Please support a World Parliament that is democratically elected in place of the superpower-controlled Security Council – we must coalesce  as a species and become responsible for our own internal governance.

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The topics on this website range from an impatient distaste for militarism through to speculation on trans-Humanism and our destiny within the Universe. Humanism is unashamedly utopian from his perspective, and his new novel portraying the ascendancy of Humanism and the UN is available on Amazon.

The Future News on his personal website at Humanist.ws offers up  ”news releases” as we might like to see them someday, when ideas are allowed to come to the fore, ahead of commercial and nationalist interests.

Dwight Gilbert Jones studied Physics, Philosophy and Biosciences at McGill, Simon Fraser  and Berkeley, and writes speculative fiction. He lives in Vancouver, Canada and is married with four children.

For his latest school science fair project he has invented painted, plastic decals that can be placed — discreetly — right in the middle of a window pane.

“This paint is a colour that birds can see but humans can’t,” he said Wednesday on CBC Radio’s All in a Day. “It’s like putting a big stop sign in the middle of the window.”

The colour is ultraviolet, beyond the range of colours visible to humans. That means the “stop sign” lets birds know the window is solid, but is nearly invisible to humans.

Similar flying falcon-shaped decals already exist on the windows of some buildings, but unlike Sobcov’s, they are black and can obstruct part of the window.

Sobcov, who studies at the Turnbull School, a private school in Ottawa, said he first fell in love with birds while on a trip with his parents to Costa Rica four years ago. He learned that bird populations were decreasing around the world, and that many scientists were blaming global warming.

He later read that about 500 million birds a year in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada were dying as a result of crashing into windows. Many deadly bird collision are with the windows of skyscrapers along their migratory paths.

Sobcov resolved to help save the lives of some of those birds.

Paint for cosmic bowling

He started researching bird vision and found out that a bird’s eye view includes colours in the ultraviolet range.

After a search, he managed to find a company in Montreal that made fluorescent ultraviolet paint. The paint is used in the entertainment industry for things like “cosmic bowling,” to make lanes glow. In normal indoor lighting, the paint is invisible, but when ultraviolet “black lights” shine on it, it emits light of a different colour — within the range that people can see.

So far, Sobcov has tested his flying falcon-shaped decals on the sunroom of a cottage neighbouring his family’s cottage.

“Immediately the birds stopped flying into those windows,” he said.

Sobcov has since posted a notice in the newspaper asking people to volunteer to help him test the decals, which can be easily peeled off and reused on a different window or a different part of the same window. He said he received responses from about 40 volunteers, including many who asked how they can buy the decals.

Sobcov said he needs to have his experiment completed by early February, but after that he may consider marketing his new invention.

After a comment on the story on CBC.ca suggested that a coating be applied internally to double-pane windows, to provide a visible grid or screen to birds, there is now the prospect that the Canadian building code will be altered to stipulate that for every exterior window in new houses.

1) Military Spending

No matter how bad the recession gets, how close we are to an actual depression, the Pentagon’s budget will never be discussed as a prime opportunity to conserve resources in this time of need. In fact, the New York Times published a feature article last week arguing that “defense” spending was the way to rejuvenate the economy.

2) Nuclear Weapons

With all the hand-wringing that Iran may be on the verge of having nuclear weapons, or that Pakistan’s may fall into the wrong hands, there is never a suggestion that the time may be at hand whereby nuclear weapons must be universally banned and their manufacture made illegal. The Pentagon’s stated policy that any competing nation may be pre-emptively attacked is the greatest insult inflicted on our species since the decrees of the Romans.

3) A World Government

The idea of a world government centered on the United Nations is anathema in the US, where it is most always pictured as an Orwellian plot to institute Big Brother himself. Yet the UN is expected to resolve every little war or famine when its budget is smaller than the NYC fire department’s.

4) Metrification

How much longer can the US be the only remaining country on the planet to take miles, pounds and gallons seriously? What does this act of governmental cowardice do to hamstring manufacturing, decade after decade?

5) The 10:1 Wage Disparity and Devaluation

The US will lose just about every factory that remains to offshore labor if it cannot devalue its currency quickly and thoroughly enough to universally lower US wages within hailing distance of those in China. Only when the millions of unemployed have no income at all, and swell to become tens of millions, will this grave matter be addressed for what it is. In the meantime there is a devaluation race between the US dollar, the Yen, Sterling and the Euro that is undeclared but in full cry. Obama must print a trillion dollars before they become a trillion quarters, but like all of the above, you won’t see that in the press either.

In a step that sealed the fate of Iraq war funding until next June, the House of Representatives voted on Thursday to approve $162 billion for the occupation, with no strings attached. The vote follows a series of compromises and revisions over the past two months, ultimately resulting in major concessions from Democrats.

    The first House vote on war funding, taken last month, failed due to the combined influence of antiwar Democrats and conservative Republicans: a sizable number of hard-liners refused to fund the war with a bill that contained any inkling of “conditions” placed on the funds. Only one restriction is included this time around: a ban on permanent bases, which was also attached to the Defense Authorization bill that passed the House last month, and has been attached to several spending and authorization bills over the past couple of years.

    The current version of the supplemental is much closer to the plans of House Republicans – and the Bush administration – than to the initial proposal presented by Democrats, who make up the majority of the House.
“This legislation shows that when Democrats are actually willing to reach out and work with Republicans, we can get things done for the American people,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a statement late Wednesday.

    White House Budget Director Jim Nussle was equally enthusiastic about the bill, telling Congressional Quarterly that the administration “obviously” approved of it. The legislation satisfies Bush’s demands not only for fiscal year 2008 funding, but also for about half of the funding needed to support status quo operations in Iraq for 2009.

    The bill does throw one fairly large bone to centrist and liberal Democrats, despite the protestations of the conservative Blue Dog Democrats: funding for a new GI bill that would grant a free college education to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. The supplemental legislation also includes a three-month extension on unemployment benefits. Additionally, the package supplies $2.6 billion for flood assistance in Iowa, a key domestic priority.

    The rule by which the resolutions were decided made it possible for pro-war Congress members to vote for the Iraq funding while opposing the domestic spending, and vice versa, since the two sections were voted on as separate amendments.

    The supplemental vote provoked sharp splits among Democrats, largely disappointing both the Out of Iraq Caucus and the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, according to Craig Jennings, federal fiscal policy analyst at the government watchdog group OMB Watch. The Blue Dogs had hoped that the GI Bill funds would be offset by a tax hike, according to the principle of PAYGO, by which all direct spending increases should be offset by revenue increases.

    ”Ultimately, the package is the politically-possible result of Congressional leadership efforts to move their priorities,” Jennings told Truthout. “Getting the troops safely out of Iraq and adhering to PAYGO rules are evidently not their numbers one and two priorities.”

    Stalwart antiwar Democrats are having none of the plan. Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee is sticking to her opposition to the war and will continue to fight it, despite the passage of the funding bill, her press secretary, Julie Nickson, told Truthout.

    ”We should not provide one more dime for funding combat operations but should fully fund the safe and responsible redeployment of all troops and contractors from Iraq,” Lee said this morning.

    Yet, the remainder of the year doesn’t leave much opportunity for dramatic changes on Iraq, once funding has been approved. Historically, the best strategy for altering the course of wars has been attaching policy initiatives to spending bills. In order to ensure troop safety and welfare, war spending bills must pass, and must be considered in a reasonably timely manner. Stand-alone legislation advocating troop withdrawals or other measures championed by antiwar Congress members are typically shot down quickly, or linger in committee indefinitely, never to reach the floor for a vote.

    ”With the passage of the Defense Authorization bill and the passage of this war supplemental, antiwar Congresspersons really have no more vehicles by which to push antiwar legislation,” Jennings said. “They have been pretty ‘flexible’ in their opposition to the war.”

    However, both Jennings and military policy analyst Travis Sharp note that in exchange for their concessions on Iraq, the Democrats picked up some crucial domestic wins.

    ”With the economy struggling, these domestic victories are important during an election year,” Sharp, who works for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told Truthout. “The Democratic leadership is willing to take heat from the antiwar base in order to reinforce the fact that Iraq is Bush’s fault, the only way to get out of Iraq is to elect Democrats in the fall, and there are pressing domestic concerns that must be dealt with.”

    The GI Bill and unemployment benefits, Sharp says, represent significant triumphs for Democrats. The former not only promises a four-year college education to veterans, but allows them to transfer that benefit to spouses and dependents. The latter provides unemployed workers who have exhausted their benefits with 13 extra weeks to find a job.

    Jeff Leys, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, argues that the unemployment extension falls short of satisfactory.

    ”Unemployed workers will continue to lose unemployment benefits, though now it will be 13 weeks longer before the benefits run out and they and their families are faced with the stark reality of no income for food and housing,” Leys told Truthout.

    The supplemental now moves from the House to the Senate, and leadership in that body appears open to the compromise.

    ”We look forward to reviewing the House’s proposal for the supplemental,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley, told Truthout. “We will take it up quickly once we receive it.”

    As for the antiwar crowd, Thursday’s vote signals a finality of sorts for its efforts to sway a Bush-bound Congress.

    ”Those of us whose work tends to focus upon ending the war will have to come to terms with reality,” Leys said. “We can take our marbles and go home, continuing to live with pipe dreams of impeachment, filibusters, mass action on singular days of action, or a revolution in government. Or we can make the hard assessments of the political lay of the land and recommit to grassroots organizing, with the full knowledge that this organizing includes being engaged in the electoral process.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The ouster of the Air Force’s top two officials may spur even more Pentagon spending on equipment for current wars and end production of pricey F-22 jets designed for potential conflicts with countries such as China. 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates forced the resignations of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley on Thursday after gaffes involving nuclear and missile security. 

The Air Force’s accidental shipping of ballistic-missile fuses to Taiwan may have been the last straw amid strains over acquisition priorities, remotely piloted vehicles and other friction about post-Iraq needs, experts on the military said. 

Starting months ago, Gates had singled out the Air Force’s top-of-the-line Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) F-22 Raptor fighter jet as a prime example of what he deemed misplaced military priorities. 

“The reality is we are fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theatre,” Gates told a Senate committee in February. He later urged all the services to send more remotely piloted planes, such as General Atomics’ Predator, to the battlefield, a step that feeds surveillance video to troops in real time. 

Under Wynne and Moseley, the Air Force had sought to buy 381 radar-evading F-22s — more than twice as many as the 183 budgeted by the Defense Department. The F-22 costs more than $132 million apiece. 

Dov Zakheim, who retired as the Pentagon’s chief financial officer in 2004, said the Air Force shake-up would prompt the Army, Navy and Marine Corps to rethink their big-ticket acquisition plans as well to make sure they met Gates’ goals. 

“What just happened underscores the secretary’s concern that the (Defense) department pursue programs that are most relevant to the kinds of wars that he expects the United States to continue to fight,” Zakheim said in a telephone interview.

MORE TRUCKS 

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan already have begun to reshape Pentagon procurement in favor of such things as armored trucks and other land systems, a trend likely to grow as the Army and Marine Corps continue to add troops.

In fiscal 2007, for instance, Britain’s BAE Systems Plc (BAES.L: Quote, Profile, Research), a producer of armored vehicles among other advanced hardware, became the Pentagon’s sixth-biggest supplier, up from No. 8 in 2006. One year ago, BAE bought Armor Holdings Inc, a maker of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected trucks. 

BAE’s prime contracts shot up more than 87 percent during this period, to $9.8 billion from $4.7 billion, the biggest percentage increase of any of the Pentagon’s top 10 suppliers. 

Gains for the top three contractors were much smaller, according to William Hartung of the New America Foundation, a New York research group. 

Lockheed Martin’s Pentagon prime contracts rose 4.5 percent from $26.6 billion to $27.9 billion while Boeing Co (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) awards grew 11.3 percent from $20.3 billion to $22.5 billion. Northrop Grumman Corp’s (NOC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) contracts climbed 4.2 percent, from $16.6 billion to $16.8 billion, Hartung found. 

Spurred by Gates’ emphasis on equipping for today’s wars, Hartung predicted multibillion-dollar programs like Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Army’s Future Combat Systems, co-managed by Boeing and SAIC Corp (SAI.N: Quote, Profile, Research), would be cut back or stretched out. 

Gates has argued that the F-22, the top U.S. dogfighter, is “principally for use against a near peer,” Pentagon code words for China and Russia, potential threats he deems years away. 

Gates’ spending priorities have not always matched those of the Air Force, which had pushed for an average of $20 billion a year more than was budgeted over the next five years.

Air Force Gen. Bruce Carlson, who heads a command responsible for developing and testing new systems, said in February the Air Force would go on pushing for the coveted F-22s, optimized for knocking out advanced air defenses. 

“Most people say in the future there will be a Chinese element to whatever we do,” he told reporters on February 13. 

In Carlson’s remarks, “Gates correctly detected a lack of willingness among Air Force leaders to follow his policies on F-22 fighters,” said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, noted for his close ties to the Pentagon and industry. 

Adding to the friction was a perception the Air Force was quietly lobbying Congress to extend the F-22 production line, a decision Gates has left to the next U.S. president who will be elected on November 4. 

The Pentagon, in its last major strategy review, in 2006, said China had the greatest potential “to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter strategies.” 

(Reporting by Jim Wolf; editing by Carol Bishopric)

Unasur (or Unasul in Portuguese) replaces a South American Community declared in 2004 and supposed to unite two existing free-trade areas, Mercosur and the Andean Community. That proved too difficult—and is likely to remain so. The new group will have the appearance of purposefulness, including a secretariat in Ecuador and a parliament in Bolivia, but not much more than that.

The leaders also discussed setting up a South American Defence Council as a forum to talk about defence and security. Brazil has been pushing for this. Its diplomats thought that they had an agreement to make it happen. Yet they were thwarted when Colombia declined to join because of its neighbours’ equivocal attitude to its FARC guerrillas.

Even as its leaders talk, Latin America is re-arming—or rather some South American countries are. In the broader region, including Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, total defence spending shot up to $38 billion in 2007 from $25 billion in 2003, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London think-tank. The military budgets of the biggest spenders—Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Venezuela—have been rising faster. Brazil announced a rise of 50% (or $10 billion) in its spending on hardware for 2008-11.

Two things are driving the spending increases. First, military budgets were cut after many Latin American nations turned their back on military rule in the 1980s. In many countries, equipment is now ancient and dilapidated. Replacing it is a sign of more normal relations between civilian governments and their armies. Venezuela is the exception: although its leftist president, Hugo Chávez, is elected, he is a former army officer and his power base lies partly in the barracks. Venezuela’s recent purchase of two dozen Sukhoi-30 fighter aircraft and 50 military helicopters from Russia may have been presented as a show of strength to the imperialists in Washington, but it was also designed to shore up support from the generals at home.

The second reason is that after four years of faster economic growth, partly induced by high prices for commodity exports, governments have more money to spend. In Chile, the link between commodity prices and arms is written into law: the armed forces get 10% of the export revenues of Codelco, the state copper producer—a sum that amounted to $1.4 billion in 2007—for capital spending. Over the past dozen years this money has bought 340 German tanks, eight frigates, two new submarines and 28 F-16 fighters.

Chile’s appetite for new kit is a worry for both Bolivia and Peru, which dispute its land and maritime borders respectively and which were the losers in a 19th-century war. In early May Alan García, Peru’s president, urged his peers in the region to stop buying weapons and to concentrate instead on fighting poverty. At a day-to-day level, however, relations between Chile and its neighbours are less tense than they were three decades ago when all were ruled by generals.

Similarly, Brazil’s arms build-up, which includes plans for a nuclear-powered submarine and new jet fighters, has not alarmed its neighbours much. Economic stability and growth, and an increasingly solid democracy, have recently made Brazilian governments more confident about acting as the regional superpower—but through diplomacy. Some Brazilian officials look askance at Colombia, whose military build-up against the FARC has the backing of the United States. But the main threat to Brazil’s ambition is Mr Chávez, who has sought to develop a network of clients in the region, dependent on his gifts of cheap oil and cash.

Venezuela’s arms purchases alarm several of its neighbours. Mr Chávez this month said airily that more tanks for Venezuela “shouldn’t worry anybody”. He promised that he would place yet more orders for Russian weapons on a planned trip to Moscow in July. What for? The president says that he would prevent the United States from setting up a military base near Venezuela’s border “whatever the cost”. He has also said that demands for greater autonomy in eastern Bolivia could lead Venezuela to intervene in support of the socialist government there.

Mr Chávez seems to have his eye mainly on Colombia. He resents its alliance with the United States, and has expressed sympathy for the FARC. Captured guerrilla documents suggest that Venezuelan military and intelligence officers have actively helped the guerrillas. Mr Chávez responded to Colombia’s cross-border raid into Ecuador in March (which killed a FARC leader) by briefly ordering tanks to the border. “Look at the evidence and [you] conclude that Venezuela is arming for war with Colombia,” says Rocío San Miguel, a defence analyst in Caracas. It recently bought 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles (more than its total number of regular troops). These are to replace ancient Belgian rifles. But the ammunition they fire is compatible with guns used by the FARC.

Hitherto Colombia’s military build-up has been wholly focused on counter-insurgency. But in what appears to be a defensive response to Mr Chávez, it has placed an order with Israel for Kfir fighter jets. According to Mark Bromley of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Colombia has also been talking to Sweden about buying an airborne early-warning system and a tanker plane.

Take into account the weakened dollar as well as economic growth, and in many countries the arms spending looks less threatening. At least until 2006, defence spending in Latin America as a whole was running at only 1.3% of GDP, according to the IISS. Only the non-NATO European countries spend less. Some of the recent spending in South America involves retooling armies that used to repress their own populations for new roles, such as peacekeeping or Amazonian surveillance. Nevertheless, some of the recent purchases are cause for concern—especially given that so much talk of South American unity is just that.

The same country that launched the “Ottawa process” resulting in the historic 1997 Mine Ban Treaty now appears to be doing dirty work for the United States to weaken the cluster munitions treaty.

As with land mines, the United States is no friend of the effort to ban cluster munitions launched in February, 2007, in Oslo. But it was openly and actively involved in the Ottawa process until walking out of treaty negotiations on the last day, unable to force acceptance of a “negotiating package” that would have gutted that treaty. This time around, Washington is opting for intense, relentless pressure behind the scenes.

One U.S. official bragged that more than 110 countries had been “spoken to” about this treaty. It has flat-out told allies that it will not alter its military doctrine, structure or deployments to accommodate terms of the treaty. Further, the United States has threatened that it will not remove its cluster munitions stockpiled in countries that do join the treaty — even though it removed land mines stockpiled in countries that are part of the Mine Ban Treaty.

It is not surprising that Washington continues to throw its considerable weight around. What is surprising, however, is that some countries are willing to carry water for the United States, despite its vow never to sign the treaty. Even more surprising is that one of those countries is Canada.

As Tim Shipman reported this week in the Sydney Morning Herald, “U.S. officials are frantically warning their allies not to sign the treaty as it now stands, because it would undermine NATO and criminalize soldiers who fight alongside them. … An official from the U.S. State Department warned that under the treaty, British front line troops who call in artillery support or air strikes [in Afghanistan or Iraq] from an American war plane, all of which carry cluster munitions, could be hauled into court.” Mr. Shipman could just as easily have used the case of Canadian soldiers fighting alongside Americans in Afghanistan.

In military jargon, this U.S. exaggeration could be called “firing for effect” — see if you can frighten others into doing what you want. It is also misrepresenting the facts.

The proposed cluster ban treaty would prohibit any signatory country from assisting a non-signatory country in its use of banned cluster munitions. But such a treaty will not mean the end of joint military operations nor make Canadian soldiers automatically liable in the event the United States were to deploy such weapons. Joint military operations with Canada continue right now despite the fact that the U.S. is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. No Canadian soldier has been hauled into court. At least seven other international treaties — many of which Washington is party to — have similar obligations on prohibiting assistance in use of a banned weapon by a country bound by the treaty. But in response to the intense pressure of the outgoing Bush administration, Canada has developed a “bottom line” on joint military operations to join the future treaty.

It says there must be language to protect Canadian military from liabilities should they be involved in joint military operations with allies outside the treaty who do use cluster munitions — in other words, the United States. Proposed Canadian language would not only seriously weaken the provision prohibiting governments from “assisting, inducing, or encouraging” states outside the treaty with any prohibited act that, but it would also create a loophole big enough for a U.S. attack helicopter loaded with cluster bombs to fly through. It would permit solders of countries that are part of the treaty to participate in the planning and execution of joint operations with the United States where cluster munitions are used.

How can the Canadian government say with a straight face it is banning cluster munitions while at the same time vigorously promoting language allowing Canadian soldiers to plan and execute operations where, in effect, they would be using U.S. cluster munitions? How can it say it is merely trying to protect Canadian troops and is not really trying to appease the United States?

A cluster ban treaty will not undermine NATO. Belgium unilaterally banned cluster munitions in 2006, and a Belgian official said it has in no way affected Belgian participation in NATO operations.

In fact, a recently completed internal NATO study found there would not be an impact on joint military operations if NATO members sign a cluster munitions treaty with the prohibition on assistance intact.

Canadians are appropriately proud of their country’s leadership both in bringing about the Mine Ban Treaty and in its continued leadership to ensure that treaty is fully implemented. It is time to call upon the government to take the lead in Dublin to give the world a stronger — not weaker — treaty banning cluster munitions.

Jody Williams was the founding co-ordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) for which she and the ICBL received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. She is also the founding chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.