (preview available here)
[2] WHO (World Health Organization), Global status report on road safety, 2009, http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241563840_eng.pdf

[3] WHO (World Health Organization), The global burden of disease: 2004 update, http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GBD_report_2004update_full.pdf
[4] "In 2004, transport was responsible for 23% of world energy-related GHG emissions with about three quarters coming from road vehicles. Over the past decade, transport’s GHG emissions have increased at a faster rate than any other energy using sector (high agreement, much evidence)." a quote from p. 325, of IPCC, 2007, "Transport and its infrastructure", chapter 5 of the Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: Mitigation of Climate Change. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-chapter5.pdf
[5] One million animals killed every week globally was the figure cited in Natural Capitalism, the 1994 book by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins. The book is available free here: http://www.natcap.org/
A HEARTY THANKS TO THE WORLD CARFREE NETWORK CARFREE BLOGOSPHERE FOR PUBLISHING THE ABOVE POST and for all their work to help others!

Key failures of neoclassical economics

2009-10-31T21:04:00.002+01:00

At a recent session of the Municipal Student Council of Lund, a visiting member of Sweden's national parliament made the comment that the current conservative-led government was moving away from neoliberal economic ideas toward Keynesian neoclassical economic ideas, as the foundation of its policy-making. This comment was in response to a point made that the visiting parliamentarians all based their analyses of questions like student housing and student grants, on neoclassical economic models, that we know have serious problems and failures. Let's take a look at some key ones.
(1) Let pleasure rule!
Amartya Sen has outlined, in such works as Development as Freedom (1999), the problems that neoclassical economics runs into because it uses the concept of utility at the centre of its analysis. Among these problems is that at the theoretical level -- even before any practical application is made -- there is an unacceptable absurdity that a society should agree to maximise overall utility (the total amount of utility for each member of society) as the primary economic principle guiding its policies. This is because if some group of people get huge amounts of utility from an activity which hurts some other people whose utility changes are not large, society should recommend and allow that, even though that violates our sense of fairness and rationality. Sen uses the term "pleasure wizard" to refer to this problem. If a pleasure wizard gets gigantic pleasure from eating a fourth meal per day, while a depressed child does not lose much pleasure from losing a third meal and eating only two meals a day, the neoclassical principle of maximising overall utility gives the obvious answer: give the four meals to the pleasure wizard!

Is that a theoretical problem only? No. The very real use of markets involves these absurdities continuously (there are all too many exuberant 4-mealers and quiet 2-mealers, for example, in a market-led society). The very pressing problem of stopping climate change has run into the problem that people in colder climates gain some utility from warmer temperatures, and in a neoclassical economics framework that must be (and is) factored into a calculation with the loss of utility when people starve or drown because of climate changes. A new book by Frank Ackerman highlights the problems of neoclassical economics on climate change that are part of the work of leading policy voices like Nicholas Stern and William Nordhaus (Monthly Review 2009).

So if enough Canadians like warmer weather, allowing some climate change is not only acceptable, it actually must be recommended and chosen, even if some other people die, because the the overall utility of global society would be higher with climate change than without it. Half of humanity dying from climate change during this century while the other half gain huge utility from luxury lifestyles, is a potential, likely and perhaps unavoidable prescription from neoclassical economics.

More generally than in just climate change, neoclassical economics leads to social prescriptions that are morally perverse, such as to give more resources and wealth to those who are today wealthy and more greedy; and this is what happens when the open and free market is the mechanism for distribution.

(2) Only pleasure exists!

A related problem that Sen, and others, such as John Rawls, have highlighted is that neoclassical economics reduces everything into one single unit that is called utility. Neoclassical economics blinds itself to, for example, human rights or human needs, which must be erased and transformed into units of utility. Sen proposes that we use a much more open way of describing human lives, oriented to human capabilities and freedoms, while Rawls focuses on a form of description oriented toward "primary goods" that have special status.

I saw the clash of neoclassical economics with other human thinking at a seminar at Lund University where we were considering a list of human needs developed by the famous "barefoot" economist Manfred Max-Neef and others (1989). A friend of mine who adhered closely to neoclassical economics looked annoyed at the list and said: "Isn't this a bit heavy-handed? Why not let the market identify needs through expressed preferences?"

(3) Let's pretend!

My friend's comment leads us face-to-face with perhaps the most egregious problem with neoclassical economics: it confuses its theoretical world with the real world and asks us to pretend there is no difference. In a theoretical world of perfect competition and perfect information, a free market will provide the maximum overall utility, according to the theoretical models that are basic to neoclassical economics. A free market is what my friend was hoping we would agree to use to allow people to "express their preferences". But there is essentially no chance of creating perfect competition or perfect information. So what we would in fact be agreeing to is a situation where we would pretend that people's preferences were being expressed and utility maximized, but in fact would be a situation of much manipulation from, for example, poor competitive practices, or poor information.
(4) Let's maximize!

Neoclassical economics is itself a project of social prescription and therefore it is involved in describing utopias. But the social prescriptions it gives are based on the serious flaws described here, among many others. What kinds of utopias are dreamed of with these guides? I have for example heard a neoclassical economist comment that the world is just a collection of atoms; the idea being that if we just let neoclassical ideas lead us, all the atoms in the world would reorganise themselves in the optimal way, maximising utility.

That utopian concept is, relative to pretty much all other utopic thinking I know of, one of the most barbaric and frightening.

However, thinking about the utopic products of neoclassical thinking, can be useful, because it can show us:

(a) how much is erased in the neoclassical economic thinking (like human rights)

(b) what is going on in the world now as it is led very much by neoclassical economics

(5) An objection: neoclassical economics is just a tool, not an ethic!

One possible objection -- not least from parliamentarians -- is that neoclassical economic models are used in a subordinated manner to other goals. Human needs and human rights are recognised, but in a society of scarcity, economic planning must use models to find ways to meet people's needs and honour their rights. Firstly, that objection does not deal with the actual problems of neoclassical economics itself. However, I do grant that neoclassical economics is not unable to co-exist in institutions, such as parliaments, with other ways of seeing the world, such as a rights-based ethic.

But how well do these various ways of thinking co-exist? For example, how well does a utility maximizing model co-exist with a human-rights honouring ethic, in any institution, or in a particular institution? There are a range of imaginable answers to that question. One answer to that is that in a democracy, people vote based on their preferences and assessments of their government, and we should simply let them be the deciders about how well these various ways of thinking co-exist. That may sound appealing, but on closer consideration it cannot stand: firstly, because democracy does not exclude public debate about issues. Secondly, democracy cannot be an excuse for trampling people's human rights and human needs. The combination of a market-utility view and a democracy-first view can be a powerful way to forget about rights and needs.

I wish to note that there is a lot already written about the inter-relations of, for example, market-rights with human rights, and I will not try to summarise that literature here. That goes beyond the aim here of describing key problems with neoclassical economics (and not how it co-exists with all other ways of thinking). There are several reasons to look at the problems of neoclassical economics first of all:

1. These problems are not well recognised or sufficiently discussed in the public debate. Neoclassical economics are used in creating public policy without much criticism.

2. The problems are severe

3. The problems are reproduced in many other fields that use neoclassical economic analysis: transport planning for one.

Notes and references:

Frank Ackerman. 2009. Can We Afford the Future?: The Economics of a Warming World. Zed.
Manfred Max-Neef, Antonio Elizalde, & Martín Hopenhayn, with the cooperation of Felipe Herrera, Hugo Zemelman, Jorge Jatobá, Luis Weinstein. 1989. "Human Scale Development: An Option for the Future." Development Dialogue: A Journal of International Development Cooperation. Vol 1, 7-80. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs
Monthly Review. 2009. "Notes from the editors". http://www.monthlyreview.org/nfte090701.php. July-August. Volume 61: Nr 3.
John Rawls. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Amartya Sen. 1999. Development as Freedom.

Deadly transport is not necessary

2009-10-31T20:47:00.000+01:00

The entire world can live very well without deadly transport. There are a variety of ways to prove this.

There is an historical proof showing that human societies have functioned in history without deadly transport. There is a physical-technical proof that shows that the economic productivity of non-deadly transport is not lower than deadly transport. There is a technical proof that the life-supporting production of non-deadly transport is not less than that of deadly transport. There is a macroeconomic proof that shows that the economic productivity of non-deadly transport is not less than that of deadly transport.

Historical proof

Many non-motorised societies even in recent history prove that deadly transport is unnecessary. Today there is the Old Town of Jerusalem that is the largest non-motorised human settlement. In the 20th century, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Mumbai are examples of human settlements that used primarily non-motorised transport and supported enormous populations / economies.

Physical-technical proof

Transport function: movement. Is non-deadly transport less productive in terms of movement?

On a wholistic -- an all-inclusive -- view that includes all forms of human and natural movement, absolutely not! Here we would need to include the movement of children, the movement of non-human life such as birds, and the non-animate movement of e.g. water.

What about an exclusively human view of movement. Again, if it were all-inclusive, non-deadly transport much better, because freedoms of movement ....

An Einsteinian thought-experiment

An interesting physical relation seems to be here: for one body to move extremely fast, other bodies get limited. Imagine, for example, a transport (like a jet-pack) that enables people to move in all directions at infinite speed. Then no one can move or even stand safely anywhere (!!!). That is to say, some people travelling fast and freely (e.g. by car) means that others are limited.

The Einsteinian thought-experiment leads to the idea that there is a safety limit in terms of vector/speed. This form or equation of the physical relation can describe the problems of cars, that combine (with roads) many vectors and high speed, and therefore, limit the speed/vector for other persons or bodies.

Cars and trucks (road-traffic in general) are not necessary.

Our built environments have become more oriented in the recent decades to deadly transport, but it is not necessary to keep that system for the future. Moving people and goods from place to place by non-lethal methods can replace today's predominantly deadly (road-traffic) transport methods.

Human settlements are more viable with non-lethal transport, because among many reasons, space is used more effectively: (1) population density is higher with non-lethal transport, and (2) the space used up for transport itself is lower with non-lethal transport.

Short-distance travel can be done primarily with walking and bicycling. Longer-distance travel can be done primarily with bus and rail that can be made nearly 100% safe with techniques such as road division, complete traffic segregation, etc. But cars and trucks must go: the technologies that will make them non-lethal are speculative and distant in the future.

Non-lethal transport forms are also much more efficient and sustainable, or viable, in terms of environmental wellbeing, social wellbeing and economic wellbeing.

Walking, cycling, and bus/rail use much less energy, cost much less money, use much less space, pollute much less (air, climate, water, soil, noise), often by very high factors (e.g. 50 times more efficient). Instead, these non-lethal transport forms free-up people, energy, money, space, and natural resources to provide positive contributions to life. Walking, cycling and bus/rail are fairer to people, and do not discriminate against the poor, the disabled, the young and old, the way road traffic does.

Few places on our Planet have not been re-oriented toward road traffic. Amazingly, the Old Town of Jerusalem is the largest human settlement that is considered to be car-free. Medium-sized university towns across Europe and North America are relatively easy to convert to car-free because of their spatial (e.g. density) and economic (e.g. people-oriented) factors. Large cities enable many people to live car-free also.

Two mirror-opposite systems of transport

The two ways of providing transport -- deadly transport and non-lethal transport -- are like mirror opposites of each other. Deadly transport forms are destructive in multiple ways. Non-lethal transport forms are protective and even creative in multiple ways.

Wasting space

Deadly transport tends to require single-use space, i.e. road and highway environments. The exception is what one finds for example in a poorer country's urban settlement, where people must attempt, as they live, work and move around, to share space with deadly transport forms.

Even the countryside can be populated on the basis of non-lethal transport, such as slow and fully segregated rail and non-motorised transport such as walking and cycling.

Who is safe on Mammon street?

2009-10-31T20:15:00.000+01:00

Not children: How many children die because of road traffic crashes every year?

In 2004, 166,000 children aged 0 to 14 years died in road traffic crashes. (WHO 2004: 68).
In High Income countries, 6000 children died.
In Middle Income countries, 53,000 children died.
In Low Income countries, 108,000 children died. (WHO 2004: 68).
Not the poor: "Almost half of those who die in road traffic crashes are pedestrians, cyclists or users of motorized two-wheelers -- collectively known as "vulnerable road users" -- and this proportion is higher in the poorer economies of the world.

For example, while in the high-income countries of the Americas Region 65% of reported road deaths are among vehicle occupants, this situation is very different in the low-income and middle-income countries of the Western Pacific Region where 70% of reported road deaths are among vulnerable road users.

The report suggests that not enough is being done to meet the needs of these vulnerable groups. For instance, speed is a key risk factor for injury among pedestrians and cyclists, and yet only 29% of countries meet basic criteria for reducing speed in urban areas, while less than 10% of countries rate the enforcement of their speed limits as effective." (WHO 2009: viii)

"Road crashes have become a global disaster, with over 1.3 million lives claimed in 2005, the vast majority in low -income countries where motorisation is low. By 2030, road deaths are predicted to increase to over 2.1 million and more than double in low income countries. Most of those killed will be pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and passengers, the most common victims young adult males, whose loss will cause emotional trauma to their families as well as financial devastation." (Roadpeace n.d.)

"Road traffic accident deaths are projected to increase from 1.3 million in 2004 to 2.4 million in 2030, primarily due to the increased motor vehicle ownership and use associated with economic growth in low and middle-income countries." (WHO 2004: 23)

Source materials and references:

Roadpeace, no date, http://www.roadpeace.org/index.asp?PageID=299

WHO (World Health Organization), Global status report on road safety, 2009, http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2009/9789241563840_eng.pdf

WHO (World Health Organization), The global burden of disease: 2004 update, http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GBD_report_2004update_full.pdf

Christian responses to Climate Change and other Environmental issues

2009-08-18T08:15:00.000+02:00

Some excerpts from, and a brief response to, Bishop GV Browning's text, "Christian responses to Climate Change and other Environmental issues", Oxford University, August 2009 (available via this link)

"The environmental crisis is caused by submission to a secular narrative that under girds the global economy, a narrative that is only partly right and because it is only partly right, in our context its consequences are morally wrong. The narrative is of an open market, (a metaphor which is not true because the hidden monopolies and power structures do not have the transparencies associated with a “market”) and of deregulated capitalism which, it asserts, delivers exponential growth and prosperity for all. The problem is that this narrative lends itself without check to opportunism and exploitation and cannot be sustained. We now need several planets to feed the appetite. It is a narrative that is controlled not by the many, but by the few, who are in positions of economic and political power. To challenge the narrative is to invite patronisation at best and being held in derision at worst. ....

"This secular narrative which informs the western way of life, drives the world economy, and causes enormous damage to global ecology; has become a narrative of personal prosperity not community well being, a narrative of exploitation rather than stewardship, of growth rather than sustainability, of winners and losers rather than partners, of unimagined wealth alongside abject poverty, of huge gain without meaningful contribution, of the supremacy of self interest over a commitment to common good, of incentive and reward given to the top end of the food chain with scant regard care or thought given to those on the bottom end of the same chain. ....

"The new narrative that must under gird changed economic behaviour in response to the threat of climate change is not (as politicians are afraid) a narrative of less, but of more; not of diminished life style, but of life style enhanced. Sadly, Christian theology and western economic systems have supported each other in the creation of a world of heightened individuality at the expense of diminished community life, a world in which more and more has to be spent on protecting what we have from the neighbours who have not. In a healthy community there are no locked doors and no one is hungry."

A response: These shortcomings of the secular narrative can be responded to with love, mercy and forgiveness, in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the Word of the Lord God Father Almighty. A hunger for love, forgiveness and mercy may be a driving cause of the shortcomings also. That is to say, Jesus Christ's teaching to refrain from judgement, and instead to love and forgive, may indeed be the best and only answer we have for the catastrophic environmental problem we face.

The Good News

2009-08-16T08:29:00.001+02:00

What is the good news that Jesus Christ talks of, the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven? How can we understand this good news?

Jesus explains that He was sent to reveal the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven. It begins with Jesus standing in the synagogue on the Sabbath and being given a passage to read in Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour. (Lk 4:18-19)

This is wonderful news. It is really a message of joy.

So let us try to understand it better.

What, for example, is a year of the Lord's favour?

This week's reading in the Torah describes something that appears related. In Deuteronomy, chapter 15, the Lord says to Israel that every seventh year all people must cancel everyone else's debts. This includes that Hebrew slaves must be freed (after seven years of service). It is worth noting that the Lord says here also that people who are poor should be able to borrow as much as they need, and that even if they borrowed money in the sixth year, even that debt should be cancelled in the seventh year.

These are very strong examples of favour, or mercy. Among people. With great mercy are people to treat one another, according to the law of the Lord.

A year of the Lord's favour, then? The Lord's mercy is greater. Debts to the Lord are cancelled. That is an enormous favour, or mercy, in view of how grave the debts can be to the Lord, and the penalties they can bring.

In a year of the Lord's favour there is good news for the poor... release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind... freedom for the oppressed.

Jesus explains in the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 6,

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

But, the question comes, shall this relief happen on earth, or in the Kingdom of God? Are there not a billion people today who lack enough food for the day? Are there not many millions who sorrow without comfort?

As I understand, the favour and mercy of the Lord is on earth and in Heaven. Relief happens now and it happens in Heaven. The Kingdom of God is within us, among us, and waiting for us.

A billion people lack food not because of a shortage of food. That is, it is no lack in Nature, or from the Lord. People are starving because people do not follow the law of God, and the principle of love, to take care of those who are in urgency, including to feed the hungry.

We live in a world filled with societies and people who do not follow the law of God and the principle of love.

We humanity haven't succeeded very much in building the Kingdom of God among us. But we shall not give up on the building! We shall not believe that the law of God does not function, we shall not believe that the teaching of Jesus Christ of acting lovingly does not bear good fruit. We shall not doubt that the Lord intervenes with miracles when we pray for mercy. And when we follow His will.

The Lord commands us to release one another. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. (Lk 6:37)

We are to love one another. Lend without question. Help without limit, all those who need. Yes, we are even to love our enemies. Jesus explains: do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those you abuse you. (Lk 6: 27-28)

With love, and only love, is how we are to act. Love - and mercy - stand in the centre.

The Lord loves us. We receive favour. He commands us to build His Kingdom of love and mercy, to participate in love and mercy.

The Kingdom of Heaven is in us, among us, and it is waiting for us.

Glädjebudet

2009-08-16T06:16:00.000+02:00

Om ni blir kvar i mig och mina ord blir kvar i er, så be om vad ni vill, och ni skall få det. (Joh 15:7)

Vad är det gjädjebudet som Jesus Kristus talar om, de goda nyheterna om Guds rike? Hur kan vi förstå dessa goda nyheter?

Jesus förklarar i Lukas evangelium, kapitel 4., att Han var utsänd för att förkunna budskapet om Guds rike. Det börjar med att Jesus står i synagogen på sabbaten och får läsa i Jesaja:

Herrens ande är över mig, ty han har smort mig till att frambära ett glädjebud till de fattiga. Han har sänt mig att förkunna befrielse för de fångna och syn för de blinda, att ge de förtryckta frihet och förkunna ett nådens år från Herre. (Lk 4:18-19)

Det är underbara nyheter. Detta är verkligen ett glädjebud.

Låt oss försöka förstå dem bättre.

Vad, till exempel, är ett nådens år?

Denna veckas läsning i Torahn beskriver nånting som verkar relaterad. I 5 Moses, kapitel 15, säger Herren till Israel att vart sjunde år skall alla människor avskriva varandras skulder, inklusive att hebreiska slavar skulle befrias. Värt att notera är att Herren säger i samma kapitel att människor som är fattiga skall få låna så mycket som de behöver. Och, att även deras skulder, även om de lånade pengar i sjätte året, skulle avskrivas i det sjunde året.

Alltså, väldigt starka exempel på nåd. Och det är bland människor. Med stor nåd ska vi behandla varandra, enligt Guds lag.

Ett nådens år från Herren därmed?

Herrens nåd är större. Skulderna till Herren avskrivas. Det är ett enormt nåd, med tanke på hur allvarliga skulderna kan vara till Herren, och vad det kan förtjäna.

I ett nådens år från Herre finns ett gjädjebud till de fattiga... befrielse för de fångna och syn för de blinda, att ge de förtryckta frihet.

Jesus förklara i lukas evangelium, kapitel 6,

Saliga ni som är fattiga, er tillhör Guds rike. Saliga ni som hungrar nu, ni skall få äta er mätta. Saliga ni som gråter nu, ni skall få skratta. (Lk 6:20-21)

Men – kommer frågan – ska detta befrielse hända på jorden, eller i Guds rike? Har vi inte en miljard människor idag som saknar mat nog för dagen?

Har vi inte miljarder människor som gråter utan tröst?

Som jag förstår det är nådet från Herren både på jorden och i himmelen. Befrielsen händer här och nu, och det händer på det eviga planet. Guds rike är inom oss, bland oss, och det väntar på oss.

En miljard människor saknar mat inte på grund av brist på mat, alltså ingen brist hos naturen eller Herren, men därför att människor inte följer Guds lag, och kärleksprincipen, att ta hand om de som lider nöd, inklusive att mata de hungriga.

Vi bor i en värld fylld av samhällen och människor som inte följer Guds lag, och kärleksprincipen. Vi lyckas inte väldigt långt med att bygga Guds rike bland oss.

Men icke skall vi ge upp med byggandet! Vi ska inte tro att Guds lag inte fungerar. Vi ska inte tro att Jesus Kristus läran om kärleksfullt agerande inte bär goda frukterna. Vi ska inte tvivla att Herren ryker in med mirakel när vi ber om nåd. Och när vi följer Hans vilja.

Herren befaller oss att befria varandra. Döm inte, så skall ni inte bli dömda. Förklara ingen skyldig, så skall ni inte dömas skyldiga. Frikänn, så att vi skall bli frikända. (Lk 6:37 )

Vi ska älska vår nästa. Låna utan fråga. Hjälpa utan gränser, alla som behöver. Ja, även fiender ska vi älska. Jesus förklarar: gör gott mot dem som hatar er. Välsigna dem som förbannar er och be för dem som skymfar er. (Lk 6:27-28)

Alltså det är kärlek, och bara kärlek, vi ska agera med. Kärlek – och nåd – står i centrum.

Gud älskar oss. Vi får nåd. Han befaller oss att bygga hans rike av nåd och kärlek, att bli delaktiga i nåd och kärlek.

Guds rike är inom oss, bland oss, och det väntar på oss.

Sanerade nyheter i sanerande Sverige?

2009-08-13T07:50:00.000+02:00

Utifrån en kristen motivering lägger jag in ett nytt postskriptum här i början av inlägget, för att texten jag publicerade har ett viktigt problem som jag vill nämna. Det är så att min text är för hård och på ett sätt dömande, när jag har ingen rätt eller vilja att döma andra. Inläggens titel är alltför hård: nyheterna i fokus är inte klart "sanerade", inte heller är det klart att Sverige är "sanerande", utan påståenden / ifrågasättandet härstämmar från bekymren att en rättsstat kunde förvrängt ha sanerade nyheter och en sanerande politik. Faktum är att DN och GP till slut publicerade minst en del av de viktiga uppgifterna i Tortyrkommitténs preliminära rapport om Sverige. Istället för att klaga på dem, tror jag att det är viktigt att läsa vad Tortyrkommittén skriver och att se hur vi som medmänniskor i en demokratisk rättsstat kan lindra dessa problem. Inlägget därmed kan fungera som en redovisning av den preliminära rapporten som handlar om hur DN och GP (under perioden 13 juli - 04 augusti) beskrev den.

Då kommer också de att fråga: 'Herre, när skulle vi ha sett dig hungrig eller törstig eller hemlös eller naken eller sjuk eller i fängelse och lämnat dig utan hjälp?' (Mt 25:44)

I denna rapport fokuserar jag på beskrivningarna i två svenska tidningar (DN och GP) av den preliminära rapporten om Sverige från Europarådets kommitté för förebyggandet av tortyr och omänsklig eller förnedrande behandling eller bestraffning (CPT), som publicerades 23 juli 2009. Genom varierade sökningar på DNs och GPs webbsidor (t.o.m. 04-08-2009) hittade jag fem texter (1 kortnotis, 1 ledare, 3 artiklar) som nämner Tortyrkommitténs rapportering om förhållandena för av svenska myndigheterna frihetsberövade människor. Texterna publicerades under perioden 13 juli - 4 augusti. Här presenterar jag en jämnförelse av DNs och GPs texter med CPT dokumenten själv, publicerade på officiella webbsidan på engelska.

Det finns djupt oroande skillnader mellan Tortyrkommitténs preliminära rapport och dessa svenska mediers rapportering av densamma. Avvikelserna i kunskapsbilden läsaren får, språkvalet och däri relationen uppbyggd mellan skribent/läsare och människor som blir frihetsberövade, är stora. Svenska läsare får en många gånger hardvinklade bild (även helt missvisande bild) och dessutom suggestionen av en distanserad/objektifierande relation till människor som blir hållna i förvar av svenska myndigheter.

Till att börja med, presenterar Tortyrkommitténs preliminära uttalande en katalog över flera sorts allvarliga brister som upptäcktes under sitt fjärde (senaste 2003) periodiska besök till ett urval av Sveriges relevanta institutioner i juni i år. DN och GP nämner dock ytterst få av dessa mänskliga rättigheters problem. Istället trycker DNs och GPs texterna på ett budskap att det finns bara ett enda grovt problem (”för långa isoleringstider”), alternativt att förhållandena i Sverige är relativt goda (”Europarådet ger tummen upp för svenska anstalter”). Rapporten börjar dock med konstaterandet att de svenska myndigheternas handlingar ”tagna med avseende på ett antal långvariga rekommendationer av CPT:et ännu inte möter kommitténs bekymmer”.

Tortyrkommitténs preliminära rapport nämner uppskattningsvis 20 olika sorts allvarliga brister i form av kränkande av rättigheter, underlåtenhet att följa lagar, fara för andra människors hälsa, osv., som upptäcktes genom stickprovet i juni. Men av dessa 20, nämns bara 3 i DN, och bara 4 i GP.

Bland bristande skydd för av svensk polisen frihetsberövade människor nämns att polis grovt fördröjer att meddela anhöriga, samt att bevilja tillgång till advokat; att svensk polis använder eget omdöme över människornas tillgång till hälsovård istället för att den blir oinskränkt; att polis har ”en bristande medvetenhet om behovet att ta hänsyn till hälsofrågor som kunde vara relevanta inte bara för de frihetsberövades hälsa utan också för utredningsprocessen, i synnerhet den medicinska lämpligheten att göra intervjuer, att arresteras eller anhållas”; att barn ”får förhöras utan närvaro av sina föräldrar eller sociala välfärdsföreträdare”; att människor som anhålls ”ej systematiskt ges” grundläggande information över sina rättigheter.

Inga av ovanstående uppgifter ges heller av DN eller GP.

Bortsett från den ovannämnda falska^¹ rapporten (”tummen upp”) som DN publicerade, signerat TT, 10 dagar innan Tortyrkommitténs preliminära rapport utkom, fokuserar texterna i DN och GP närmast totalt på ett problem: långa isoleringstider, upp till minst 18 månader, beordrade för många människor under deras häktning innan rättegång. Denna den svensk rättstatens praxis tar upp nästan 100% av tidningarnas rapportering, och sambandet med självmordsförsök är poängterat upprepade gånger med t.e.x ”Ökad självmordsrisk blir resultatet.” Det utvidgade bilden av flera svåra psykiska skador från isoleringar nämns en gång i en (GP) ledare: rubbad tidsuppfattning, minnesstörningar, tilltagande oförmåga att kommunicera, oro, ångestutbrott, posttraumatisk stress, depressioner, självskadning, självmordsförsök och självmord. Att Tortyrkommittén påpekat att i Sverige så unga personer som 15 år också får ”restriktioner som liknar isolering” nämns bara 2 gånger i en enda artikel (GP). Att långa isoleringstider används också i anstalter nämns bara i förbigående. Att Sverige under flera år har försummat att följa upp Tortyrkommitténs rekommendationer nämns en gång i en (GP) ledare. DNs falska rapport konstaterar att Tortyrkommittén funnit bara två problem överhuvudtaget och dessutom ger dem missvisande lindriga beskrivningar: ”att nattbemanningen på vissa håll är låg och att Kriminalvården i framtiden bör bygga häkten på ett annat sätt så att rastgårdarna får en annan marknära utformning.” Ett sista problem som inkluderas i dessa svenska medier är att Sveriges nya säkerhetsavdelningen för högriskfångar ”får frågetecken från kommittén” som dock inte talas närmare om. Därmed sammanfattas de 6 problem som nämns i DN och GP.

Tortyrkommittén har dock mer att berätta om Sverige. Gällande rastgårdarna, uppvisar de “en oppressiv utformning (redan kritiserade i tidigare CPT besöksrapport)”, inklusive att vara för små för att motionera eller göra mer än gå fram och tillbaka. Gällande nattbemanningen på tre anstalter (Hall, Kumla och Göteborg) var den såpass låg att orsaka “underlåtenhet att ge tillgång till toaletter under natten” och “risk för personal och fångar”, och att kommittén informerades om två dödsfall som inträffat under nattetid. Tillkomsten av den nya högsäkerhetsavdelningen väckte enligt Tortyrkommittén välgrundad “ångest och frustration” hos många fångar att deras säkerhetsriskbedömningar skulle förhöjas för att fylla alla nya platserna, vilket är “vanligt” när sådana avdelningarnas “konstruktion nödgade markanta offentliga utgifter”, men som kan också försvåra säkerheten i fängelser och “vara skadlig snarare än skyddande av mänskliga rättigheter”. Isoleringsregimen på två anstalter (Hall och Kumla), som varar över ett år, visade sig “extremt utarmade (tiden utanför cellen begränsade till en timme utomhus motion per dag, ensamt)”. Rapporten också noterar mångfaciterat hindrande av fångarnas kontakt med världen utanför fängelset, och “manar svenska myndigheter att tillförsäkra att fångar (speciellt de med familjer i utlandet) ej förlorar kontakt med sina anhöriga”. Den noterar att det står oklart om och hur människor på anstalter kan överklaga beslut om fortsatt isolering; att målet om 7 timmars “associationer” per vecka under isoleringstider var både förmodligen “långt ifrån tillfredsställt” och “ganska lågt för att motverka effekterna av isolering.” Vidare fann kommittén bevis på fördröjningar och förhinder gällande tillgång till hälsovård för fångar och “inget system för skyddande av kliniska uppgifter”. Att “människor som är frihetsberövade under migrationslagstiftning fortfarande ibland blir häktade i fängelser (ibland under långa tidsperioder)” noteras också med bekymmer.

Tortyrkommittén besökte också ungdomshem, slutna psykiatrivårdsenheter, och förvarsanläggningar hos Migrationsverket. I den sistnämnda fann kommittén bristfälliga procedurer för tillgång till läkare och skydd av sjukjournaler. I psykiatrivårdsenheter noterade Tortyrkommittén behandlingar “exklusivt med mediciner (ibland med höga doseringar)”, inga sysselsättnings – eller rehabiliterings aktiviteter, och bristande tillgång till utomhus vistelse/motion. I ungdomshem noterar rapporten användningen av polis med tvångssyfte som istället “borde kvarstå som ansvaret hos behandlingspersonal med lämpliga kvalifikationer”, och reella brister i dokumentation över incidenter där.

Inte heller kommer alla dessa problem med i DNs och GPs dokumentation av Europarådets tortyrkommitténs preliminära rapport. Därmed blir också informationsbredden och kunskapsbilden för läsarna väldigt begränsade.

Alltså hårdvinklar DN och GP sin rapportering av Tortyrkommitténs preliminära Sverigerapport på ett enda problem. Därefter vidare hårdvinklande på en enda instans – Göteborg – och på ett enda utfall (självmordsförsöken som blivit mer frekventa). Vidare koncentreras de två långartiklarna på en Göteborgscentrerad debatt mellan t.f. chefen för Kriminalvårdens Region Väst och s.t.f. kammarchefen vid åklagarmyndigheten över orsakerna till och ansvaret för de långa isoleringstiderna i häkten. Alltså får läsaren titta mest på byråkratiska finesser, ursäkter och cirkulära kontrande. Frågor som kan leda någonstans ut från isoleringsproblemet, saknas totallt. CPTs rapport uttrycker människorespekt och människovärde i sin rapport medan DNs och GPs texter helst talar om de ”häktade”/”intagna”, och därmed är relationen mellan samhället och frihetsberövade människor tragiskt nedbruten.

Utom i GP-ledaren. Där framstår en stark människorättsfrämjande ton. Och där finns också ett hopp för någon slags lösning: “Det är alltså dags att i lag begränsa häktningstiderna.” Tyvärr måste man konstatera att även detta utrop visar sig vara alltför svagt, ett bristfälligt svikande och underkännande av mänskliga rättigheter och människovärde.

Det finns även obehagliga paralleler mellan vad Tortyrkommittén skriver om den ofta allvarligt bristande relationen mellan den svenska staten och den frihetsberövade människan, och en klart bristande relation mellan tidningarna och läsaren.

Postskriptum

DN följde GPs ledare med sin egen ("Begränsa häktningen") den 5e augusti. Den kan läsas här. Från ett människorätts perspektiv kan man konstatera att DN-ledaren har, precis som GPs ledare, en mer människorättsfrämjande ton, men också att den följer samma linjer som beskrivs i min redovisning här: alltså, hårdvinklingar, osv.

Källförteckningen

European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), Preliminary Observations: Sweden: Visit 09/06/2009 – 18/06/2009. 2009-07-23. http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/swe/2009-23-inf-eng.htm

Nyberg, H. Alltför hårt för häktade. Göteborgs-Posten 2009-08-04. http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=113&a=509534

Osignerat. Ledare 4/8: Begränsa häktningstiden! Göteborgs-Posten 2009-08-04. http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=122&a=509401

TT, Europarådet ger tummen upp för svenska anstalter. Dagens Nyheter 2009-07-13.

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/europaradet-ger-tummen-upp-for-svenska-anstalter-1.910633

TT, Kritik mot isolering i häkten. Dagens Nyheter 2009-08-04. http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/kritik-mot-isolering-i-hakten-1.923980

TT, Kritik mot isolering i häkten. Göteborgs-Posten 2009-08-04. http://www.gp.se/gp/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=361&a=509466

1 DN/TT artikeln börjar: ”Förhållandena på svenska häkten och anstalter får i huvudsak ett gott betyg av Europarådets kommitté mot tortyr (CPT), enligt en preliminär rapport.”

Yes we can make a green economic recovery

2009-04-14T16:08:00.000+02:00

What can people do to create jobs and reduce atmospheric carbon in the face of the economic crisis and the climate crisis? Could food services and cleaning services be part of an answer?

Provide food services

Providing vegetable-source foods
Ingredients from local farming that practices carbon sequestration techniques
Delivered by minus-carbon transport (walking or cycling) that frees space for nature
Paid for with local currency (at least in part) *
Organisable as an economic cooperative **

Provide cleaning services

Providing cleaning services that use only natural, non-toxic materials (baking soda, white vinegar, etc.)
At least some ingredients could come from local farming that practices carbon sequestration techniques
Delivered by minus-carbon transport (walking or cycling) that frees space for nature
Paid for with local currency (at least in part) *
Organisable as an economic cooperative **

The generic idea is to provide services that are minus-carbon (or zero-carbon), and to make them viable for more people to do (e.g. via local currency and cooperative organisation).

Another example would be services that enable recycle, re-use, and repair; e.g. for clothes, computers, etc.

An additional example is providing services enabling increased compact living:

converting low-use spaces like garden sheds, attics, etc., into new living space.

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* Why local currency? There are many reasons: firstly, because it enables people to spend even when they don't have much money, something highly important during economic recession/depression. Secondly, it keeps money circulating in the local economy.

** Why an economic cooperative? There are many reasons: firstly, democracy is usually preferable to autocracy. It also removes the incentive to extract maximal profit at the expense of the wellbeing of workers.

Making cities minus-carbon: solving major problems

2009-04-11T09:08:00.001+02:00

Let's take inspiration from Vandana Shiva's insight that we solve 20 major problems by eating local and organic:

What if we make the city minus-carbon: what problems get solved?

It seems that good food, good health, good social cohesion, good livelihoods, good homes, all become affordable to ensure for all people. (An unexpected coincidence?)

1. Food: cities become minus-carbon through their food policies, first and foremost, because nature and soils re-absorb and store carbon. That requires organic and non-animal agroforestry, producing vegetable & perennial (fruit) foods for much lower costs than animal-based foods, because inputs (energy, land, water, etc.) are lower for lower trophic-levels by orders of magnitude (10x, 100x, etc.).

2. Health: in a minus-carbon compact city, people walk and breathe clean fresh air for starters! There are no cars and near-zero air pollution. Minus-carbon agriculture provides people with varied and affordable vegetarian food, another boost to health. Close proximity to green space and nature, the two main drivers of the city's carbon-reduction, is another key support for good health.

3. Social cohesion: the minus-carbon city isn't segregated by motorways and cars. People share urban spaces where we walk, talk, meet, and share. (Newman & Kenworthy, John Whitelegg, Jane Jacobs)

4. Livelihoods: the minus-carbon city doesn't waste huge amounts of money and resources (e.g. on car-transportation, or millions of preventable DALYs, etc.), so it can spend more in support of people's livelihoods. Car-free cities are also places people want to live in, work in, shop in, and visit, all boosts to the city's economic resources. The minus-carbon necessity for service livelihoods (that use less resources) may also make it easier for our societies to guarantee dignified work for all.

5. Homes: a minus-carbon city must be compact and therefore promote highly rational use of space and compact living. Decent homes (apartments) become less expensive the more rational and compact the designs are.

I must admit these are just outlines of what minus-carbon achieves. Careful consideration is needed.

Yet I hope it is not too early to consider: What if it turns out that minus-carbon planning designs actually make it so that with more people, the more carbon captured? Then we would see yet more reasons to respect human life properly, seeing each other as sacred, and welcoming each other into our (urban) homes.

-------

A similar exercise to consider:

Create compact cities, and solve 20 problems.

A real green recovery, solving 20 problems

2009-04-09T13:15:00.001+02:00

Asking a hard question can produce a diamond-like answer. How did Vandana Shiva answer a surprisingly tough question at a conference on the future of food*?

What do you expect people to learn from a three hour conference on food that will make a difference?

Vandana's answer:

Eat organic and local. Then you solve 20 problems.**

Eric Clark and Björn Cinthio's piece "Nyliberalism skapar nytt Lort-Sverige" ["Neoliberalism is creating a new squalor-Sweden"] in Sydsvenskan this week also leads to a tough question:

Will we provide an alternative to neoliberalism's programme of propelling people into degradation and misery?

With the example of the plight of people living in squalid buildings owned by a Swedish capital investment fund, Clark and Cinthio direct our attention to the misery facing Sweden's majority, as we are steadily herded into housing insecurity and social segregation by the twin-act of maximal profit-extraction by the private sector and the cooptation of public policy in neoliberalising Sweden.

Ilmar Reepalu, the chairperson of Malmö municipality's executive board, provokes another tough question in Sydsvenskan this week through his debate piece, "Regeringen förvärrar krisen" ["The Government is worsening the crisis"]:

Will Sweden's national government sit on their hands -- and the public wealth -- while many of the basic foundations of social welfare and of human rights and freedoms -- health care, education, elderly care, insurance coverage against unemployment and disability -- collapse?

There is a third -- much tougher -- question we may add here:

Are we going to do anything sufficient to stop our planet's ongoing shift into catastrophic climate change?

Do you think we can answer the above questions, and solve 20 or more problems, by action as clear as Vandana's "eat local and organic"? Is there a clear ecological / economic answer to the above problems?

What about:
"Meet all people's needs via the most efficient use of resources, beginning with space" [Alternatively, "Make the city minus-carbon"]
What if municipalities took that approach? What if Malmö did the following, in response to the economic, social and environmental crises:

Free space and money from the car: Create walking streets and plazas, new public and commercial life, by reducing road space for cars, by for example 80% this year. Bus lanes and bicycle lanes can provide almost all needed mobility beyond walking.
Find space for human habitat: Construct advanced, low-cost green habitation for people in all low-use spaces. To reduce costs, one could re-introduce shared facilities in buildings like bathrooms and kitchens.
Add space for livelihoods: Provide free use of unused public premises for services that generate employment and income, e.g. continuing education and wellness services provided in school buildings after school-hours. The 24-hour library and 24-hour school are worth imagining.

Begin with two very hard principles: a zero- or minus-carbon city, and a city that meets all people's needs. Then see how its highly efficient use of space (compactness) and prioritisation of service-oriented livelihoods (dematerialisation), among other shared resource systems, help to meet people's needs and create a robust ecological/economic foundation for universal social welfare.
"Share space and use it all", or "Waste no space", could be a Shiva-like answer. Or "Make cities minus-carbon".
More particularly: "Minus-carbon Malmö" / "Waste nothing Malmö". Let's not waste time either, or opportunities. Cities must become zero- or minus-carbon, and they must meet everyone's needs. How much longer will we wait to live up to those requirements? It may be that the current economic crisis is the necessary opportunity to make the major changes required to prevent climate disaster.
The Shiva-like answers are also a part answer to the very tough questions that follow logically from Mahatma Gandhi's observation that "There is enough in the world for all people's needs, but not enough for even one person's greed." More recently, the possibility that the survival of life on earth may depend on our abandonment of selfishness was articulated by KG Hammar in a public dialogue at Malmö's Rosengård in 2008. The same trade-off or choice is framed in another way by Noam Chomsky in his books Failed States and Hegemony or Survival, and a speech quoted in the documentary "Manufacturing Consent". We can start by deciding to prioritise people's needs, making sure we meet them; then we can see if there is anything left over for anyone's greed.
What do you think?

An update: please read a consideration of what the minus-carbon city could achieve.

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* The Future of Food conference, January 2005, organised by Resurgence Magazine in London

** What are those 20 problems that eating local and organic can solve? Reading Vandana's works and Resurgence Magazine, among other sources, one could list:

multinational corporate monopoly / oligopoly control over food
biopiracy by multinational corporations
greenhouse gas emissions from billions of transport kilometers
destruction of biodiversity by chemical agriculture, GMO agriculture, etc.
preservation of food biodiversity and resilience in agriculture instead of vulnerable monocultures
prevention of GMO consequences other than biodiversity destruction
prevention of for-private-profit promotion of unhealthy foods and major public health problems like cancer, obesity and cardiovascular disease
food security
support for small-scale agriculture
support for sustainable rural livelihoods through direct retailing, etc.
reduce the scourge of rural poverty, rural hunger, rural marginalisation (poor quality education, etc.)
reduced oil dependence
oil-based problems ranging from health impacts to militarisation / war
decreased atmospheric carbon through organic agriculture methods
local ecosystem services for cities
incentives to reduce urban pollution of air, water and land through tighter feedback loops
incentive to reduce urban sprawl and instead implement compact city planning, with its 20 problems that it solves (among them Sweden's main reducer of emissions, i.e. district heating)
Water security because, among many reasons, the city must budget its own water use rather than import water from where it imports food.

Demand a green recovery from economic crisis

2008-11-14T08:08:00.000+01:00

A green recovery from crisis: Please demand that your government invests in renewable energies and other climate-saving efforts now in their recovery plans.

"Only a major crisis will get people to change." Does that sound familiar?

We have a major crisis now: the climate is changing much faster than expected. And the global economy is facing the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Already, nearly a billion people go hungry. We can and must take this chance to change now.

We can put millions of people to work, to produce the technologies and build the infrastructure -- and provide the services, and replant the forests -- that will avert climate disaster.

We can insist that public money to rescue banks and companies in this crisis comes with a demand for climate responsibility! If we don't demand it now, when we have the bargaining initiative with banks and companies, when would we?

This is our chance. Please write in your newspapers, websites and blogs. Please write to your politicians, your political parties and your NGOs, write to Avaaz.org and ask them to petition. Please tell your friends and neighbours. And tell Obama!

This may be the best chance the world gets to go green. Let's use this in a positive way to pull ourselves out of the danger of economic depression, and out of the danger of catastrophic climate change.

We can have a green and sustainable world instead.

If we demand it. If we build it. Let's not forget it!

Here are some voices supporting a green recovery to the crisis: please add your voice in creative support.

GLOBAL WARMING I

The climate for change

Al Gore

"Here is the good news: The bold steps that are needed to solve the climate crisis are exactly the same steps that ought to be taken in order to solve the economic crisis and the energy security crisis....."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/09/news/edgore.php

GLOBAL WARMING II

Crisis and opportunity

Ban Ki Moon, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Donald Tusk and Anders Fogh Rasmussen
"As world leaders gather in Washington this weekend, they would do well to remember that we face two crises. The global financial crisis is most immediate; the more existential is climate change. The urgency of the first is no excuse for neglecting the second. On the contrary, it is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone....."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/09/opinion/edban.php

Solve economic and environmental crises at the same time

Top scientific meeting urges coordinated response

A fix for the economy must address ecological threats, a top international scientific meeting here has urged. Human society is moving dangerously beyond the planet's natural limits in a striking parallel to the financial debt crisis. "We're running the planet like a subprime loan," Dr. Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre said. A coordinated response would reduce the risks of both kinds of crises in the future.
http://www.igbp.kva.se/page.php?pid=433

Comprehensive joy!

2008-11-08T20:32:00.000+01:00

The news program Democracy Now, broadcast from the US, always chooses music wonderfully....

So what music would they play on the show announcing the election of Barack Obama as the US President? I was full of joyful anticipation. And they don't let you down over there at the Firehouse Studio....

The lovely video & music piece of about 1 minute can be seen by going to around the 20th minute of the video at

http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2008/11/5

It's Angelic Kidjo singing.... And the images are wonderful to see!