Terrorism Safari

From what I have been hearing, permaculture farming is the answer to many ills including water shortages. Traditional farming destroys the soil over time and uses a lot of water. Permaculture, that is, planting of many varieties of nut trees, fruit trees, berries and other plants, builds up the soil, uses less water and can help reverse the process of desertification. It may not have the high yields, but is more sustainable. Globalization, food subsidies and the like help keep farmers and countries poor and dependent on the world bank for loans. Thus bureaucrats would not favor such things.

[Probably true. Yemen, however, has too many people for any sustainable solutions. If population issues were successfully addressed the rest might follow, but that's a big if. g.]

I thought this was a very interesting and thoughtful interview.

On the subject of the UK. I'm not entirely sure I share his sanguine view of British intelligence. Its hard to be sure given their culture of secrecy (a very British disease), but what we know of MI5/special branch and military intelligence operations in the past are pretty scary. Their operations in N. Ireland were totally out of control and extremely scary (similar to the kinds of stuff that went on in Italy in the 70s). It involved possible death squads, and the running of protestant terrorists to eliminate troublesome (but non-terrorist) individuals. Something that we still haven't come to terms with here, despite this mostly being in the public domain and well documented

Similarly, there is a long history of spying and use of provocateurs (and worse) on UK radicals (many obviously members of peaceful organizations), by an agency that has traditionally been upper class and very right wing. While their politics may have improved, the spying continues.

More recently, there have been several arrests or Muslims (based on intelligence) which have varied from ludicrous (the so called Ricin plot), to extremely dubious. And the relationship between MI5 and the torturers in Guantanamo seems to have been fairly close, and morally dubious.

Also I'm surprised he didn't touch on the Aden campaign. A very nasty bit of late Brit imperialism, where our soldiers behaved every bit as badly as the US in Iraq, perhaps worse.

[On a related note, James recommended to me a book that looks interesting: Charles Allen's Soldier Sahibs. Now out of print, but you can find it on the internet — I've ordered a copy myself out of curiosity. About how the Ulster Scots built the Empire. g.]