الرعب غير المتوازن --كارل شرو

لاقى خطاب السيد حسن نصر الله مساء أمس تجاوبا كبيرا من مندوبي حزب الله لدى ما يسمى بالكثير من التفاؤل باليسار اللبناني فسارعوا إلى مدوناتهم و مقالاتهم ليستنهضوا الهمم و يعلنوا عن ولادة توازن رعب جديد بين الحزب و إسرائيل. من كبيرهم العربي الغاضب و الساخط و المحتقن اسعد أبو خليل إلى الصديق الساخر و المتهكم، عادة، خالد صاغية، رددوا كلاما متشابها عن معادلة جديدة في الصراع العربي ـ الإسرائيلي أخرجها هذا الخطاب إلى العلن. الخطاب نفسه حكيم و واعي اثبت من خلاله السيد حسن عن فهمه و تحليله الدقيق للمرحلة الراهنة، ليس فقط لطبيعة الصراع مع إسرائيل بل أيضا للنفسية السائدة لدى حكام إسرائيل و الوضع الداخلي في لبنان. لكن الخطاب لم يٌفهم جيدا من قبل جوقة اليسار الإعلامي للأناشيد الوطنية و الثورية الذي يبدوا إن نشوة النصر الذي اعترتهم بعد 7 أيار قد أثرت على قدراتهم التحليلية فظنوا إن احتلال شارع الحمراء شكل بداية مسيرة تحرير القدس

The real lesson of climate change: we can control the weather!

It has been staring us in the face all along, but nobody seems to have noticed. What is the real lesson of the climate change saga? Humanity is going to wipe itself out because of its greed? We're in for a long century of disasters, scarcities and upheaval? We have to reverse all the progress we've made since the industrial revolution and develop a non-growth based approach to economic and social organisation? None of the above actually, the real lesson is much more positive and encouraging.

India's retreat on GM crops is a step backwards

India has announced deferring the commercial cultivation of what would have been its first genetically modified crop due to 'safety concerns.' The BBC reported that 'Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said more studies were needed to ensure genetically modified aubergines were safe for consumers and the environment.' Far from being a sound decision based on scientific evidence, this is another significant capitulation to the precautionary principle that will hinder India's ability to maximise food production to meet the demands of its fast-growing population.

The Crackdown on Student Visas: Knee-Jerk Illiberalism

The home secretary Alan Johnson announced a crackdown on student visas aiming to cut the number of people coming to study in the UK by tens of thousands. It's quite hard to know what the intended aim of the policy is as the justification ranges from that student visas are being exploited by people coming to the UK to work to the truly surreal accusation that student visas are allowing terrorist suspects to come to the UK. The real aim, I think, is to project a sense of being in control of immigration and acting tough on border control. But like any of the hundreds of half-baked schemes that New Labour has come up with since it came to power, the result of this move will reinforce the illiberal attitude towards the free movement of people and is likely to damage the economy.

Burj Dubai: What's wrong with towering ambition?

This is a historic day for mankind, a new era in the story of skyscrapers begins with the completion of Burj Dubai expected to be around 818 meters tall. It is almost a kilometer long of flats, offices, hotels and commercial space breaking every single record and in the process pushing construction technology to new realms. Rather than celebrate this achievement, most critics have treated this as an opportunity to kick Dubai while it suffers from a serious financial crisis, spewing all kinds of venom against its ambition and desire to push the boundaries. It is no surprise that these poisonous attacks are coated in the language of environmental concerns and social justice, we have become accustomed by now to this type of low-aspiration and reactionary critique masquerading as progressive thought. But those sour grapes should remember that history is not written instantly no matter how hard they wish Dubai to fail monumentally. If anyone had written New York off in the 30s and predicted that the depression meant its end, they would have been completely wrong. The city prospered again, and so will Dubai.

قمة كوبنهاغن و التغير المناخي : بداية عصر الاستعمار البيئي - كارل شرو

يحوز التغير المناخي على الكثير من النقاش في بلدان الغرب و يمكن الجزم بأنه يمثل قضية العصر من غير منازع. يمكن مثلا النظر إلى حجم التغطية الإعلامية التي تحظى بها قمة كوبنهاغن المنعقدة حاليا في العاصمة الدانمركية بإشراف الأمم المتحدة لمكافحة التأثيرات المتوقعة للتغيير المناخي التي ارتفعت وتيرتها بشكل محموم. قامت وسائل الإعلام الغربية بالتمهيد لهذه القمة ووصفتها بأنها الفرصة الأخيرة لإنقاذ البشرية من مفاعيل التغير المناخي ثم رفعت مستوى تغطيتها خلال الأيام الأخيرة بشكل منقطع النظير. في المقابل، لم تبد وسائل الإعلام العربية نفس القدر من الاهتمام بقمة كوبنهاغن، ما عدا مقالات منفردة هنا و هناك. واللافت في التغطية الإعلامية العربية أنها تظهر بعيدة عن مغالاة الإعلام الغربي وتبدو كأنها بعيدة إلى حد ما عن قضية المناخ. لا حرج في ذلك، فقضية التغير المناخي قضية مستوردة كما أساليب تغطيتها ولغة الكتابة عنها التي تعاني اثأر التعريب الفج. غير إن الابتعاد عن هذه القضية ترف لا يمكن للصحافة العربية أن تتجاهله مطولا، ليس من باب مجاراة الهرع الغربي و هستيريا نهاية العالم التي تجتاحه بل تصديا لمفاعيل هذه القمة و سياسة المناخ عموما التي سيكون لها تأثيرات سيئة على اقتصادات الدول العربية لو بقي العرب في موقع المتفرجين في موضوع التغير المناخي. ائمل آن يكون هذا المقال بداية نقاش عقلاني لموضوع المناخ يبتعد عن الانغلاق الذي يعانيه هذا النقاش في الغرب و يفتح باب التصدي لما سأجادل بأنه مشروع استعمار بيئي ستنتجه قمة كوبنهاغن إذا نجحت بترسيخ مفاهيم التقشف التي يروج لها ألان

The Return of Primitivism in Architecture or Godzilla's Furball: MOS and P.S.1 Afterparty

The winners of this year's MoMA and P.S.1's Young Architects Program, MOS, titled their project 'Afetrparty'; 'Wake' would have been a far better description. The deceased is Modern architecture and all that it ever represented: ambition, experimentation, industrial techniques, and rationality. 'Afterparty' is the antithesis of all those concepts: random, reactionary, patronising and furry. P.S.1 had paved the way for this abomination with last year's winning entry 'Public Farm' by WORK architecture company, an exercise in autarky wrapped in a text whose level of naivety is hardly matched outside a Miss America contest. The trend can only intensify in the coming years, although it is hard to imagine anything more dreadfully reactionary than 'Afterparty'.

According to the New York Times the project is 'a mix of what could be described as cones, domes, smokestacks, primitive huts, towers or industrial chimneys.' Primitive hut would have done: the project's main distinguishing feature is its primitivism that, like biodynamic agriculture, represents a yearning for pre-modernity masquerading as radicalism. The project is so imprecise and accidental formally and organisationally that it is completely open for interpretation: this is the Rorschach Test of architecture, a three-dimensional accident of shapes or a giant furball thrown up by Godzilla after a night of rampage in a hippie market.

Michael Meredith of MOS said the structures were meant to evoke the fading factory vernacular of the P.S. 1 area in Long Island City. “We’re interested in building typologies,” he said. They must have tried very hard to resist showing this interest in 'Afterparty'. Rather than evoking the 'factory vernacular' the project is symptomatic of America's ending love affair with industrialisation. For the second time in the space of a few decades America is losing nerve and turning to imported ideas from Europe for inspiration, the Green assault has truly began in the US. Three years ago it would have been really hard to find advocates of sustainability outside Hippie communities in Nevada, now architects are competing really hard to learn the New Speak of the environmentalist dogma.

The connection between declining production and the recession has still not been grasped in America, so it's not strange to see MOS trying to pass off their cheap knock-off of a primitive village as a thoughtful response to the economic situation. There is still talk of an 'economic party' and an 'economic hangover', isn't it fun how eco-geeks always try to use words like party and hangover to pretend that they are cool? It still hasn't dawned on American intellectuals that financial hyper-activity is not equivalent to productive economic activity, never mind they are still willing to throw the baby out with the bath water, let them eat biscuits. The result in architecture? MOS's masterpiece, a monument to garage sales and Sunday markets across the land, where the fetishistic value of recycled materials is elevated above real innovation in architecture.

The architects are obviously free to present whatever design they come up with, the real blame falls on P.S.1 and MoMA for encouraging and supporting this trend towards reactionary architecture and celebrating it as good architecture. This is not a one-off, it's a trend that started with last year's project and is bound to continue as long as architects will continue to pursue this obsessive form of self-harm that is passed off as 'environmental responsibility'. Solving challenging economic and environmental problems requires innovative thinking and advanced technologies, not the escape from modernity that is represented by projects like 'Afterparty'. Let's interrupt this assault on Modernity before it escalates into a full return to primitivism.