Whatever happened to Domino Theory? Way back in the 1950s, the world was recovering from World War II. News coverage was not as intensely 24/7 as it is today. Nevertheless, the world was still a nervous place less than a decade after the great war, with its aftermath still evident in many parts of the world. In 1954, when General Giap decisively defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu, US President Eisenhower brought forth the “falling domino” principle that had been accepted wisdom in foreign policy circles for several years. According to this theory, once Vietnam fell to the Communists, then the neighbouring countries of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand would fall like dominoes and also become communist.

Once Vietnam became Communist, other nations in Indo-China would fall like dominoes….

The wisdom of hindsight shows that this did not happen. The North Vietnamese were merely fighting for their independence. They had no desire to become satellites of either Russia or China. The US wasted thousands of lives of its own young men (not to mention the terrible toll of Vietnamese lives) in a vain effort to stop dominoes falling. In the process, the US dropped over 2.7 millions tons of ordnance on neighbouring Cambodia, more bombs than the Allies used in all of World War II. This bombing gives Cambodia the doubtful distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in history. See this Yale University link for more detail. http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaBombing_OCT06.pdf (short excerpt below).

The still-incomplete database (it has several “dark” periods) reveals that from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons’ worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier than is widely believed—not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson. The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a coup d’état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide.

Fast forward to 2015. The current fear that ISIS, a cruel and aggressive Islamist group, will take over the region is unfounded. There are too many opposing interests, not least the Kurds, who will fight to ensure that this does not happen. Kudos then to President Obama for admitting that “we don’t yet have a complete strategy” for dealing with ISIS. This is an honest answer, for there is no cogent strategy to deal with this convoluted situation. The world should be thankful there is no new domino theory in place, no covert plan for “carpet bombing” the region based on fear of falling dominoes. Progress of sorts, perhaps.

Ernst F. Schuhmacher made the phrase famous with his book of the same title and its thought-provoking subtitle: economics as if people mattered.

Pawel Wembley’s photographs of the minuscule make us look at everyday things in nature in a completely different light. The underside of a leaf, a close up of a flower in bloom, the down on a caterpillar’s hair. For more stunning images of nature’s miniatures brought to light, see his pages of images at the URL below.

https://www.google.com/+PawelWembley

Here are a couple of low-resolution samples of Pawel’s superb photos. Most of them were taken on walks through the woods on an island in the South China Sea.

The more I read about the history of man, the clearer it becomes that we all, without exception, once came from somewhere else. That’s quite a thought, and a deceptively simple truth, really. So why are prosperous countries in Southeast Asia turning away thousands of Rohingya refugees from their shores? Why are the prosperous countries of Europe turning away the boatloads of refugees from North Africa? Is it because we in these countries have become too rich to share? The New Testament story of the widow’s mite is well known. Have middle class people in middle class countries become too rich to care?

During the 1971 Bangladesh war, when ten million refugees streamed over the border into India, I heard a story about the beggars of Calcutta. This resembles the ‘widow’s mite’ story of Jesus in the New Testament. In 1971, seeing the desperate plight of the Bangladesh refugees, the beggars of Calcutta sent a delegation to the municipal corporation requesting that their weekly free meal be redirected to the poor people in the refugee camps instead.

Is this story true? I can find no documentation of this tale, but my own experience of the kindness of strangers in poorer parts of the world convinces me that it is. For armchair travellers, here is a link to milestones from the “Out of Eden” walk, an attempt to relive mankind’s journey through the ages.

http://www.outofedenwalk.com/milestones/?page=3

The 103GW of capacity added by renewables last year (2014) equals the energy generating capacity of all 158 nuclear power plant reactors in the USA.

…Wind, solar, biomass and waste-to-power, geothermal, small hydro and marine power contributed an estimated 9.1% of world electricity generation in 2014, up from 8.5% in 2013. This meant that last year the world electricity system emitted 1.3 gigatonnes of CO2 – roughly twice the emissions of the world’s airline industry – less than it would have if that 9.1% had been produced by the same fossil-dominated mix generating the other 90.9% of world power.

“Once again in 2014, renewables made up nearly half of the net power capacity added worldwide” says Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP.

from Environmental Research Web, 2 April 2015

Maybe I’m just prejudiced, but an estimate made by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2008 (George Bush was President) said “just 140 MW of total utility-scale PV solar capacity would be installed by 2015.” In fact, before end-2014, there was more than 8,100 MW actually installed. Obama has been President in the intervening years. Was this the difference? Could government loan guarantees instituted by his administration have made such a difference?

To be fair to the EIA, the Paris-based IEA (International Energy Agency, an important institution in the international salad of energy agencies) has also under-estimated the growth of renewables worldwide: “the International Energy Agency in 2000 projected 34 GW of wind power globally by 2010, while the actual level reached was 200 GW.”

Image courtesy: http://www.dinoleaks.com

Are these honest errors? Wrong question. This is not a question of honesty, but of views, ideologies, and implicit, unquestioned assumptions on which expert opinions are often based. An executive in a corporation with billions of dollars, pounds, euros, or ringgit locked up in an existing technology naturally thinks: why meddle with a model that has proved successful for a century? Young (mostly), hungry entrepreneurs risking their life savings and livelihoods to usher in an age of new technologies might lose out in the short run but will prevail in the end. This clash of views has nothing to do with honesty, but merely proves the wisdom of the old adage. “Where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit.”

The slogan has been used by the New York Times ever since its adoption in 1896. Perhaps because of the NYT’s influence, the message seems to have sunk deep into the world’s collective psyche, and most people believe themselves to be well informed if they read a newspaper, whatever their choice may be, every day. But of course, the day is short, the world is large, and reporters and editors are human too, working to tight deadlines. They are just as beholden to the people who provide cash flow (advertisers; often large, powerful companies) as any office employee to her boss.

And so some of the news that’s fit to print never makes it to print or into the media. It’s hard to bite the hand that feeds even though the reporter might know it deserves a good nip on occasion. The example came powerfully home to me many years ago when I visited an orphanage that was run in exemplary manner; in the best way such an institution could possibly be run. I remarked to the director how relieved I was to know that such fine institutions existed, having seen a devastating documentary just a week earlier, broadcast by a sender of high repute. She perked her ears immediately.
“Oh, was it by so-and-so?” she asked.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“They were here a year ago, while filming the documentary. I suggested they report about this place instead of showing only the negative stories, but they weren’t interested.”

So on top of financial pressures, there is reporter bias as well. Many reporters seem to think that only bad news sells. If the customer is king, then its up to us, the readers to stop buying all the crappy news that’s published. Here are a few good news websites below. This is only a tentative list. There are plenty more out there to look at or, better still, create your own for a guaranteed improvement in your quality of life. Despite its ills, the world is still a beautiful place, and one shouldn’t begin each day with a daily dose of despair.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/good-news/
http://www.happynews.com/
http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/
http://optimistworld.com/News.aspx
http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
http://www.gimundo.com/
http://positivenews.org.uk/
http://www.thebetterindia.com/topics/heroes/
http://www.thebetterindia.com/14672/man-creates-artificial-glaciers-chewang-norphel-ladakh/

See more of this author here.

Today, Sunday 5 October, marks day 8 of the peaceful protests in Hong Kong and the sometimes violent reactions that the protesters faced. For today’s update, I’ve posted a link to the blog of Jason Ng, a Hong Kong-born lawyer, writer and democracy activist. See more on Jason’s blog at the link below.

http://www.asiseeithk.com/2014/10/darkest-before-dawn.html

https://www.amazon.com/author/aviott