zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — when a city hits water zero, & when a vast aquifer is up for commercial grabs ]
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I would like to scare you two ways:

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The Guardian’s Cape Town headline (upper panel, above) alerts us to the imminent failure of the first major global city’s water supply:

The head of Cape Town’s disaster operations centre is drawing up a plan he hopes he never has to implement as this South African city on the frontline of climate change prepares to be the first in the world to turn off the water taps.

“We’ve identified four risks: water shortages, sanitation failures, disease outbreaks and anarchy due to competition for scarce resources,” says Greg Pillay. “We had to go back to the drawing board. We were prepared for disruption of supply, but not a no-water scenario. In my 40 years in emergency services, this is the biggest crisis.”

Anarchy due to competition for scarce resources — would you care to say more about how virulent that strain of anarchy might be, and how its epidemiology would intersect with those of water shortages, sanitation failures, and disease outbreaks?

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The lower image, above, shows the extent of the Guarani aquifer — water supply for the vast lands above it, and the fauna, flora and humans who inhabit those lands.

What’s the problem?

As a Canadian government page puts it, Barlow warns Nestle is seeking control of the Guarani aquifer in South America:

Mint Press reports, “A concerted push is underway in South America that could see one of the world’s largest reserves of fresh water soon fall into the hands of transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola and Nestle. According to reports, talks to privatize the Guarani Aquifer – a vast subterranean water reserve lying beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – have already reached an advanced stage. The deal would grant a consortium of U.S. and Europe-based conglomerates exclusive rights to the aquifer that would last over 100 years.”

Cash would dance in the heads of the relevant CEOs — “including Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Carlos Brito, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, and Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris” — while guns would no doubt protect their “rights”.

We’ll copyright it, we’ll patent it, no, we’ll — bottle it!

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Justice William O Douglas in A Wilderness Bill of Rights, argued the need for a “Bill of Rights to protect those whose spiritual values extend to the rivers and lakes, the valleys and the ridges, and who find life in a mechanized society worth living only because those splendid resources are not despoiled.” In his now celebrated dissent in Sierra Club v. Morton, he suggested the courts should give standing “in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage.”

In the High Country News article, Should nature have standing to sue? from which I’ve taken those quotes, we discover:

Douglas’ views were inspired by his own experiences in the wild. He grew up in Yakima, Washington, hiking the foothills and peaks of the Cascade Range, and he sang the praises of nature throughout his life. “When one stands on Darling Mountain, he is not remote and apart from the wilderness; he is an intimate part of it,” he wrote in a typical passage from his memoir, Of Men and Mountains. “Every ridge, every valley, every peak offers a solitude deeper even than that of the sea. It offers the peace that comes only from solitude.”

Solitude. Can you believe it? Such a value!

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Douglas:

Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation

Let therefore the Guarani aquifer have standing to sue for all the inhabitants of the lands above it, else — in the prescient words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, speaking in the parched, blistered voice of an Ancient Mariner:

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

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Afterthought:

Oh aye, they play soccer, the Guarani —

— and are warriors in protection of their native forests:

Brazil, Guaraní tribe attacked by ranchers who want their land.

Attacks on indigenous people by armed gunmen working for ranchers continue: a slow genocide, the result of the occupation of indigenous ancestral lands.

A slow genocide.. As above, so below.

[ by Charles Cameron — Canada, Hollywood cave? ]
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Sources:

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, Did the CBC get spooked?

Hollywood Reporter, Vladimir Putin Cut From Two Upcoming Hollywood Movies

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The Chinese don’t want the Dalai Lama to speak with heads of state; they throw their weight around, and some heads of state capitulate.

Here’s the equivalent in terms of the arts. I suppose it’s inevitable, considering the state of the world, but I don’t like it one little bit.

[ by Charles Cameron — genuinely puzzled ]
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RAND has a terrific puzzle map for the cover of its Election 2016: The International Issues essay, but..

.. where did Britain go?

I don’t see Sweden either, so it can’t just be Brexit, can it? Not to mention chunks of Canada..

[ by Charles Cameron — two books of the same name ]
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I have long been an admirer of Jessica Stern‘s Terror in the Name of God, which benefits greatly from the author’s intrepid insistence on visiting and debriefing those religious militants from around the world she wishes us to understand. Imagine my surprise, therefore, at discovering yesterday a book with the same title, written by one Simma Holt, published in 1964, and dealing with religious violence as practiced by the Svobodniki or Sons of Freedom sub-group of the Doukhobors or Old Believers:

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I haven’t been on a thrift-store book run in a couple of years, and yesterday’s jaunt with son Emlyn rewarded me with three or four items, of which this was the standout — albeit my copy lacks the lurid dust-jacket.

The Old Believers have interested me for some time now, but I haven’t known much about them. Apparently their split (“Raskol”) from the larger body of Russian Orthodoxy was in opposition to reforms intended to align the Russian with other Orthodox patriarchies in terms of practice — the one change I’d run across having to do with the substitution of the sign of the cross made with two fingers by the sign made with three fingers.

I am accordingly very interested to see what more I can learn about the Old Believers in general and in particular the Svobodniki, their doctrine of “Opposite Speak” and their theological sanctions for arson and murder.

Now too, I get to explore Aylmer Maude‘s 1904 book on the Doukhabors, A Peculiar People. That phrase — more fully, “ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (I Peter 2.9) — has always pleased me, and Maude’s Christian name, a relatively uncommon one I believe, is my own second name, and the name of one of my uncles.

O quiet joy.

[ by Charles Cameron — yes, innocent until proven otherwise — & will we need to go into “black banners and Khorasan” once again? ]
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RCMP annpouncement:

Ottawa, April 22, 2013– Today, the RCMP arrested two individuals and charged them with conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack against a VIA passenger train. The accused have been charged under sections 248, 235 (1), 83.2, 83.18, 83.21 of the Criminal Code of Canada. As a result of extensive collaborative efforts, the RCMP was able to disrupt the threat early. While the RCMP believed that these individuals had the capacity and intent to carry out these criminal acts, there was no imminent threat to the general public, rail employees, train passengers or infrastructure.

The two accused, Chiheb ESSEGHAIER and Raed JASER, who live in the Montreal and Toronto area were conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack against a VIA passenger train. Charges include conspiring to carry out an attack against, and conspiring to murder persons unknown for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a terrorist group.

Sources:

LinkedIn

ScienceDirect

RCMP