Posts Tagged: cop15

News clippings — No Comments
23
Dec 09

How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room

“Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.”

Read on: How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room | Mark Lynas – The Guardian

in Danish / Polemos — 1 Comment
22
Dec 09

Muligheden af en anden verden

I fredags var Anne Knudsen som sĂĄ ofte før 1 ude med sin lettere sløve rive efter alle, der ikke indgĂĄr i “det store vi” med dertil hørende respekt for ejendomsretten og generel tilfredshed med det bestĂĄende samfund. Hun indleder med, hvad der i en bedre verden var en overflødig anerkendelse af ytringsfriheden. Hmm…

Hvis man anerkender menneskerettighederne, hvilket Anne Knudsen jo foregiver, giver det ikke mening at relativisere og hierarkisere dem. Menneskerettighederne betragtes vel som ubestridelige, som a priori strukturer i menneskets konstitution. Er ytringsfriheden vigtigere end artikel 6, der fremstĂĄr lettere overset i de politihandlinger, som Anne Knudsen hylder: “Ethvert menneske har overalt i verden ret til at blive anerkendt som retssubjekt”? Derudover er menneskerettighederne jo en “anerkendelse af den mennesket iboende værdighed og af de lige og ufortabelige rettigheder,” hvorfor de som fundamentale menneskelige elementer er evige. Skal man absolut give dem en historie, springer 1948 i øjnene som ĂĄbenlyst pejlemærke for alle menneskerettighederne, hvorfor det igen er meningsløst at tale om “ældste.”
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  1. se evt. vores sidste svada mod Anne Knudsen her ↩
Polemos / Waffle — No Comments
14
Dec 09

To speak and say nothing

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“I am here, and there is nothing to say.” “I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it.” These two quotes are, respectively, the first and one of the first sentences of John Cage’s Lecture on Nothing 1. Usually, to speak and say nothing is not appreciated by the listener, the speech will be categorized as waffle, a waste of time. And rightfully so! There is, however, such an abundance of empty utterances that actually aim at – but horribly miss – meaningful communication that, from time to time, you long for the willful undermining of language, the brave probings of nonsense.

These are the days of the COP15 summit and more or less everyone is busy stating their views of a better world. There are a lot of professional opinion makers in the fray. Prominent among them, Naomi Klein yesterday contributed with the following commentary in her Memo to Danes: Even You Cannot Control This Summit: “In the morning demonstrators are going to march to the Bella Center to demand real solutions to the climate crisis, not the fuzzy math and carbon trading on offer inside.”

Carbon trading might be a legitimate means for handling the current problems, it might be the contrary, but to simply oppose “real solutions” to “fuzzy math and carbon trading” is downright silly. Why is math an unreal tool to the task? One should think that mathematics would be a necessary and very real element in fighting climate change. What she means, of course, is that the official negotiators have trouble agreeing on the math and that carbon trading is an unacceptable solution. But sadly, the math seems equally fuzzy at Klimaforum09, and carbon trading is, supposedly, a manifestly more real solution than “real solutions.”
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  1. A 2007 performance of Lecture on Nothing can be found at Ubuweb and heard here:
    ↩
All things theory / Polemos / Waffle — No Comments
9
Dec 09

We the People

“We the people” is a weird constellation. Is the plural subsumed under the singular or is it the other way around? Who is “We” and what is a people? Well in the case of “We the people,” “We” are the “people” of the United States, but again what does this entail? This question has no doubt been scrutinized endlessly by jurists and philosophers and our goal here is not to attempt what better men and women have already achieved. It is simply to draw attention to an unsettling frequency of similar statements in current political discourse and the problematic consequences thereof.

Let us begin at home. At their main annual convention this summer, leader of Danish People’s Party Pia Kjærsgaard said something like the following: “So while the potential maximum penalty for a crime has maybe doubled, the actually passed sentences have only augmented slightly. We will not stand for this. The judges are not the rulers of this country!” As well as crying out for mandatory minimums, this angry minx is decreeing the power of “We” over the power of the judges. “We the people” may be sovereign in American law but even the Americans try to uphold the seperation of powers as described by Montesquieu. Kjærsgaard is actually calling for direct popular control of the judiciary branch. “We the people shall not accept delicate judicial treatment of those who dare defy our laws.”
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