“Rio+20 will be one of the most important global meetings on sustainable development in our time.”
– UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Mubarak? Not quite rest in peace time for the old man as I go to press, but close enough. I guess that is to be expected when a life-time job and a nation is stripped from you. It certainly is not the future he wanted, but all good things must come to an end, you know?
I cannot dredge up much emotion about the man, except a certain unease that the predictable has been upended with the possible. My natural proclivities generally support freedom against tyranny, and while the Egyptians do not appear to have been delivered from the latter, I am hoping that something good comes from the Spring in Tarhir Square.
It is not like we don’t have our own problems right here. I am tempted to add politics to the list of topics that I will treat with kid gloves. I know that is going to be a challenge the next few months as desperation rises and the inevitable October Surprise looms. But there is a surprise coming from the earnest bureaucrats of the UN in lovely Rio this week.
I always wanted a UN job. I was angling for a position up in New York one time- there was actually a military billet on the staff of the US Ambassador there, and I heard nothing but good stuff about the apartment that went with the job, and the tax benefits, and not being responsible to anyone in particular. As far as good gigs in government go, working for the UN was right there with NATO and the World Bank for cushy assignments.
I had to leave all that behind, and there is enough is this toxic soup of bad economic news and venomous politics that I am more than a little creeped out, and naturally focused on what is happening at home rather than what is going on overseas. This would seem to be a fine time for some navel-gazing, but the connections overseas are pernicious, from the Eurozone to drone strikes.
They are all wild cards, with direct implications to our domestic tranquility. I will not take a position on any of it, since I am as ignorant as everyone else in authority about what the unintended consequences might be of this mess. Maybe Mr. Bernanke will enlighten us on what it means. I am not sure this is the future I wanted, but no one asked.
The drone thing is just one of the matters at hand. Plucky anti-Yanqui dictator Hugo Chavez just took delivery of some unattended autonomous aerial vehicles (UAAVs) from his buddies in Iran. Apparently they came to Venezuela concealed in shipping containers, and according to the feisty former Colonel, are intended to be used for the Big Threat from the north.
What with our program of selective assassination in other sovereign states, I cannot imagine that we won’t see the Bush-Obama doctrine being utilized against us, perhaps someday even in these United States.
That will be a new beginning. Something we will have to deal with in the future, not quite yet, but we are making our bed and eventually we are going to have to sleep in it.
Like I say, I am going to try to stay away from politics, though I am not certain it is possible in this toxic hothouse of rhetoric. It will deliver, at the end, a framework for building a future which, according to polls, just about half of us, either side, have no particular interest.
In order to keep this screed on the high ground, I invite you to consider the latest intrusion of the future on our daily lives here in the present. The big conference in Rio this week- the Rio+20- probably has not blipped your daily consciousness, and there is no particular reason it should. There is only so much to worry about in the course of a regular day.
But I do invite your attention to the next event on the agenda of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. Like most of the antics of the United Nations, it is so bizarre that it seems worth ignoring, and I probably will. But this is pretty cool.
Check it out for yourself: the final draft document is out there in advance of the for the conference on sustainability that people are jetting in from all over the world to attend. I wish I could travel for it, but can’t, so here is the next best thing, the final draft report of The Future We Want.
The document is a daunting thing with hundreds of paragraphs “affirming” belief in all manner of extraordinary things, based on extensive and possibly imaginary past events which only a UN bureaucrat could reasonably be expected to cite, and none of which ever appeared for ratification in the Senate of the United States.
Scrolling through the document I had to continually remind myself of who the “we” are that are issuing the declaration and performing the affirming-and-believing contained in the document.
Here is who they are:
“Heads of State and Government and high level representatives, with full participation of civil society.”
It is news to me if that latter part is true, since the “civil society” seem to be composed mostly of Non-governmental Organizations with a bunch of unique hot-button issues and distinct agendas. But like I say, it this is a UN document and quite entertaining. See what you think. Is this the future you are interested in?
I dunno. We will be hearing more about this, I presume, since as a result of the conference, someone is going to be showing up with their hand out to see how much we want to pay for the Future They Want.
Personally, I am sort of tapped out at the moment, and I think I will take a pass. But you never know. It might be a future people want.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com