iraq

Yes, I'm still meant to be on internet silence, but Linux and various bits of software have me stumped for a while until I get some help from the mailing lists, so I thought I'd cast my mind over the implications of the court case this week that resulted in a jury deciding that it was okay to commit a crime in order to prevent what the perpetrators believed would be a greater harm in the future. The case in point was that they had committed (and admitted) criminal damage by climbing a chimney at a Kent power station with the intent of scrawling graffiti on it in protest at its pollution record and plans to expand the facility, which, their oh so clever advocate declared would cause more and more widespread damage to people and property through the global warming it would contribute to.

Now, some of the more unthinking environmentalists might see this as a great victory. A court recognized that global warming was such an imminent threat to life and property that it was justifiable to commit brazen thuggery leading to criminal damage on anything that allegedly contributed to that global warming. Yay!?

Nay! I have two problems with this.

First is the acceptance, apparently by both judge and jury (and so, you may think, all "reasonable people"), not just that anthropogenic climate change is a fact but also such a grave threat that it justifies individuals taking the law into their own hands. To my mind this is still a matter in the political arena. Not only are there still, and perhaps growing, voices of dissent on the very premise of the debate; that mankind is responsible for such a change that it is a threat to the planet's very future. But also about what to do about it and when. A power station after all merely supplies a demand. Is the power generator guilty or the consumer making those demands? It is more dangerous to disrupt existing dwindling supplies before we have worked out how to replace them with cleaner affordable technologies? If the threat from global warming is real, so presumably is the threat of harm through disrupted power supplies.

Second is how this operates as a precedent in other, possibly more serious cases - although I heard someone saying that this decision will not be treated as forming a precedent, I'm not clear how that can be prevented. It is okay to murder an abortionist in order to stop the immediate harm to others he or she will cause? That threat, after all, is far more immediate and traceable to an individual than the effects of a single coal power station amongst all the coal fired power stations and other "climate vandals". We're starting to get not only into the realms of Philip K Dick's pre-crime but vigilante prevention of what individuals claim may be a pre-crime. This is hardly the basis for the rule of law.

Oh, you can say that no court is going to acquit a murderer because they thought they were preventing a bigger crime, but actually we already do. The "reasonable force" defense can be used to justify a death in the process of preventing an immediate threat to others' life. This decision seems to extend the boundaries of "immediate threat" let alone accurate identification of the person causing that immediate threat.  One could, and many do, fight abortion on the basis that the most immediate threat t future generations of humanity is eradicating them before they are born.  If we're going to adopt a principle (and I do) that we have a responsibility of stewardship not to harm future generations' survival on the planet then it would be legitimate for others to argue more forcefully that we have a responsibility to see those future generations actually survive as far as birth!

Anyway, two odd sounding sources provide what I believe are better alternative "precedents" to work from. First, there is a Catholic maxim that it is not legitimate to cause one moral bad, or an act that could foreseeably lead to morally bad consequences in order to prevent another, even near certain, specific bad. It is used mostly about abortion again. It is used to argue that it is not even permissible to abort a new life in order to prevent the death of the mother - often in the circumstances of an ectopic pregnancy for example.

Of course the world's aggressors, including the US and UK, routinely ignore this. They argue that foreseeable "collateral damage" is permissable to remove a dictator, for example. It is not. Terrorising and killing the people of Bagdad in "Shock and Awe", even as "collateral", was morally repugnant, notwithstanding our general agreement that the regime they were trying to punish or remove was also morally repugnant. The results of ignoring of this basic principle are there for us all to see - there can be little doubt now that more people in Iraq have suffered for longer under the oversight of the western occupying forces than it is likely would have happened at the hands of the previous repugnant regime. At least there could have been alternatives that held less potential for further suffering.

But on the environment, the libertarians' respect for the rule of law provides a better alternative to various bearded crusties climbing a chimney and committing vigilante criminal damage. Locke's proviso can be used, for example, to tackle pollution. If you, a power generator or anyone else - a pig farm even, pollute the atmosphere we both have to share, we have the right to legal remedy. Just as much as if you came along and started digging a hole in my prize rose border. Indeed this ought to work better than any political "solution". Protectionism is a political strategy, and even Green politicians will forcibly protect their favourite, in this case, power generation mechanism against legitimate complaint of harm. If planning permission were truly privatised, those affected most would almost certainly do better out of it than they will once the government has removed most of their rights in order to force their political idea of strategic energy infrastructure through.

Yes, we all need power, but left to ourselves we would probably not choose to have a nuclear reactor at the bottom of our garden. But, as they say, everyone has their price. If, collectively, my neighbourhood decided that the compensation on offer was enough when weighed against the costs of electricity or the convenience of not having a long transmission route or any potential danger they'd accept that nuclear reactor. If nobody accepts any price for nuclear, they have to weigh that decision against the potential alternatives. If nobody wants a giant power station, then we perhaps have to accept that we will have to help our neighbours fund micro-generation.

If you are already a Christian baptised in a trinitarian tradition, all you really need to do to be "converted" to Rome, is to undergo the Sacrament of Reconciliation ("confession"). Now, of course, it's perfectly possible that in a twenty-five minute private audience this morning with the Pope, Tony Blair may have already done so.

Part of the Sacrament is to perform a penance which is intended to help you reflect on the sinfulness of what you have just confessed and consider how you will avoid doing such things again.

What should brother Tony's penance be I wonder? For me, with some pretty venial sins to confess, it was to meditate on certain Psalms. But I hadn't gone against all the exhortations of the highest authorities in the church and sent men to kill and die in a far off land on a false prospectus in arrogant disregard of evidence collected by servants of the international community on the ground.

So maybe his penance should be to hold a proper inquiry into the decision to go to war and, when it is completed, apologise and face the consequences of his decisions like a man.

Technorati Tags: iraq, catholicism, penance, tony blair

On the occasion of his visit to Iraq on a "fact finding mission" the BBC report that "Gordon Brown has said lessons must be learned on use of intelligence in the run-up to war" and that "in future intelligence analysis must be kept independent of politics."  read more »

The Guardian on Thursday presages a Downing Street Press-fest at which Tony Blair will apparently claim that we've all "misunderstood me over the Middle East".

Apparently...he will "face down his critics today over his controversial handling of the Middle East crisis by insisting that he has been working throughout for a ceasefire in Lebanon and that his position has been misunderstood. He will argue at a Downing Street press conference that he wanted a ceasefire, but only if it was coupled with a clear understanding that the Hizbullah militia would be disarmed."

So that'll be a "no" then Tony, we've understood you perfectly well. You don't actually give a stuff about the real people whose lives have been cut short and homes and livelihoods torn apart by what's been happening (actually on both sides but since Israel has all the responsibilities and moral capacity of a democratic nation state they bear most of the blame).

You're happiest with your seven good buddies tucked up in some posh hotel like prep schoolers playing that great game of Diplomacy or like the crowned heads posturing in the pier ballroom on "Oh what a lovely war!". You want a ceasefire but only once 20% of a country has been displaced or left utterly destitute. Can you imagine not wanting a ceasefire until after London and the South East region had been evacuated, bulldozed and occupied? No.

The "rules of war" and human rights were established to prevent a recurrence of razing villages, treating civilian areas as battle grounds to target your artillery at. I actually have more respect for what Israel are now doing - starting on the eyeball to eyeball anti-guerilla fighting on the ground - than the softening up and remote control village clearances by artillery and bombing (now acknowledged by Israel to have been completely intentional all along as some of us predicted).

You'd rather condone human rights abuses and war crimes when they're being carried out by the lot on "our side" (apparently) than stick up for what is right - the defense of the innocents (also on both sides). Presumably your party is worried that they'll never be allowed into International Labour Organization meetings ever again having surrendered any claim to being the champions of ordinary people.

I don't believe anyone can really talk properly about what happens in the future until the guns have fallen silent. The difference between that happening two weeks ago and next week will only have been that "our ally" achieved most of its illegal and immoral military aims before you made them stop with hundreds dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. And I have no doubt Hezbullah is now stronger by a few village butchers, bankers and undertakers because nobody else was going to help them fight for their homes, lands and livelihoods.

While governments are pushing options round tables thousands of miles away, hundreds of thousands of lives are being uprooted and devastated. The poor and excluded are always the victims of war.