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According to a recent report from US-based Pew Research Center, there are 1 billion 570 million Muslims living in the world today, and thus every fourth person on this earth is a Muslim. Is this report a good reason for rejoicing? I do not think so. On the contrary Muslim should do some exercise for self appraisal after this report. Why with 25 percent (1.5 Billion) in this world they are scientifically and technologically backward, politically marginalized and economically poor. Why their share of World GDP (60 trillion dollars) is hardly 3 trillion dollars which is less than the GDP of France (Population 70 Millions), about half of the GDP of Japan (Population 120 Millions) and one fifth of GDP of U.S. (Population 300 Millions). It is important to know that Christians constitute about 35% of the world population but control nearly 70% of the World’s wealth.

In case of Human Development Index too, ranking of Muslim countries, with the exception of some Oil producing Arab countries, is very low. In scientific field record of Muslim nations is dismal. Hardly five hundred Science Ph.D’s.are produced every year. This number is three thousand in U.K. alone. Out of the five hundred and odd Nobel Prizes in Science from 1901 to 2008, Jews, who are 0.2 per cent of the World population, got around 140 Prizes (25%) as against only one to a Muslim (the other one being declared non-Muslim by Pakistan), which is about 0.2% of the total Awards. What a sad commentary for Muslims as far as scientific achievements are concerned. Another disheartening report has appeared recently from Shanghai University which has listed top four hundred World Universities with high standard of teaching and research. None from the Islamic World finds a place in the list. This is really painful situation, particularly when compared with period of shining Islamic Civilization of middle Ages (7 th to 16th Century.) when all the standard universities were situated in the Islamic cities of Cordoba, Baghdad, Cairo etc. Well known Science Historian Gillespie has recorded around 130 names of scientists and technologists who made great impact during middle ages. Out of this number 120 scientists belonged to Islamic world and only four from Europe. Is this not enough reason for Muslims to know their past critically, asses the present honestly and determine the future rationally.

I can add little more information (based on reports from several Agencies),not a happy one, about the so-called numerical strength of Muslims in coming years. With the present birth rate, Muslim population will be doubled in next 50 years. i.e. it would be around 3 billions. In that scenario Muslims will surpass the Christian population which stands today at about 2.3 billion but will only be doubled in 500 years. Once again that situation will not be good either for Muslims because with the present economic conditions prevailing in the Muslim World and the backwardness they are experiencing today, their growth in terms of population may still aggravates the economic problems instead of solving it. Doubling the population in next fifty years may still increase the economic gap between Muslims and Christians nations. Who will dominate the World thus in this century or the next century? Muslims with 5% of global wealth or Christians with 70% of world economic power. Muslims must understand that numerical strength of any nation or a country does not guarantee respect and dominance in the present day scientifically advanced world. It is only scientific knowledge which matters and which brings respect, power and wealth. There are many examples which prove the futility of higher population with lower economic and military power. For instance, powerful (economically, militarily, scientifically) small Jew community of Israel is considered a perpetual threat to a very large population (technologically backward) of Arab countries who feel rightly defeated and cheated. Another glaring example is of those small numbers of Muslims who are living in the West and but are happy with their economic prosperity whereas in many Muslim majority countries with large population, they are experiencing hardship of various kinds. Gross Domestic product of about 20 million Muslims living in Europe is higher than the entire Muslim population of Indian subcontinent which is around 500 million

Nissim Hasan, an Islamic Scholar of repute, has observed that “Diminishing Muslim vision of knowledge is singularly responsible for the decline of economic and political power of the Islamic civilization. We have failed now for centuries to become leaders of humanity. We have surrendered our vision, our faith and our reason to deadwoods”. Mahathir Mohammad (Former P.M., Malaysia) has rightly advised Muslims “to give up their illogical beliefs and regressing thoughts and be prepared to face the challenges of the fast changing social order (OIC Conference, Kuala Lumpur).

It is important to note that during their Rule of Spain (8th century Ad to 14th century A.D.), Muslim dominated the entire Europe as the Muslim Spain was hub of scientific activity and its earnings were higher than the earning of entire Europe. Today situation has changed topsy turvy. Today DGP of Christian Spain is higher than that of combined 12 Oil Producing Muslim Countries. It was not Spain alone that was a highly developed country in the Islamic World during Middle Ages, but all the regions and cities under Islamic Rule such as Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Tripoli etc were humming with scientific activities. Islamic Society all over the world was considered to be highly developed scientifically, intellectually, culturally and economically. In contrast, as described by Donald Cambell- (Surgeon- France) “When Science flourished in the Islamic World, Europe was on dark ages and evils of pedantry, bigotry, cruelty, charms, amulets and relics were common there”(Muslim Medicine). It is important to note that during the Rise of Islam, world population of Muslims was hardly ten percent. According to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the great Visionary of India, this situation “started changing after sixteenth century when Muslim Society stagnated and followed the lifestyle of Europeans of Dark Ages. On the other hand Europeans (Christians) turned towards progressive thinking and scientific pursuits of Muslims” (Letters of Azad). Result was obvious. Muslim Society which dominated the World for about eight hundred years in all respect of human activity, started declining in their intellectual vitality, and were ultimately dominated by the Emerging Power of Europe. In this connection, observations of Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi, great Thinker of Islam, are very relevant and valid when he explains “After sixteenth century Muslims lost the interest in Enquiry and Physical Sciences and engaged themselves more in Metaphysical Sciences with the result they could not produce great men of knowledge (genius). Muslims forgot their own scientific thinking and followed only traditional knowledge. They, therefore, lagged behind in Science and Technology and thus became slaves of the West”. (Islam & the West). Sometime back political scientist Samuel P. Huntington expressed his view that the recent conflict between the West and the Muslim World is actually a Clash of Civilization. This is an absolute nonsense. In fact it is a clash between the rich and poor. Rich nations are dictating their terms and poor nations are subjected to exploitation and humiliations.

Poor nations, Muslims or non-Muslims, should understand that their survival depends entirely on global peace and their unnecessary conflict with the rich nations, particularly in the name of religion, will only land them into greater trouble and distress. Muslims can only regain their past glory, if they adopt scientific renaissance similar to European renaissance, more vigorously and faster than done by Europe. But before this is done, Muslims have to condemn and reject forces of extremism and promote true Islamic values of tolerance and moderation. Hatred of the West will do no good to Muslims. This will only lead to their greater miseries.

Hating the West but taking pride in getting Visas or Green Cards for living in the West is nothing short of hypocrisy and duplicity. Some Distinguished Rulers of Arab world in general and Saudi Arab King Abdullah in particular must be congratulated and supported for their recent initiative of interfaith dialogues and understanding between all the Faiths of the World. In a recently held Interfaith Conference, King Abdullah rightly observed that” Islam must do away with the dangers of extremism to present the religion’s “good message”. We must tell the whole world that we are a voice of justice and values and humanity, and we are a voice of coexistence. Islamic world faces difficult challenges from the extremism of some Muslims, whose aggressions target the magnanimity, fairness and lofty aims of Islam”. Establishment of Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue (DCID) at Qatar Capital to foster better understanding among followers of the different faiths for the cause of World Peace and Peaceful Coexistence, is a highly laudable step by Arab Rulers.

Muslims do not need empty slogans and misplaced religious fervour. It high time that they interact with the West as responsible nations. They must welcome Barrack Obama’s Cairo Speech which invites Muslims to join hands with the West for Global Peace and Prosperity. Obama’s initiatives should be supported, his hands strengthened so that he succeeds in his stupendous task of unity of all faiths for the cause of better Understanding and Peace on highly charged and disturbed Earth. President Hosni Mubarak has rightly observed that “Islamic civilization respects all the mankind and this must be made clear to the whole world, not by words, but rather by deeds and conduct.”

It is high time that close contact and cooperation is established between Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama and Muslim Nations in general and Arab Countries in particular. This will greatly help in weakening the Anti-Islamic Forces of the West, which have, no doubt, existed there, in some form and strength, since the period of Crusades.

(Issued by Sir Syed Scientific Society, Lucknow. Dr. M.I.H. Farooqi, Secretary of the Society, is the author of PLANTS OF QURAN and MEDICINAL PLANTS IN PROPHETIC TRADITIONS) Email: mihfarooqi@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

22 April, 2010

Countercurrents.org

Written by Dr. M.I.H. Farooqi

Posted: 24 April 2010 00:00

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

The energy crisis outlined in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, comes as the price of petrol in Britain reaches record levels and the cost of crude is predicted to soon top $100 a barrel.

“By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,” says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.

It adds: “While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India.”

The US military says its views cannot be taken as US government policy but admits they are meant to provide the Joint Forces with “an intellectual foundation upon which we will construct the concept to guide out future force developments.”

The warning is the latest in a series from around the world that has turned peak oil – the moment when demand exceeds supply – from a distant threat to a more immediate risk.

The Wicks Review on UK energy policy published last summer effectively dismissed fears but Lord Hunt, the British energy minister, met concerned industrialists two weeks ago in a sign that it is rapidly changing its mind on the seriousness of the issue.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency remains confident that there is no short-term risk of oil shortages but privately some senior officials have admitted there is considerable disagreement internally about this upbeat stance.

Future fuel supplies are of acute importance to the US army because it is believed to be the biggest single user of petrol in the world. BP chief executive, Tony Hayward, said recently that there was little chance of crude from the carbon-heavy Canadian tar sands being banned in America because the US military like to have local supplies rather than rely on the politically unstable Middle East.

But there are signs that the US Department of Energy might also be changing its stance on peak oil. In a recent interview with French newspaper, Le Monde, Glen Sweetnam, main oil adviser to the Obama administration, admitted that “a chance exists that we may experience a decline” of world liquid fuels production between 2011 and 2015 if the investment was not forthcoming.

Lionel Badal, a post-graduate student at Kings College, London, who has been researching peak oil theories, said the review by the American military moves the debate on.

“It’s surprising to see that the US Army, unlike the US Department of Energy, publicly warns of major oil shortages in the near-term. Now it could be interesting to know on which study the information is based on,” he said.

“The Energy Information Administration (of the department of energy) has been saying for years that Peak Oil was “decades away”. In light of the report from the US Joint Forces Command, is the EIA still confident of its previous highly optimistic conclusions?”

The Joint Operating Environment report paints a bleak picture of what can happen on occasions when there is serious economic upheaval. “One should not forget that the Great Depression spawned a number of totalitarian regimes that sought economic prosperity for their nations by ruthless conquest,” it points out.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010,

Written by Terry Macalister

Posted: 16 April 2010 19:41

40 years after the first Earth Day, we’re still staring down the barrel of environmental catastrophe. Here are five big approaches we can take to saving life on the planet.

Forty years ago we were living in a different world. Ohio’s Cuyahoga River had recently caught fire, nuclear testing had dispersed radioactive material across the West, California was reeling from a massive oil spill, Americans sputtered about their endless highways spewing leaded fumes as the country continued on a post-World War II path bent on industrializing food and farming while growing industry at all cost — pollution and chemicals be damned.

Michigan Senator Gaylord Nelson, with the help of young organizer Denis Hayes, is credited with lighting the fuse of the modern environmental era on April 22, 1970 with the first Earth Day — an event that garnered the support of an incredible 20 million Americans across the country.

Many Republicans and Democrats alike got on board. Government responded in the next few years by creating the Environmental Protection Agency and passing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act, to name a few.

Yet, four decades later, we’re still staring down the barrel of environmental catastrophe. Many of those same pieces of legislation have been whittled away, and although we’ve made massive gains in many areas we are still faced with a global climate crisis, along with food and water systems that are being pushed to the brink, and are downright failing in many places. In a recent story, Denis Hayes recollects the first Earth Day and credits the event with embracing all people who are trying to help the planet — in any way big or small. But, Hayes says, we need to do more. The time has come for more radical action.

So what can we do? Here’s five good ideas that industrious greens in our mix are already working on — will you join in?

1. A Clean Water Trust Fund

Most people living in the U.S. are fortunate to have clean and safe drinking water available at their tap at a very low cost. We turn on the water and it comes out, we don’t have to think about where that water comes from. But what many people don’t know is that our water systems are on the verge of collapse. Lurking beneath our streets are 1.5 million miles of aging pipes. Food and Water Watch reports that U.S. cities have 250,000 to 300,000 water main breaks a year and we lose one-fifth of our water through leaks and contaminate our waterways with 1.2 trillion gallons of wastewater annually.

The price tag for fixing all this is going to be big. The EPA estimates that we have a potential funding gap of $150-400 billion between projected needs and current levels of spending over the next 10 years. The New York Times reported that, “There are 16,000 publicly owned wastewater treatment plants in the United States that operate 100,000 major pumping stations, 600,000 miles of sanitary sewers and 200,000 miles of storm sewers, according to U.S. EPA. That system received a grade of D- from the American Society of Civil Engineers in its latest ‘Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.'”

One of the reasons for this is a drop in federal funding in the last few decades. In 1978, 78 percent of money for new water infrastructure projects came from the federal government, but by 2007 that number had fallen to 3 percent. Additionally the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which many communities have relied on to help keep their water clean, has also been slashed. The federal government cut spending on this program by 66 percent from 1991 to 2007.

To counter this imbalance, water advocates have been calling for the creation of federal trust for clean water — similar to what already exists for highways and airports — and what has been created at the state level with North Carolina’s Clean Water Management Trust Fund.

Ken Kirk, executive director of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) said, “Communities currently bear 95 percent of the cost of clean water, and ratepayers will continue to see increases unless they see some financial assistance from the federal government to help them fill this gap. A clean water trust fund, financed broadly by fees potentially on such things as bottled beverages, flushable products, pesticides and agricultural chemicals, and pharmaceuticals will help cities cover the staggering cost of meeting their water quality objectives.”

The Government Accountability Office recently released a report looking into the various funding strategies and how it could be structured and NACWA, along with other advocates like Food and Water Watch, is calling on Congress to create legislation for a clean water trust fund.

2. Eating for the Planet

Judging from the reception of Anna Lappe’s new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, we are more than ready to shift our consciousness when it comes to eating. Diet for a Hot Planet outlines how we can transform our diets for a sustainable planet and prevent climate change.

“A key part of the core message is that it matters how your food was made,” said Lappe in an interview with AlterNet’s Jill Richardson. “The less processed the foods are, of course, the less energy used to produce it. And meat, particularly that raised in factory farms is many times more carbon-intensive than produce and vegetarian sources of protein. A Cornell study found that meeting the annual dietary needs of a typical meateater in New York State requires nearly five times as much farmland as that of a plant-centered eater.”

Eating lower on the food chain, eating local, knowing your farmer, skipping processed food, and buying products with minimal (or no) packaging are all helpful. Of course, we can’t stop the freight train of global warming simply with personal choices.

“What we’re talking about when we talk about the food and climate crisis is a system-wide failure,” said Lappe. “System-wide failures need collective actions to fix them.” This means greening our food infrastructure and changing our economic structure that supports agribusiness over sustainable agriculture. “We wouldn’t expect individuals to personally excavate subway tunnels, purchase a fleet of fuel-efficient buses, or lay down tracks for high-speed rail,” she said. “Similarly, we shouldn’t expect individuals to fix our broken food infrastructure on their own. We need public investment in climate-friendly food that makes choosing locally raised, organically grown, fresh whole foods as easy as grabbing a Big Mac, fries and shake at the drive-thru.”

Farm Sanctuary is one organization putting this idea into practice. Its Green Foods Campaign helps people reach out to their local governments to introduce resolutions to deal with the environmental and health impacts of the food we eat. “A Green Foods Resolution is a city or town council resolution designed to counteract the health threats, animal cruelty and massive environmental damage caused by animal agriculture by calling on citizens to eat lower on the food chain,” the organization explains. “This forward-thinking legislation enables cities to take responsibility for their carbon ‘foodprint’ by encouraging greater access to nutritious plant-based foods, supporting local farmers markets and community gardens, and educating citizens about the health and environmental benefits of consuming more plant-based foods.”

3. The Limits of Growth

Annie Leonard’s hit Internet film and book, The Story of Stuff, helped to popularize research about overconsumption. And the recent book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben drives the point home even further. For decades people have been talking about the threat of overpopulation — can our planet support so many people? When do we hit the breaking point? But in recent years, the mainstream discussion has been expanded to include the ever-pertinent addendum to the questions of population — is the problem the number of people we have or how much we are consuming? How do we know when we’ve hit the limits of growth? Can we and should we stop?

President Obama, McKibben writes, said, “It’s going to be an impossible task to balance our budget or even approximate it if we are boosting our growth rates.” But far more troubling, McKibben contends, is our mounting ecological debt: “Growth is what we do. Who ever really dreamed it might come to an end.”

But, faced with collapse, what are our options? There is another possibility, that “We might chose instead to manage our descent,” he explains. “That we might aim for a relatively graceful decline. That instead of trying to fly the plane higher when the engines start to fail, or just letting it crash into the nearest block of apartments, we might start looking around for a smooth stretch of river to put it down in.”

McKibben eloquently explains how “bigness” spells trouble and what we can begin to do to counter it — an idea that is also afoot elsewhere.

Filmmaker Dave Gardner will soon be releasing the documentary, Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity, which takes on this critical question and offers an antidote for how we can become more sustainable. Already, the growth-centric ideas are being challenged on different levels with projects addressing Slow Food, Slow Money, Slow Design and the like, with communities teaming up to declare that less is more.

4. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Thinking small works well when it comes to finance, too. In recent years, people have been embracing the idea of microloans — small investments, sometimes as little as $20, that can go a long way in helping people in some of the poorest parts of the world. One company leading the way is Oikocredit, which helps provide financing to trade cooperatives, fair trade organizations and small-to-medium enterprises in the developing world.

“As one of the world’s oldest and largest international microfinance organizations, Oikocredit currently reaches 19 million poor entrepreneurs in over 70 countries with small loans that help them escape poverty,” explained Terry Provance, executive director of Oikocredit’s U.S. office. “Oikocredit is also one of just a few microfinance organizations with transparency and environmental clauses, and supports fair trade cooperatives in 70 countries. Last year, Oikocredit USA — the U.S. operation for Oikocredit International — received over $4 million from U.S. investors.”

When it comes to the environment, microfinance may be able to play a significant role. “With roughly 3.5 billion people around the world living on less than $2 a day, it is impossible for the poor to escape the cascading effects of climate change such as increasing mosquito populations and malaria, and droughts that make growing food unfeasible. Microfinance–small loans to the world’s working poor–is one proven method for giving working entrepreneurs the tools they need to adapt to these changes, and to engage in sustainable practices to help minimize their impact on the environment,” said Provance. “For instance, the loans allow the poor to build assets and invest in sustainable business practices that protect the environment versus exploiting it for immediate and desperate gain, such as slash and burn farming or using water-needy pesticides to grow food. The ability of microfinance to positively impact the environment increases as more people are lifted from poverty, and can provide a sturdy future for themselves.”

5. A Clean Energy Future

On April 21, the Department of Energy announced it had awarded $452 million in federal grants to 25 cities and states to help with programs to create clean energy jobs. Proponents of clean energy are fighting for funding as a new climate bill is poised to hand away many millions more to nuclear and coal initiatives. Nowhere is the battle between clean and dirty energy as visible as in Appalachia — where Big Coal reigns and the destructive practice of mountaintop removal (MTR) mining is blowing up whole ecosystems and destroying the communities around them.

But folks there have a vision for a different, cleaner future, in which the jobs are better and safer, too. Coal River Mountain is on the chopping block — facing annihilation from a mountaintop removal mining operation run by Massey Energy (you may have heard Massey’s name in the news lately after the deaths of 29 miners). But instead of seeing another mountain destroyed, locals have come up with a plan, and a damn good one, to cover those mountain ridges with wind farms.

“Set aside for a moment the many health and social ills of MTR–the toxic drainages, the dusty air, the undrinkable tap water–and still the economic argument alone for Coal River Wind is compelling,” wrote Ben Jervey for GOOD. He explains:

A 2007 wind potential study found capacity for 328 megawatts of clean energy on Coal River Mountain, enough to power 70,000 West Virginian homes. The revenue would produce $1.7 million in property taxes that would benefit the local communities. That’s over 50 times the $36,000-per-year that coal mining would generate in severance taxes, and the wind money wouldn’t dry up when the coal runs out in an estimated 14 years. (The coal revenue itself flows immediately out of state.) A wind farm would also create at least 50 permanent jobs that also last long after the coal would disappear. Again, this isn’t even to mention the external costs of public health and environmental quality.

One economic study found that by factoring in such externalities–health expenses, environmental cleanup costs and lost resources from tourism and ginseng harvesting–the Massey mines would wind up costing the community $600 million over their brief lifespans. Coal River Wind has the potential to rewrite the economics of mountaintop removal.

Faced with the enormity of our climate and energy problems, can replacing one coal mine with one wind farm make a dent in our quest for a more sustainable future? Of course! It makes a difference in the same way that investing $100 can change a family’s life; in the same way that personally knowing your farmer makes a difference in your health and the health of your community; in the same way that starting one teach-in on the environment in 1970 drew 20 million people and awakened a country’s consciousness.

So where will we be 40 years from now? Which road do we choose? How many people can we get to join us on that path?

22 April, 2010

Alternet.org

Written by Tara Lohan

Posted: 22 April 2010 00:00

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraLohan.

A July 2008 Fact Sheet Series titled, “Behind the Bars: Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons” was jointly prepared by the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the Palestinian Counseling Center (PCC), and Mandela Institute. Along with background information, it covered Israel’s obligations under international law, prison conditions where they’re held, medical neglect, and their educational rights restricted or denied.

Relevant International Laws Protecting Prisoners and Civilians in Times of Conflict, Including Women

The 1949 Third Geneva Convention applies to prisoners of war, replacing the 1929 Prisoners of War Convention. It broadened the categories of persons entitled to prisoner of war status and precisely defined the conditions and places of their captivity – especially with regard to allowed labor, financial resources, required treatment, and rules of judicial proceedings.

It specifically prohibited acts of:

— “Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

— Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;” and

— judicial guarantees “recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

The 1955 UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners requires “no discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

Other provisions apply to sleeping accommodations, sanitation, personal hygiene, clothing and bedding, food, exercise, medical services, discipline and punishment, instruments of restraint, information to and complaints by prisoners, contact with the outside world, books, religion, retention of prisoners’ property, notification of death, illness, or transfer, among other provisions to provide humane and proper treatment.

The 1974 UN General Assembly Declaration of the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict, requires all states engaged in armed conflicts and military occupiers:

“to spare women and children from the ravages of war. All the necessary steps shall be taken to ensure the prohibition of measures such as persecution, torture, punitive measures, degrading treatment and violence, particularly against women and children.”

The 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions….and relating to the Protections of Victims of International Armed Conflicts – supplements the four Geneva Conventions.

The 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women protects them with regard to discrimination, human rights, judicial fairness, equality, reproduction, health, education, employment, and “fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.”

The 1988 Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under any Form of Detention or Imprisonment affirms their human rights and obligation for authorities to enforce them – especially for women, children, the aged, sick, or handicapped.

The 1999 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women puts this measure “on an equal footing with International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention against Torture and other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”

Background

Since 1967, over 700,000 Palestinians have been incarcerated, including 10,000 women. Daily, from 15 – 20 men, women, and children are arrested.

During the second Intifada, Israeli security forces targeted women as well as men, subjecting them to mass arrests and mistreatment in detention, including torture and sexual abuse. From 2000 – 2008, more than 700 women were affected, many held without charge. Under military occupation, due process and judicial fairness conditions aren’t allowed because Israel denies them.

According to Addameer, women are held in vermin-infested cells or sections with “criminal prisoners;” subjected to regular body searches performed brutally by male guards; sexually harassed; denied rights the above laws require, including sufficient and proper food and clothing, medical care, recreation, and education; often placed in solitary confinement; beaten regularly in their cells; and denied contact with family and other prisoners.

In 2004, 120 were held; 17 were mothers; 2 gave birth in prison; 8 were under 18; and some were arrested to pressure their husbands, then told if their spouses had blood on their hands, their children would be killed.

In July 2008, 74 women were imprisoned, including two mothers with babies, subjected to the same harsh treatment. According to the Ahrar Center Prisoners Studies & Human Rights, the number was 140 in August 2009.

Prisons

Facilities were “designed for men by men and rarely do they meet women’s needs.”

Telmond Prison in Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, is one of Israel’s largest prison complexes. It has a section for Israeli criminals, including juveniles, as well as Palestinian men, women, and children “security” detainees and other prisoners.

Damon Prison on Mount Carmel, near Haifa, was originally a tobacco warehouse and stable, its appalling conditions unfit for human habitation, especially, of course, for women and children.

Al-Jalameh Detention Center is a maximum security facility in Kishon, near Haifa.

Article 10 of the 1955 Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners states:

“All accommodation provided for the use of prisoners and in particular all sleeping accommodation shall meet all requirements of health, due regard being paid to climate conditions and particularly to cubic content of air, minimum floor space, lighting, heating and ventilation.”

Article 19 states:

“Every prisoner shall, in accordance with local or national standards, be provided with a separate bed, and with separate and sufficient bedding which shall be clean when issued, kept in good order and changed often enough to ensure its cleanliness.”

Nonetheless, Palestinian women endure severe overcrowding conditions, affecting their health and safety.

In Damon Prison, women are in three cells, each with 10, 13, and 14 occupants, but only 12 beds. In addition, no storage space is provided for clothes and other belongings. Other conditions include four restricted use common bathrooms outside cells with no showers for 37 women.

Telmond Prison has two type cells – small, four square meter ones for two prisoners, including a bathroom, and larger 20 square meter ones for up to eight women.

Al-Jalameh Prison bathrooms are separate from cell living areas, separated only by a curtain, denying women privacy, personal dignity, and minimum hygiene standards.

All prisons have uncomfortable iron bed frames with 3 – 5 centimeter badly worn, thin mattresses, causing back problems. Requests for better ones and wood frames were denied. No blankets are provided, so if able, families must send them. Only thin blankets and sheets are permitted, so are inadequate in winter with no central heating.

Hygiene standards are poor. Moreover, cells are cold in winter, and extremely hot in summer. They have one window covered by an iron sheet blocking sunlight, allegedly for security reasons. No gas or electric heaters are allowed, or consideration for other basic needs. Essential items like toothpaste, soap, shampoo, detergent and light bulbs aren’t provided. Women are on their own to get them.

Although international law mandates proper amounts of well-prepared nutritional food, what’s served is poor, unbalanced, and inadequate. At Telmond, a typical breakfast includes a spoon of yogurt, a slice of tomato, pepper and bread. Lunch is the main meal, consisting of small amounts of either bean soup with potatoes and eggs; rice and wheat soup; small salad, rice and schnitzel; rice, a single kebab and beans; fish and potatoes; meat, rice and hummus; or rice, bean soup and chicken – all poor quality in small amounts, some of it inedible.

At Telmond, women have canteen access every 15 days where items like beans, spices, tomatoes, other vegetables, olive oil, snacks, soft drinks, coffee, tea, pens, notebooks, and other products are available. Yet prices are much higher than in the Territories, creating an added hardship for women with few resources to make purchases.

Clothing provided is very inadequate, requiring families to send what they can, yet packages are sometimes withheld. Recreation, such as it is, is greatly restricted, women allowed outside in a narrow courtyard for short periods, mornings and afternoons.

Imposed punishments are often arbitrary, such as for destroying public property when their old mattresses decompose or paint comes off walls. Women also face collective punishment if a prohibited item is found in a cell.

Individual punishments include solitary confinement, strip searches by male guards, confiscation of personal items, intimidation, denying outside contact or canteen privileges, and harassing day or late night searches. They’re frequent and harsh, a detainee saying, girls scream, are sprayed with tear gas, are severely beaten, and some placed in isolation. When they’re searched, they’re forced to undress, and if resist, they’re handcuffed and guards do it with cell doors open for others outside to observe.

Medical Neglect

Currently, about 25% of Palestinian female prisoners suffer from untreated diseases, the result of inexcusable medical neglect. Malnutrition causes weight loss, general weakness, anemia, iron deficiency, and poor health. Because of poor sanitation and ventilation, insect infestations, lack of sunlight, cold winters, hot summers, dirt, isolation, and stress, diseases like rheumatism, skin rashes, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, sickle cell anemia, kidney, eye, and dental problems, emotional trauma, and others are commonplace. They’re poorly addressed or treated.

Incarceration also affects mental health, showing up in depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, women in prison longest affected most but, with rare exceptions, none are treated.

From 2003 – 2008, four pregnant women gave birth under extremely difficult conditions with little pre or post-natal care. Hospital transfers entail being shackled, hands and feet, then chained to their beds until entering delivery rooms, then again after giving birth.

Yet doctors know that shackling during labor may cause complications such as hemorrhaging, decreased fetal heart rate, and if a caesarean is needed, even a short delay may cause permanent brain damage.

Imprisoned Palestinian Girls Denied Education

Girls as young as 16 are incarcerated with adults and denied any form of education, either vocational or continuation of their schooling. Israeli juvenile offenders, in contrast, may complete up to grade 12.

In 2008, five Palestinian girls, under age 18, were imprisoned. Four were high school students, unable to continue their education. Three of them were pending trial, one for over seven months, the other two from February and April 2008. A whole year or more may be lost, and if sentenced to lengthly incarcerations, perhaps no chance for personal development. As a result, affected girls are understandably depressed, not knowing what kind of future to expect or what more may happen to harm it.

Families may bring books once every three months if they’re able to enter Israel to do it. While general reading materials are allowed, technical publications and science books are prohibited as are encyclopedias, dictionaries, and large books, except with special permission.

The Tawjihi secondary education exam is the only opportunity for female prisoners. As a result, girls see it as the most important event in their lives, their reputations and futures riding on it. Yet at times, the exam is prohibited – for example, cancelled to impose collective punishment or because a Palestinian bringing it was obstructed at checkpoints, searched crossing the Green Line, again before entering the prison, or not allowed to come at all.

Eligibility for the exam requires registering with the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education, typically done through families. As for the girls, everything is arbitrary, ad hoc, and uncertain as they’re afforded no institutionalized learning framework, forced instead to rely on their own resources to obtain materials and study them. Even at exam times, teachers can’t enter prisons to instruct formally nor may girls communicate with them by phone, letters, or other means. The combination of prison, isolation, uncertainty, and helplessness adds greater levels of stress, mental pressure, and anxiety.

For those who qualify and get the chance, higher education is only in Hebrew – at the Open University of Israel, an added burden for young girls with poor language proficiency. Those permitted to enroll have to pay all costs, including tuition, books and fees, that alone making university training unaffordable for most families struggling to get by. The cost of an Israeli education is five times what a Palestinian college charges.

Another prison regulation permits only sentenced prisoners to enroll, those administratively detained or awaiting trial are prohibited. And those allowed must apply at least five years ahead of scheduled releases, adding still another hurdle. As a result, no female prisoners are enrolled at the Open University. From 2000 – 2008, only three managed to do it for a portion of their incarceration, but at no time was it easy, and training in hard sciences are excluded.

Israeli justice is cruel and inhumane in violation of fundamental international laws, including Fourth Geneva’s Article 147 affirming the right to a fair trial, and Article 49 prohibiting individual or mass forced transfers or deportations from the occupied territory to that of the occupying power or any other country. Article 76 states that:

“all protected persons accused of an offense must be detained within the occupied country and if they are sentenced, they have to serve the sentence within it.”

Yet Palestinian men, women, and children are held in Israeli prisons far from families, rarely given permits to visit them. They’re incarcerated for resisting occupation. International law permits it. Israel systematically breaches it, subjecting Palestinian men, women and children to cruel and inhuman confinement and treatment – atrocities by any standard.

Their struggle is ours – to free them and return their dignity and rights, those afforded only to Jews, but not all in an increasingly unfair society favoring privilege over democracy and equality.

Written by Stephen Lendman

Posted: 24 April 2010 00:00

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

22 April, 2010

Countercurrents.org

Last week none of us had ever heard of an Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajokull, and still even now, very few of us can actually pronounce its name. The volcanic dust spewn forth across Europe as a result of its spectacular eruption has had a remarkable effect, leading to, among other things, the total grounding of the UK’s aviation fleet for several days until this morning. The headline on Metro, the free newspaper the person next to me on the train is reading as I write this, is “Fly, fly again”. It will take days to clear the backlog and to get things back to normal, but let us not pass up this opportunity to meditate on vulnerability and resilience, which led to major disruption to the air freighting of produce from Kenya and other places, thousands of people stuck in their Easter holiday destinations, and Liverpool Football Club having to travel to its Europa League fixture with Athletico Madrid on public transport . But perhaps rather than seeing it as the ‘misery’ most news broadcasts labelled it as, we might see it as good practice for the near future.

Two days ago, 400,000 Britons were stranded around the world, 268,000 across Europe, the rest mainly in the US, Home Secretary David Miliband calling for the ‘great British spirit’ to be invoked by stranded tourists. The navy fleet was on standby for a Dunkirk style ‘rescuing’ of Brits from the European mainland to get them home. A Royal Navy ship picked up tourists from Spain, the captain saying “it’s a warship so the civilians won’t be used to the austere conditions, but they will get fresh rations, fish and chips for dinner tonight and curry tomorrow. We will provide as many camp beds as we can, but it’s not a 5 star hotel. An Englishman who organised a flotilla of boats to sail to Dunkirk to pick up tourists in a restaging of the Dunkirk evacuations of World War 2, was turned back by French authorities who told him that such behaviour was anti-commercial and could affect the viability of French ferries (at least that’s the story as it was told to me, true or not, it’s a great story).

Kenya’s horticulture industry, mostly flowers such as roses, grown for the UK market, has been losing $2 million a day in exports, with tonnes of roses and other fresh produce being thrown away each day (at least they were ‘composted’, according to the Guardian). One of the tabloids headlines yesterday was “TFI Flyday!” such was the media jubilation at the return to the skies. However, as Heading Out at the Oil Drum notes, this might just be the beginning of a series of eruptions, this may be just the beginning, rather than just the end of a week-long interruption to business-as-usual.

As a result of the grounding of the UK’s planes, Europe’s carbon emissions from aviation fell by 60%. This great graphic from informationisbeautiful.net answers the question of what produces more CO2, the volcano, or aviation? In spite of the huge amount of carbon pumped out by Eyjafjallajokull, aviation is still a far greater polluter.

Of course that was partly offset by the rather large amount of carbon belched forth by the unpronounceable volcano, but I spent Monday reading a fascinating piece of research by Meinshausen et.al.(1). It puts into context what ‘misery’ actually means, and it goes way beyond a few days stuck in a foreign airport or composting roses. Runaway climate change, accompanied by 2 metre sea level rise, crippling impacts on agriculture and most other aspects of modern life, would be utterly catastrophic. While not wishing in any way to denigrate the experience of those who have had a stressful, costly and disruptive few days, perhaps looking at this experience as a dry run for an oil-strapped near future might be healthier.

Of course we have had these ‘wake-up’ moments before. In 2000 the lorry drivers went on strike, blocking refineries, and the UK was a few days away from a major food crisis. The same thing was threatened a few years later when Grangemouth refinery was blockaded. Then there was the oil price spike of July 2008, and the impacts of the oil price rises. There was the snow of last winter, many communities cut off and distribution of essential goods made rather tricky. Oh and I think there was the world nearly coming to the brink of economic meltdown quite recently if I remember rightly, although I’m told that is all fine and sorted out now.

Now we have the grounding of the entire UK air fleet, and still the press coverage focused on newly-weds stranded in their honeymoon locations, or school choirs stuck in the US, rather than questioning how utterly reliant we have become on aviation, and how perilously unresilient we have grown as a culture. One minor interruption and everything starts coming unstuck at the edges rather quickly, developing countries find their agricultural sectors on the edge of bankruptcy, school exams might have to be scheduled, we will be short of fruit and other imports, etc.etc.

Meinshausen et.al. look at what level of cuts in emissions we need to make if we are actually going to avoid runaway and catastrophic climate change. They estimate that there is about a 70% chance of staying under 2°C if global emissions are cut by 50% from 1990 levels by 2050, and that emissions would need to have peaked and started to decline by 2020, and that they would need to continue being cut beyond 2050, and would need to have reached zero before 2100. A cut of 72% by 2050 would give us an 84% chance of avoiding runaway climate change.

They suggest that a programme of reductions capable of producing cuts in emissions necessary to avoid a 2°C rise, would mean that by 2050, the annual UK personal carbon allowance would need to be between 1.96 and 1.10 tonnes of CO2e per year, a cut of between 86% and 92% on 1990 levels, a level of emissions similar to that of Mozambique today. In this context, there really is little or no place for aviation, and that’s before we add in the question of what, by then, planes would even be running on.

We are talking about reducing emissions, personally and societally, by over 90%. Personally I don’t think future generations will be especially bothered that I had a few days over Easter chilling out in Rome or snorkelling in Thailand as they come to grips with the irreversible nightmare they have inherited from us. They will almost certainly look at any interruption to our “Fly, fly again” collective madness as having been a good thing, and would have hoped that we might have learnt something instructive from it.

Profoundly thought-provoking though the implications of Meinshausen’s study is, it is seen by some as being the optimistic scenario. A different study by Helm et.al. argues that even this scale of cuts is unrealistic, because presently the emissions of different nations are based on production rather than consumption, that is, they don’t factor in the carbon emissions that go into making imported consumer goods, which could be seen as ‘outsourced emissions’. If emissions were allocated to countries on the basis on consumption rather than production, the UK’s emissions would increase by 50%. Then there’s the fact, as set out so clearly in the recent Climate Safety report, that we haven’t even reached 2°C yet, we have gone up 0. 8°C and are already seeing feedbacks starting that the IPCC didn’t think we’d see for many years yet.

A re-immersion in the climate change literature is always a chilling experience (the word ‘sobering’ doesn’t somehow feel anywhere near strong enough). We are talking about a profound shift, such as that set out in the excellent forthcoming ‘Zero Carbon Britain 2030’ report, that takes as its basis the need to cut emissions to zero by 2030. In that context, in spite of all the wonders that aviation brings to our lives, whether it be 2 weeks in Rome over the Easter hols or early spring broccoli, roses and green beans airfreighted from Kenya, we are going to have to let it go.

The Department of Transport argue that air passenger numbers will have grown by 200% by 2030 (this is, of course, the same government that argues that peak oil won’t be a concern until 2030 at the earliest), and 21% of all the UK’s transport emissions come from aviation. It is, however, the key element of our transport infrastructure that defies decarbonisation. The aviation industry is already nearly as fuel efficient as it could become, electric planes are a non-started, hydrogen powered planes put 2.6 times the water vapour that ordinary planes put into the upper atmosphere, and biofuels for planes would be a humanitarian disaster, hitting food security hard. We have no option than to consciously, intentionally and urgently design for the end of the aviation industry.

Listening to 5 Live yesterday morning the speculation was all about whether or not planes would get into the air today, like a ‘which-airport-gets-planes-back-in-the-air-first’ competition. Gave me a mental picture of Boeing 737s on runways up and down the country, white knuckles clenching joysticks, revving their engines ready to reconquer the skies as soon as they get the green light. The sky with no planes is clearly seen by some as abhorrent, like a football match with no players, or, in my own case, a garden with no vegetables growing in it.

Alain de Botton wrote a beautiful piece for the BBC, a Transition Tale in effect, writing about life in 2050 with no planes, and people thinking back to the day when people flew. Writing in yesterday’s Guardian, George Monbiot wrote that “over the past few days, people living under the flight paths have seen the future and they like it”. Would it really be that bad to have a vastly scaled back aviation industry? Of course not. I haven’t flown for four years, and it has had no adverse impact on my quality of life at all.

In talks I sometimes use the analogy of the 7 League Boots, how people in the world before oil couldn’t imagine being able to travel long distances in any way other than by foot or travelling on an animal. Now we have lost any sense that distant places are, well, quite distant. The Canaries is actually a long long way from the UK, it’s an island in the middle of the sea. New York is also really a very, very long way from London. Cheap oil and not giving a toss about our carbon emissions has enabled us to shrink distances and as George Monbiot put it yesterday;

“it made everywhere feel local, interchangeable. Nature interjects, and we encounter – tragically for many – the reality of thousands of miles of separation. We discover that we have not escaped from the physical world after all”.

Rather than seeing the past few days as an interruption to our inherent right to go wherever in the world we want to whenever we want to, perhaps we ought to reflect on the awesome power that fossil fuels have brought, albeit temporarily, to our lives.

Helm et.al. argue, as does James Hansen, that the ‘tipping point’ for the Earth’s climate was a 0.5°C increase on pre-industrial levels. Given that the global climate is already committed to a 1.4°C increase, this might seem an impossible task. As Spratt & Sutton write in ‘Climate Code Red’, “the fact that we have long passed this point in no way detracts from its importance as a policy goal, and a state to which we should wholeheartedly endeavour to return the planet”. The Climate Safety Report and the forthcoming second edition of Zero Carbon Britain argue that this means nothing less than a target of zero carbon within the next three decades, a target clearly far in advance of current UK government policy, which, as set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act, is to cut UK emissions by 34% by 2020 and at least 80% by 2050.

Is such an ambition feasible without some major rethinking of many of the assumptions that underpin a business-as-usual approach? I for one struggle to imagine that aviation has any place whatsoever in a world of volatile oil prices, liquid fuel shortages, where biofuels have taken a backseat to actually feeding the world’s population and where avoiding the undermining and irrevocable destabilisation of the world’s climate systems is afforded the seriousness it deserves.

As Rosie Boycott wrote in today’s Guardian, #

“… perhaps this cloud of ash will have a genuine silver lining. Maybe we’ll wake up to where our food comes from, the real price it costs to get here, and the vulnerability of the systems in place. By ramming home the message that what we eat is now at the mercy of acts of God – as well as dwindling resources such as oil and the threat of climate change – I sincerely hope we’ll all start to reconsider how and what we eat”.

Indeed. As George Monbiot concluded yesterday in his typically forthright style:

“we have a choice. We can start decommissioning this industry (aviation) while there is time and find ways of living happily with less of it. Or we can sit and wait for physical reality to simplify the system by more brutal means”.

Designing creatively for this inevitable transition will require a shift in our expectations, shifting what we think of as being the best thing to do when the kids have 2 weeks off school, and what we expect to find on supermarket shelves.

However, as Rafa Benitez, Liverpool manager, told 5Live yesterday after expressing his disapproval with UEFA for making them play their tie in Madrid in spite of the flying ban, and contemplating a very long journey made up to coaches, trains, and at the end, a plane, “we will adapt”. Of course we will, and be healthier, leaner and better connected for it, and we may just, still avoid runaway climate change. Let’s just not have a bank style bail-out for airlines please.

References.

(1). Meinshausen, M. Meinshausen, N. Hare, W. Raper, S. C. B. Frieler, K. Knutti, R. Frame, D. J. Allen, M. R. (2009) Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 degrees C. Nature 458, 1158-1162

22 April, 2010

Transition Culture

Written by Rob Hopkins

Posted: 23 April 2010 00:00

A NUN who has been superior at a Syrian monastery for the past 18 years has warned that media coverage of ongoing violence in that country has been “partial and untrue”. It is “a fake”, Mother Agnes Mariam said, which “hides atrocities committed in the name of liberty and democracy”.

Superior of the Melkite Greek Catholic monastery of St James the Mutilated in Qara, in Syria’s diocese of Homs, which is in full communion with Rome, she left Ireland yesterday after a three-day visit during which she met representatives of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Maynooth.

She told The Irish Times she was in Ireland “not to advocate for the (Assad) regime but for the facts”. Most news reports from Syria were “forged, with only one side emphasised”, she said. This also applied to the UN, whose reports were “one-sided and not worthy of that organisation”.

UN observers in Syria had been “moderate with the rebels and covered for them in taking back positions after the withdrawal of heavy equipment, as seen so tragically in Homs”, she said.

When it was put to her this suggested the whole world was out of step except for Syria, Russia and China, she protested: “No, no, there are 20 countries, including some in Latin America” of the same view.

The reason the media was being denied easy access to Syria currently was because in the Libyan conflict journalists placed electronic devices for Nato in rooms used at press conferences in that country, she said. “So Syria didn’t want journalists,” she said.

Christians make up about 10 per cent of Syria’s population, dispersed throughout the country, she said. The Assad regime “does not favour Christians”, she said. “It is a secular regime based on equality for all, even though in the constitution it says the Koran is the source of legislation.”

But “Christians are less put aside [in Syria] than in other Islamic countries, for example Saudi Arabia,” she said. “The social fabric of Syria is very diverse, so Christians live in peace.”

The “Arab insurrection” under way in that country included “sectarian factions which promote fundamentalist Islam, which is not genuine Islam”, she said.

The majority of Muslims in Syria are moderate and open to other cultural and interfaith elements, she said. “Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) is not open,” she added.

Christians in Syria were “doubtful about the future if the project to topple the regime succeeded”. The alternative was “a religious sectarian state where all minorities would feel threatened and discriminated against”, she said.

There was “a need to end the violence”, she said. “The West and Gulf states must not give finance to armed insurrectionists who are sectarian terrorists, most of whom are from al-Qaeda, according to a report presented to the German parliament,” she said.

“We don’t want to be invaded, as in Aleppo, by mercenaries, some of whom think they are fighting Israel. They bring terror, destruction, fear and nobody protects the civilians,” she said. There were “very few Syrians among the rebels”, she said. “Mercenaries should go home,” she said.

What she and others sought in Syria was “reform, no violence, no foreign intervention.” She hoped for “a new, third way, a new social pact where the right to autodetermination without outside interference” would be respected.

© 2012 The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Mon, Aug 13, 2012

The rich world is causing the famines it claims to be preventing.

I don’t blame Mo Farah, Pele and Haile Gebrselassie, who lined up, all hugs and smiles, outside Downing Street for a photocall at the prime minister’s hunger summit(1). Perhaps they were unaware of the way in which they were being used to promote his corporate and paternalistic approach to overseas aid. Perhaps they were also unaware of the crime against humanity over which he presides. Perhaps Cameron himself is unaware of it.

You should by now have heard about the famine developing in the Sahel region of West Africa. Poor harvests and high food prices threaten the lives of some 18 million people. The global price of food is likely to rise still further, as a result of low crop yields in the United States, caused by the worst drought in 50 years. World cereal prices, in response to this disaster, climbed 17% last month(2).

We have been cautious about attributing such events to climate change: perhaps too cautious. A new paper by James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, shows that there has been a sharp increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers(3). Between 1951 and 1980 these events affected between 0.1 and 0.2% of the world’s land surface each year. Now, on average, they affect 10%. Hansen explains that “the odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small”(4). Both the droughts in the Sahel and the US crop failures are likely to be the result of climate change.

But this is not the only sense in which the rich world’s use of fuel is causing the poor to starve. In the United Kingdom, in the rest of the European Union and in the United States, governments have chosen to deploy a cure as bad as the disease. Despite overwhelming evidence of the harm their policy is causing, none of them will change course.

Biofuels are the means by which governments in the rich world avoid hard choices. Rather than raise fuel economy standards as far as technology allows, rather than promoting a shift from driving to public transport, walking and cycling, rather than insisting on better town planning to reduce the need to travel, they have chosen to exchange our wild overconsumption of petroleum for the wild overconsumption of fuel made from crops. No one has to drive less or make a better car: everything remains the same except the source of fuel. The result is a competition between the world’s richest and poorest consumers, a contest between overconsumption and survival. There was never any doubt about which side would win.

I’ve been banging on about this since 2004(5), and everything I warned of then has happened. The US and the European Union have both set targets and created generous financial incentives for the use of biofuels. The results have been a disaster for people and the planet.

Already, 40% of US corn (maize) production is used to feed cars(6). The proportion will rise this year as a result of the smaller harvest. Though the market for biodiesel is largely confined to the European Union, it has already captured seven per cent of the world’s output of vegetable oil(7). The European Commission admits that its target (10% of transport fuels by 2020) will raise world cereal prices by between 3 and 6%(8). Oxfam estimates that with every 1% increase in the price of food, another 16 million people go hungry(9).

By 2021, the OECD says, 14% of the world’s maize and other coarse grains, 16% of its vegetable oil and 34% of its sugarcane will be used to make people in the gas guzzling nations feel better about themselves(10). The demand for biofuel will be met, it reports, partly through an increase in production; partly through a “reduction in human consumption.”(11) The poor will starve so that the rich can drive.

The rich world’s demand for biofuels is already causing a global land grab. ActionAid estimates that European companies have now seized five million hectares of farmland – an area the size of Denmark – in developing countries for industrial biofuel production(12). Small farmers, growing food for themselves and local markets, have been thrown off their land and destituted. Tropical forests, savannahs and grasslands have been cleared to plant what the industry still calls “green fuels”.

When the impacts of land clearance and the use of nitrogen fertilisers are taken into account, biofuels produce more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels do(13,14,15). The UK, which claims that half the biofuel sold here meets its sustainability criteria, solves this problem by excluding the greenhouse gas emissions caused by changes in land use(16). Its sustainability criteria are, as a result, worthless.

Even second generation biofuels, made from crop wastes or wood, are an environmental disaster, either extending the cultivated area or removing the straw and stovers which protect the soil from erosion and keep carbon and nutrients in the ground. The combination of first and second generation biofuels – encouraging farmers to plough up grasslands and to leave the soil bare – and hot summers could create the perfect conditions for a new dust bowl.

Our government knows all this. One of its own studies shows that if the European Union stopped producing biofuels, the amount of vegetable oils it exported to world markets would rise by 20% and the amount of wheat by 33%, reducing world prices(17).

Preparing for the prime minister’s hunger summit on Sunday, the international development department argued that, with a rising population, “the food production system will need to be radically overhauled, not just to produce more food but to produce it sustainably and fairly to ensure that the poorest people have the access to food that they need.”(18) But another government department – transport – boasts on its website that, thanks to its policies, drivers in this country have now used 4.4 billion litres of biofuel(19). Of this 30% was produced from recycled cooking oil. The rest consists of 3 billion litres of refined energy snatched from the mouths of the people that David Cameron claims to be helping.

Some of those to whom the government is now extending its “nutrition interventions” may have been starved by its own policies. In this and other ways, David Cameron, with the unwitting support of various sporting heroes, is offering charity, not justice. And that is no basis for liberating the poor.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/sport-stars-get-behind-olympic-hunger-summit/

2. http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/

3. James Hansen, Makiko Satoa, Reto Ruedy, 2012. Perception of climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in press. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.1286.pdf

4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-change-is-here–and-worse-than-we-thought/2012/08/03/6ae604c2-dd90-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html?hpid=z3

5. http://www.monbiot.com/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/

6. OECD and UNFAO, 2012. Agricultural Outlook, 2012-2021.

http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/agriculture-and-food/oecd-fao-agricultural-outlook-2012_agr_outlook-2012-en

7. Alessandro Flammini, October 2008. Biofuels and the underlying causes of high food prices. UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. http://bit.ly/P7V1Zt

8. Mariann Fischer Boel, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, 13th March 2008. Biofuels: not a magic wand, but a valuable policy tool. Speech to the 2008 World Biofuels Markets Congress. http://bit.ly/MTPDdZ

9. R.Bailey, 2008. Response of Oxfam GB to the Gallagher Review. Oxfam. Cited by ActionAid, 2010. Meals per Gallon: the impact of industrial biofuels on people and global hunger. http://www.actionaid.org.uk/doc_lib/meals_per_gallon_final.pdf

10. OECD and UNFAO, 2012. Agricultural Outlook, 2012-2021.

http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/agriculture-and-food/oecd-fao-agricultural-outlook-2012_agr_outlook-2012-en

11. as above

12. ActionAid, 2010. Meals per Gallon: the impact of industrial biofuels on people and global hunger. http://www.actionaid.org.uk/doc_lib/meals_per_gallon_final.pdf

13. PJ Crutzen, AR Mosier, KA Smith and W Winiwarter, 1 August 2007. N2O release from agro-biofuel production negates global warming reduction by replacing fossil fuels. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions 7, pp11191–11205. http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/11191/2007/acpd-7-11191-2007.pdf

14. Joseph Fargione, Jason Hill, David Tilman, Stephen Polasky, Peter Hawthorne, 7th February 2008. Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt. Science. Doi 10.1126/science.1152747.

15. Timothy Searchinger, Ralph Heimlich, R. A. Houghton, Fengxia Dong, Amani Elobeid, Jacinto Fabiosa, Simla Tokgoz, Dermot Hayes, Tun-Hsiang Yu, 7th February 2008. Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change . Science. Doi 10.1126/science.1151861.

16. “This figure may not include all emissions from direct land use change and excludes the emissions from indirect land-use changes considered in the ‘Gallagher Review’.” http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/verified-rtfo-biofuel-statistics-2010-11/

17. Grant Davies, 2012. Removing Biofuel Support Policies: An Assessment of Projected Impacts on Global Agricultural Markets using the AGLINK-COSIMO model. DEFRA. http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/meeting-energy-demand/bio-energy/5134-removing-biofuel-support-policies-an-assessment-o.pdf

18. http://www.dfid.gov.uk/What-we-do/Key-issues/Food-and-nutrition/

19. http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/verified-rtfo-biofuel-statistics-2010-11/

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 14th August 2012

August 13, 2012

Foreign and Expatriates Ministry Welcomes Statement Issued by Tehran Consultative Meeting

Aug 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said that is has followed with interest Tehran’s Consultative Meeting on Syria, held in the Iranian capital Tehran on August 9th, with the aim of enhancing international and regional efforts to help Syria find an exit to the crisis based on implementing the six-point plan of UN Envoy Kofi Annan and paving suitable ground for national dialogue within a peaceful atmosphere among the Syrian people.

In a press release, the Ministry welcomed the statement issued by the meeting and thanked the Islamic Republic of Iran and all participating countries for their efforts exerted to help Syria overcome the crisis based on the principle of defending the right against the wrong and supporting the legitimate demands of the Syrian people through peaceful national dialogue far from foreign interference in the Syrian affairs.

The Ministry stressed that it will continue building on these positive initiatives, and it will continue communicating with all countries concerned to help encourage constructive initiatives to help Syria.

Authorities Inflict Heavy Losses upon Armed Terrorist Groups in Homs, Lattakia, Idleb and Daraa

Aug 14, 2012

PROVINCES, (SANA) – A unit of the Syrian armed forces pursued an armed terrorist group in Jouret al-Shayah in Homs, killing a large number of mercenary terrorists and wounding others. The armed forces unit also destroyed a warehouse of weapons and ammunition.

Several Terrorists Killed and Wounded in Clash with Authorities in Homs

Authorities in Homs province chased a group of armed terrorists who attacked civilians and properties near Souq al-Ghanam on al-Salamiyah-Homs highway.

A source in the province told SANA correspondent that clashes resulted in killing and wounding several gunmen.

Authorities Storm Terrorists’ Den, Kill Large Number of Terrorists

With residents’ cooperation, authorities stormed a terrorists’ den in Talbiseh area in Homs Countryside and killed large numbers of terrorists.

Authorities chased armed terrorist groups that attacked citizens, cut off roads and fired on passing cars in al-Ghanto town and Telbiseh city to the north of Homs.

SANA reporter quoted a source in the province as saying that the lash resulted in killing and wounding large number of terrorists.

Authorities Destroy Den used by terrorists in Homs countryside

The competent authorities today destroyed a den which was used by the armed terrorist groups as a base for their operations at al-Eznea town in al-Qseir, Homs countryside.

A source in Homs told SANA reporter that the authorities inflicted heavy losses among the terrorists, Killing and injuring all of them.

Authorities Seize Explosive Devices Factory in Homs

Authorities stormed a den used by an armed terrorist group to make explosive devices in al-Shammas area in Homs.

SANA reporter quoted a source in the Province as saying that the authorities seized 11 explosive devices in addition to equipment and raw materials used in manufacturing explosives.

Armed Forces Seize Car Transporting Anti-Armor Rounds in Daraya, Damascus Countryside

An armed forces unit seized a car in Daraya area, Damascus Countryside, and arrested the terrorists in it who were attempting to transport weapons and ammo to an armed group.

The weapons, which were concealed inside the car, a Kia Cerato, included an anti-armor rocket launcher and rounds and charges for it.

Authorities Pursue Armed Terrorists in Lattakia, Kill and Wound many Gunmen

Authorities in Lattakia Province pursued a group of armed terrorists who attacked law-enforcement forces in al-Khadra town in Lattakia countryside and inflicted heavy losses upon them.

A source in the province told SANA correspondent that the authorities pursued last night a gang of armed terrorists who terrified civilians in al-Rihaneh town and killed all gang members.

Authorities Inflict Heavy Losses Upon Terrorists in Idleb

Authorities continued pursuing the armed terrorist groups in Areha area in Idleb, inflicting heavy losses upon them and seizing weapons and stolen cars.

Armed Forces Pursue Terrorists in Daraa Province

The Syrian Armed Forces continued to pursue armed terrorist groups in several areas in Daraa province, killing and injuring several of their members.

A source at the province told SANA’s correspondent that an armed forces units pursued a terrorist group in the town of Tafas in Daraa countryside, killing a large number of its members and arresting others.

The dead terrorists include Adhamd Bdewi al-Zoubi, Mohannad Ahmad Haza’a al-Zoubi, Qasem Mohammad al-Masri, and Mohammad Ahmad al-Zoubi.

The armed forces also pursued terrorists in Bosra al-Cham and Izra’a in Daraa, and clashed with terrorists in the town of al-Sanamin, killing a anumber of them including Khedr Qassem Abdelkader and Mufid Ahmad al-Mehdi.

Salehi: Tehran Opposes Suspending Syria’s Membership at OIC

Aug 13, 2012

TEHRAN, (SANA)-Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Monday underlined his country’s opposition to suspending membership of any member country at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation OIC.

“Any country, particularly members of the OIC, should put hand in hand to resolve the crisis in Syria in the service of the region’s security and stability, Salehi said in a statement in the Saudi city of Mecca, in response to comments by OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu on suspending the membership of Syria at the OIC.

Salehi reiterated Iran’s rejection of any foreign intervention in Syria’s domestic affairs.

Syria’s Ambassador in Tehran: Syria was first in implementing political and economic reforms

Syria’s Ambassador in Tehran Hamid Hassan underlined that Syria was first in implementing the political and economic reforms in the country.

During a meeting held by the Establishment of Mobilization at the TV& Radio Center in Iran today, Hassan said “Syria has taken its reform steps continuously and truly.. Syria has clearly announced its rejection of any foreign intervention.”

Military Source: Military Aircraft  Suffers Technical Failure during Ordinary Training Flight over Eastern Area

Aug 13, 201

DAMASCUS, (SANA)_A military source said that a technical failure that happened to a military aircraft while it was on an ordinary training flight over the eastern area caused the command devices to break down, and the pilot to leave the plane by the ejection seat.

The source added that search for the pilot is underway.

Head of UN Observer Mission in Syria: The Mission will Continue its Work according to UNSC Resolution 2059

Aug 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)_General Babacar Gaye, head of the UN Observer Mission in Syria, said that the mission will continue its work according to the UN Security Council Resolution No. 2059.

In a press conference held in Damascus on Monday, Gaye said that the UN observers in Syria are monitoring the increasing violence in Syria and are visiting the displaced Syrians inside the country, adding that the mission has enhanced its efforts in an attempt to reach a ceasefire to deliver humanitarian aid to those in need.

”The mission is determined to continue its work until the end of its mandate,” he said, demanding that all sides end violence and come to the negotiating table, expressing the UN readiness to back political dialogue among the Syrians.

Gaye noted that he recently held a meeting with the Syrian government and discussed holding dialogue.

He added that the mission has scaled down its presence in certain areas like Aleppo due to the developments there, indicating that it will redeploy its monitors temporarily in Damascus.

Answering a question on abducting and killing journalists, Gaye said that the UN is committed to protecting the freedom of press, adding that media in Syria is playing a pivotal role.

He condemned the violence targeting media by either side.

Terrorist Gharibo: I Issued Several Fatwas Upon which the Terrorists Perpetrated Crimes Against Civilians

Aug 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)-Terrorist Ahmad Ali Gharibo, one of the armed terrorist groups’ Muftis in al-Maliha, Damascus countryside, admitted that he has issued several fatwas to the armed groups that permit killing upon which terrorists have depended to perpetrate a number of crimes against civilians.

“I was born in Aleppo countryside in 1964 and live in al-Maliha, East Ghouta.. I work as the Imam and preacher of Khadija mosque,” Terrorist Gharibo said in confessions to the Syrian TV broadcast Monday.

“One day, a car came to my house at 12 midnight.. four armed men came down and asked me to go with them for one hour.. they threatened me of my son if I rejected to go with them.. they took me to Dir al-Asafeer town.. when we arrived in there, we entered a tent where a group of people were inside with drugs in front of them,” the terrorist added.

He said “After interrogating me by the armed group, I pleaded to them to inform me about the person which threatened me.. they answered that his name was Mazen Zamzamm, a leader of an armed terrorist group in al-Maliha.”

Terrorist Gharib added that those evil persons were drug addicts, and one of them has raped a married woman.

“Later, they introduced me to a man called Abu Adi from Homs who has escaped from the army in Saqba.. they told me that they will give him the leadership of the group and they will name themselves as the free army, I told them you are free, it is up to you,” terrorist Gharibo said.

He added that a fatwa has been issued on a website, known as the fatwa No. 107, because it was issued by 107 Sheikhs inside and outside Syria.. it permits to kill anyone who deals with the State if he was proven a killer, they asked me about my opinion, I answered yes, it is true.

“It was my first fault to give a fatwa to kill.. they were killing in a unnatural way.. they were mutilating the bodies.. I remember that they have killed five persons and threw their bodies in the sewage and rubbish containers,” he said.

Terrorist Gharibo went on to say that al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nasra in Syria are takfiris, they believe in sectarianism, they regard bloodshed as lawful and they have no problem to kill civilians during their evil acts.

People’s Assembly General Freedoms and Human Rights Committee Discusses Draft Charter

Aug 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The People’s Assembly General Freedoms and Human Rights Committee on Monday discussed its draft charter in preparation for approving it so that the Committee may play its intended role of tackling issues related to protecting freedoms and human rights.

The General Freedoms and Human Rights Committee is one of four new permanent committees at the People’s Assembly which joins the 12 existing committees. It is charged with looking into everything pertaining to protecting citizens’ freedoms and human rights based on article 33 of the constitution.

Chairman of the Committee, Bade’a Saqer, reviewed the draft work guide of the Committee, affirming that it is an independent entity that is subject only to the supervision of the People’s Assembly via reports.

Saqer said that human rights are inherent, not earned, and human cannot live without them as all people are born free, explaining that the Committee aims to fulfill a number of goals listed in the constitution, particularly ensuring that all executive authorities in the state establishments conform to the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in addition to formulating legislations to improve the state of freedoms.

He went on to add that other goals include preparing an annual report to the Assembly on the state of freedoms in Syria, studying the conditions of people detained for criminal and political reasons, monitoring illegal detainment, and working to spread the culture of freedoms and human rights.

Saqer said that the Committee members will establish direct and indirect contact with people to receive complaints, and that they will also work to protect cultural rights and intellectual, cultural and religious  pluralism, adding that several ministries will be work to include the issue of constitutional freedoms in their work programs and translate them in practice, while relevant ministries will be asked to present the necessary data on the implementation of human rights according to the constitution.

He also said that the Committee will coordinate with the Syrian Human Rights Network, along with relevant organizations and parliaments around the world.

On this note, the Committee addressed the world’s parliaments, saying that citizens’ rights and freedoms are being violated due to unjust sanctions imposed on Syria and the escalation of the aggressive acts carried out by armed terrorist group which reject dialogue and reconciliation and are supported by the US, some EU countries and Arab countries.

The Committee called upon these parliaments to pressure their governments into adopting the six-point program to resolve the situation in Syria and prevent it from escalation.

The Committee members stressed the need for it to begin work as soon as possible, given the exceptional situation in Syria.

They said that the Committee is a necessity, voicing hope that it will be effective and carry out its work properly through fieldwork and keeping in touch with citizens.

The members affirmed that this Committee is one of the most important of the new committees and is the first such committee in an Arab parliament, adding that there’s a distorted image of Syria being spread abroad regarding freedoms and human rights violations, and that the Committee should relay the truth about what is happening in Syria in this field.

Stand in Honor of Martyr Journalist Ali Abbas Tomorrow

Aug 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The Syrian Journalists’ Union organizes a stand in honor of the martyr journalist Ali Abbas and the kidnapped Syrian journalists outside the building of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) on Tuesday at 11:00 a.m.

Martyr Abbas, who was the head of the Internal News Department at SANA, was assassinated by an armed terrorist group in his home in Jdeidet Artouz in Damascus Countryside.

Kidnapped al-Ikhbariya TV Cameraman Hatem Abu Yehya Martyred

Aug 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The Syrian al-Ikhbariya TV channel announced that the cameraman Hatem Abu Yehya, who was kidnapped along with a press team in Tal Mnin area, was martyred.

The TV channel added that the other press team members are in good health after two days of being kidnapped while covering the events in Tal Mnin area in Damascus Countryside.

Decree on Establishing two New Faculties in Aleppo University

Aug 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – President Bashar al-Assad on Monday issued a legislative decree No. 301 for 2012 on establishing the Third Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the Third Faculty of Education in Aleppo University.

The decree provides for that the two new faculties to be based in Manbij city, Aleppo.

Minister Haidar: Ministry’s Doors Open to Every Possible Help that Might Contribute to Solving Problems

Aug 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Minister of State for National Reconciliation Affairs Ali Haidar said that the Ministry’s door are open to every possible help that might contribute to making its tasks a success and solving issues under discussion through objective viewpoints on what is taking place in Syria and embracing honesty in conveying the reality.

Following his meeting with Hungarian ambassador in Damascus Janos Budai, Haidar told reporters that he briefed the ambassador on the Ministry’s tasks and work mechanisms as well as means of potential cooperation between the two sides.

The minister stressed the importance that the Syrians be united in the current stage, indicating that any stance to support the Syrian people should fit their national interests.

Regarding the Ministry’s role in tackling the issue of the kidnapped, Haidar said that this issue is a priority for the Ministry, stressing that all kidnapping operations are condemned whatever their motives or purposes, particularly if they aimed at silencing the voice of the right just like what happened with the Syrian al-Ikhbariya TV channel.

Longtime journalist Alexander Cockburn passed away on July 21st, an enormous loss. Cockburn was a brilliant, witty, and courageous opponent of falsehoods and injustice. He stood on the side of the oppressed, the weak, and the victimized – even those victims that many writers and human rights defenders chose to ignore.

With his scathing intellect, engaging talent, far ranging knowledge, and quick humor, the Oxford-educated Cockburn could have become a celebrated, wealthy journalist – the kind whose lucrative articles are consistently published in top journals, whose best-selling books are reviewed widely throughout the media, and whose commentary is in demand by the top television and radio news programs.

Instead, he used his extraordinary abilities to skewer dishonesty, expose cruelty and hypocrisy, and spread facts that many wished to remain hidden.

Others have written remembrances that discuss the diverse topics he addressed; I will limit myself to just one.

Although he was not known as an activist on Israel-Palestine, I believe that history will show Alexander Cockburn to have been one of the most important figures in the quest for justice in Palestine.

While most others on the left were largely ignoring, obscuring, or misrepresenting the facts on this issue, Cockburn was exposing them.

In fact, he lost his first major position in the U.S., as a writer for the Village Voice, because of his articles discussing Israel-Palestine and Israel’s ruthless invasion of Lebanon. His pieces earned the enmity of both Zionists and those who claimed they weren’t, but who had what former Voice writer James Wolcott describes as a “gravitational pull to Israel.”

When Cockburn received a $10,000 research grant from the Massachusetts-based Institute for Arab Studies to investigate Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Israel partisans saw this as a way to get rid of him. (He had been recommended for the grant by Columbia professor Edward Said.)

An article published by the Boston Phoenix after Cockburn’s death, “How the Boston Phoenix Got Alexander Cockburn Fired from the Village Voice,” gives some of the details.

The Phoenix, which was then published by Israel partisan Stephen Mindich (and now by his son), reported on the grant in an article written by Alan Lupo, a writer with a record of consistent pro-Israel bias in his articles. The piece was headlined “Alexander Cockburn’s $10,000 Arab connection” and subtitled “A question of propriety.” For his story Lupo phoned Village Voice Editor David Schneiderman, who eventually suspended Cockburn because of an alleged “conflict of interest.”

Other pro-Israel journalists gleefully took up the refrain, suggesting that Cockburn had acted improperly in accepting money from “the Arabs.” Recent obituaries mentioned the incident and continued this spin.

The validity of this charge, however, is significantly diminished by the fact that receiving a grant from an American foundation is normal, acceptable, and standard practice, as evidenced by the multitude of books in which author acknowledgements thank the various foundations that have funded their research.

As James Wolcott recently pointed out in his Vanity Fair blog: “Much handwringing to-do was made at the time of the incident about the need for journalistic transparency and accountability and such but let’s be honest — if it had been a Jewish-American organization or Israel front forking off the relative piddling sum of $10 thou, there hardly would have been this gummy uproar.”

Wolcott went on to note, “Imagine how many Beltway pundits, commentators, consultants and the like are on the take today via speaking fees, serving on panels, free fact-finding trips to the Mideast, etc. Alex’s sin was in aligning with the wrong team.”

The articles in 1984 and since that focused on Cockburn’s alleged “impropriety” failed to mention the fact that, according to prominent pro-Israel journalist Michael Kinsley, numerous journalists have gone to Israel on trips financed by the Israeli government – a far sketchier proposition. *

Governmental funding of journalism, in fact, is considered so problematic that a number of Israel Lobby organizations such as Act for Israel and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy have now stepped in to finance such journalistic junkets to Israel, removing the need for the Israeli government to be directly involved.

The fact that many journalists go on these Lobby-financed junkets also went unmentioned in the articles that brought up Cockburn’s allegedly improper grant and supposed conflict of interest. Also unmentioned was the fact that many journalists reporting on Israel-Palestine have close family – and sometimes personal – ties to the Israel military.

And there is still more to the story – which also is not referenced in recent obituaries. According to a 1992 article by former AIPAC insider Gregory Slabodkin, “AIPAC [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] was the source of the original Phoenix story.” AIPAC is a leading institution in the Israel Lobby.

In his article, “The Secret Section in Israel’s U.S. Lobby That Stifles American Debate” published by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Slabodkin described how AIPAC secretly monitors individuals critical of Israel and feeds negative information about them to the media.

Slabodkin, who used to work for the section within AIPAC responsible for this surreptitious activity, reported that Lupo “said AIPAC had told him the Institute for Arab Studies was ‘linked to a $100 million campaign to sway U.S. policy against Israel.’” In reality, Slabodkin reported, “the Institute had U.S. tax-exempt status and listed individual contributors within the United States until it closed down in 1983 due to a lack of funds.”

Slabodkin discussed AIPAC’S promulgation of anti-Arab bigotry as a tactic to protect Israel: “AIPAC attempted to discredit critics of Israel not by refuting their arguments, but by trying to tie them to Arab money. Making an Arab connection can damage the victim’s reputation, the pro-Israel lobby believes, so long as it can encourage a mindset in the United States that anything Arab-related is tainted.”

While Voice Editor Schneiderman at first defended Cockburn, he eventually went along with the charges, suspending him for what he claimed was a conflict of interest, and Cockburn left.

Schneiderman, who had originally been hired to edit the Voice by Rupert Murdoch, went into increasingly lucrative directions, eventually making tens of millions of dollars by turning the Village Voice and its offspring into advertising money machines, largely through classified ads, some of which eventually got the paper sued for the grotesque sex trafficking they enabled. He is currently employed at a PR firm advising global corporations on corporate communications, crises, antitrust and other regulatory matters, labor relations, and environmental issues.

Cockburn, on the other hand, continued to skewer the powerful, mendacious, hypocritical, and cruel. His biting and occasionally very funny essays were published in periodicals from the Nation to the Wall Street Journal, both of which employed him as a columnist, and collected in his book Corruptions of Empire and others.

A scan of these reveals that in the 1980s he was already exposing the neocons and their appalling agenda. In “The Gospel According to Ali Agca,” originally published in the Nation in 1985, he described the CBS documentary “Terrorism: War in the Shadows,” and reported the implied challenge by alleged “terrorism expert” Robert Kupperman** not to let TV images of “charred babies” and our guilt over Vietnam interfere with our commitment to fighting “terrorists.”

CounterPunch

Most important, in 1996 Cockburn and co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair took over CounterPunch, a small newsletter that had been started two years earlier.

In subsequent years they created an extraordinarily non-doctrinaire muckraking publication where independent writers could cover a wide variety of topics fully, accurately, and without being constrained by positions decreed by political orthodoxy.

CounterPunch has covered Israel-Palestine with a thoroughness and honesty that few if any other non-specialty publications have approached. Moreover, it has been uniquely open to pieces by writers from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives.

I am personally indebted to CounterPunch, which was the first general interest publication to publish my pieces on the topic. Without CounterPunch, I think it is quite likely that my articles on Israel-Palestine would never have made it into the small, fairly closed world of highly regarded progressive general interest publications.

While most other media were covering Israel-Palestine very little, if at all – and were frequently obscuring such central issues as the Palestinian right of return, the systemic discrimination within Israel itself, the power of the Israel Lobby in the U.S., and Israel partisans’ direct connections to the invasion of Iraq – CounterPunch contributors were exposing all in meticulous, principled detail.

When former Zionists worked on a campaign to blackball some writers, including two Israeli anti-Zionist authors, for allegedly going too far in their subject matter, CounterPunch refused to bow to the attempted party line and continued to publish their thought provoking, often highly informative pieces.

The importance of what Cockburn and co-editor St. Clair have achieved in CounterPunch cannot be overstated. Without CounterPunch, it is quite likely that essential information on Israel-Palestine would have remained largely hidden from progressive American readers. CounterPunch not only published critical facts itself; by carrying thoroughly cited articles on information that had previously been buried, it also pushed other American publications and individuals into discussing Palestine with greater depth, frequency, and honesty.

The censorship on Israel-Palestine has been far more serious and profound than most people realize. It has pervaded both the left and the right and has long worked to minimize informed discussion on the subject and prevent effective work for justice and peace.

CounterPunch ripped open the curtain.

* Kinsley’s revelation about this came in his essay “Cockburn the Barbarian: Lessons in journalistic ethics from a veteran of an infamous Israeli junket,” Washington Monthly, April 1984. Online at: http://www.unz.org/Pub/WashingtonMonthly-1984apr-00035

** Robert Kupperman was in on the ground floor of building the war against certain types of terror. He created the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism under President Richard Nixon. This was in response to Palestinian fighters who had taken eleven Israeli athletes hostage to use in an exchange to free Palestinian men and women held (and tortured) in Israeli prisons. When Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir refused to consider such an exchange, a bungled rescue attempt resulted in the hostages being killed. The next day Israel launched air attacks against Lebanon and Syria, killing between 200 and 500 Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians, mostly civilians.”

When the UN Security Council tried to pass a resolution condemning these raids, the U.S. vetoed it, only the second time that the U.S. had vetoed a Security Council resolution in its history. This was the beginning of a long string of vetoes perpetrated to shield Israel from international condemnation of various massacres and other human rights abuses, creating extreme hostility toward the U.S. and escalating Americans’ risk from retaliatory “terror.” For more information see “The U.S. Cast the First of 29 Security Council Vetoes to Shield Israel” by Donald Neff, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Sept-Oct, 1993, p. 82. Also in Fifty Years of Israel, by Donald Neff, published by the American Educational Trust. Online at: http://www.wrmea.org/archives/150-washington-report-archives-1988-1993/september-october-1993/7306-the-us-cast-the-first-of-29-security-council-vetoes-to-shield-israel.html

By Alison Weir

13 August, 2012

@ Veteransnewsnow.com

Alison Weir is president of the Council for the National Interest and executive director of If Americans Knew. While CounterPunch published many of her articles, she did not know Cockburn personally. For information on American journalists’ ties to the Israeli military see her article “US Media and Israeli Military: All in the Family” at : http://ifamericansknew.org/media/bronner2.html

The political debate in the United States and Europe has focused attention on public financial deficits and how best to resolve them. Tragically, the debate largely ignores the deficits that most endanger our future.

In the United States, as Republican deficit hawks tell the story, “America is broke. We must cut government spending on social programs we cannot afford. And we must lower taxes on Wall Street job creators so they can invest to get the economy growing, create new jobs, increase total tax revenues, and eliminate the deficit.”

Democrats respond, “Yes, we’re pretty broke, but the answer is to raise taxes on Wall Street looters to pay for government spending that primes the economic pump by putting people to work building critical infrastructure and performing essential public services. This puts money in people’s pockets to spend on private sector goods and services and is our best hope to grow the economy.”

Democrats have the better side of the argument, but both sides have it wrong on two key points.

>> First, both focus on growing GDP, ignoring the reality that under the regime of Wall Street rule, the benefits of GDP growth over the past several decades have gone almost exclusively to the 1 percent—with dire consequences for democracy and the health of the social and natural capital on which true prosperity depends.

>> Second, both focus on financial deficits, which can be resolved with relative ease if we are truly serious about it; and ignore far more dangerous and difficult-to-resolve social and environmental deficits. I call it a case of deficit attention disorder.

To achieve the ideal of a world that secures health and prosperity for all people for generations to come, we must reframe the public debate about the choices we face as a nation and as a species. We must measure economic performance against the outcomes we really want, give life priority over money, and recognize that money is a means, not an end.

What We Borrow from Each Other

To realistically address the nature of the public financial deficits at the center of the current political debate, it is crucial to understand the nature of money and debt. Money is just a number, a system of accounting useful in facilitating economic exchange. A deficit occurs when expenditures exceed income. If, as a result, financial liabilities come to exceed financial assets, we go into debt. It is all basic accounting.

The key point, which the deficit debates rarely address, is that one person or entity’s financial debt is another person or entity’s financial asset. We can only borrow money from each other. The idea that we borrow money from the future is an illusion.

From a societal perspective, total debts and assets are always in balance. Consequently, if we say that one person or entity has excessive financial debt, we in effect say that another has excessive financial assets. Reducing the aggregate financial debt of debtors necessarily requires reducing the aggregate financial assets of the creditors.

In theory, we could instantly wipe away all financial debts through a universal forgiveness, a modern equivalent of the ancient institution of the Jubilee. The ancients recognized the significance of such action to restore the balance essential to the healthy function of the human community.

The deficit-hawks recoil in horror and assure us that we can reduce government debt while leaving the financial assets of the rich untouched. It makes perfect sense in the fantasy world of pure finance in which profits and the financial assets of the rich grow perpetually even as growing inequality and wasteful material consumption deplete the social capital of community and the natural capital of Earth’s biosphere.

A viable human future, however, must be based on living world realities rather than financial world fantasies.

What We Steal from Future Generations

Any normally intelligent 12-year-old is fully capable of understanding the distinction between a living forest or fishery and a system of financial accounts that exists only as electronic traces on a computer hard drive. Unfortunately, this simple distinction seems to be beyond the comprehension of the economists, pundits, and politicians who frame the public debate on economic policy. By referring to financial assets as “capital” and treating them as if they had some intrinsic worth beyond their value as a token of exchange, they sustain the deception that Wall Street is creating wealth rather than manipulating the financial system to accumulate accounting claims against wealth it had no part in creating.

Real capital assets have productive value in their own right and cannot be created with a computer key stroke. The most essential forms of real capital are social capital (the bonds of trust and caring essential to healthy community function) and biosystem capital (the living systems essential to Earth’s capacity to support life). We are depleting both with reckless abandon.

>> Social capital is the foundation of our human capacity to innovate, produce, engage in cooperative problem solving, manage Earth’s available natural wealth to meet the needs of all, and live together in peace and shared prosperity. Social capital is depleted as individualistic greed becomes the prevailing moral standard and the governing institutions of society deprive all but a privileged minority of access to a secure and dignified means of living. Once it is depleted, social capital can take generations to restore.

>> Biosystem capital provides a continuing supply of breathable air, drinkable water, soils to grow our food, forests to produce our timber, oceans teeming with fish, grassland that feed our livestock, sun, wind, and geothermal to provide our energy, climate stability, and much else essential to human survival, health, and happiness. It is depleted when soils are degraded, oceans are overfished, rivers and lakes are polluted, forests cut down, aquifers contaminated and depleted, and climate stabilization systems disrupted. These natural systems can take thousands, even millions of years to restore. Species extinction is forever.

According to the World Wildlife Federation’s 2012 Living Planet Report, at the current rate of consumption, “it is taking 1.5 years for the Earth to fully regenerate the renewable resources that people are using in a single year. Instead of living off the interest, we are eating into our natural capital.” This is a path to never-never land. Unlike with financial deficits, simple debt forgiveness is not an option.

When we deplete Earth’s bio-capacity—its capacity to support life in its many varied forms—we are not borrowing from the future; we are stealing from the future. Even though it is the most serious of all human-caused deficits, it rarely receives mention in current political debates.

When we assess economic performance by growth in GDP and stock price indices, we in effect manage the economy to make the most money for people who have the most money. This leads us to the fanciful belief that as a society we are getting richer. In fact, we are impoverishing both current and future generations by creating an unconscionable concentration of economic power, depriving billions of people of a secure and dignified means of living, and destroying the social and biosystem capital on which our real well-being depends.

With proper care and respect, biosystem capital can provide essential services in perpetuity. The reckless devastation of productive lands and waters for a quick profit, a few temporary jobs, and a one-time energy fix from Earth’s non-renewable fossil energy resources represent truly stupid and morally reprehensible deficit spending. Evident current examples include tar sand oil extraction, deep sea oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas, and mountaintop removal coal mining The fact that we thereby deepen human dependence on finite nonrenewable fossil energy reserves and accelerate climate disruption make such actions all the more stupid and immoral.

Financial system logic, which rests on the illusion that money is wealth, tells us we are making intelligent choices. Living systems logic tells us our current choices are insane and a crime against future human generations and creation itself.

From Built-to-Loot to Built-to-Serve

The economy of a just and sustainable society needs a proper system of money creation and allocation that:

1. Supports the health and productive function of social and biosystem capital and allocates the sustainable generative output of both to optimize the long-term health and well-being of all; and

2. Rewards individuals with financial credits in proportion to their actual productive contribution to living system health and prosperity.

The current U.S. money system does exactly the opposite. It celebrates and rewards the destruction of living capital to grow the financial assets of Wall Street looters at the expense of Main Street producers—thus concentrating economic and political power in the hands of those most likely to abuse it for a purely individualist short-term gain.

Wall Street operates as a criminal syndicate devoted to the theft of that to which it has no rightful claim. It then bribes politicians to shield the looters from taxes on their ill-gotten gains and to eliminate social programs that cushion the blow to those they have deprived of a secure and meaningful means of livelihood. This brings us back to the real source and consequence of excess financial debt.

Masters and Debt Slaves

In the big picture, the Wall Street 1 percent has divided society into a looter class that controls access to money and a producer class forced into perpetual debt slavery—an ancient institution that for millennia has allowed the few to rule the many [See inset: “Wall Street and the Ultimate Tyranny”] .The immense burden imposed on the 99 percent by public debt, consumer debt, mortgage debt, and student debt is an outcome of a Wall Street assault on justice and democracy.

The resulting desperation and loss of social trust account for the many current symptoms of social disintegration and decline in ethical standards. These include growth in family breakdown, suicide, forced migration, physical violence, crime, drug use, and prison populations.

Equality as a Crucial Variable

I grew up in America during a time when we took pride in being a middle-class society without extremes of wealth and poverty. In part, we were living an illusion. Large concentrations of private wealth were intact and systemic discrimination excluded large segments of the population—particularly people of color—from participation in the general prosperity. The underlying concept that the good society is an equitable society, however, was and still is valid. And from the 1950s to the 1970s the middle class expanded.

Complete equality is neither possible nor desirable. Modest inequality creates essential incentives for productive contribution to the well-being of the community. Extreme inequality, as exemplified by current U.S. society, is both a source and an indicator of serious institutional failure and social pathology.

British epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson has compiled an impressive body of research that demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that economic and social inequality is detrimental to human physical and mental health and happiness—even for the very rich. Relatively equal societies are healthier on virtually every indicator of individual and social health and well-being.

In highly unequal societies, the very rich are prone to seek affirmation of their personal worth through extravagant displays of excess. They easily lose sight of the true sources of human happiness, sacrifice authentic relationships, and deny their responsibility to the larger society—at the expense of their essential humanity. At the other extreme, the desperate are prone to manipulation by political demagogues who offer simplistic analyses and self-serving solutions that in the end further deepen their misery. Governing institutions lose legitimacy. Democracy becomes a charade. Moral standards decline. Civic responsibility gives way to extreme individualism and disregard for the rights and well-being of others.

To achieve true prosperity, we must create economies grounded in a living systems logic that recognizes three fundamental truths:

>> The economy’s only valid purpose is to serve life.

>> Equality is foundational to healthy human communities and a healthy human relationship to Earth’s biosphere.

>> Money is a means, not an end.

A New Political Narrative and Agenda

Runaway public deficits are but one symptom of a profound system failure. They can easily be resolved by taxing the unearned spoils of the Wall Street looters, eliminating corporate subsidies and tax havens, and cutting military expenditures on pointless wars that undermine our security.

Joblessness can easily be eliminated by putting the unemployed and underemployed to work meeting a vast range of unmet human needs from rebuilding and greening our physical infrastructure to providing essential human services, eliminating dependence on fossil fuels, and converting to systems of local organic food production. If the primary constraint is money, the Federal Reserve can be directed to create it and channel it to priority projects through a national infrastructure bank—a move that avoids enriching the bankers and does not create more debt.

In addition, we must:

1. Break up concentrations of unaccountable power.

2. Shift the economic priority from making money to serving life by replacing financial indicators with living wealth indicators as the basis for evaluating economic performance.

3. Eliminate extremes of wealth and poverty to create a true middle-class society.

4. Build a culture of mutual trust and caring.

5. Create a system of economic incentives that reward those who do productive work and penalize predatory financial speculation.

6. Restructure the global economy into a planetary system of networked bioregional economies that share information and technology and organize to live within their respective environmental means.

Within a political debate defined by the logic of living systems, such measures are simple common sense. Within a political debate defined by conventional financial logic, however, they are easily dismissed as dangerous and illogical threats to progress and prosperity.

So long as money frames the debate, money is the winner and life is the loser. To score a political victory for life, the debate must be reframed around a narrative based on an understanding of the true sources of human well-being and happiness and a shift from money to life as the defining value.

A promising new frame is emerging from controversies surrounding the recent United Nation’s Rio+20 environmental conference. Wall Street interests argued that the best way to save Earth’s biosystems is to put a price on them and sell them to wealthy global investors to manage for a private return. Rather than concede the underlying frame to Wall Street and debate the price and terms of the sale, indigenous leaders and environmental groups drew on the ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples to challenge the underlying frame. They declared that as the source of life, Earth’s living systems are sacred and beyond price. They issued a global call to recognize the rights of nature.

Thus framed, the Rio+20 debate highlights a foundational and inherent conflict between the rights of nature, human rights, property rights, and corporate rights.

In current practice, based on the same financial logic that leads us to treat financial deficits as more important than social and environmental deficits, we give corporate rights precedence over the property rights of individuals. We give property rights precedence over the human rights of those without property. And we give human rights precedence over the rights of nature.

We will continue to pay a terrible price for so long as we allow the deeply flawed logic of pure finance to define our values and frame the political debate.

There is no magic bullet quick fix. We must reframe the debate by bringing life values and living systems logic to the fore and turning the prevailing rights hierarchy on its head. The rights of nature must come first, because without nature, humans do not exist. As living beings, our rights are derivative of and ultimately subordinate to the rights of Earth’s living systems.

Human rights come, in turn, before property rights, because property rights are a human creation. They have no existence without humans and no purpose other than to serve the human and natural interest. Corporations are a form of property and any rights we may choose to grant to them are derivative of individual property rights and therefore properly subordinate to them.

The step to a prosperous human future requires that we acknowledge life, not money, as our defining value, accept our responsibilities to and for one another and nature, and bring to the fore of the debate the social and bio-system deficits that are the true threat to the human future.

Replacing cultures and institutions that value money more than life with cultures and institutions that value life more than money is a daunting challenge. Fortunately, it is also an invigorating and hopeful challenge because it reconnects us with our true nature as living beings and offers a win-win alternative to the no-win status quo.

David Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. David is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, president of the Living Economies Forum, and a member of the Club of Rome. He holds MBA and PhD degrees from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School.

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By David Korten

13 August, 2012

YES! Magazine