We all try to make sense of the world in our own ways. We try to understand the world through the information that we receive from our newspapers, TV and internet portals. We see the world through the prism of consciousness or awareness that we build after gleaning information from these sources.
But how much can we rely on the mainstream media to know what is really going on? How much is BS and how much the truth? Is the truth somewhere else? Are things being hidden from us? Are there vested interests that want us to know things partially or differently? We want to know all these and more because we don't know what the future holds for us. Because we care about our future.
Don't believe in anything blindly just because someone is saying it. Always remember this. Use your own brain. Verify what has been stated. Look for evidence and analyze things on your own. Then you might get to the truth. Truth often lies buried under tons of lies and misinformation.
That's why it is important that we question every bit of information that is put forth for our consumption (to manufacture our consent). Remember, we must be skeptical or the truth will evade us. We live in dangerous times, there is no doubt about it.
When things are so complicated, there is a theory that can simplify things for you. In fact, there are many theories going around these days. Let us start with this one. It is a theory by Michael Ruppert, a former US police officer.
If there is one documentary you must watch this year or the next, it is this one: Collapse. It will make you see the world a bit differently. It is based on Michael Ruppert's theory.
On Collapse, America's most respected film critic says, "I don't know when I've seen a thriller more frightening. I couldn't tear my eyes from the screen. "Collapse" is even entertaining, in a macabre sense. I think you owe it to yourself to see it."
Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. After leaving the Pakistan Air Force Academy to pursue a career in journalism, he worked for Newsline, India Today, and The Washington Post. While heading the BBC Urdu Service in London, he penned his first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Here, he is in conversation with Zafar Anjum, co-editor of Writers Connect, in Singapore. The author was in Singapore to attend the Singapore Writers Festival this year.
Looking at the leaked secret Danish document, Copenhagen seems more about money (carbon markets) than about climate change
By Zafar Anjum
I am not a climate change denier. Climate change is a reality because climate is meant to change. It is a dynamic phenomenon of nature and it has been changing ever since it came into existence.
When we talk about ‘climate change’, we refer to the phenomenon of global warming due to the greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major component of the greenhouse gases.
The question is whether it is the humans that are emitting the excessive carbon dioxide that is polluting the earth and making it an unsustainable place.
For years, this was the main question in the climate change debate: one group blamed the humans, another the sun (the sun argument being that the sun was getting hotter and hence was the main culprit behind the earth’s rising temperatures.)
Proponents of both sides of the argument have been championed and funded by vested interests. The ‘humans being responsible for the climate change’ side has been championed by the green brigade. Some political groups even brand them as “the green fascists” who want “to impose their de-industrialisation agenda to kill people”. The other side, the climate change deniers, are often backed up by the traditional energy—oil and coal—industry.
There are climate change scientists in both camps to argue for or against the motion. The common man was confused, not knowing which side to support. Until Al Gore walked into the picture.
Due to a concerted global media campaign, the climate change sceptics kept losing the ground. Once Al Gore went around the world with his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the room for scepticism shrunk considerably. From AP to the New York Times to CNN, the world’s agenda setting media spoke in one word: Climate change was real and we humans must do something about it! The world’s timid and copycat media repeated what their leaders asked them to print and speak. The global consensus on climate change was thus built.
It didn’t take long for the Nobel Committee in Sweden to award a Nobel Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC, the United Nation’s body studying and building global consensus and policies on climate change.
A few months ago, when Obama won the Nobel Prize for Peace, I was reminded of Gore’s Nobel. True to my gut feeling, within a few weeks of winning the Nobel, Obama ordered a 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan. More war for peace—the classic Orwellian doublespeak!
Sorry for the digression but I couldn’t help making the remark.
Once the consensus on climate change was built, the world’s most influential people started using the IPCC to push through their agenda. Kyoto happened. It was decided that all countries of the world will have to cut CO2 emissions and a quota system was developed. That’s when climate change stopped being about climate change.
Copenhagen: About climate or about money?
Weeks before world leaders would meet at Copenhagen in December this year, e-mails from scientists working on data gathering for the IPCC at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, were leaked. The leaked e-mails, among many other despicable malpractices, established that scientists at UEA were tweaking the data to suit the argument that the temperature on earth was rising.
The leaked e-mails created a brouhaha, casting deep mistrust on the science behind the climate change movement. Regrettably, it didn’t change much at Copenhagen. Only Gore had to cancel his ticketed speech.
But that is not my point. No matter what the science says, we all know that greed is not good. As Mahatma Gandhi has said, there is enough on this earth for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed. Unfortunately, in today’s world of globalised corporatism, we live through the constant cycle of consumption and production. We can’t afford a slowdown and it means we have to keep consuming and keep growing. That means more pollution for the earth.
One quick little example: In New Delhi, the government has tried to combat the pollution problem through CNG (compressed natural gas) buses for public transportation. What it achieved in eight years was washed away by the pollution generated by the cars that joined the roads of New Delhi in just one year! But can you ask the Delhiites not to buy cars? That is against the idea of growth.
So, under Copenhagen, countries such as India and China will continue to grow and pollute. So will the developed countries. Only they will have to buy some carbon credits from poor nations where people don’t have enough money to buy cars and run factories. The rulers of poor countries don’t mind this arrangement as long as they get their dirty hands on the moolah! Enter the world of carbon credits and carbon money managed by the World Bank!
Danish text leaked
The leaked “Danish” text, that became available to UK-based newspaper, The Guardian, clearly points out what the world is going to achieve at Copenhagen. The paper reported: “The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol—the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.”
The text’s main points include:
• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;
• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called "the most vulnerable";
• Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;
• Do not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.
“Hansen is also fiercely critical of Barack Obama—and even Al Gore, who won a Nobel peace prize for his efforts to get the world to act on climate change—saying politicians have failed to meet what he regards as the moral challenge of our age.”
Hansen says climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics. "This is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill," he said. "On those kind of issues, you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50 per cent or reduce it 40 per cent."
I don’t see any reason why one shouldn’t agree with Hansen. If we can’t throw the politics and greed out of Copenhagen, then it must fail for the good of the larger humanity.
Indian thriller writer Mukul Deva’s first two novels, Lashkar and Salim Must Die, are bestsellers in India. His third novel, Blowback, is releasing in January 2009. And he has already finished writing his fourth, the last book in a four-part series on global terrorism.
Mukul is an ex-Indian army officer and a security consultant who, before turning to writing novels, wrote a few books on corporate management. You can find more about him here.
Writers Connect co-editor Zafar Anjum had an exclusive conversation with Deva at his residence in Singapore in November this year. In this interview, Deva shares his insights on writing thrillers and also talks about his journey so far as a writer. If you want to be a thriller writer like Deva, he has some special advise for you.
We all try to make sense of the world in our own ways. We try to understand the world through the information that we receive from our newspapers, TV and internet portals. We see the world through the prism of consciousness or awareness that we build after gleaning information from these sources.
