A (second) revival?

As the days get longer, the weather worsens. At least that is how it seems to be in the UK. Regardless, with any inclination to venture into the outdoors being swatted away by the endless downpour, new forms of procrastination must be sought out. Perhaps then it is worthwhile reviving this moribund blog once more. I shall not promise to do so; I have made many such promises in the past and they have fallen by the way side faster than a new years resolution to give up eating sweet foods. Nonetheless, consider this a statement of intention. Now all that needs to be done is find something interesting to muse upon.

Hawaii '61

So, the most controversial document of the last few years is...Barack Obama's birth certificate. Not content with the 'short' copy of his birth certificate released in 2008, political campaigners have continued to pressurise the U.S. President into revealing his 'full' birth certificate, which he did today. Congratulations to all the 'birthers' who have tirelessly fought for this moment. No, really. After all the economic turmoil, political peaks and troughs and, more recently, unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, it's good to see that a minority have their eyes firmly set on the key issue: whether their President was born in the U.S..

Now, don't get me wrong, if it were proved Obama was not born in America, that would have been a significant legislative issue. But no more than that. In the grand scheme of things, the obsession with a leader's birthplace is quite ridiculous: his political decisions were not made because he was born in Hawaii, they were made because they represent what he believes is necessary. Donald Trump's comments before and after the release of the full birth certificate only serve to perpetuate this nonsensical obsession with Obama's birthplace. Nevertheless, hopefully the ludicrously high number of people in the U.S. who believe that Obama was brought into this world outside of America will finally realise the truth and, should they choose to do so, challenge the U.S. President over his policies, rather than his background.

As a non-American, I find the whole affair laughable; that a politician be forced to publicly reveal his birth certificate and have it posted all over the internet is indicative of a political system where politics is secondary to personality. Furthermore, no matter what anyone might say about this not being a racial matter, it is. I don't remember a clamour in 2001 for George W. Bush Junior's birth certificate. The whole affair may well be a case of Conservative sore losers refusing to accept Obama's leadership but, at the end of the day, it is also a reminder that some American political figures feel that a man with African ethnic roots cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the country of his birth. In the supposedly multicultural 21st Century, it is not the message that the U.S. should be sending out to countries where it is ostensibly trying to promote 'democracy' and 'freedom'.

Who cares about legality when it comes to 'freedom'?

United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, announced yesterday plans to provide $25 million of funding to those trying to circumvent restrictive internet policies and technologies. While this is all very well, what gives the US the right to interfere with the policies of sovereign states? Now, I am not being so naive to suggest this is a new approach to foreign affairs. Quite the contrary, I am only surprised that this plan has been declared so openly as this is, after all, the same government which is restricting the access of Federal employees to the Wikileaks site. One can only assume therefore, that the US government sees itself as a far better judge of what information people should access than the Chinese, Burmese, Cuban or Syrian governments identified in Mrs Clinton's speech.

It is no secret that US governments have long considered themselves the global defenders of 'freedom', with numerous Cold War incidents (for example, the Bay of Pigs invasion) and the extensive covert funding of dissidents in countries which found themselves on the wrong side of those in Washington. It is however, intriguing that this funding has been publicised, as it appears to be against the spirit, if not the letter, of international law. The United Nations Charter upholds the sovereignty of all states, which includes the right to a state's authority over its domestic affairs. By openly supporting dissidents and technologies intended to circumvent internet restrictions, the US government is meddling in the domestic affairs of a state and potentially opening a proverbial can of worms.

What gives the US the right to determine what websites the Chinese government, deems 'acceptable'? If the Obama administration is suggesting that the internet is a global resource, then surely any attempts to police it, by the removal of alleged 'terrorist' or 'indecent' material, is a restriction of freedom, as it is a basic right of any human to communicate. Now, while I do not condone the material mentioned above, there needs to be some equality when it comes to the supposed 'freedom' of the internet. If the US believes bomb-making material to be a security threat, why can't the Chinese government argue the same about Twitter? As a social networking tool, Twitter is a potential security threat to autocratic governments and as much as the US may want to see these regimes fall, its higher-than-thou neo-liberal approach is extremely shallow and likely to do more harm than good.

Slaves to Rationalism

The Guardian newspaper yesterday published an article claiming that two mathematicians have adapted a financial formula to predict that England will "maul" Spain in the World Cup final this year. This is frankly ridiculous; the idea that a formula can 'predict' the outcome of a sporting tournament that has not even begun yet is fantastical at best and harrowing at worst. While it is entirely possible, and indeed it is hoped, that the mathematicians in question were just having some fun, there is a possibility that their venture was entirely serious and based on a desire to rationalise everything, including future sporting events. This is where the prediction becomes harrowing, as it reinforces society's dependence upon rationality.

This fascination with rationalism is not a new phenomenon. Hans J. Morgenthau's book Scientific Man vs Power Politics (1947) charts the development of rationalism in society through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the case of the World Cup, the mere attempt to mathematically predict the outcome is ludicrous; it is highly doubftul that the formula used was able to take into account ability, tactics, the weather, the morale of the players, injuries, form and numerous other factors. However, the predicition is sympotmatic of attempts to rationalise society and societal interactions, to place science in a social environment and accept the results without question.

If there is an accident in the workplace, for example, health and safety officers are called out to investigate. The rationale behind this is the idea that accidents only happen when something does not work as it is 'supposed' to, thus accidents are preventable providing everything works perfectly all the time. This approach is commendable, however people are not rational, they are not perfect; conflict and irrational thinking are unfortunately integral to human nature. Nevertheless, society is determined to instill a scientific rationale of perfection, which has led to an obsession with health and safety. If an accident occurs, there not only has to be a reason but there has to be something which can be improved or changed to prevent such an event from occuring in the future. Now, health and safety is important and of course, everything must be done to prevent accidents from happening but the fact of the matter is they do happen. The ambition to eradicate accidents from life is, unfortunately, doomed to failure because as mentioned above, people are irrational. However many times people might be told to climb a ladder or a cliff in a certain manner, someone will inevitably decide to do it different. There might be a reason, there might not be. The notion of the whim is not to be derided, it has arguably led to a variety of inventions and developments which have characterised contemporary society. Trying to eradicate irrational thinking threatens to remove what separates humans from machines: independent thought.

Of course, if England do go on to win the World Cup and thrash Spain in the process, there will be no complaints from this author. However, it would not change the fact that a mathematical prediction made 21 days before the tournament began was yet another reminder of the ludicrous reliance on rationalism that has infected society.

Goodbye Constellation, Hello...Nothing

This week, US President Barack Obama announced that he was cancelling NASA's Constellation project. Publicised under the George Bush Jr. administration, the Constellation project included the Orion programme, which was intended to replace the Space Shuttle. The reasons given for the cancellation were the significant investment yet lack of innovation. On the one hand, one can appreciate the frustration of the Obama administration; billions of dollars have been spent only for plans which echo 1960s technology and concepts. However, on the other hand, there is the argument that the technology and concepts employed in the 1960s were successful; they landed man on the moon after all.

After the lunar landings and the cancellation of the Apollo programme by the Reagan administration in the 1970s, further lunar exploration or settlement appeared to have been removed from the political agenda. Instead, the idea of recyclable spacecraft became popular, albeit spacecraft that could only travel within a certain distance of the earth. The Space Shuttle was never designed to travel to the Moon, let alone Mars. The Obama administration may complain that the Constellation programme was based on 1960s technology but nevertheless that technology was designed to travel to celestial bodies (specifically the Moon) and return safely, which is surely a more appropriate foundation for future programmes than recyclable spacecraft which are restricted to the Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). The concept of the Space Shuttle was ideal for the political ambitions of the time; the Moon had been 'conquered', insofar as it had been visited by man, ending the 'Space Race' and thus leaving no particular goals to be accomplished. Suggestions for Moon settlements proved too expensive to be worthwhile, hence there was little need for a spacecraft designed to facilitate travel to celestial bodies. From this, the Space Shuttle was born, allowing recyclable travel to LEO and back for the flexible deployment of orbital satellites.

With the cancellation of the Constellation programme, the Obama administration has confused matters slightly. On the one hand, it has increased NASA's budget by $6 billion per year, an increase which has been sorely needed ever since George Bush Jr. announced his desire for a manned mission to Mars, while on the other, one questions the message transmitted by the cancellation of a programme in which billions of dollars and thousands of man-hours have been invested. Orion may well have not been the most original programme ever but it was based on a functioning formula.

It is understandable that ventures to the Moon and Mars may not appear cost-effective to the Obama administration, though there is an argument that national pride and the spirit of scientific exploration are sufficient to justify such missions. Certainly these arguments appear to have been put forward by critics in the US Senate. The absence of a mission to the Moon aside, there is a significant issue with the cancellation of the Constellation programme in that nothing has been proposed to replace the Space Shuttle. Those behind proposed budget appear to hope that commercial interests in space exploration will be enough to help the development of future manned spacecraft. That is all very well but currently, the most advanced commercial spacecraft are those belonging to Virgin Galactic and are based on a similar concept to the Space Shuttle; short hops into orbit and back. Unless there is a significant incentive offered for commercial investors to work on developing future spacecraft, it seems doubtful that manned US spacecraft designed to travel past Higher Earth Orbit (HEO) will be seen any time soon. Celestial bodies are exempt from national appropriation under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, meaning that the commercial exploitation of those bodies is also debatable, therefore restricting the prospect of significant financial return for investors.

While the reasons for the cancellation of the Constellation programme may be understandable, NASA has been left in limbo. It has an increased budget but the Space Shuttle remains due to be replaced by the end of 2010, leaving NASA and the US without a spacecraft on the horizon, forcing them to rely on other countries for missions to the International Space Station for years to come, a dependence which some critics will undoubtedly perceive to be a national humiliation.

Hugo Chavez presents a worrying prospect for the future

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, announced last Friday that Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, otherwise known as Carlos the Jackal and currently incarcerated in France having been found responsible for numerous murders and bombings, is a "revolutionary fighter" and has been "unfairly convicted". One really has to wonder about the intentions of Mr Chavez, especially since he allegedly also praised Robert Mugabe and Idi Amin, calling the latter a "patriot" and arguing that both had wrongly been portrayed as the "bad guys". For those unfamiliar with African history or current affairs, such praise is on a similar level to suggesting that Adolf Hitler was a great visionary for peace and reconciliation. 300,000 died during Amin's reign in Uganda, while Mugabe's policies and prejudices have led to economic catastrophe and famine in Zimbabwe, not to mention allegations of war crimes.

Many British and American newspapers have chosen to focus on Chavez's praise for Sanchez, though surely the more worrying prospect is that of a national leader prepared to suggest Amin and Mugabe are not 'bad'. Usually, labels such as 'good' and 'bad' are far too ambiguous to be used to describe the careers and policies of politicians, however I think it is fair to say that mass murder, famine, rape and economic failure on an unfathomable scale merit such generalisation. Chavez, it seems, has tried to defend the indefensible.

On the other hand, perhaps this is just a glimpse of the future. Josef Stalin is now revered by many despite the atrocities committed during his rule of the Soviet Union. If a man responsible for the deaths of millions can have his crimes blissfully forgotten by so many only 50 years after his death, who knows what will happen in a half century from now. Perhaps idealist university students and nationalists will be happily showing off grandiose posters of Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe, portraying them to be heroes. The mere thought of those leaders being perceived in that manner is sickening but seeing as Stalin's crimes have been forgotten so easily by so many, there is an uncomfortable possibility that the thought may one day become reality. Chavez's speech, and others like it, only serve to help erase memories of the horrors of the past.

Van Rompuy's election goes to show that bigger isn't always better

Putting to one side the controversy surrounding the mere existence of a EU president, the election of Belgian Prime Minister Mr Van Rompuy is undoubtedly an intriguing one. Critics argue that Mr Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton, elected to the position of High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security, lack ambition. Even if they are not particularly ambitious, it can be argued that they will have ambition thrust upon them by their new responsibilities. Despite the various criticisms raised against Mr Van Rompuy, his election may well prevent potentially dangerous power struggles within the EU that may have resulted from the appointment of a strong political figure, supported by some but not all.

An interesting point raised by the BBC's Gavin Hewitt in his blog was that Angela Merkel believed Mr Van Rompuy to offer "consensus". Perhaps this was the main reason for his appointment. Critics may bemoan a lack of an established, strong leadership figure but it is questionable whether that was really what was required The furore around Tony Blair's candidature suggested that an established, 'strong' figure may be no more than a divisive hindrance to the EU. Mr Van Rompuy's relative anonymity within the minds and opinions of many observers could be one of the main reasons for his election, alongside his linguistic and mediation skills. It must also be remembered that Mr Van Rompuy has been the Belgian Prime Minister for nine months, which is an acceptable length of time considering the continuous political turmoil that has blighted the country over the past two years. He is by no means the novice some critics might portray him to be.

One could even go so far as to hope that this trend is continued with future EU Presidents. Though commentators such as Martin Kettle wish for a stronger political persona to eventually replace Mr Van Rompuy, it is possible that the political power and backgrounds of such figures may prove just as divisive as Tony Blair's candidature for this election. Consensus is the name of the game and as Chancellor Merkel pointed out, Mr Van Rompuy seems to have that covered.