Disaster daughters
Lets start at the end of the world.
Over the past year, the Diary has been generous in its coverage of global catastrophe and the wiping out of life as we know it. After a while, it becomes a duty.
So this week, the Diary just could not bring itself to overlook the theory of Dr Arnon Dar of the Technion Space Research Institute in Israel. How can you ignore a man who predicts that, The few who might survive will wish they had died. They will struggle, forlornly, on a wrecked planet.?
Dr Dar refers not to plans for yet another series of Friends, but to the probability that an exploding star somewhere in our Universe would devastate our otherwise peaceful planet.
Supermassive stars yes, supermassive die a horrible death. Dar believes that these stars, substantially bigger than our Sun, of which there are plenty in our Galaxy, collapse at the end of their lives into black holes, sending out radiated gamma-rays into space. Any planet in their path faces instant sterilisation, which, optimists say, might just solve the population problem.
If such a beam were to strike Earth, the effects would be totally devastating, unlike anything we could imagine, Dr Dar said. The side of the Earth lucky enough to be facing the explosion will see shock waves burn through the atmosphere sparking infernos once they reach the ground you once walked on. Temperatures will soar. Weather systems will be turned inside out.
After that the millisecond gamma-ray come the days of cosmic rays. No cave in Tora Bora will save you from them. Daughter particles from the cosmic rays muons penetrate hundreds of metres into rocks. Out goes the worlds ecosystem.
So when is this going to happen? Well, roughly every one hundred million years. Dr Dars theory is that the great extinctions have all coincided with major injections of radiation from space. The rays from exploding stars slam into Earth about once in every one hundred million years.
Direct proof that it happened this way is lacking at present, but many people are looking for it, Dr Dar said.
At present, we have no way of detecting whether a supermassive star is about to burst and head our way. Warnings? Not with our current understanding of science, Dar says.
To the labs, everyone!
Timely convention
The War on Terror has put the 1864 Geneva Convention the international agreement for the treatment of the sick, wounded and dead in wartime under intense scrutiny.
Switzerland has decided to convene a meeting of officials from a representative group of countries in January. The idea is to update how the Conventions are applied.
Daniel Haener, a spokesman for the Swiss Foreign Ministry, said on Friday that the principles of the conventions will not be discussed. It is the application, not the principles, that will be explored, he explained. The three-day meeting will begin on 27 January at Harvard University. The US will attend.
One of the reasons for the timing was the war on terror, said Mary Richardson, project manager of the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research at Harvard.
The New York Times reports that Among the topics proposed in the memo are how a military objective is appropriately determined and defined in contemporary conflicts, whether it is possible to protect civilians during aerial bombardments and whether facilities essential to public health, like water-treatment plans, should be military targets.
Stolen kiss
To Iran, again.
This week, other than the public executions of four rapists (one of whom had a heart attack as the noose was put around his neck, and will be hanged now at a later date), Iran has been alive with the scandal of a public kiss.
The guilty parties were actress Gowhar Kheirandish and actor Ali Zamani. They shook hands and kissed on the cheek during a public festival in Yazd. An arrest order was immediately ordered.
Kheirandish is in her fifties. She appeared in court on Thursday charged with immoral behaviour and was released on $3,750 bail. Zamani is in his twenties. He appeared in court earlier in the week, with bail set at $2,500.
Lawyers said they could face a jail sentence or up to seventy lashes for their actions. But it is more likely they will be fined.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addressed police officials on Sunday. People expect a society where their youth are not exposed to immoral hazards as soon as they leave the house, he said. The police should sternly confront promoters and agents of social and moral insecurity in the country.
The filmmaker Abolfazl Jalili was shocked. He said that Kheirandish became emotional and kissed Zamani on the forehead after shaking his hand. In fact, Zamani was a student of Kheirandishs late husband, Jamshid Esmaeilkhani, a well-known actor who died earlier this year. For Kheirandish, Zamani was like her son and there was definitely no other intention. Judicial action only harms Irans improving international image, Jalili said.
But it does not seem to matter. Mohammed Ali Pakdel, a cultural official in Yazd was arrested and jailed for failing to act quickly enough and arrest the offending couple. He was later released with bail set at $6,250.
EU flag - proposed new design
To federalise or not?
The biggest decision of all, or just a minor detail? The EU looks set to re-name itself again.
From the ECSC, through the EEC, the Common Market, the EC and the EU, the whatever-you-want-to-call-it has been through a number of identities in the past fifty plus years, and is now looking for a better, more inspiring, title. In charge, of course, is Mr Convention himself, Valery Giscard DEstaing.
There are no plans to put it to a vote. The International Herald Tribune quoted Giscards spokesman, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, as saying, There is no legal basis for having something like a European referendum. It simply doesnt exist.
Mmm . As the BBC puts it: Part of the conventions brief is to help the European Union reconnect with its European citizens, many of whom regard it as a distant bureaucracy.
This is a big decision. An interview with Giscard in the Financial Times began like this: Lack of self-belief has never been one of Valery Giscard dEstaings notable character traits, so there is not a moments hesitation when asked how long his plans for Europes future will last: Fifty years.
Fifty years, eh? Thats a very long time in politics. Two thousand six hundred weeks, to be precise. Better get it right.
Various options have emerged. How would you feel about the United States of Europe, or the USE? Sounds too familiar? Well, Giscard does fancy himself as a bit of a George Washington. Perhaps we could have his profile carved on to Mont Blanc? Just a thought.
Actually, the man himself seems to fancy United Europe, which, in case you hadnt noticed, is an easier on the tongue version of European Union (EU), or, annoyingly, in French, LUnion Europeenne (UE). So much for homogenisation. United Europe, says Giscard, has the advantage of putting the word Europe first. It does, of course in French.
You see how difficult this is? Says Giscard, Collective decision-making, the practice of organised cooperation, is winning ground. Our proposal is to make things work in a more unified way. Europe has become too complicated, with too much hostility.
His aim is to appease the federalists (for whom he has little sympathy) with the Eurosceptics (for whom he has little sympathy). The name mustnt sound too much like a Brussels federation, but must capture a sense of shared destiny. The word intergovernmental is not very good because it has the implication we have forgotten Europe and it is the governments which matter, Giscard says, concluding that, United is a strong word; it is a united continent, united in the constitutional sense.
Temperatures those still registering run high. I am astonished, said astonished rightist Conservative MEP Roger Helmer from Britain. The sort of people who elected me from the East Midlands would recoil in horror at the United States of Europe. Its a repellent tag. Karel Lannoo, executive director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, isnt keen either: I dont like it. Its emulating the United States too much. This should be discarded right away. We should try to push our model, rather than imitating their model all the time.
But whats this? The International Herald Tribune ran a front-page headline that read: Shall we call it Federated? No, lets just say: Europa. Well, we hate to say it, but openDemocracy got there first, launching its Europa theme ages ago now. The Diary asked Rosemary Bechler, who runs the Europa e-list, for her thoughts. Judging by the internal politics of openDemocracy, she said, bizarrely, the last thing Europe needs is another name-change debate.
(To join the Europa e-list email openeuropa@opendemocracy.net)
Quotes of the week
Without a strong America holding the world together, and doing the right thing more often than not, the world really would be a jungle. Thomas Friedman in the New York Times
With whatever weapons we have in our hands, and after depending on God with faith, and because we are on the course of righteousness, we are able to confront any aggressor, from wherever he comes. Saddam Hussein
If you ask me whether, at heart, I am a withdrawer, it depends on who is withdrawing from what. Iain Duncan-Smith, leader of the (Eurosceptic) British Conservative Party.
Theres nothing political about literature. Everyone can like American literature, no matter what your party. The refreshing words of Laura Bush, said by the New York Times to be quietly creating her own space within a presidency focused on war.
