Sharm El-Sheik Flights

The British government has advised national airlines to stop flying in and out of Sharm El-Sheik as a result of suspicions surrounding the crash of the Russian Airline over the Sinai desert last Saturday. There is a suspicion that a bomb was planted on the plane.

The British government is right to exercise caution even though an air accident report has not been finished or concluded that the flight came down as a result of a bomb on board.

Some of the holidaymakers who are now stranded believe that the government should not have intervened and that individuals are responsible for their own safety. Many will disagree with this opinion. I support the British government's action as it is duty bound to protect the public as best it can. I feel that I am responsible for my own safety but I am more cautious than the government.

I am careful not to fly over a war zone just to go on holiday. In the past I have travelled a lot for business and often I felt very uncomfortable flying over the Middle East but I took a calculated risk. For a holiday in the sun, where I could go for a walk on a beach or a swim and  then enjoy a glass of wine afterwards without disapproving looks or upsetting the locals I preferred Spain.

With regard to airport safety, security is often only tightened up after there has been an incident which means that if an airliner is victim of air piracy, a bombing or a ground to air missile, then there has been a fault in security. Travellers should be aware that governments and travel corporations may neglect security because of incompetence or a lack of will or both.

If the Russian airliner was downed  by a ground to air missile fired by guerilla fighters then it may be dangerous to fly over the Sinai desert even if, officially, it remains open for air companies to use it. The area could now be unsafe to travel home from by air; but hopefully not.

If  your government advises you not to travel to an area our country then you are probably better off heeding their advice; they might know something that you do not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34730104

Syria

Russia has now decided to enter the fray and I suppose that this was predictable but I did not think this would happen. If it is wrong for the Western Powers to drop bombs on Syria and the Middle East then it is equally wrong for Russia to do the same.

All sides are also engaged in a propaganda war:  "our bombs are better aimed than your bombs; your bombs are killing the good guys and only ours are killing the bad". It sounds like playground bullies lashing out at each other.

With Russia entering the conflict the dangers of an East -West hot war are only increased.
There is now also the possibility of Saudi Arabia and Iran entering the conflict directly but on different sides.

While the politicians are playing this dangerous game the ordinary Syrian citizen is set to suffer more. There will be more and more "collateral damage" and "accidental" killing of the innocent, more torture and more refugees.

More bombing will not solve the problem. Only, the United Nations can and it can only succeed when security council members set aside their national interests and act together to secure the peace. The ordinary Syrian citizen is not interested in war or religious conflict: he just wants peace.

If the UN cannot find a diplomatic solution then there is a case for a peace making military intervention which is preceded by an ultimatum for the local protagonists to disarm. Anyone who has committed torture or war crimes should then be sent to the Hague for trial. All this is possible if the super powers set aside their national interests.

What are the chances of this happening? None I fear. What is the chance of humanity surviving into the next millennium? Does it have to be none?

Water on Mars

Recently, NASA has confirmed that during the Martian summer melt water runs on the planet. The presence of running water means that life could have developed on Mars and may still exist there today. We need to find out.

So far Space agencies have made considerable efforts to ensure that Mars and other planets and satellites have not been contaminated by microbes or other life forms from Earth. They need to redouble their efforts.

If a base is established on Mars, which exploits Martian resources, then the spacefarers will need to be ultra careful not introduce alien species. Mars should be protected for scientific research at all costs.

If life is discovered on Mars it must not be contaminated as it will be the most important discovery ever made: we will know that we are not "alone" in the Universe. It will be essential to know what are the differences between life on Earth and life on Mars. This knowledge will help us to survive and prosper on Earth.

There will be no excuses to develop Mars industrially or to exploit its resources. The human species has done so much damage to the Earth's environment because we have been unable to control or regulate ourselves. We need to suppress the desire to exploit our neighbour.

There are many who express the opinion that Mars should be populated by humans as part of a "Noah's Ark"  project to ensure the survival of the human species against the threat of environmental collapse of even asteroid strikes. These opinions are disingenuous and I aver that they are an attempt to scare the the human population into taking unneeded action.

If we look after our planet we can ensure our survival for the foreseeable future and we could even survive long enough to evolve into a different species. The chances of the Earth being hit by a completely destructive meteorite or asteroid are low and we are unlikely to be hit in the near future. There is probably much more chance of our environment being seriously damaged by man-made climate change or war or both. Man-made threats could quite easily be regulated or even eliminated if we learn how control ourselves. Scientific research of the Martian environment will help show us how to preserve our own planet; but only if we are certain that our neighbouring planet has not been artificially contaminated.

There is little that we can do about the threat of a massive asteroid hitting us and we just have to learn to live with this fact. It is after all part of the natural evolution of the solar system.

Our future could be assured without he need to populate Mars just to create man-made climate change and environmental damage there.

An asteroid threat exists no matter which planet we live on and Mars is closer to the asteroid belt than the Earth, so we might be better off staying where we are.

The refugee crisis

A substantial proportion of people migrating to Europe are refugees. Europe has a duty to help them. Many of these refugees are escaping from regimes which arguably are the most cruel in history.

The Western powers have mistakenly intervened by force in the Middle East but the armed forces of the Western powers have not indulged in deliberate cruelty and barbarity and they have acted in general within the confines of the Geneva convention. It was never the intention of the USA, Britain or France that irregular forces should take over in Iraq, Syria or Libya but this is what has happened as a result of military and political intervention and the failure to make provision for the peace. The civilian populations of these countries are now being exposed to the most dreadful cruelty inflicted by guerilla forces and their political supporters in the power vacuum left by the Western Powers. withdrawn.

To alleviate the suffering of the civilians in Syria and Iraq, Western powers have been forced to act with more military force. President Obama probably would not have got involved in the Iraq war to unseat Saddam Hussein but his hand is now being forced to contemplate further military action rather than achieve a diplomatic solution which now seems almost impossible. Interfering in Syria to unseat President Assad has been another costly mistake.

Whilst there is no peace in the Middle East, the Levant and North Africa there will be refugees. The USA, Britain and France have played a substantial role in creating the chaos of war, albeit unintentionally, but without forethought the peace was not provided for. This is why the USA, Britain and France must take responsibility for the victims of war. We did this in the Second World War -  a conflict which we did not start. In this era we had real leaders namely, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle - perhaps we need them back.

Jeremy Corbyn and The Labour Leadership Election

I am not a member of a political party and never intend to be. I also have no intention of paying £3 to vote for a Labour leadership candidate. This does not mean that I am not interested in politics or the outcome of the election.

There are some disturbing aspects to the commentary surrounding the contest.  Most of this commentary is rather personal and directed at Jeremy Corbyn. It does not consist of critical examination of Mr Corbyn's policies which are being dismissed out of hand by most of the press and many Labour MPs and party supporters. Mr Corbyn is being subjected to some rather unfair criticism based on his personality and the exaggerated view that his policies are of the hard left and are unpalatable to the majority of the electorate.

Mr Corbyn does not look "telegenic" and for this reason alone he will probably never get elected as Prime Minister if he becomes leader of the Labour party. Why should looking good on television be a qualifying factor for being Prime Minister? Would it be impossible for a Winston Churchill or Clement Atlee to be elected in the modern era? These great former leaders would, sadly, stand no chance today. Such is the fickleness of the modern electorate.

Let's examine some of the criticism of his policies from within his own party. Mr Corbyn has proposed that quantitative easing should used to fund the building of hospitals and roads etc. The Shadow Chancellor described this as a hard left  economic policy. This is humbug.  The policy of using public funds to stimulate the economy by financing public works was proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1920's and 1930's to help revive the UK economy because of the The Great Depression. This policy is in no way related to Marxist economic theory. The policy proposes that economic growth is used to pay off  government debt. John Maynard Keynes was a highly respected economist and he was a life long Liberal. Franklin D Roosevelt used similar policies to regenerate the American economy - he was no Marxist and he was not even left wing.

Today on the television a former adviser to Tony Blair averred that Mr Corbyn  was not a suitable candidate for the Labour leadership because he advocated printing money- quantitative easing by another name - perhaps he forgot that the Gordon Brown and David Cameron governments have already printed £320 billion  but they gave it to the Banking sector who invested it property and stocks and shares and quite possibly another asset bubble has been created. Most of this money was not invested in the real economy. Mr Corbyn is proposing that the £320 billion  of public money might have been better spent on public works just as John Maynard Keynes proposed all those years ago.

Critics have suggested that Mr Corbyn's economic policies are rooted in the past: well so what? The neoclassical economic policies of the last 30 years or so are firmly rooted in the past. The 2008 economic crisis had all the hallmarks of the 1720 South Sea bubble.

My biggest criticism of Mr Corbyn is the fact that he has no policy to deal with the massive amount of private debt which could easily drag our economy back into depression. Private Individuals, Corporations and Banks have succeeded in building up debt to the same levels as before the 2008 crisis. I have written about this before; Britain has private debts of around 400% of GDP and this is more of a burden to our economy than government debt as it could lead us into another economic crisis. Mr Corbyn does not have a policy to alleviate private debt but unfortunately no other politician is proposing a solution either, so we are living in hope that interest rates are not forced up.

Mr Corbyn's political opponents in the Labour party do not have any policies as far as I can see that are different to the Conservative party. So what happens if the neoclassical economic policies of the Tories and New Labour fail again? What is the alternative proposal? Without Corbyn there will be no alternative. We need him to shave off his beard and make himself look 20 years younger and go around waving copies of  "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". He is not of the hard left; he is a hard Liberal and that is why his policies are not really that dangerous.

A good dose of Keynesian medicine might repair the economic damage caused by 30 years of monetarism and private debt excess. Corbyn has never espoused Marxist economics and this is why the attacks upon him have to be personal to succeed. Corbyn's policies are needed to demonstrate that there is an alternative path, even if the man himself will never be elected to lead the way.

Migrants at Calais and Racism

When I see the disturbing scenes at Calais of hundreds of migrants from Africa, Afghanistan  and the Levant trying to avoid the police to jump on trains heading for Britain, I think of racism. If all of these desperate people were white skinned they would stand much more of a chance of being accommodated in both Britain and France. The migrants have been forced to live in appalling conditions in "jungle city". This is much to the chagrin of local residents. Everyone wants to escape this situation resolved and none more so than the refugees and residents of Calais.

Most of the migrants are genuine refugees from violence , torture, false imprisonment and starvation. They are desperate to find a new home. Some of them will be miscreants who are using violence to gain access to lorries and the channel tunnel system but the miscreants are few in number and they can be dealt with by the justice system.

The British and French governments are reluctant to take positive action to accommodate these poor people because of public opinion. I am ashamed to say that not many people in Britain or France have got much sympathy for the plight of these people - and it is probably because  they are seen as being from a different "race" by some of our compatriots. Some politicians are also stirring up political trouble with their populist opinions and simplistic solutions to a complex problem.

The leader of UKIP is being disingenuous when he makes public statements that all France has to do is give the 3,000 migrants at Calais French passports and then they can all come to Britain legally - so let's leave the EU to prevent this happening: Balderdash. The French government cannot and will not grant any of these migrants French citizenship. There are already thousands and thousands of immigrants in France who have not been given passports; they are the "sans papiers" and they work in the under cover economy. These migrants have been staying in France illegally for years and they are going nowhere else.

The French government is coming in for much criticism from the  British tabloid press and right wing MPs. The same people who object to the EU from doing anything which impinges on British freedom of action are telling the French what to do. Hypocrisy  - hardly a British value is it? Maybe the French find this objectionable.

Of course, the British Home Secretary recognises the need for co-operation with the French government which has been generous enough to allow British border posts and fences on the French side of the channel or La Manche. If the border posts had to be moved back to Dover and Folkestone then the migrants would establish "jungle city" in Britain and in short order. We are lucky that the French are prepared to secure our border for us. We are also lucky that the French police are prepared to go along with this.

Many of the migrants have travelled a long time and across dangerous terrain and countries to get here. Many would have risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean sea in flimsy boats to land in Europe. The people at Calais are resourceful risk takers and have not given up on their objective. Many of these migrants would be hard working people who  have no need to sponge off the state as they can survive on their own resources. They would probably be happy to work hard for Britain if we let them in.

Successive British governments have done nothing to make provision for traffic to be managed when the channel tunnel is closed for whatever reason.  If there is just a storm in the channel then the tunnel cannot cope with the diverted traffic from the ferries. Lorries, therefore, are parked on the M20 motorway. This is a ludicrous solution. With migrants blocking the tunnel on a nightly basis the M20 stacking system in Kent has now reached crisis point. Complacency is no longer an option.

The French and British governments must find a solution which helps everyone including the migrants, lorry drivers, the residents of Kent and Calais and the police from both nations.

The French and British governments have a moral duty to resolve this crisis as they have brought war to Africa, The Levant and Afghanistan and this is the major reason why the migrants are coming. We really have no right to treat any of these unfortunate people so badly. The answer can be found if we use a sense of compassion on both sides of the channel rather than xenophobia. The voters of France and Britain should give their governments more room for manoeuvre.

Breakthrough Listen and the Fermi Paradox

Professor Stephen Hawking recently launched the Breakthrough Listen project which will be conducted to find intelligent alien life on another planet in our Galaxy, the Milky Way, or even in another Galaxy altogether.
http://www.space.com/29990-stephen-hawking-intelligent-alien-life-initiative.html

In my view this is a fantastic project. At the moment we have absolutely no evidence that any form of life exists in the Universe other than on Earth or its near environment.

The project involves scanning the skies to detect electro-magnetic radiation in the form of radio signals or laser beams which would have been transmitted by an alien and intelligent living being or a robot of such a being.

It is quite possible that the ten year project will pick up such a signal and be able to decode it. Picking up an alien radio signal may be our best chance to confirm that life exists elsewhere in the Milky Way. It is unlikely that a telescope such as Kepler will be able to resolve the signs of life on planets many light years away. It is equally unlikely that a satellite probe will find life on another planet or moon of our solar system within 10 years. However, Mars could be a candidate for such a discovery.

Yuri Milner who is financing the project has rightly pointed out that even if we do not discover alien life with the Breakthrough project then it does not mean that life does not exist elsewhere.

I am hoping that the project will be successful but I have my doubts that intelligent life is abundant in the Galaxy.

The renowned physicist Enrico Fermi surmised "our galaxy should be teeming with civilizations, but where are they? Why are they not here visiting us already? Why can't we see them? The Galaxy has been been in existence for billions of years surely we cannot be the only form of life that is intelligent? This is the Fermi paradox.

http://www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.html

So far we can only speculate that life exists in the rest of the Galaxy. It is quite possible, however, that some planets are teeming with life - just like the Earth. There are about 400 billion stars in our Galaxy so millions of them could support life on a planet or moon within their alien "solar system".

However, what are the chances of a life form on another planet evolving both the intelligence and the dexterity to make tools which can communicate across interstellar space and make space probes. Out of the millions of species that have ever survived on Earth only a small number would qualify as tool makers intelligent enough to make a radio set if they had survived. Homo Erectus and Homo Heidelbergensis are two but they went extinct. Neanderthal Man also had the potential but he could be part of our own species. Only one surviving species has been thrown up on Earth which has the intelligence and physical ability to design and build a radio set. Dolphins, Whales and other non-human primates display some form of intelligence but they do not have the manual dexterity to create complex tools. The chance of an intelligent species such as man evolving are probably millions to one against. Intelligence does not confer a particular ability to survive as a species. Cockroaches have survived for millions of years without any form of intelligence. The human genus has only existed for a couple of million or so years.

Planets which support life elsewhere in the Galaxy could face the same evolutionary predicament. Thousands or millions of species survive on a planet but none of them have both the intelligence and the dexterity to create tools. There may be billions of planets which can support life but only thousands which support intelligent life that can communicate across the Galaxy.

It will be interesting to note how human beings fare when they travel to Mars.  Whilst it may be physically possible to survive a trip it might be mentally very difficult. We cannot know how humans will deal with the isolation of both time and distance. Experiments have been done by isolating humans in submarines and laboratories for months on end and humans can survive on the international space station for similar periods. All of these humans have had an escape route and know that their isolation can be ended if it becomes too much of an ordeal. A trip to Mars is of a different order of isolation of even a trip to the Moon. Inter-planetary and inter-stellar space travel may not be possible for humans because of the isolation factor. The same could apply to intelligent aliens. Some of the stars which harbour intelligent life could be hundreds if not thousands of light years away; the magnitude of the isolation is daunting and a more advanced species than ours may have already given up  the idea of travelling to another star and may have resigned itself to just listening out for other forms of intelligent life. This does not mean that we should not try to find a distant radio signal across inter-stellar space even if we cannot visit the source.

The difficulty of communicating with other being is also a daunting task. The latest extra solar planet discovery, Kepler 452b, is 1,400 light years away. This planet is similar in size to Earth and it revolves  around a  star similar to our own in the "habitable zone". If there are intelligent beings on this planet and they are listening out for us then they will have to wait a long time to pick up the BBC news - more than a 1,000 years. If they send us a message back then they would have to wait 2,800 years for an answer, and that would be if we were confident enough and feel safe enough to reply. Communication with even a near stellar neighbour may be almost impossible because of the time difference, isolation and social difference.

This could be the resolution of the Fermi Paradox. There are too few fellow intelligent beings out there and they are too far away in terms of time and distance to maintain contact.

This does not mean that we should not satisfy our curiosity; it would be good to know that we are not alone and that life is not a single event limited to our own planet and star. If we do pick up a radio or laser signal from  an alien civilisation it would probably mean that our Galaxy has millions of planets and moons  that support life and that we should redouble our efforts to find it on Mars or a moon of  Jupiter or Saturn.

Let's hope Stephen Hawkings and Yuri Milner meet with success.