Find every day a new NGO here and see us again when back. Meanwhile have a good time. Heidi.

*****

See also our long existing pages:

• people by first name;
• PEOPLE BY COUNTRY;
• All NGOs sorted alphabetically;
• All NGOs sorted chronologically.

And see our just new created pages:

• New page on Economy and Society: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on Humanitarian Texts: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on KASHMIR and IDPs: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on Geopolitical Analysis: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on History – Past and Present: all artic les sorted chronologically;
• New page on Berhane Tewolde’s Development Blog: all articles sorted chronologically;
• New page on Mein privater Garten: all article sorted chronologically;
• New page on Heidi Barathieu-Brun: all articles sorted chronologically.

Further find on the blog History – Past and Present:
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 1;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 2;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 3;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 4;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 5;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 6;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 7;
Baharistan-i-Shahi – Chapter 8.

The US Justice Department has determined that nearly 50 of the remaining 196 detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are to be held indefinitely, without charges or trial, according to a front-page article published Friday by the Washington Post.

The Post reports that the decision is the result of a case-by-case review of the remaining Guantanamo prisoners by a Justice Department-led task force set up by President Obama last year. The detainees have been held under barbaric conditions and subjected to torture, most of them languishing in the prison camp for eight years. The Post report cites unnamed administration officials, who spoke of the task force’s conclusions in advance of the public release of its report …  

… Of the 110 who are deemed eligible for release, 60 are Yemenis. Since Obama indefinitely suspended the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to Yemen after the attempted Christmas Day airliner attack, these detainees have no prospect of release for the foreseeable future. That leaves only fifty whom the government is preparing to repatriate over the next few months.

Even their release is contingent on “variables,” an administration official told the Post, including “a changed security situation in a proposed transfer state.”

The administration claims that all of the detainees have the right to challenge their incarceration in habeas corpus proceedings in federal court. However, the US appeals court which has jurisdiction over all such cases, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, earlier this month issued a sweeping ruling making it all but impossible for detainees being held as “alien unprivileged enemy belligerents” to prevail in such suits.

The appeals court upheld the Obama administration in opposing the release of Ghaleb Nassar al-Bihani, a Yemeni citizen who has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since early 2002. In its ruling, the court declared that presidential power to jail alleged terrorists is not limited by international law, and that Guantanamo detainees who seek to contest the legality of their incarceration are not entitled to the constitutional guarantees and legal norms afforded to defendants in criminal cases.

The focus of the government and the media on the remaining Guantanamo detainees obscures the fact that a far larger group of alleged “enemy belligerents” are being held without charge or trial, under, if anything, even more brutal conditions at the US military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Last week, the Pentagon, in compliance with a Freedom of Information request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, released a redacted list of 645 people being held at the prison.

A McClatchy newspapers investigative report revealed that many of the Bagram prisoners were civilians who were arrested based on false information. (full long text).

The left needs to organize the unorganized. The working people, the unemployed, the young, and the restless. The right wing has their core group of supporters who organize around fear of the other. The liberals have those who believe in the myth of American equality because they have no class analysis. The Left needs to organize the rest and they need to do so without the Democratic Party. It should be quite clear to almost every left-leaning American by now that the Democrats are nothing more than another wing of the party that works for Wall Street and the Pentagon. To continue to work for and elect their candidates is self-defeating. As the first year of the Obama presidency has clearly shown, not only do the Democrats support the right wing agenda, that support makes it easier for the right wing to put their candidates into power. Why? Because after promising progressive reforms and then failing to deliver, voters tend to either not vote or vote for the right wing candidates out of anger and frustration.

This occurs because the current system provides no alternative. There is no progressive third party or grassroots movement to support such a party. There is not even a grassroots movement that vocalizes the desires of millions for a fair and just society where people’s needs come before Wall Street’s profits and the Pentagon’s wars that help protect and expand those profits. So, the Democrats step in as they have always done and pretend that they are the party that will address these desires. There was a time when such an argument was plausible. From FDR to LBJ, the Democrats were the party that passed many reforms making life better for America’s working people. They even passed bills outlawing racial segregation. Of course, this occurred because of immense pressure from the Left–pressure a hundred times greater than the pressure from America’s right that the Democrats claim has caused them to compromise on virtually every progressive piece of legislation during the current period. Yes, there was a time when that claim could have been made …

… I can’t be emphatic enough, there is no reasonable reason to waste a dollar or a moment of your time campaigning for the Democratic Party. Barack Obama’s campaign based on false hope and promises and the subsequent reneging on almost every promise of change should be enough to convince any left-leaning or progressive person in the United States who voted for Obama in 2008 that the time has come to end this relationship for good and forever. Like the cheating and lying spouse that keeps asking for one more chance after you find them in bed with your enemy once again, there comes a time to end the relationship. Not only have the occasional moments of bliss and the crumbs that say I care become fewer and fewer, they are no longer enough. The denial so many left-leaning Americans have lived with in their relationship with the Democrats is causing more harm then it is worth. Walk away, close the door behind you and begin the work required to build a real force for progressive change in the United States. (full text).
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/just-walk-away-from-the-democrats/

(Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up
is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached by e-mail. Read other articles by Ron, or visit Ron’s website).

Last September, I wrote The Hightower Lowdown about how the Roberts’ Court could throw out over 100 years of campaign finance law.

Remember their names: Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas.

Yesterday, from within the dark isolation of the Supreme Court, these five men pulled off a black-robed coup against the American people’s democratic authority. In an unprecedented perversion of judicial power, this court cabal has decreed that corporations have a free-speech “right” to dip into their corporate coffers and spend unlimited sums of money to elect or defeat candidates of their choosing. 

Corporate interests already had too much money power over our political system. No other group in America comes anywhere near the spending clout that this relatively small clutch of wealthy special interests wields over our elections and government. So it’s ludicrous for anyone – much less Supreme Court judges – to argue that the corporate voice is a victim of political “censorship.” This is not merely judicial activism, it is judicial radicalism …

… We MUST fight back. Many good groups are working on this issue, and we all have to get involved to fight against this corporate take over of our political system. Public Citizen has a petition we can sign. Common Cause is asking us to contact your congressperson and make sure they have signed on to the Fair Elections Now Act. I mentioned other good groups that are working on this issue. Get in touch with them. Let’s fight the good fight… and win! Onward. (full text).

Published on Xinhuanet.com, english.news.cn, Source: China Daily/Agencies, 2010-01-22.

BEIJING, Jan. 22 – Shaving three grams off the daily salt intake of Americans could prevent up to 66,000 strokes, 99,000 heart attacks and 92,000 deaths in the United States, while saving 24 billion U.S. dollars in health costs per year, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The benefit to the U.S. population would be comparable to cutting smoking by 50 percent, significantly lowering obesity rates and giving cholesterol drugs to virtually everyone to prevent heart attacks, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues.

Such a goal, they said, is readily attainable … // 

… Women would benefit the most.

”Even if the federal government were to bear the entire cost of a regulatory program designed to reduce salt consumption, the government would still be expected to realize cost savings for Medicare, saving $6 to $12 in health expenditures for each dollar spent on the regulatory program,” the researchers wrote.

In a commentary, Dr. Lawrence Appel and Cheryl Anderson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said the new study may be underestimating the benefits.

They said it did not take into account how it would help children or the fact that lower salt intake may reduce the risk of stomach cancer, kidney disease, congestive heart failure and osteoporosis. (full text).

U.S. customs authorities have assigned themselves the authority to copy all data on your laptop or other electronic device when you cross a U.S. border. I wrote about this policy last year.

Now, customs authorities in Canada (and other countries, especially the U.K.) are getting into the act. I’ve received reports from several sources (among them from J. J. Luna, author of the classic How to be Invisible) describing intimidating encounters at the Canadian border. Luna reports that after being routed into a secondary inspection queue, customs officials forced him to reveal the passwords to his two laptops and USB flash drives. Then, they disappeared with these devices in hand for nearly an hour, presumably to copy and inspect them. 

Your smart phone may be subject to the same type of inspection, and all your photos, text messages, online searches, and calling records copied onto a customs database.

To avoid a border inquisition, the best precaution is not to carry any electronic device across an international border. For most people, this isn’t practical, so the next-best strategy is to carry only “sanitized” devices.

For instance, I have a laptop I use only for international travel. There’s nothing on it except for the operating system and program files. I also have an “unlocked” cell phone I use only for international travel. When I arrive in a new country I purchase a domestic SIM card from a local phone dealer. This not only protects your privacy at the border, but also insures your domestic carrier has no record of your international calls. And, it eliminates roaming charges.

If you do carry your cell phone across the border, delete any photos or text messages you feel to be even remotely controversial, and then reset it to factory settings. You can find instructions for doing so at http://www.master-reset.com.

What if you need access to confidential data while traveling internationally? One option is to upload a zip file containing your data to a commercial backup service, such as Carbonite (http://www.carbonite.com).  Be sure to encrypt the data before uploading it, using a product such as PGP Whole Disk Encryption (http://www.pgp.com) or True-Crypt (http://www.truecrypt.org).

Another option is to send an encrypted USB flash drive to your destination via courier, and send it back via courier when you’re ready to return home. I’ve done this several times without any problems … (full text).

… In a recent editorial, the Post lambasted Clinton’s speech on human rights in which she quite sensibly added “oppression of want” to the traditional concerns with the oppression of tyranny and torture. “Ms. Clinton’s lumping of economic and social ‘rights’ with political and personal freedom was a standard doctrine of the Soviet Bloc, which used to argue at every East-West conference that human rights in Czechoslovakia were superior to those in the United States, because one provided government health care that the other lacked,” the Post opined …

… Art of Extraction:

A teacher puts out chocolate-chip cookies for her elementary school students, along with toothpicks and paperclips. The children use play money to buy the cookies and the mining equipment, and then proceed to dig out the chips as if they were chunks of coal. After calculating the time spent in this activity, they are ready to add up the costs of coal mining.

”At first blush, this classroom exercise seems innocent enough,” I write in The Art of Extraction. “The exercise becomes considerably less innocent when you learn that it’s part of a series of lesson plans that the American Coal Foundation, an industry organization, distributes to schools. It becomes even less innocent through juxtaposition in poet Mark Nowak’s powerful new book Coal Mountain Elementary. Nowak places these lesson plans next to two other sources: news accounts of coal mining accidents in China and excerpts from the verbatim testimony of miners, rescue workers, and families connected to the Sago, West Virginia mine disaster of January 2006. These are the true costs of coal mining, measured not in swallowed chocolate chips but in human lives” …

… The Pentagon Is Happy:

The unemployment rate remains ghastly, the U.S. debt continues to pile up, and the overall economy has about as much stability as a Jell-O shot. But one U.S. institution remains well-fed and happy: the Pentagon.

”The Pentagon budget increased for every year of the first decade of the 21st century, an unprecedented run that didn’t even happen in the World War II era, much less during Korea or Vietnam,” writes FPIF contributor William Hartung in Obama and the Permanent War Budget. “And if the government’s current plans are carried out, there will be yearly increases in military spending for at least another decade. We have a permanent war budget, and most of it isn’t even being used to fight wars — it’s mostly a giveaway to the Pentagon and its favorite contractors.”

As Barbara Ehrenreich argues in her new book, reviewed by FPIF contributor Rubrick Biegon in The Foreign Policy of Optimism, relentless optimism is an endemic problem in the United States that translates into an exceptionalist foreign policy and a blinkered economic policy. “Perhaps the clearest connection between America’s penchant for positivity and the wider world is the ongoing global recession, which began in the United States. Ehrenreich persuasively illustrates how positive thinking blinded both elites and non-elites alike to the gathering economic catastrophe, resulting in what is likely to be the first contraction in global economic output since World War II.”

Finally, on an even more pessimistic note, FPIF contributor Gabriela Campos reviews Mark Danner’s latest collection of essays. “Danner’s compilation of his past work reveals misery, destruction, and violence but also provides critical analysis of American foreign policy in the last quarter century. American foreign policy has been plagued with hypocritical and weak decisions where its consequences mostly affected those in distant places.” (full text).

(Note: {meanwhile} … we changed our reply-to address from web@fpif.org to fpif@ips-dc.org, so if you have questions or concerns, you can find us there. Please add us to your safe senders list so you can continue to get World Beat).

Nachfolgend ein Auszug aus dem Schreiben der Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung gbs an den deutschen Bundespräsidenten vom 15. Dezember 2009 (veröffentlicht auf der gbs-Webseite):

” … Der Grund für unser Schreiben ist, dass Sie in Ihrer Rede empfehlen, Kindern die Bibel vorzulesen, weil dies angeblich ein „wertvoller Beitrag für die frühkindliche Erziehung“ sei.

An dieser Stelle müssen wir energisch widersprechen! Denn die Bibel hat auf Kinder vor allem eine desorientierende Wirkung. Denn sie vermittelt falsche Ansichten über die „Natur der Dinge“ (etwa bezüglich der Entstehung der Welt). Zudem enthält sie ethisch höchst problematische Anweisungen, die dem mittlerweile erreichten Stand unserer kulturellen Evolution nicht mehr entsprechen (beispielsweise die durchgängige Diskriminierung von ungläubigen, andersgläubigen oder homosexuellen Menschen in den Texten des Alten und Neuen Testaments). 

Wir bestreiten dabei keineswegs, dass die Bibel sehr wohl auch in einem aufklärerischen, humanen und mit wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen kompatiblen Sinne gelesen werden kann. Allerdings setzt dies einiges Vorwissen voraus:
Man muss beispielsweise die Evolutionstheorie verstanden haben, um die kreationistischen Konzepte der Bibel relativieren zu können. Ebenso muss man den Prozess der menschlichen Kulturentwicklung begriffen haben, um die oft grausamen, biblischen Normen historisch-kritisch einordnen zu können.

Das Problem ist, dass Kinder über derartiges Vorwissen nicht verfügen. Sie besitzen daher auch nicht die Möglichkeit, die an sie herangetragenen Glaubensaussagen zu relativieren. Stattdessen nehmen sie die kreationistischen Vorstellungen der Bibel wörtlich, im schlimmsten Fall entwickeln sie irrationale Ängste gegenüber einem strafenden Schöpfergott, der, wie sämtliche Kinderbibeln bildreich berichten, dereinst keine ethischen Bedenken dagegen hatte, nahezu alle Menschen und Tiere im Zuge der „Sintflut“ zu ertränken.

Führt man sich die verheerenden Konsequenzen einer vorkritischen Aneignung von Glaubensaussagen vor Augen, so erscheint Ihr Ratschlag, schon den Kleinsten die Bibel vorzulesen, als eine „Anstiftung zur weltanschaulichen Indoktrination von Kindern“! Selbstverständlich ist uns klar, dass eine derartige weltanschauliche Beeinflussung in der Regel in allerbester Absicht geschieht. Die Tradition der religiösen Indoktrination ist so etabliert, dass sich gemeinhin niemand bewusst macht, was wir unseren Kindern antun, wenn wir sie mit Glaubensaussagen konfrontieren, ohne ihnen zuvor die Kenntnisse vermittelt zu haben, mit deren Hilfe sie diese Aussagen angemessen
einordnen können.

Es kann doch nicht richtig sein, dass wir unsere Kinder schon im frühsten Alter mit kreationistischen Vorstellungen konfrontieren, während ihnen das wissenschaftlich akzeptierte Weltbild der Evolutionstheorie erst sehr viel später nahe gebracht wird (in den meisten Lehrplänen taucht sie als eigene Lerneinheit erst im 10. Schuljahr auf!)! Wäre es nicht besser und einer modernen, pluralen Gesellschaft auch weit angemessener, wenn wir den Kindern zunächst einmal das vermitteln würden, was wir mehr oder weniger gesichert über die „Natur der Dinge“ wissen, bevor wir zusätzliche religiöse Weltdeutungen an sie herantragen? … (ganzer Text). “

Has one of the great political murder mysteries of our time finally been solved? I’d say the answer is probably yes, although we can be confident the solution will be rejected by many.

INTRODUCTION

On the evening of 6 April 1994, just as it was approaching Kigali, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana home from Tanzania was shot down by missiles fired from the ground. Also on the flight was the president of Burundi, Cyprian Ntaryamira, as well as several high-level Rwandan political and military officials. But from the first movement there was no doubt that the target was Habyarimana. What was in doubt was the culprit, and on this the debate has raged furiously for the past almost 16 years … //

… THE NEW REPORT 

Now along comes a new document prepared by an ‘Independent Committee of Experts’ appointed by the government of Rwanda, with the explicit title Report of the Investigation into the Causes and Circumstances of and Responsibility for the Attack of 06/04/1994 against the Falcon 50 Rwandan Presidential Aeroplane [sic], Registration Number 9xR-NN. The head of the 7-person committee was Dr Jean Mutsinzi, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Rwanda, now a judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The other members are apparently lawyers or authorities on aircraft matters, but an annex offering their resumes is not unfortunately part of the commission’s report (which is easily available online at mutsinzireport.com).

In my view, the Commission’s report is largely persuasive. But you can immediately see how much more credible it would be if the members hadn’t all been Rwandans appointed by the Kagame government. I am confident that an independent commission appointed, say, by the African Union, would have delivered the same conclusions but with far more credibility. An obvious precedent was the OAU-appointed independent International Panel of Eminent Personalities (IPEP) whose report, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide[ PDF], has achieved a certain authority. But I readily acknowledge that genocide deniers, Hutu extremists and Kagame-haters will reject any and all conclusions that give Kagame the benefit of the doubt, and the evidence be damned.

Perhaps that’s why his government consistently acts on its own, without waiting for external validation. It did the same with the report on the role of France in the genocide, delivered by a panel of Rwandans also appointed by the government and headed by well-known RPF militant. In my view its report was overwhelmingly accurate and appropriately damning for France. But I wished they had asked outside experts like Linda Melvern to undertake that project, to give it real international credibility. But that is not the way the Kagame government does things.

We are left, then, to judge the report on the plane crash on its merits, and in this respect it seems to me to have made a major contribution to settling the great question of who was responsible.

In a word, the ‘Committee of Experts’ documents the logic most of us have accepted since the start. They pin the blame directly and fully on a group of Hutu extremists who were simply not prepared to accept the power-sharing provisions of the Arusha Accords. In this sense, they prove a terrible point: The very agreement that was to bring harmony to Rwanda led directly to the genocide. This is a staggering truth for all those involved in conflict resolution and peace-making to conjure with … //

… These flaws reduce the authoritativeness of this report. They will be jumped all over by those who will never accept any conclusion that fails to blame Kagame and the RPF for Habyarimana’s murder. So there’s no point whatever in trying to prove anything else to these deniers and extremists. They have no interest in the truth.

But for those genuinely searching for the most convincing answer to this great political murder mystery, the strengths of the committee’s report overwhelmingly outweigh its few unfortunate flaws. Of course it would still be best to have the definitive report by a truly independent group of international experts. But until we do, the conclusions of this report should stand. And if there ever were an independent external study, I’m confident its conclusions would echo those of this Rwandan committee of experts:

‘We know who shot Habyarimana’s plane down. We know why they did it. We know how they did it. And we know that they came within an inch of success in their diabolical plan. Before they were defeated, the Hutu extremists who assassinated President Habyarimana wiped out thousands of decent Hutu who wouldn’t go along with their fiendish plot and three-quarters of their country’s Tutsi. The attack on the president’s plane was the opening shot in one of the purest genocides of the past 100 years, launched for no better reason than the greed of a few power-hungry Hutu fanatics. It was one of the greatest man-made tragedies of our time.’

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS. (full long text).

While the deployment of 10000 US troops in Haiti has been qualified by a number of Latin American political leaders as an invasion and occupation under the guise of a humanitarian relief operation, the arrival of the USS Bataan in Haiti raises even more questions.

Over recent years, this amphibious assault ship has been converted into a floating secret prison, forming part of the CIA network of “black sites” used for so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques”. The ship’s flat hold bottom, designed to accommodate troops for disembarkment, has been equipped with cages.

Prisoners are subjected to the same experiments as in Guantánamo.[1]

Having denied it for a long time, the Pentagon eventually acknowledged that the USS Bataan had in fact been used as a prison in December 2001, but that it recovered its normal functions as of January 2002, an allegation which is contested by numerous specialists who claim that it continued to operate as a prison off shore … (full text).

Alors que le déploiement de plus de 10 000 soldats états-uniens en Haïti a été qualifié par de nombreux leaders latino-américains d’invasion et d’occupation sous couvert d’aide humanitaire, on ne peut que s’interroger sur l’arrivée de l’USS Bataan.

Ce bâtiment de la Navy a été transformé au cours des dernières années en prison secrète flottante. Ses cales à fond plat, conçues pour abriter des troupes en vue d’un débarquement, ont été aménagées avec des cages. Les détenus y sont soumis aux mêmes expériences qu’à Guantanamo [1].

Après avoir longtemps nié cette réalité, le Pentagone a admis que l’USS Bataan avait effectivement été utilisé comme prison en décembre 2001, mais qu’il avait été rendu à son usage normal dès janvier 2002, ce que contestent de nombreux spécialistes selon lesquels il a conservé sa mission de prison off shore … (full text).

When he became U.S. president, Barack Obama ordered the Guantanamo detention facility closed within a year.  That deadline is now fast approaching. Of the prisoners who remain at Guantanamo, U.S. authorities will have a difficult time resettling the seven Uighurs who are still there. The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking Chinese Muslim minority.  Beijing has not wasted any opportunity to assert its claim to decide what happens to the Guantanamo Uighurs … //

… Uighurs from Guantanamo have been resettled to Albania, Bermuda and Palau.  The United States has refused to send them back to China or grant them U.S. refugee status. The latest country to consider taking in two of the Uighurs is Switzerland. The Chinese spokeswoman called on Bern to take into consideration China’s concerns. Jiang says she hopes Switzerland can consider overall bilateral relations and refuse to accept any Uighur suspects from Guantanamo Bay. Swiss officials say there has been no final decision. Last month, Cambodia returned to China more than 20 Uighurs who had fled to Cambodia to seek refugee status, following strong protest from the Chinese government. The Uighurs had left their homeland, Xinjiang, in western China, following deadly ethnic riots in July that left nearly 200 people dead.China accuses some Uighurs of seeking an independent homeland. Uighurs accuse the Chinese government of discrimination and repression. (full text).

*****

Schnelle, nicht repräsentative TV Umfrage /A non representatif quick TV poll:
Sollen wir Guantanamo-Uiguren in der Schweiz/im Kanton Jura ansiedeln? / Shall we settle Guantanamo-Uigurs in Switzerland /the Jura-region?

Say:

• ja, aufnehmen, ein guter Draht zu den USA ist wichtig / yes, accept, a good relation with the US is importent: 8 %;
• nein, nicht aufnehmen, wir sollten es uns mit China nicht verderben / no, not accept, we don’t want harm relations with China: 8 %;
• ja, grundsätzlich aufnehmen, die Männer sind unschuldig /by princip: yes, accept, these men are not guilty: 34 %;
• no, grundsätzlich nicht aufnehmen, Guantánamo geht uns nichts an / no, not accept, it’s an US mess and not our affair: 50 %.

(My comment: yesterday night we had a long TV-debate about the question. Some spokesleaders of the 34% wanting Human Rights be our first consideration told their shame if this expressed egoism of half of our population will win [my question: too long in peace and wealth to know what means real horror?]. I join these 34%, I want these 2 Uigurs in Switzerland and tell China: don’t mix up in our concerns).

The humanitarian Kindertransport program brought nearly 10,000 children, mostly Jewish and mostly girls, out of Nazi Germany to Britain during the Second World War. Reunion of Kindertransport, is an international organization aimed at helping the now grown displaced persons find their kin. Some have never recovered psychologically and spent the past 50 years in mental institutions … //

… And now we are faced with an earthquake with unimaginable damage in Haiti. Unicef has stated it very simply:

• The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said Tuesday that international adoption should be the ‘last resort’ for children orphaned by last week’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti.
• “Unicef’s position has always been that whatever the humanitarian situation, family reunification must be favoured,” spokeswoman Veronique Taveau said during a press briefing in Geneva.
• “The last resort is inter-country adoption,” she said.
• Taveau said Unicef is working to find and identify children left without parents after last Tuesday’s devastating earthquake in the country.
• “We find them, identify them and register them, and favour family reunification,” she said, adding that for Unicef’s purposes, family includes uncles and aunts, cousins, grandparents and more distant relatives.
• Unicef expressed concern amid reports of efforts to speed international adoptions of Haitian children in the aftermath of the disaster, which is estimated to have left about 200,000 people dead.

International Social Services and the International Rescue Committee concur, stating “in general, international adoption should not take place in a situation of war or natural disaster, given that these events make it impossible to verify the personal and family situation of children. Any operation to adopt or to evacuate children that are victims of the earthquake to another country must be absolutely avoided, as was the case during the 2004 tsunami….”

Haitian “children are currently experiencing extreme stress so that a sudden shift to a new country and a new family can have a psychological impact that is impossible to measure. According to the Guidelines developed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the evacuation of such children or their temporary placement in families abroad is also traumatic. It is considered as an added disruption to the injury already suffered by the child.”

The Hague Conference on International Law likewise states: … //

… Truly non-profit child advocating organizations all side with caution before the wholesale removal of children from their families and culture while lobbyists and marketers for those who profit from the redistribution just want to rush in and grab up the commodities.

SOS Children’s Village, The UN, ISS and IRC, The Hague have no financial gain in the best and safest outcomes for these children. They simply advocate what is best for the children and have the expertise and workers on the ground to back it up.

Unicef and other NGOs involved in child welfare know full well that nearly 90% of children worldwide in orphanages are not orphans but have one living parent, or extended family who visit and hope to regain custody. People in impoverished nations like Haiti reply in institutional care for temporary assistance and to access medical care they cannot otherwise afford.

Children are a highly sough commodity in a multibillion dollar industry in which demand creates supply. Poverty is always exploited, let’s not add this exploitation to people who have already suffered so very much.

There are many organizations accepting donation aid the children of Haiti for all who feel compelled to help without risking being exploitative. (full text).

(Mirah Riben is an activist/author/lecturer. Read other articles by Mirah, or visit Mirah’s website).

More articles about Haiti:

Haitian homeless to be relocated out of capital, 2010-01-22;

Chinese peacekeepers in Haiti, 2010-01-22;

Haitians flee homeland by boat as in movie 2012, 2010-01-21;

Haiti port opening raises hopes for quake victims, 22 January 2010.

With the victory Sunday of billionaire businessman Sebastián Piñera in Chile’s run-off presidential election, right-wing parties identified with the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet are set to return to power for the first time in 20 years.

Piñera, the candidate of the right-wing Coalition for Change, scored a narrow victory over Eduardo Frei, a former president and candidate of the Concertación, a political alliance dominated by the Christian Democrats and the Socialist Party, which has elected all four presidents since the transition from military dictatorship to civilian rule at the end of the 1980s.

Piñera won 52 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election, compared to 48 percent for Frei, with 222,742 ballots constituting the margin of victory.

The election marks the first time in half a century that the parties of Chile’s traditional right—today represented by the National Renovation party and the Independent Democratic Union—have won a popular vote for president.

Both parties were founded by political collaborators of the Pinochet dictatorship, which came to power in the US-backed military coup of September 11, 1973, and was responsible for the execution, disappearance, torture, imprisonment and exile of tens of thousands of Chileans during its 17-year rule … //

… Meanwhile, the so-called “Chilean miracle,” which generated 5 percent growth rates together with extreme social polarization, has ground to a halt under the impact of the world financial crisis. The country has seen negative growth over the last two years and an official unemployment rate that rose by a third over the last year, reaching 10.2 percent last September.

Piñera’s political handlers consciously emulated the Obama campaign in the US, casting the rightist as the candidate of “change,” running on a program of “hope for the future.”

In the course of the campaign, he promised to create 1 million jobs, make a one-time handout of $80 to all of Chile’s poor and extend unspecified benefits to the country’s middle class. He also vowed to implement a law-and-order crackdown by putting 1,000 more police on the streets.

Chile’s Socialist Party President Michelle Bachelet went beyond extending formal congratulations to Piñera, going to the rightist candidate’s home for breakfast the day after the election and announcing that she would take him along to an upcoming Group of Rio meeting in February.

For his part, Piñera has spoken of forming a government of “national unity” based on “consensus.” Given the right-wing parties’ lack of a majority in the Chilean congress, his government will need support from elements of the Concertación parties to enact legislation. It is likely that Piñera will try to incorporate some of their members in his cabinet.

The Concertación itself has functioned in consensus with the right over the past two decades. This is in line with a long historical trajectory.

In the 1970s, the earlier incarnation of this popular front formation, the Popular Unity government of Socialist Party President Salvador Allende, politically and literally disarmed the Chilean workers in the run-up to the military coup, which claimed the life of Allende, together with thousands of others.

In 1988-1989, it negotiated a peaceful transition with the Pinochet dictatorship in which it upheld the same ruling class interests defended by the military regime, accepted the 1980 constitution dictated by the generals and agreed to an amnesty for those responsible for horrific crimes against the Chilean people.

While the leaders of the Concertación parties are talking in terms of the victory of the Pinochet right at the ballot box being a vindication of Chilean democracy, the reality is that the coming to office of Piñera will signal a further turn to reaction by the state and an intensification of the class struggle in Chile. (full text).

Ever since Ricardo, the defense of international trade has been about productive efficiency. But much more important is that civilisation is a process of cultural exchange, and hybridity is a source of the truly human in the form of new meanings.

It seems almost obscene to speak about culture during a time of global economic and political crisis. But I will persist in my intention. I offer two justifications for doing so.

The first is my conviction that the exchange of products of cultural creativity sustains the life of a human community and gives temporary meaning to our pursuit of a better, more sophisticated and more complete experience of reality. Each and every individual needs to pursue meaning within overlapping cultural frameworks, ones that sparkle – even if deceptively – with the thrilling beauty of our living present, the better to resist the grip of banality … // 

… Westernistic civilization:

Instead of subscribing to the ideology that views the world through the “hard” lens of conflict between “the West and the Rest”, let us try a theory that looks at the world through the “soft” lens of “westernistic” civilization.

An analogy between Hellenistic and westernistic civilization is helpful. In much the same way as classical Greece cannot be equated with Hellenic civilization, the modern West is not the same as westernistic civilization. Until 4 BC and the twilight of city-states, classical Greek civilization remained within the territorial borders of the southern Balkans. Similarly, the civilization of Latin Christianity or the traditional West was firmly rooted in the western countries of Europe until the advent of modernity.

The Hellenistic civilization of Alexander the Great emanated from classical Greek heritage, but territorially it stretched across the entire world then known to man, reaching to Egypt and India, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. In the same way, the westernistic civilization that has arisen from modern western heritage comprises the entire known world today.

A special fusion of Middle Eastern and Indo-Iranian cultural traditions on the one hand, and ancient Greek tradition on the other, gave rise to forms of collective life in which classical Greek ideas represented only the backbone rather than the entire social body. Alexander the Great systematically expanded both the borders of his multi-national empire and the minds of his multi-cultural subjects. He encouraged “mixed marriages” between Greek colonists and locals with the same fervour that he supported merging of Greek and local ideas and technologies.

Westernistic civilization, too, has a hybrid nature. The backbone of the basic package of ideas arises from the heritage of the modern West, but its many ribs extend to all ends of the planet. Various communities in various parts of the world adopt and adapt these ideas in their singular ways as they take into account local specificities. Elections provide an example: this form of representative democracy is today practiced in virtually all countries of the world, although we will readily agree that this process is not equally free and honest across the board.

In ancient Greece, individual identity was determined by the politics of a city-state. It embodied the centre of the world. For this reason, the ancient Greeks engaging in trading and military expeditions, and especially those in overseas colonies, always invoked their homeland, their home city or metropolis. In Hellenistic civilization, the origins of a person was not an issue worthy of much attention. After all, ancient Greek ideas were carried to the outside world by an army under the command of a Macedonian.

Within this empire that stretched across three continents, in which the journeys between regional capitals could take several years, the need for just one centre gradually diminished. The idea of a metropolis was replaced by the idea about a world city or cosmopolis. It transcended local citizenship and offered an answer to the new need for diverse identities, obligations and loyalties. Instead of exclusive patriotic feelings incorporated in the ancient Greek differentiation between “the home and the world”, the inclusive Hellenistic cosmopolitanism expresses the paradox of global awareness: “The world is the home.”

Diverse identities of peoples and locales in westernistic civilization are perhaps best expressed in cosmopolises such as Marseille and Milano, London and Lisbon, Berlin and Barcelona. All of these cities are historically and geographically rooted in the countries and the cultures of the traditional West, but they have included in their symbolic and actual economy many non-western elements. From fast food to intoxicating music, from fashions to exciting social customs, “local” and “foreign” elements merge on the street corner and in the office, producing new synthetic products and hybrid ideas.

A similar process is unfolding beyond the traditional West: megalopolises such as Sydney and Saigon, Cairo and Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City and Manila are the laboratories of diverse identities. While transport and trade, science and industry, communication and arms are unerringly of modern western provenance, every local environment uses them in keeping with their own prejudices and needs, capacities and resources.

Ancient Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenized world, has acquired many local accents and underwent (not only subtle) adaptations through the babble of tribes and peoples, soldiers and diplomats, merchants and pilgrims. This process is not unlike the spread of the English language in modern westernistic civilization, as various groups and individuals make use of it in their (not only subtle) exchange of ideas, goods and services.

Westernistic civilization therefore does not imply a western model that is uniformly imposed all over the planet in the same manner. This is the assumption of those who advocate the division of the world into the “West and the Rest”, explaining the processes of cultural exchange as a blind alley at the end of which the victorious robber (the West) empties the purses of all the rest.

The notion of westernistic civilization carries a cognitively different, even if politically unpromising content. It is a two-way street accommodating a lively trade in ideologies and technologies that the modern West invented, but (no longer) holds in sole possession. To use another illustration: the ideas and technologies of the modern West are like sewing patterns that define the basic rules of tailoring but do not dictate the thickness of the garment or the colour of seams.

Perhaps the best illustration of westernistic civilization is Japan. The Land of the Rising Sun began to absorb western ideas more than a century ago. Having assimilated administrative, military and industrial procedures of the modern western type, Japan avoided the fate of a western colony and itself became a regional colonial force. Japan uses the package of modern western ideas in its own unique way, adapting these to local cultural traditions.

Japan turned the fruits of such hybridization into profitable export items. For experts, these are anima and manga, for ordinary people karaoke and karate, for business elites industrial miniaturization, just-in-time delivery and the mass production of low-price high-quality electronic gadgets. The secret of Japan’s global success lies precisely in its ability to creatively combine western and local ideas.

However, it is not possible to overlook the fact that many people in many corners of the planet seriously fear globalization. Unfortunately, the one-sided exposure of the destructive consequences of global trade in services, products and goods is frequently grist to the mill of popular fears and mass paranoia. A terrified mind cannot help but perceive globalization as a flood threatening to sweep away diverse and special cultural traditions, and to seek scapegoats in response.

A closer look will show that many critics of globalization point their moralist finger and turn up their refined noses at one or another internationally popular style, be it teenage hip hop or Madonna’s indulgent raving, Hollywood kitsch or hard-boiled detective movies. To be more precise: the critics of globalization frequently use cultural diversity and defence of collective (national) identities as a kind of smoke screen. It usually conceals some other agenda: in most cases, it is romantic anti-capitalism that is close to leftist zeal, or modern anti-Americanism nourishing rightwing litanies.

The actual processes of globalization are controversial and complex, but the international exchange of ideas and technologies, symbols and methods of operation increases and broadens cultural diversity. If culture is understood as a laboratory of meaning, on which individual communities feed, then we have to accept the flexible process of adaptation and resistance, transformations and hybridity, where the border between the “domestic” and the “foreign” evaporates like cheap petrol. (full long, long text).

Dear Supporter, In part because of restrictions imposed by the U.S. military, aid is still not getting through quickly enough to people in Haiti who desperately need it. In particular, fresh water is not getting through to people who need it.

Established aid groups who have a long history of working in Haiti have suddenly found themselves unable to deliver urgently needed medical, water, and food supplies because the U.S. military will not grant them access to ports and airports. Doctors Without Borders reports that a “plane carrying 12 tons of medical equipment, including drugs, surgical supplies and two dialysis machines, was turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday night.” [1] Groups ready to deliver aid to Jacmel – the fourth-largest city in Haiti – were told they would receive no clearance to land there from the U.S. military, even though they already had both aid supplies and the means for distributing them. This aid is only just now beginning to be delivered – thanks to assistance from the Dominican Republic, not the U.S.

In Port-au-Prince, huge stockpiles of aid sit in warehouses while people wait for supplies that mean the difference between life and death.

Finally, the US has started to airdrop water and food. Would you join us in urging that these airdrops, including water purification tablets, be immediately expanded, and that established aid organizations be allowed to deliver urgent assistance?

Just Foreign Policy.org/Urge Congress to Expand Airdrops in Haiti

AP reports that “The U.S. military has airdropped water and food into Haiti after earlier ruling out such a delivery method as too risky… Military officials are considering whether the method was successful enough to be used throughout Haiti.” [2]

The risk cited earlier by Defense Secretary Gates was that airdrops might trigger riots if there was no structure on the ground to distribute the supplies.

But the primary driver of potential violence is shortage: if there is plenty to go around, there is no reason to fight. That’s why these airdrops must be immediately expanded.

Please join us in demanding that the Obama Administration immediately expand the airdrops of water and food into Haiti, and that established aid organizations be allowed to deliver urgent assistance.

Thank you for all you do to help bring about a just foreign policy …

References:

1) “Doctors Without Borders Plane with Lifesaving Medical Supplies Diverted Again from Landing in Haiti: Patients in Dire Need of Emergency Care Dying from Delays in Arrival of Medical Supplies,” Doctors Without Borders, January 19, 2010.

2)”US military airdrops supplies into Haiti,” Associated Press, Monday, January 18, 2010.

Dear Friends, Women’s World Summit Foundation WWSF invites you to nominate candidates for its 2010 Prize for women’s reativity in rural life. Nomination guidelines are on line (Eligibility). Reply to WWSF.

Wishing you a wonderful Holiday Season.

Best regards, Elly Pradervand, WWSF Executive Director, Women’s World Summit Foundation WWSF.

… Then, too, the abuse and poverty of Somalia, its people and resources, have contributed to the present, industry of piracy, and the CIA’s call for a presence “on the beach side” as well as in the water. As Wiki reports. “Piracy off the Somali coast has been a threat to international shipping since the beginning of the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s. Since 2005, many international organizations, including the International Maritime Organization and the World Food Programme, have expressed concern over the rise in acts of piracy.

“Piracy has contributed to an increase in shipping costs and impeded the delivery of food aid shipments. Ninety percent of the World Food Programme’s shipments arrive by sea, and ships have required a military escort. According to the Kenyan foreign minister, Somali pirates have received over US$150 million in ransom during the 12 months prior to November 2008. 

As stated, “Clashes have been reported between Somalia’s Islamist fighters (who are opposed to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the pirates. In August 2008, Combined Task Force 150, a multinational coalition task force, took on the role of fighting Somali piracy by establishing a Maritime Security Patrol Area (MSPA) within the Gulf of Aden.[6] The increasing threat posed by piracy also caused significant concerns in India since most of its shipping trade routes pass through the Gulf of Aden. The Indian Navy responded to these concerns by deploying a warship in the region on October 23, 2008. In September 2008, Russia announced that it too will soon join international efforts to combat piracy.

“On October 5, 2008, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1838 calling on nations with vessels in the area to apply military force to repress the acts of piracy. At the 101st council of the International Maritime Organization, India called for a United Nations peacekeeping force under unified command to tackle piracy off Somalia. There has been a general and complete arms embargo against Somalia since 1992.”

Interestingly, the pirates recently have managed to arm themselves to the teeth with the profits from hijacking higher profile ships at much higher ransoms rather than smaller, more vulnerable vessels carrying trade across the Straits or employed in the coastal trade on either side of the Straits.

“In November 2008, Somali pirates began hijacking ships well outside the Gulf of Aden, perhaps targeting ships headed for the port of Mombasa, Kenya.[13] The frequency and sophistication of the attacks also increased around this time, as did the size of vessels being targeted. Large cargo ships, oil and chemical tankers on international voyages became the new targets of choice for the Somali hijackers.

As stated, “There are discussions under way to begin an aggressive covert operation against the pirates …”

As mentioned earlier, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been publicly warning of this potential threat for months. In a Harpers Magazine article, a CIA official stated, “We need to deal with this problem from the beach side, in concert with the ocean side, but we don’t have an embassy in Somalia and limited, ineffective intelligence operations. We need to work in Somalia and in Lebanon, where a lot of the ransom money has changed hands. But our operations in Lebanon are a joke, and we have no presence at all in Somalia.” Take that with a grain of salt.

Wiki also points to years of toxic waste dumping in Somali waters by European nations, exacerbated by the Tsunami which spread the waste settled on the bottom, redistributing the toxic radiation, which has seriously sickened many Somalis who have eaten the fish.

Fortunately, the pirates kept out industrial fishing and gave the waters and the fish a chance to heal and repopulate. The ransom monies have contributed to reviving the coastal economies of impoverished towns. So there’s a bit of Robin Hood afoot with the pirates here as well as eco-protection. Then, too, the pirates were wise enough to handle with care their hijacked crews and expensive vessels. This takes some of the sting out of the ransoms, making them simply a cost of doing business in the region.

So goes this sketch of a very complex political picture. Coups, instability, insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, warlords, clans, pirates and now Blackwater’s newly-minted Blackwater/Ex. As to the future, I feel Somalia will be further destabilized by factionalism blamed on Al Qaeda, this to fuel more anti-Islam sentiment.

Worse-case scenario would be the introduction of a Karzai-like puppet, pro-US government as the gas and oil rights go to one the big four companies hovering like tyrannosaurs around them. But stay tuned. Today Somalia, tomorrow the world. Anything can happen as the US lands in Africa thirsty for its favorite drink, oil, with a side of natural gas, bought with bloodshed and catastrophe. Whatever happened to our Peace President, our Obama, who disliked dumb wars?

Estimates range from 300,000 to 1,000,000 slaughtered in these “dumb” wars. (full long text).

… The tragedy has genuinely moved a significant number of people, particularly those in which that quality is innate. But perhaps very few of them have stopped to consider why Haiti is such a poor country. Why does almost 50% of its population depend on family remittances sent from abroad? Why not analyze the realities that led Haiti to its current situation and this enormous suffering as well?

The most curious aspect of this story is that no one has said a single word to recall the fact that Haiti was the first country in which 400,000 Africans, enslaved and trafficked by Europeans, rose up against 30,000 white slave masters on the sugar and coffee plantations, thus undertaking the first great social revolution in our hemisphere.

Pages of insurmountable glory were written there. Napoleon’s most eminent general was defeated there. Haiti is the net product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than one century of the employment of its human resources in the toughest forms of work, of military interventions and the extraction of its natural resources.

This historic oversight would not be so serious if it were not for the real fact that Haiti constitutes the disgrace of our era, in a world where the exploitation and pillage of the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants prevails.

Billions of people in Latin American, Africa and Asia are suffering similar shortages although perhaps not to such a degree as in the case of Haiti.

Situations like that of that country should not exist in any part of the planet, where tens of thousands of cities and towns abound in similar or worse conditions, by virtue of an unjust international economic and political order imposed on the world. The world population is not only threatened by natural disasters such as that of Haiti, which is a just a pallid shadow of what could take place in the planet as a result of climate change, which really was the object of ridicule, derision, and deception in Copenhagen.

It is only just to say to all the countries and institutions that have lost citizens or personnel because of the natural disaster in Haiti: we do not doubt that in this case, the greatest effort will be made to save human lives and alleviate the pain of this long-suffering people. We cannot blame them for the natural phenomenon that has taken place there, even if we do not agree with the policy adopted with Haiti.

But I have to express the opinion that it is now time to look for real and lasting solutions for that sister nation.

In the field of healthcare and other areas, Cuba – despite being a poor and blockaded country – has been cooperating with the Haitian people for many years. Around 400 doctors and healthcare experts are offering their services free of charge to the Haitian people. Our doctors are working every day in 227 of the country’s 337 communes. On the other hand, at least 400 young Haitians have trained as doctors in our homeland. They will now work with the reinforcement brigade which traveled there yesterday to save lives in this critical situation. Thus, without any special effort being made, up to 1,000 doctors and healthcare experts can be mobilized, almost all of whom are already there willing to cooperate with any other state that wishes to save the lives of the Haitian people and rehabilitate the injured.

Another significant number of young Haitians are currently studying medicine in Cuba.

We are also cooperating with the Haitian people in other areas within our reach. However, there can be no other form of cooperation worthy of being described as such than fighting in the field of ideas and political action in order to put an end to the limitless tragedy suffered by a large number of nations such as Haiti.

The head of our medical brigade reported: “The situation is difficult, but we have already started saving lives.” He made that statement in a succinct message hours after his arrival yesterday in Port-au-Prince with additional medical reinforcements.

Later that night, he reported that Cuban doctors and ELAM’s Haitian graduates were being deployed throughout the country. They had already seen more than 1,000 patients in Port-au-Prince, immediately establishing and putting into operation a hospital that had not collapsed and using field hospitals where necessary. They were preparing to swiftly set up other centers for emergency care.

We feel a wholesome pride for the cooperation that, in these tragic instances, Cuba doctors and young Haitian doctors who trained in Cuba are offering our brothers and sisters in Haiti! (full text).

Links: Les articles auxquels vous avec échapés:

Une répression passée sous silence, par Seumas Milne, 10 janvier 2010.

Les USA vont entreposer pour 800 millions de dollars de munition en Israël, 13 janvier 2010.

La Cour européenne des droits de l’homme condamne la loi britannique anti-terroriste, 13 janvier 2010.

Published on WorldNet Daily Exclusive WND, by Jerome R. Corsi, January 09, 2010.

Fears of a new ice age not seen since the 1970s are arising in the aftermath of the “Climategate” scandal that has cast doubt on the legitimacy of scientific research forming the basis for the theory that mankind is causing an ultimately catastrophic rise in temperatures worldwide.

Accuweather meteorologist Joe Bastardi has produced a video, 3.21 min,  suggesting the current frigid conditions in North America, Europe and Asia are very similar to the weather patterns in the 1970s that produced fears a new ice age was imminent. (If you wait a moment, the next videos will run automatically). 

In the video Bastardi explains his theory that “weather goes in a lot of cycles, and we’re going to see a lot more of the cold trending here over the next 20 or 30 years.”

WND previously reported President Obama’s science czar John Holdren was among the scientists who predicted 1 billion people would die in “carbon-dioxide induced” famines in a coming new ice age by 2020.

In the 1970s, Holdren’s theme was that government-mandated population control was essential to prevent “eco-disasters” such as the forecast ice age. Today, Holdren urges immediate passage of the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade legislation to control carbon emissions before it is too late to save the planet from “global warming.”

Get “HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today’s obsession with global warming“:

Malthusian population alarmist Paul Ehrlich in his 1986 book “The Machinery of Nature” announced Holdren’s prediction that 1 billion people would die from a global cooling “eco-disaster.”

Holdren based his prediction on a theory that human emissions of carbon dioxide would produce a climate catastrophe in which global warming would lead to global cooling, with a consequent reduction in agricultural production causing widespread disaster.

On pages 273-274 of “The Machinery of Nature,” Ehrlich explained Holdren’s theory by arguing “some localities will probably become colder as the warmer atmosphere drives the climactic engine faster, causing streams of frigid air to move more rapidly away from the poles.” (Emphasis in original text.)

The movement of the frigid air from the poles caused by global warming “could reduce agricultural yields for decades or more – a sure recipe for disaster in an increasingly overpopulated world,” Ehrlich wrote … (full text).

Links:

Inside the Beltway, The Washington Times, September 19, 2007;

The mini ice age starts here, by David Rose, 10th January 2010;

Grüne Roth: Wir müssen radikaler werden, 10.1.2010, Zeit online.

… page 10 – … Droits de l’Homme: Liberté de religion ou de conviction – Conclusions du Conseil – Le Conseil a adopté les conclusions suivantes:

• “Le Conseil réaffirme que l’Union européenne est résolument attachée à la promotion et à la protection de la liberté de religion ou de conviction.
• Le Conseil rappelle que la liberté de pensée, de conscience, de religion ou de conviction s’applique de façon égale à toutes les personnes. Il s’agit d’une liberté fondamentale qui englobe toutes les religions ou convictions, y compris celles qui ne sont pas traditionnellement pratiquées dans un pays donné, les convictions des personnes appartenant à des minorités religieuses, ainsi que les convictions non théistes ou athées.  Elle comprend également le droit d’adopter ou d’abandonner de plein gré une religion ou une conviction, ainsi que d’en changer.Le Conseil souligne que les États ont le devoir de protéger chaque individu, y compris les personnes qui appartiennent à des minorités, de la discrimination, de la violence et d’autres formes de violation. Ils doivent veiller à ce que leur système législatif offre à tous sans distinction des garanties suffisantes et effectives de liberté de pensée, de conscience, de religion ou de conviction.
• Le Conseil condamne toutes les formes d’intolérance envers les personnes fondée sur leur religion ou leur conviction. Il déplore que la discrimination fondée sur la religion ou la conviction soit encore pratiquée dans toutes les régions du monde et que de nombreux pays continuent de priver de leurs droits humains des personnes appartenant à certaines communautés religieuses, y compris à des minorités religieuses. Le Conseil est préoccupé par les informations faisant état d’actes de violence extrême de plus en plus nombreux perpétrés récemment contre des membres de minorités religieuses, et fait part de son inquiétude face à la vulnérabilité de ces personnes dans de nombreuses régions du monde.
• Le Conseil se déclare vivement préoccupé par le fait que les pays qui disposent d’une législation relative à la diffamation des religions ont souvent recours à celle-ci pour brimer les minorités religieuses et limiter la liberté d’expression, ainsi que la liberté de religion ou de conviction. Il souligne que le droit international des droits de l’homme protège les personnes et les groupes de personnes et, à cet égard, il réaffirme que la diffamation des religions n’est pas une notion qui relève des droits de l’homme. Rappelant que les droits de l’homme transcendent les différences entre les religions, le Conseil souligne que ces droits ne peuvent faire l’objet d’aucune restriction imposée au nom de la religion et que cette dernière ne peut en aucun cas servir à justifier ou à tolérer la restriction ou la violation de droits individuels. L’UE continuera à rejeter toute tentative en ce sens.
• Le Conseil souligne que la liberté de religion ou de conviction est intrinsèquement liée à la liberté d’opinion et d’expression, sans laquelle il ne peut exister de sociétés pluralistes, tolérantes, ouvertes et démocratiques. En permettant le libre débat et les échanges d’idées, en diffusant des informations sur les violations des droits de l’homme, en imposant une obligation de rendre des comptes et en défendant l’indépendance des médias, de la presse, de la télévision, de l’internet et des autres nouveaux médias, la liberté d’expression joue un rôle important dans la lutte contre l’intolérance.
• Le Conseil souligne l’importance stratégique de la liberté de religion ou de conviction, ainsi que de la lutte contre l’intolérance religieuse, et réaffirme son intention de continuer à réserver une place prioritaire à ces questions dans le cadre de la politique de l’Union européenne dans le domaine des droits de l’homme. Il invite les instances compétentes du Conseil à évaluer les initiatives existantes de l’UE et à élaborer, le cas échéant, des propositions visant à promouvoir la liberté de religion ou de conviction dans les relations bilatérales et dans le contexte multilatéral”.

(voir les 20 pages en entier).

… Page 10 – … Human Rights: Freedom of religion or belief – Council conclusions – The Council adopted the following conclusions:

• “The Council reaffirms the strong commitment of the European Union to the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief.
• The Council recalls that freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief applies equally to all persons. It is a fundamental freedom which includes all religions or beliefs, including those that have not been traditionally practiced in a particular country, the beliefs of persons belonging religious minorities, as well as non-theistic and atheistic beliefs. The freedom also covers the right to adopt, change or abandon one’s religion or belief, of one’s own free will.
• The Council underlines that States have a duty to protect everyone, including persons belonging to minorities, from discrimination, violence and other violations. States must ensure that their legislative systems provide adequate and effective guarantees of freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief to all without distinction.  
• The Council condemns all forms of intolerance against persons because of their religion or belief.
• The Council deplores that discrimination based on religion or belief still exists in all regions of the world, and that persons belonging to particular religious communities, including religious minorities, continue to be denied their human rights in many countries. The Council is alarmed by reports of recent and increasing acts of extreme violence against persons belonging to religious minorities and expresses its concern about the vulnerable situation faced by them in many parts of the world.
• The Council expresses its deep concern that in countries that have legislation on defamation of religions, such legislation has often been used to mistreat religious minorities and to limit freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief. The Council stresses that international human rights law protects individuals and groups of individuals and, in this regard, reiterates that defamation of religions is not a human rights concept. Recalling that human rights transcend differences between religions, the Council underlines that no restrictions in the name of religion may be placed on those rights and religion may never be used to justify or condone the restriction or violation of individual rights. The EU will continue to reject any attempts to do so.
• The Council emphasises that freedom of religion or belief is intrinsically linked to freedom of opinion and expression. Freedom of opinion and expression is necessary to create pluralist, tolerant, broad-minded and democratic societies. By allowing free debate and exchanges of ideas, and by disseminating information on human rights abuses and calling for accountability, independent media, press, television, internet and other new media, freedom of expression plays an important role in the fight against intolerance.
• The Council underlines the strategic importance of freedom of religion or belief and of countering religious intolerance, and reaffirms its intention to continue to give priority to the issues as part of the European Union’s human rights policy. The Council invites the relevant Council bodies to evaluate existing EU initiatives and to elaborate proposals, as appropriate, for promoting the freedom of religion or belief in bilateral relations and in multilateral context.”

… (full 20 pdf-pages Press Release).

Published on political affairs.net pa, by Gary Tedman, January 11, 2010.

-The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations. [Source]

As Louis Althusser explained in “Spontaneous Philosophy…”, when ‘think tanks’ and similar ‘interdisciplinary’ institutions made up of experts from disparate fields are brought together, what inevitably results is that they cohere around the ideas which they all readily share and recognize. This is always their common ideology. And this ideology can be nothing but the ruling class ideology, i.e. in this case bourgeois ideology. 

As we all know, a body was set up in 1988 by the UN to officiate over the concern of harmful human induced climate change, called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It all began around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, which perhaps is no accident (but we will leave aside for the moment the need the dominant media/press seems to have to promote fear: mass extinctions by catastrophes and epidemics, such as avian/swine flu, asteroid impact, and so on, and how this ending of one big fear in the possibility of nuclear war, seems to have generated a need to fill this gap with new fears) … //

… So there are patterns that can be described in climatic change, but the element of chaos tends to obscure these regularities in any short-term view, and this short term is by any common human measure actually quite long. 300,000 year is the blink of an eye in geological terms. Given this, one mistake the climate warming scientists continually make is to refer to “imbalance” in climate taking place without explaining or justifying scientifically what the balance is, or might be, given time.

For, if the Earth can be said to have a normal long term climate at all, it would actually appear to be a warmer one than it is now. We are currently in a colder interglacial period. On the other hand, our planet is quite dialectical, in the sense that it usually fluctuates between the two opposed poles of temperature, any balance between these therefore also oscillates.

Thus, the long term weather of the Earth is an extremely complex, fractal system with a lot of capacity for change, but put basically, this is to hotter and colder environmental conditions, yet life is tenacious and has been around for a very long time, actually billions of years. All change can be considered harmful, and all stasis harmful, it depends.

Periodic climatic change is a scientifically established fact. However, the language of even the most respected scientific sources on this subject often reverts to trying to prove just this, that climate change happens (e.g. IPCC itself as a name), which is superfluous, rather than the more recalcitrant thesis that harmful human induced climate change is happening.

The case for harmfulness is of course harder to prove; it does not just necessitate understanding carbon emitting as a fact, but what harmful means, and depends on the timescale applied – the future is a long time. Whatever we do, or do not do, might be regarded as dangerous depending on where the line in time is drawn. Relying, as sometimes occurs, on data over the last 150 years in this context is disingenuous.

For example, in the long term, it even seems likely that the changing climate, even to its extremes, has (perhaps ironically) helped the evolution of our species, as does the changing seasons, over the last three billion years, including extinction events and bottlenecks.

The real and more difficult question is whether human industry, which is so extremely recent in terms of the planet’s long history, pollutes so much that it is going to have an injurious effect on the ecosystem of our planet, one that is unprecedented (as if from outside) and not capable of being counterbalanced by other existing forces without our conscious intervention, in the short space of time which means that it may be taken as an immediate danger.

Predicting climate change is made difficult because of the complexity and the amount of different physical processes involved. In this sense it is sometimes understood as a stochastic process, similar to the stock market, involving sequences of random variables. Can this harmful global warming currently be proved within a reasonable definition of proof? The scientific consensus is that human induced warming is taking place and is dangerous. We must accept this consensus. But this consensus is only consensus, and is not itself based in an indisputable scientific theory of climate that can predict entirely accurately. Such a complete theory does not currently exist. And remember, consensus has often been proved wrong in the history of science, by individual rebels against the think tanks. Nevertheless, not all sciences are exact sciences, and this does not mean they are unscientific.

With all the above provisos, the research so far points to dangers for our species and life as such on Earth that seem to be prevalent, and we should err on the side of caution and lessen the impact of our “footprint.” The human species has probably, in prehistoric times, been here before through ignorance combined (peculiarly) with economic success – through hunting without sustaining the hunted species – and we seem destined to repeat this same kind of mistake.

Action involves switching to sustainable resources for energy.

Unfortunately this is not something that capitalism is good at. The trouble is that the incentives produced in capitalist competition are usually to increase the profitability and reach of the existing oil industry and its derivatives by disguising oil use in different technical forms. And, for various oft cited reasons, it can be regarded as almost impossible in capitalist economics to enforce solutions outside this, not least because its ideology willfully regards planning the economy as a bad thing and the “free market” as the good, and in climate terms the free market will always be too short term.

As we have seen above, even the “green” + “cyber” capitalism that is being promoted as the savior from environmental doom inevitably presents false options and pseudo solutions based in vested interests, as do the various summits concerned with carbon trading. These almost always represent a serious failure to take into account the bigger joined-up economic picture that genuine sustainability requires.

It will seem a glib answer to conclude that socialism represents our only hope here, but, safe sustainable solutions to the energy crisis already exist in the form of technological uses of wood, water, wind, wave and solar power, the difficulty is social implementation and the political will. (full text).

Link: Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak, The Guardian, 8 December 2009.

But not less pain I feel with a statement of this year’s Swiss Head of State, Ms Doris Leuthard … to need first an ok from the local authority, before we go to organise anywhat in a country … and (yesterday) it seemed there was no answer given.

Every body knows this local authority/elite is corrupt, helpless and immensely stupid. If now Haiti authority’s ok is more important than people’s need … meanwhile French TV F5 showed in a panel discussion statements, that we have to ignore Haiti government’s acceptance for urgent help, just go and help … ok, these panelists were not the french government … but in Switzerland even a panel is not able to speak out in this way.

If government’s/elite’s rituals are more important that peoples safety, then we are straight on the way to hell …