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By Franklin Lamb

01 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Beirut: The United Nations General Assembly vote of 11/29/12, which some in Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps are calling a “birth certificate for our country” is the latest of more than 400 UN resolutions on the Question of Palestine and a rare major victory for Palestinians after 65 years of resisting occupation.

The UN action, which was backed by an overwhelm majority of UN members with a lopsided vote of 138 to 9, may well force the Zionist regime to seriously consider a just peaceful resolution of the conflict.

With due respect to the nearly 50 percent of the UN members who voted against the historic Palestine Resolution on 11/29/12 at the General Assembly, which is to say the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru ( the world’s smallest republic covering just 8.1 square miles with a population of 9, 378)), and Palau, with its approximately 20,000 inhabitants, all former U.S. Trust Territories and currently “freely associated states” of the United States, with U.S. zip/postal and telephone codes much more closely resembling American states (51st, 52nd, 53rd and 54th) than sovereign countries, the World spoke clearly in favor of Palestinian self-determination. Indeed, the only reason these dissenting four “countries” are UN Members at all is due to cold war era efforts of Washington to stack the General Assembly in its favor by running up the numbers of its safe votes.

Over the past fortnight, as the US and Israel piled layers of threats onto their mantra of derision regarding yesterday’s historic UN vote on Palestine, both countries desperately tried to dissuade the Palestinians from scrapping their application for non-member observer state membership status with the United Nations.

Way too much did Israeli officials and their US lobby protest, thus drawing more international attention and curiosity as they kept dissing the “purely symbolic empty gesture and meaningless act.”

Naftali Bennett, leader of the extremist right-wing national religious Zionist party in Israel, Habayit Hayehudi (“The Jewish Home”) warned the day before the vote that “the PA bid for non-member status at the UN has very real implications on Israel, and that we must take harsh measures in response. I don’t accept the claim that this is a symbolic move,” Bennet told Israel Radio. “This is not symbolic at all. This has very practical implications. “He added: “We must tell the Arabs, if you pursue a unilateral strategy at the UN, We will pursue a unilateral strategy in annexing settlements in the West Bank.”

There is some important symbolism in the UN admitting Palestine as a non-member observer on the 65th anniversary of the November 29, 1947, adoption by the UN General Assembly of the resolution on the partition of Palestine (resolution 181 (II)). On December 2, 1977, it was recorded that the assembly called for the annual observance of November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (A/RES/32/40 B).

Last minute appeals by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton plus a late night pre-vote visit by US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Middle East envoy David Hale to the hotel room of the Palestinian Authority hold-over President Mahmoud Abbas failed to convince him to withdraw the resolution and to include the demanded eviscerating codicils.

Secretary of State Clinton could not have been more mistaken as she insisted at her news conference on 11/28/12 that “the only path towards a Palestinian state was through direct negotiations. As I have said many times the only path to a two-state solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Palestinian people is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York.” Few in the state department, according to congressional staff members who liaise with Clinton’s staff, believe that direct negotiations would ever lead to Israel voluntarily rejecting its current apartheid system or that the interminable “peace process” has ever been taken seriously by the Zionist regime and in fact constitute a hoax. In contradistinction, the growing reality in the Middle East and all five continents is the belief that only Resistance, with its scores of forms, will liberate Palestine from Zionist occupation.

Low balling the UN vote…..

Following the 138 to 9 vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, intimated, as did the usual Amen chorus of anti-Arab & anti-Islam zealots, from the US Israeli lobby, including the likes of ADL’s Abe Foxman, that” just as predicted, anti-Semitism was lurking behind the lopsided vote” and that it all amounted, in the words of Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev, “to nothing but cheap political theater that should not come as a surprise to anyone.”

The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as it does on any issue involving Palestine and Israel issued Talking Points for members of Congress and other Zionist organizations to be used when communicating with constituents and giving media interviews. AIPAC keeps close track of how many interviews each member gives and how closely they tow the Zionist line so as to help determine how much cash the particular member will receive for re-election as well as other perks.

For this crucial UN vote, the US Zionist lobby used U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Susan Collins (R-ME) drafted a letter from these AIPAC stalwarts to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas opposing any unilateral attempts by the Palestinian Government to pursue non-member state status at the United Nations General Assembly.

In their letter, the Senators asserted that “Palestinian statehood can only be realized as a result of a broader peace agreement negotiated with the Israelis, not through unilateral measures at the United Nations. Should you decide, however, to bypass direct negotiations and unilaterally seek upgraded status at the UN, we want to again remind you of the potential for significant consequences. As S. Res. 185 notes, any such efforts may cause consequences in regards to U.S. policy and foreign aid.”

AIPAC instructed Congress to make the following points which was included in an “urgent advisory” to every member and many staffers.

1. This UN action won’t lead to peace.

Peace will only occur through direct talks. By refusing to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seeking recognition of a state at the United Nations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is damaging U.S. peace efforts. (nothing in this point is accurate)

2. Recognizing a Palestinian state gives legitimacy to Hamas.

The Iranian-backed terrorist group has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians and is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state. By granting recognition of a state, the international community will reward Hamas for its terrorist actions, rather than condemn them

3. The United States has rejected the Palestinian approach.

President Obama has said that “no vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state” and called the Palestinian efforts at the U.N. a “mistake.”

Other talking points AIPAC told Congress to use include: while Israel Takes Steps for Peace, Palestinians run to UN , Israel Wants Talks; Palestinians Still Refuse, Palestinians Glorify Terrorists by praising the Hamas victory.

What the Zionist leaders of Israel, as they franticly try to intimidate the region by stockpiling American weapons, while grabbing more Palestinian land, fear is that the 11/19/12 UN resolution may be a game changer.

In this they are correct.

The UN action allows the Palestinians to participate in General Assembly debates and de facto grants recognition of Palestinian statehood on the pre-1967 ceasefire lines while re-enforcing the wide international consensus that the pre-1967 lines should form the basis of a permanent peace settlement.

It also opens up the 17 Specialized Agencies of the UN including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), International Labor Organization (ILO), International Maritime Organization (IMO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Universal Postal Union (UPU), the World Bank Group, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization (WTO), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) as well as related and comparable organizations.

As noted this week by Al-Haq, the Palestinian human rights organization “ Under such a strengthened position within the international legal system, the State of Palestine will be allowed to formally accede to international human rights instruments and other technical United Nations bodies, thus improving protection of Palestinian rights at the domestic and international level”.

It is also to be expected that Palestinian citizens under brutal Zionist occupation will demand to use their new status to join the International Criminal Court and might press for investigations of Zionist international crimes, crimes against humanity, attempted genocide, and a host of other practices in the occupied territories. Investigating such international crimes and bringing punishment to those convicted is why the ICC was established.

Professor Francis Boyle reminds us that Palestine can also now sue Israel at the International Court of Justice and end the illegal siege of Gaza, and join the Law of the Sea Convention and secure its fair share of the gas fields lying off the Gaza coast with enormous economic benefits. Palestine can also now join the International Civil Aviation Organization and gain sovereignty over its own airspace; join the International Telecommunications Union and gain sovereign legal control over its own airwaves, phone lines and band-widths.

These are just some of the many reason the Obama administration, slavishly joined the Zionist leadership of occupied Palestine to defeat the UN application.

The actions of the Obama Administration and its vehement opposition to the UN vote continues to diminish the relevance of the US in the Middle East as it slides further down the wrong side of history with its client state in tow. Attempting to justify its shameful opposition to the Palestinian diplomatic undertaking in the UN, the Obama administration could only offer a weak brief from the State Department legal department accusing the PLO of acting unilaterally, in breach of signed agreements are simply parroting AIPAC talking points noted above.

Deepening Palestine’s international legal personality within the United Nations system is a legitimate presence on the world stage from which to assert rights guaranteed by fundamental principles of International Law. With more access to the United Nations system, Palestinians have gained a major political and legal framework from which to work and to encourage the international community to comply with its obligation to end Israeli crimes against them and bring Israel’s serious breaches of international law to an end.

Franklin P. Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut and Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC Email: fplamb@gmail.com

By James Hansen, Guardian UK

01 December 12

@ readersupportednews.org

The extreme weather events of 2012 are what we have been warning of for 25 years, but the answer is plain to see

Will our short attention span be the end of us? Just a month after the second “storm of a century” in two years, the media moves on to the latest scandal with barely a retrospective glance at the implications of the extreme climate anomalies we have seen.

Hurricane Sandy was not just a storm. It was a stark illustration of the power that climate change can deliver – today – to our doorsteps.

Ask the homeowners along the New Jersey and New York shores still homeless. Ask the local governments struggling weeks later to turn on power to their cold, darkened towns and cities. Ask the entire north-east coast, reeling from a catastrophe whose cost is estimated at $50bn and rising. (I am not brave enough to ask those who’ve lost husbands or wives, children or grandparents).

I bring up these facts sadly, as one who has urged us to heed the scientific evidence on climate change for the past 25 years. The science is clear: climate change is here, now.

Superstorm Sandy is not the first storm, and certainly won’t be the last. Still, it is hard for us as individual human beings to connect the dots. That’s where observation, data and scientific analysis help us see.

No credible scientist disputes that we have warmed our climate by almost 1.5C over land areas in the past century, most of that in the past 30 years.

As my colleagues and I demonstrated in a peer-reviewed study published this summer, climate extremes are already occurring much more frequently in the world we have warmed through our reliance on fossil fuels.

Our analysis showed that extreme summer heat anomalies used to be infrequent: covering only 0.1-0.2% of the globe in any given summer during the base period of our study, from 1951 to 1980. During the past decade, as the average global temperature rose, such extremes have covered 10% of the land.

Extreme temperatures deliver more than heat.

The water cycle is especially sensitive to rising temperatures. Increased heat speeds up evaporation, causing more extreme droughts, like the $5bn (and counting) drought in Texas and Oklahoma. It is linked to an expanding wildfire season and an increase by several fold in the frequency of large fires in the American west.

The heat also leads to more extreme sea surface temperatures – a key culprit behind Sandy’s devastating force. The latent heat in atmospheric water vapour is the fuel that powers tornadoes, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. Stepping up evaporation with warmer temperatures is like stepping on the gas: More energy-rich vapour condenses into water drops, releasing more latent heat as it does so, causing more powerful storms, increased rainfall and more extreme flooding. This is not a matter of belief. This is high-school science class.

The chances of getting a late October hurricane in New York without the help of global warming are extremely small. In that sense, you can blame Sandy on global warming. Sandy was the strongest recorded storm, measured by barometric pressure, to make landfall north of Cape Hatteras, eclipsing the hurricane of 1938.

But this fixation on determining the blame for a particular storm, or disputing the causal link between climate change and this or that storm, is misguided.

A better path forward means listening to the growing chorus – Sandy, extreme droughts and wildfires, intense rainstorms, record-breaking melting of Arctic sea ice – and taking action. Think of it like taking out an insurance policy for the planet.

We can fix this. The answer is a price on carbon. We must make the price of fossil fuels honest, reflecting their cost to society including the economic devastation wrought by storms like Sandy, the toll on farmland and ecosystems, as well as priceless human lives.

Whether that price takes the shape of a carbon tax, as some in Washington are now willing to discuss, or a carbon fee, as I have advocated, a price on carbon lets the market find the most effective ways to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels. It also moves us to a sustainable energy future where energy choices are made by individuals and communities, not by Washington mandates and lobbyists.

A carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, will increase consumer costs. So the money that is collected should be distributed to the public. As people try to minimise their energy costs to keep money for other things, their actions will stimulate the economy, drive innovations and transition us away from fossil fuels.

If we make our demand for action clear enough, I am optimistic that our leaders in Washington can look beyond the short-term challenges of today to see the looming, long-term threats ahead, and the answer that is right in front of them. We can’t simply allow the next news cycle to distract us from the real task ahead.

Back in the 1980s, I introduced the concept of “climate dice” to make clear the difference between natural variability and climate-change driven extremes. As I predicted, the climate dice in the 21st century are now “loaded”. It’s not just bad luck Sandy pummelled America’s coasts, extreme drought devastated its midlands and wildfires scorched its mountains.

We loaded the dice. We changed our climate.

By Amy Goodman

30 October, 2012

@ Democracy Now!

Forecasters say Hurricane Sandy is a rare hybrid superstorm created by an Arctic jet stream from the north wrapping itself around a tropical storm from the south. Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground, warns that such a “Frankenstorm,” as it is called, is an outgrowth of the extreme weather changes caused by global warming. “When you do heat the oceans up more, you extend the length of hurricane season,” Masters says. “There’s been ample evidence over the last decade or so that hurricane season is getting longer — starts earlier, ends later. You’re more likely to get these sort of late October storms now, and you’re more likely to have this sort of situation where a late October storm meets up with a regular winter low-pressure system and gives us this ridiculous combination of a nor’easter and a hurricane that comes ashore, bringing all kinds of destructive effects.” We’re also joined by climate scientist Greg Jones from Southern Oregon University.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re on the road in Medford, Oregon, at Southern Oregon Public Television, but the story today is on the East Coast, as we continue our coverage of Hurricane Sandy, a massive storm that could impact up to 50 million people from the Carolinas to Boston. New York and other cities have shut down schools and transit systems. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been evacuated. Millions could lose power over the next day.

We are continuing here in Ashland, Oregon, with Greg Jones, climate scientist, professor of environmental studies at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. And joining us by Democracy Now! video stream is Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground, which was just bought by Weather Channel.

Jeff Masters, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk—explain what is happening right now on the East Coast.

JEFF MASTERS: We’ve got a Caribbean hurricane that formed last week, moved northwards through the Bahamas. It’s now offshore the coast of Virginia. It’s maintained its hurricane strength. It’s got 85-mile-per-hour winds, and it’s starting to accelerate towards the coast now, as a wintertime low-pressure system starts to suck it in. The scale of this storm is just remarkable. The U.S. has never seen this sort of a large storm where you’ve got winds that are tropical-storm force, about 900 miles in diameter, and the radius of 12-foot seas surrounding the storm is more than 500 miles. So, over a 1,100-mile-diameter area of 12-foot-high waves—just a massive storm. It really deserves the label “superstorm.”

AMY GOODMAN: What is the death toll so far?

JEFF MASTERS: Last I saw was about 65. Eleven of those were in Cuba, which is very good about their disaster preparedness. That’s an unusually high death toll for them. And then, the majority of the deaths were in Haiti, where they don’t have as good a public sort of response system because of all the deforestation that’s gone on there and the poverty and, of course, the earthquake of two years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think of the preparations for this storm?

JEFF MASTERS: In the U.S., I think people are getting the message. Whether they act on it or not, I don’t know. This part of the world where it’s getting hit doesn’t have a lot of storm experience. We did have Hurricane Irene last year, but that fizzled out a little bit right before landfall, and we didn’t get as high a storm surge as we were expecting. Storm surge is the most dangerous part of a hurricane, typically, and it’s going ashore in an area that doesn’t have much experience with this sort of event. And this will be a one-in-200- or one-in-100-year sort of event for them. There’s already record storm surge flooding occurring along the shore of New Jersey, and it’s going to get much worse tonight when the high tide comes in.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you compare this hurricane to Sandy—Sandy to Irene?

JEFF MASTERS: Sure. Hurricane Irene brought about a 9.5-foot storm tide to New York City; Sandy is expected to bring a foot or two higher than that, which potentially will flood the subway system in New York City, so a higher storm surge.

As far as the rains go, Irene had higher rains. This storm is going to have about 30 percent less rainfall, and you’re not going to see the kind of catastrophic rainfall flooding damage that we saw with Irene, which amounted to something like $16 billion. And in part that’s because the soils are drier and rivers are lower right now; we’ve been in a little bit of a drought condition in the Northeast. So the rains aren’t going to be that big of an issue.

The winds, however, are going to be a huge issue, because they’re going to affect a massive amount of coastline. Again, over a 500-mile stretch of coast is going to see winds in excess of probably 50 miles per hour. With the trees still with their leaves on them, you’re going to see a lot of tree damage, a lot of power failures. I expect over 10 million people will suffer power failures during this storm.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about climate change and whether it makes this storm more destructive?

JEFF MASTERS: Whenever you add more heat to the oceans, you’ve got more energy for destruction. And hurricanes are heat engines. They pull heat out of the ocean, convert it to the kinetic energy of their winds. So, the approximately one-degree-Fahrenheit warming of the oceans we’ve experienced over the past century does directly increase the winds of hurricanes. And that’s of concern because just if you’ve got a 5 percent increase in hurricane winds, that doesn’t translate to a 5 percent increase in damage. The damage of the wind goes by some power, like a second or third power. So a 5 percent increase in the winds causes a much higher degree of wind damage. So that’s the main thing, as far as heat in the oceans goes, about the effect on hurricanes.

The other thing to think about is, when you do heat the oceans up more, you extend the length of hurricane season. And there’s been ample evidence over the last decade or so that hurricane season is getting longer—starts earlier, ends later. You’re more likely to get these sort of late October storms now, and you’re more likely to have this sort of situation where a late October storm meets up with a regular winter low-pressure system and gives us this ridiculous combination of a nor’easter and a hurricane that comes ashore, bringing all kinds of destructive effects.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you disappointed, Jeff Masters, that in the three presidential debates, that tens of millions of people were watching, the issue of climate change did not arise?

JEFF MASTERS: Yeah, absolutely. Climate change has become the new Voldemort of our times, that which cannot be named. And it’s ridiculous that we can’t talk about a subject that’s directly influencing our lives now and will continue to do so even more strongly in the future. I see superstorm Sandy here as kind of a wake-up call coming the week before the election. “Hey, America, hey, politicians, pay attention to this.” We’re experiencing an unusual number of very rare meteorological events, and they’re probably not all due to just random variations in the weather. We do expect extreme events of this nature to increase in the future, and we should be paying attention to the fact that we’ve had a very large number of these billion-dollar sorts of disasters in recent years.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering, Greg Jones, as a climate scientist here at the Southern Oregon University in Ashland, if you find the same kind of silence around the issue of climate change?

GREG JONES: Sure. You know, right now it’s really sad to see all of our political entities not approaching this in some way, shape or form. It’s not an electable issue, not until the public sees it to be important enough to demand something more from both parties. It’s really unfortunate. I see it in my students, as well. There’s some apathy relative to both the weather and climate. Until the types of damage that a hurricane like this system can bring, you know, I don’t think that people wake up enough and see those kind of issues as being directly tied to what we do in the fossil fuel industry and in terms of changing the climate, changing the surface of the earth and the oceans. Those are all very problematic issues, and the parties just aren’t there with it.

AMY GOODMAN: You look at effect of climate change on wineries here on the West Coast?

GREG JONES: Well, I’m a—I’ve been studying climate and how it affects agricultural crops for years. My main area of study is—is looking at how climate influences growing grapes and making wine. Now, it’s a very important issue, but it’s very frivolous compared to the—you know, the hurricane that’s bearing down on the East Coast right now. But the issue is, is that all crops have very fine climate niches relative to their surroundings, and small changes in climate can completely change coffee, pineapples, chocolate, wine, any of these types of very specialized crops that we grow. Plus, it also has an issue for broad-based crops. Whether or not those broad-based crops like corn and soybeans and wheat can produce consistently in a changing climate is a big question for the future.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it’s a very serious issue when you’re talking about a term that a lot of people don’t hear about in the United States, “climate refugees” —

GREG JONES: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: —when food becomes scarce because of climate change.

GREG JONES: Sure, and we have some serious issues with dealing with this. I mean, many of our crops—you take rice grown in Southeast Asia, has been feeding the largest population on earth. Small changes in monsoon rainfalls can bring about a, you know, disaster. And so, just—just small changes, I think, is really very important as we look at these crop systems. Humans, in general, as we talk about what we do daily and weekly and seasonally, you know, small changes in climate don’t mean very much to us. But when they impact our food systems and how they’re produced, that’s where we have real problems.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Jeff Masters, about geoengineering, also, as well, Greg Jones. Naomi Klein had a fascinating piece in the New York Times yesterday called “Geoengineering: Testing the Waters,” where she talked about being on British Columbia’s shoreline, the Sunshine Coast, and seeing orcas in the water, killer whales, and being shocked by this extremely rare visit. And she said, “The possibility [that] the sighting may have resulted from something less serendipitous did not occur to me until two weeks ago, when I read reports of a bizarre ocean experiment off the islands of Haida Gwaii, several hundred miles from where we spotted the orcas swimming.

“There, an American entrepreneur named Russ George dumped 120 tons of iron dust off the hull of a rented fishing boat; the plan [was] to create an algae bloom that would sequester carbon and thereby combat climate change.”

And she goes on to say, “Mr. George is one of a growing number of would-be geoengineers who advocate high-risk, large-scale technical interventions that would fundamentally change the oceans and skies in order to reduce the effects of global warming. In addition to Mr. George’s scheme to fertilize the ocean with iron, other geoengineering strategies under consideration include pumping sulfate aerosols into the upper atmosphere to imitate the cooling effects of a major volcanic eruption and ‘brightening’ clouds so they reflect more of the sun’s rays back to space.”

And she goes on to say that “The risks are huge. Ocean fertilization could trigger dead zones and toxic tides. [And] multiple simulations have predicted that mimicking the effects of a volcano would interfere with monsoons in Asia and Africa, potentially threatening water and food security for billions of people.”

Jeff Masters, your response? And then Greg Jones.

JEFF MASTERS: It’s a high-risk sort of thing, and it’s quite controversial. We don’t know how we’re affecting the climate now, so you add another element of risk by deliberately modifying it. And we should definitely do a lot more study before we do any sort of real implementation of a geoengineering scheme. I do think we should study it. And we may get desperate enough that we’ll have to do it. I call geoengineering a bad idea whose time may come. When you’re down two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter, sometimes you’ve got to throw deep. I mean, it’s a terrible gamble, and it will cause unexpected effects, including drought, shift of rainfall patterns. But if civilization itself is potentially going to collapse because of what we’re doing to the climate, maybe we need to consider these sorts of things—not in the near future, but down the road a few decades.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein asks, “What are the real solutions to climate change?” She says, “Wouldn’t it be better to change our behavior—to reduce our use of fossil fuels—before we begin fiddling with the planet’s basic life-support systems?” Greg Jones?

GREG JONES: Well, I mean, Jeff is correct here. I think these are measures that we’re looking at because we haven’t approached it maybe in the best possible way of just dealing with our usage of fuel. But geoengineering, there is a tremendous number of different potentials there. The problem, typically, is scaling it up to something that is going to be effective at the global scale, that doesn’t cause any other ramifications into whatever system it is, whether it’s the oceans or the atmosphere or the surface of the earth. We need to do the studies, I think, to find out what is going to be the most effective strategies in geoengineering. But it’s a real challenge to [inaudible] these types of research projects when we—when we know that the outcomes probably aren’t scalable to the global scale.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and when we come back, we’re going to go to Haiti. I want to thank you, Greg Jones, for being with us, climate scientist at Southern Oregon University. Also, I want to thank Jeff Masters for being with us from Michigan, from Ann Arbor. Jeff Masters runs Weather Underground, which was just bought by Weather Channel. We’ll continue to follow what is taking place on the East Coast and deal with the issue of climate change.

 

By Gilad Atzmon

30 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

The Guardian newspaper reported on 27 November that Britain is prepared to back a key vote recognizing Palestinian statehood at the United nations but only if the Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, pledges not to pursue Israel for war crimes and to resume peace talks.

According to the newspaper,

On Monday night [26 November], the government signalled it would change track and vote yes if the Palestinians modified their application…

Whitehall officials said the Palestinians were now being asked to refrain from applying for membership of the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice, which could both be used to pursue war crimes charges or other legal claims against Israel.

Abbas is also being asked to commit to an immediate resumption of peace talks “without preconditions” with Israel.

The third condition is that the General Assembly’s resolution does not require the UN security council to follow suit.

In other words, in return for Britain supporting the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN, the Palestinians would have to overlook Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, and refrain from insisting that Israel stop the ongoing theft of Palestinian lands in the occupied territories by building new Jewish settlements and expanding existing ones, practices that are illegal under international law.

I wonder why the British government is so keen to protect Israeli war criminals? Could it be because 80 per cent of Conservative Party MPs belong to the pro-Israel lobby group, Conservative Friends of Israel?

I’d also like to know what is it that has led the British government to change its position on the Palestinian bid for statehood. Is it because our Tory politicians are trying to squeeze more money from their paymasters? After all, if Whitehall’s decision is driven by ethical and humanist concerns, why then are they trying to save Israeli mass murderers from being schlepped to the International Court of Justice where they belong?

Another possible explanation for the British turnaround is that Israel and its lobby may actually want the world to support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN. Such a bid could be the first step towards accomplishing the Zionist aim of removing once and for all the demographic threat to the Jews-only state posed by millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

A “sovereign Palestine” on a fraction of the Palestinian homeland would “liberate” Israel from the burdens of an occupier state.

It is possible that, following the recent Israeli defeat in Gaza, someone in Whitehall cottoned on to the fact that the Jewish state belongs to the past and doesn’t have much of a future. It is possible that they’ve realized that Britain had better seek some new allies in the Arab world.

Still, putting all their money on Abbas might be just one more poorly calculated British political decision.

Gilad Atzmon is a musician-composer. He is particularly well-known both for his fiction and his political analysis which is widely published. Gilad – New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics Gilad.co.uk

By Gilad Atzmon

30 November, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

In the past week, the people of Gaza have been subject to some serious Israeli attacks. Some Hamas leaders and militants have been murdered and many more Palestinians – innocent civilians, babies, kids women and elders – have lost their live. Yet, Gaza is celebrating with the Hamas leadership never more popular.

So here is an interesting anecdote that deserves our attention. During the recent clashes Gazan militants launched more than 1500 rockets at Israel. These rockets caused rather limited damage with more than six Israeli fatalities. Militarily at least, this is far from a great achievement. And yet the Gazans are celebrating. Would Israelis be happy to learn that 1500 of their rockets had had such limited effect? Would any western army accept such a result at such a cost? The answer is a categorical NO. But the Palestinians are ecstatic, why, because they know they have won the battle and are now set to win the war. They won the battle, not because they killed six Israelis – actually they would have won it without hitting one single Israeli. They won it because they managed to deliver a message to Israel, world Jewry and the whole world.

For many years I have argued that the Palestinian war of the rockets should be seen as sending a message: Israelis! You are on stolen land! You took our houses, villages, cities, fields and orchards. You pushed us into the desert. You surrounded us with barbed wire. You starve us and you kill us simply to suit your political ambitions. So this rocket is a message to you all. Think about us and then look at yourself in the mirror. Enough is enough!’

For more than six decades the Israelis have dismissed this message. They surrounded themselves with ghetto walls and have sealed their skies with an Iron Dome. However, with Tel Aviv now under attack, Israel and Israelis have been confronted with their original sin.

In the last two days, the entire Israeli media has admitted the colossal defeat of the so-called Operation Pillar of Cloud. Just yesterday, the Israeli right wing Ynet wrote “Hamas stood up and won almost all fronts…. Hamas has managed to turn focus on Gaza, it made it into the centre of the political discussion.” It seems that the most hawkish Israel government ever, has failed to beat either Hamas or the Palestinian spirit. The Palestinians are stronger than ever while the Jewish State has been exposed as an impotent manic-depressive collective driven by a neurotic and impotent leadership.

If Zionism was ever there to counter Jewish diaspora ghetto paralysis, just to ensure that ‘never again’ Jews would be ‘led like lamb to the slaughter’, Netanyahu, Barak and Liebermann have proved in the past week that paralysis is inherent to Jewish political culture. Like all bullies, they are obsessed with power, but when they meet defiance, their vile paradigm instantly collapses.

Speech can provides us with an insight into what we most lack. Speech can reveal that which we prefer to keep hidden. But speech is also often rather misleading, there to shape our lies into a truthful narrative. But it is these ‘true lies’ that provide an access to the fearful-self. It is these ‘true lies’ that reveal the unconscious. So, when, for instance Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists preach to us about Jewish ‘humanism and universalism’ they are obviously lying yet are they not also expressing a yearning for such an ethos to really exist in their own culture? Similarly, when Israel refers to itself as ‘The only democracy in the Middle East’ it this not because Israel would really love to be such a true democracy? In other words, often, when we speak we demonstrate what we most lack i.e. that which we miss and desire, yet we cannot admit this to ourselves. When Netanyahu decided to designate his latest massacre as a Pillar of Cloud, he actually tried to disguise from himself and his people the fact that in reality, he is actually an impotent, and the cloud is actually one big duvet of lies, there only to conceal his shame.

Israel and the Israelis love to talk about their ‘power of deterrence’ – Israeli actions, there to deter Palestinians and Arabs from even contemplating the possibility of challenging the Jewish state. In fact, the entire Israeli foreign and military policy can be realised with reference to that power. Israel likes to see itself at the core of its neighbours’ anxiety. This explains the Israeli fascination with the accumulation of nuclear bombs and other WMDs. It explains the policy towards Iran and it also explains its brutal attitude towards the Palestinians.

Israelis are obsessed with ‘deterrence’ only because, deep down, they are aware of their own vulnerability. Israelis are fanatical about ‘deterrence’ because they know that when push comes to shove, they themselves are actually powerless. They are now exposed for what they are: a fragmented society dominated by egotistic hedonism. Israelis know that their underbelly is very soft indeed.

Israeli collective melancholia must be realised in the light of their inevitable encounter with their true nature. As Ynet admits, they have been defeated in almost every possible respect. As a society, they have been caught naked and their imaginary collective bond has proved to be a farce. In spite of Israel’s mighty, sophisticated army the Hamas leadership, together with the people of Gaza, remained defiant. In spite of relentless air raids, and till the very last moment, Hamas kept firing their rockets reminding Israelis what life in Gaza is really like. When it seemed that the IAF had done its worst (but achieved so little), the Israeli government called on its 75.000 reservists, hoping against hope that such a move would bully Hamas into surrender. Again they were wrong. Ismail Haniah made things very clear when he invited the Israeli reservists to try their luck and enter the strip. Israel was caught with its trousers down – and believe me, the vision of their collective genitalia was not a pretty sight!

‘Unconscious is the discourse of the other’ says Lacan. The fear of impotence is not the fear that you may not be up to much in bed, it is actually the unconscious nightmare that everyone around you is saying behind your back that you’re not up to much in bed. Israelis not just now admitting their impotence to themselves, they are also aware of now being seen as a bunch of arrogant, cowardly and helpless barbarians.

By the time it became clear that the Pillar wasn’t even semi-erect and the Cloud couldn’t cover even that embarrassing truth, Netanyahu, Barak and Liebermann as well as the whole of Israeli society realised that nothing was left of Israel’s power of deterrence – for the Palestinians have lost their fear.

Gilad Atzmon is a musician-composer. He is particularly well-known both for his fiction and his political analysis which is widely published. Gilad – New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics Gilad.co.uk

Kuala Lumpur (30/11/12) .- Whenever the word ‘massacre’ is mentioned, one can’t help but to imagine lifeless bodies liying hauntingly like discarded dolls with some with their arms outstretched, liying shoulder to shoulder.

 

Thus, to read about a massacre of up to 80 Yanomami people has taken place in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas is more horrifying. Two months before the Venezuelan Presidential elections, there was a report saying an armed group flew over in a helicopter, opening fire with guns and launching explosives into Irotatheri settlement in the High Ocamo area. According to the report, the village was home to about 80 people and only three survived the attack.

 

Images of the horrifying attack with crude explosives, executions and a helicopter strafing the village with machine-gun fire dominates one’s imagination of how the attack took place. Feelings of anguish and despair soon take over when we learn that the village was burned and like the wildfire quickly spreads, consuming the thick, dried-out vegetation and almost everything else in its path.

 

It was horrific just to imagine. But it was not as horrific as the act of Media Terrorism aimed at Venezuela.

 

The news about the massacre of the Yanomami spread throughout the international media like wildfire, sparked by the statement by Survival International (SI).

 

Despite causing a big stir in international news, SI then conveniently retracted their claim of the attack after Venezuelan authorities sent a team who were accompanied by the media had found no bodies or any evidence of an attack, let alone a massacre.

 

However, what SI and most of the international media refuse to highlight is the efforts taken by the Venezuelan government to ensure the welfare of its indigenous people.

In 2011, the Venezuelan government returned over 15,800 hectares of ancestral lands to the indigenous Yukpa people, as an act of social justice attached to their constitution which repaid what is owed to those who for years maintained control over these lands as the country celebrated “Indigenous Resistance Day”.

 

Then, in the same celebration, the Venezuelan government announced numerous initiatives aimed at assisting and empowering indigenous communities. Nicia Maldonado, the minister for indigenous peoples, said that the government plans to create several socialist communes to be inhabited by indigenous communities.

 

Meanwhile, Ricardo Menéndez, the minister for science and technology and vice president for the productive economy, said that indigenous communities are being incorporated into the Grand Venezuelan Housing Mission through which the government has promised to build two million homes over the next seven years.

 

 

In addition, the National Constitution of 1999 and the Organic Law on Indigenous Peoples and Communities (LOPCI) obligate the government to serve and protect a series of special rights for people of indigenous ancestry. These include the right to demarcate and inhabit their ancestral territory, to be legally identified as indigenous, to receive bilingual or multi-lingual education, to choose their authentic authorities and have those authorities recognized, to elect three indigenous representatives in the National Assembly, to carry out traditional economic and religious customs of their choice, to practice traditional medicine with patients’ consent, and to have their genetic material protected from exploitation.

 

On top of that, Venezuela’s National Assembly also has a “Permanent Commission of Indigenous Peoples” which has nine Assembly members; with five represented by the Government and four from the opposition.

 

Nevertheless, these efforts represent only a small part of the government’s broad set of policies toward indigenous communities.

 

Thus, why was there a report in the first place?

 

With this appalling and irresponsible reporting, it comes to questions the reason on why such accusations were made by SI against the Venezuelan government. Additionally, questions also arise on how unfounded horror stories were found published without any investigation or corroboration as to the facts of the story or whether it even occurred in the first place in respectable international media.

 

In all this commotion of false reporting, one cannot ignore the fact that this dubious report was conveniently published two months before the Venezuelan Presidential elections.

 

The lie about the massacre of the Venezuelan Yanomami was created and published is a direct attack on the Venezuelan Government. These lies fabricated and given by Survival International and international news agencies, serve as an example of Media Terrorism, meant to turn the public opinion against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and undermine the Bolivarian Revolution in Latin America. It was a ghastly bid to disrupt the Venezuelan government’s attention in the midst of the elections.

 

These lies not only have abused the indigenous Yanomami but it is insulting to the government of Venezuela. What is more insulting is the irresponsible reporting by these ‘Media Terrorists’ who are feeding lies to the readers who deserved to know the truth.

While showing no concern for their readers, they have also not issued a single apology for the lies they published.

 

Meanwhile, when the Venezuelan government flew local and international journalists to the Irotatheri village, just 12 miles from the Brazilian border, as soon as the procession leaves the helicopter, smiling and curious indigenous give small chest clapping to welcome visitors. “No matanza, todo fino” (“No killing, all fine”) a Yanomami said in Spanish to the delegation’s translator.

 

In this isolated place no apparent trace of violence or deaths. In contrast, its inhabitants, who have a lump of snuff in his mouth, prepare a welcome dance showing their spears and bows and face painted with black lines.

 

“‘Wishak, wishak, wishak,’ or ‘monkey, monkey, monkey,’ the indigenous repeated as two bearded photographers approached”. One of the photographers wrote “It was our facial hair that took them by surprise. They touched our faces. They touched their own. Then they lifted their hands to their own. Then they lifted their hands to their chest and said, ‘noji,’ or ‘friend.’”

 

Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Malaysia

 

Yanomami girl

 

Yanomami welcomes foreign journalists

 

 

Yanomami welcomes foreign journalists

 

 

Yanomami being checked by government doctors

 

 

Yanomami being checked by government doctors

 

 

Yanomami dancing

 

Yanomamis in Venezuela

By Dirk Adriaensens

29 November, 2012

Countercurrents.org

Hamid Al-Mutlaq, Deputy Prime Minister and Member of the Defense and Security Committee alerted both Nouri Al-Maliki, Chief Commander of the Armed Forces, and Sadoon Al-Dulaimi, Defense Minister, about the torture in Iraqi prisons, and said that female prisoners are routinely raped by the prison guards. Al-Mutlaq said in a press conference held in the Parliament that there are many female prisoners who are tortured on a regular basis, and that Al-Maliki and Al-Dulaimi bear full responsibility. He also added that it’s unacceptable that the perpetrating officers go unpunished for raping women, children and torturing them. He also mentioned the names of prisoners who died as a result of torture: Muhammad KhudairUbaid, Muhammad MoohiSharji, Ibrahim Adnan Salih, MahmoodUbaidJameel, Hamid Jameel, Fadil Abdullah, Omar Hisham, and Muhammad JasimMezhir.

Al-Mutlag said the Iraqi army and security forces carry out many raids and arbitrarily arrest citizens to blackmail them to be released on bail. He said that the government and the Iraqi Parliament are responsible for this situation of lawlessness.

A security source revealed in August that the officers in the detention centers in Baghdad practice all kinds of torture on the prisoners, and many of them died as a result.

MP Hamid al-Mutlaq holds Nouri al-Maliki and the Supreme Judicial responsible for violations perpetrated against Iraqi women in prisons and demandsthe release of these female victims and asked why such shameful practices go unpunished.

Al Mutlaq: “The security situation has deteriorated to a limit that can not be tolerated as violation of women honor during arrests is done by the security services.

Mutlag expressed his regret for arresting women and their daughters aged of 12 years on charges of terrorism. This situation of lawlessness and rape of Iraqi female prisoners is becoming a big problem for Maliki, as more MP’s, Civil Society organisations and the Iraqi people are denouncing the abuses of the Regime’s security forces Sheikh Sufian Omar al-Naimi,Emir of Naim tribes in Iraq, urged Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Iraqi parliament speaker Osama Nujaifi to start an immediate investigation in the case of the Iraqi women detainees who are suffering of flagrant violations in the women prison in Baghdad.

He said in a press statement issued by his office on 25 November that “the appeals that we receive from Iraqi jailed women on charges of multiple crimes mostly of terrorism are subjected to torture and rape”.

MP Khalid Abdullah al-Alwani called the Iraqi Government to open the women prisons for civil society organizations in order to provide the female inmates with services and to inspect their situations.

Alwanisaid “We condemn the government’s silence towards the torture and rape crimes that are practiced inside the women prisons.”

He urged the “officials to reveal the names of the perpetrators of these shameful acts, calling at the same time to give the guilty officers the maximum penalty”, and added that “our women’s honor is the honor of all Iraqis.”

Hundreds of citizens demonstrated on 26 November in downtown Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, urging the government to proceed with the investigation of violation of human rights committed against women in detention centers.

Demonstrators waved banners calling on the government to open a serious investigation of those violations and the formation of a committee to examine the reality of female detainees situation in prisons and to distinguish between those who were arrested unjustly and terrorist elements.

A team of the Iraqi NGO Hammurabi Organization published on 21 Octoberits first report about the dreadful situation in the women’s prison in Baghdad and its 31 prisoners sentenced to death on terrorism charges under Article 4. The report says women have been subjected to torture by electrocution, beatings, and rape by the investigators during interrogation. They had also been raped by the police and by the officers escorting them during the transfer from Tasfirat Jail to the women’s prison in Baghdad. Two membersof the Hammurabi Organization, William Warda and Pascal Warda, former minister of environment,were authorized to visit the prison. They said that female prisoners in death rowsuffered from infectious diseases and scabies. “They receive no health care and are not allowed to bathe andcan change clothes only once a month, which aggravates their health situation”. The NGOsaid that the children, imprisoned with their mothers,are“ticking time bombs that can explode any minute”.

The organization also said in its report that there are 21 children, some of them infants, living inside the women’s prison “suffering a punishment without committing any crime”. A total of 414 detainees are being held in the jail, varying in age from 20 to 65. Among the inmates were 18 women sentenced to death, and they all complainedabout neglect and violence in various ways.

Pascal Warda who led the Hammurabi Organization team said that the conditions of prisoners, convicted as suicide bombers, live in miserabe and intolerable conditions.

The report quoted an unidentified judge as saying that there were “violations throughout the investigation process,” recommending that female security officers escort women prisoners to reduce the chance of abuse.

International human rights groups have on several occasions complained of persistent torture at Iraqi prisons being used to extract confessions from detainees, and also of the continued use of secret jails.

Journalist Serene Assir, member of the BRussells Tribunal, accurately described on 08 March 2012 in Iraqi Women: Resilience Amid Horror(http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/4957) the situation of female prisoners and women in general in today’s Iraq.

Thousands of women are currently in prison under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior or the US and UK-trained military. Others, according to veteran Iraqi activist Asma al-Haidari, languish in “secret prisons, headed by militias loyal to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.”

The use of torture and sexual abuse in prisons has become systematic in Iraq, al-Haidari said, thanks to training not only by the US and the UK, but also Israel and Iran.

While in detention, many women suffer rape and become mothers to children they never wanted. Some are raped in front of their husbands and children, as a way to humiliate the family and extract “confessions” from men suspected of resisting against a criminal regime. Some of the women are arrested and behind bars instead of their husbands.

The degradation of secularism in Iraqi society, under the weight of Iranian-trained and backed militias, has also given rise to new social dynamics, for which women paid the heaviest price.

It is hard to imagine just how the effects of a decade of oppression can be undone. For one, the dismantling of Iraq’s state institutions in 2003 put hundreds of thousands of women out of work. A 2007 BRussells Tribunal dossier on women estimated that until 2003, 72 percent of public sector workers, including teachers, were women.

In spite of the damage, many Iraqi women have continued to take an active, even heroic role. “Iraqi women have been very resilient,” said Zangana. “Since 2003, and increasingly since February 2011, women have been at the forefront of protests denouncing the occupation and the regime.”

Violations of women rights and torture and rape of women has been introduced by the US Occupying Forces. In June 2010 the General Secretary of the Union of Political Prisoners and Detainees in Iraq, Muhammad Adham al-Hamd declared that the US occupation administration in Iraq relied on systematic rape, torture, and sadistic treatment of Iraqi women prisoners in its prison camps in the country. Al-Hamd said that the enormous crimes being committed against women in the prison camps in occupied Iraq had the support and blessings of the US military, for whom the practices served as a means to bring psychological pressure on men engaged in the Resistance, in an attempt to break their spirit and fighting will.

Muhammad Adham al-Hamd made the comments in a statement regarding reports that confirmed the presence of large numbers of women in the American-run prison camps – women who are detained solely to be raped and abused in order to bring pressure upon their husbands, brothers, sons or fathers.

Years of US/UK occupation of Iraq have affected Iraq’s social fabric and contributed to a serious deterioration of Iraqi women’s rights. As a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Government of Iraq (GoI) should urgently take the necessary measures to improve gender equality and women’s rights.

The US and UK must be held accountable for thisdeterioration, for the destruction of Iraq’ssocial fabric and for all other crimes against humanity they have inflicted upon the people of Iraq.

Dirk Adriaensens is coordinator of SOS Iraq and member of the executive committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Between 1992 and 2003 he led several delegations to Iraq to observe the devastating effects of UN imposed sanctions. He was a member of the International Organizing Committee of the World Tribunal on Iraq (2003-2005). He is also co-coordinator of the Global Campaign Against the Assassination of Iraqi Academics. He is co-author of Rendez-Vous in Baghdad, EPO (1994), Cultural Cleansing in Iraq, Pluto Press, London (2010), Beyond Educide, Academia Press, Ghent (2012), and is a frequent contributor to GlobalResearch, Truthout, The International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies and other media.

Additional translation: Lubna Al Rudaini

By Herman Daly

29 November, 2012

@ The Daly News

Under the heading, “Oil nations asked to consider carbon tax on exports,” John Vidal writes in The Guardian:

The Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa, proposed a carbon tax at a summit of Arab and South American countries in October in Peru which included the heads of state and energy ministers of nine of Opec’s 12 countries. The Guardian understands the proposal was taken seriously and not dismissed out of hand. The idea was first mooted in 2001 by former World Bank senior economist Herman Daly — leading it to be dubbed the “Daly-Correa tax” — and will be further discussed by Opec countries at the UN climate talks which open on Monday in Doha.

Whether or not it will be discussed at Doha, I think it is worthwhile to explain the idea as it was presented to an OPEC Conference in Vienna in 2001. It elicited little interest on that occasion, but in 2007 was in large part adopted by President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, after being presented to him and his minister of planning, Fander Falconi, by ecological economist Professor Joan Martinez-Alier. Below is the relevant part of my speech at the OPEC conference.*

How might OPEC fit into the emerging vision of sustainable development? Permit me to speculate.

Sources of petroleum throughput derive from private or public (national) property; sinks are in an open access regime and treated as a free good. Therefore, rents are collected on source scarcity, but not on sink scarcity. Different countries or jurisdictions collect scarcity rents in different ways. In the U.S., for example, Alaska has a social collection and sharing of source rents, institutionalized in the Alaska Permanent Fund whose annual earnings are distributed equally to all citizens of Alaska. Other states in the U.S. allow private ownership of sources and private appropriation of source rents.

New institutions are being designed to take the sink function out of the open access regime and recognize its scarcity (Kyoto). Tradable rights to emit carbon dioxide, requiring first the collective fixing of scale and distribution of total emission rights, are actively being discussed. Ownership of the new scarce asset (emission rights) could be distributed in the first instance to the state, which would then redistribute the asset by gift or auctioned lease.

Ideally sink capacity would be defined as a separate asset with its own market. This would require a big change in institutions. Assuming it were done, the source and sink markets for petroleum throughput, though separate, would be highly interdependent. Sink limits would certainly reduce the demand for the source, and vice versa. The distribution of total scarcity rent on the petroleum throughput between source and sink functions would seem to be determined by the relative scarcity of these two functions, even with separate markets. Alternatively, sink scarcity rent could also be captured by a monopoly on the source side, or source scarcity rent could also be captured by a monopoly on the sink side.

To give an analogy, municipal governments, in charging for water, frequently price the source function (water supply) separately from the sink function (sewerage), thus charging different prices for inflow and outflow services related to the same throughput of water. In deciding their water usage, consumers take both prices into account. To them it is as if there were one price for water, the sum of the input and output charges. Likewise the petroleum throughput charge would be the sum of the price of a barrel of crude oil input from the source and the price of carbon dioxide output to the sink from burning a barrel of petroleum. One could consolidate the two charges and levy them at either end, since they are but two ends of the same throughput. This would be a matter of convenience. Since depletion of sources is a much more spatially concentrated activity than pollution of sinks, it would seem that the advantage lies with levying the total source and sink charge at the source end. This is especially so since the sink has traditionally been treated as an open access free good, and changing that requires larger institutional rearrangements than would a sink-based surcharge on the source price. OPEC, given sufficient monopoly power over the source, would be well positioned to function as an efficient collector of sink rents for the world community.

Could it also serve as a global fiduciary for ethically distributing those rents in the interests of sustainable development, especially for the poor? OPEC, assuming it could increase its degree of monopoly of the source, may be in a position to preempt the function of the failing Kyoto accord by incorporating sink rents (and even externalities) into prices at the source end of the petroleum throughput.

Of course OPEC does not have a monopoly on petroleum, much less on fossil fuels. It does not, even indirectly, control non-petroleum sources of carbon dioxide. So it would be easy to overestimate OPEC’s monopoly power, and the scheme suggested here does require an increase in its monopoly power. However, modern mass consumption nations such as the U.S. apparently do not have the discipline to internalize either externalities or scarcity rents into the price of petroleum. Exclusion of developing countries from the Kyoto accord, while understandable on grounds of historical fairness, undermines the prospects for accomplishing the goal of the treaty, namely limitation of global greenhouse gas emissions to a sustainable level. OPEC, assuming it had sufficient monopoly power, might be able to provide this discipline for both North and South.

The South, as well as the North, would have to face the discipline of higher petroleum prices in the name of efficiency, but would, in the name of fairness receive a disproportionate share of the sink rents. There would be a net flow of sink rents from North to South. The size of those rents would depend on OPEC’s degree of monopoly power. The distribution of the rents would be in large part decided by OPEC — a large ethical responsibility which many would be unwilling to cede to OPEC, and which OPEC itself may not want. The obvious alternative to such a global fiduciary authority, however, has already failed. The inability to reach an agreement on international distribution of carbon dioxide emission rights was the rock on which Kyoto foundered. It is hard to see how such an agreement could be reached, either as a first step toward emissions trading, or as a fixed non-tradable allocation.

 

It is in OPEC’s self-interest to preempt the emergence of a separate market for sink capacity, which could surely lower source demand and prices. While this gives OPEC a motivation, it also calls into question the legitimacy of the motivation as pure monopolistic exploitation. A legitimating compromise, as indicated above, would be for OPEC to behave as a self-interested monopolist on the source side, but as a global fiduciary on the sink side — that is, as an efficient collector and ethical distributor of scarcity rents from pricing the sink function. OPEC countries own petroleum deposits, but not the atmosphere. OPEC has a right to its source rents, but no exclusive right to sink rents. However, it may well have the power to charge and redistribute sink rents as a global fiduciary — exactly what Kyoto wants to do, but lacks the power to do. In addition to effecting this transfer, the expanded role of OPEC as global fiduciary might increase the willingness of other petroleum producers (e.g., Norway) to join OPEC, thus increasing its monopoly power and ability to function as here envisioned. In addition, the fiduciary role might provide ethical reasons for OPEC members to adhere to the cartel, when tempted by short-term profit opportunities to cheat.

Actually the existing OPEC Development Fund is already a step in this direction. Expansion of this fund into a global fiduciary institution for collecting and distributing sink rents, as well as the existing source rent contributions generously made by OPEC countries, is what is envisaged in this suggestion.

Just how total rents are determined and divided between source scarcity and sink scarcity is a technical problem that economists have not tackled because they have not framed the problem this way. Economists have focused on capturing source rents through property rights, and then internalizing the external sink costs of pollution through taxes. Only recently has there emerged a theoretical discussion of property rights in atmospheric sink capacity — whether these should be public or private, the extent to which trade in such rights should be allowed, and so on. As an initial rule of thumb we might assume that, since the sink side is now the more limiting function, it should be accorded half or more of the total throughput scarcity rents. In other words, sink rents should be at least as much as source rents.

Sink rents would go to an expanded OPEC Development Fund dedicated entirely to global sustainable development in poor countries (especially investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency). Source rents would continue to accrue to the country that owns the deposits, and presumably be devoted to national sustainable development. The focus here is on a new public service function for OPEC of efficiently collecting and ethically distributing sink rents in the interest of global sustainable development. Where Kyoto has failed, OPEC might succeed as a stronger power base on which to build the fiduciary role — a power base that sidesteps the inability of nations to agree on the distribution of carbon dioxide emission rights among themselves.

Although any exercise of monopoly power is frequently lamented by economists, the early American economist John Ise had a different view in the case of natural resources: “Preposterous as it may seem at first blush, it is probably true that, even if all the timber in the United States, or all the oil, or gas, or anthracite, were owned by an absolute monopoly, entirely free of public control, prices to consumers would be fixed lower than the long-run interests of the public would justify.” Ise was referring only to the source function. The emerging scarcity of the sinks adds strength to his view. The reasonableness of Ise’s view is enhanced when we remember that for a market to reflect the true price, all interested parties must be allowed to bid. In the case of natural resources the largest interested party, future generations, cannot bid. Neither can our fellow non-human creatures, with whom we also share God’s creation, now and in the future, bid in markets to preserve their habitats. Therefore resource prices are almost certainly going to be too low, and anything that would raise the price, including monopoly, can claim some justification. Nor did Ise believe that the resource monopolist had a right to keep the entire rent, even though the rent should be charged in the interest of the future.

The measurement of the two different rents presents conceptual problems. The source rents are in the nature of user cost — the opportunity cost of non-availability in the future of a non-renewable resource used up today. Assuming that atmospheric absorptive capacity is a renewable resource, the sink rent would be the price of the previously free service when the supply of that service is limited to a sustainable level. If we assume separate markets in both source and sink functions we would theoretically have a market price determined for each function. Since the functions are related as the two ends of the same throughput, the source and sink markets would be quite closely interdependent. The separate markets could be competitive or monopolistic, and differing market power would largely determine the division of total throughput rent between the source and sink functions. For example, if, following a Kyoto agreement, the total supply of sink permits were to be determined by a global monopoly, that monopoly would be in a stronger position to capture total throughput rent on petroleum than would a weak cartel that controls the source. OPEC is surely aware of this.

What might the WTO and the World Bank think of such a suggestion? Since these two institutions are well represented at this conference, this question is more than just rhetorical. So far the WTO and the World Bank have been dedicated to the ideology of globalization — free trade, free capital mobility, and maximum cheapness of resources in the interest of GDP growth for the world as a whole, including mass-consumption societies. In their view maximum competition among oil-exporting countries resulting in a low price for petroleum is the goal. Trickle down from growth for the rich will, it is hoped, someday reach the poor. I suspect the free-trading globalizers consider themselves morally superior to the OPEC monopolists. But which alternative is worse:

Price- and standards-lowering competition in the interest of maximizing mass consumption by oil-importing countries by minimizing the internalization of environmental and social costs with consequent destruction of the atmosphere, and ruination of local self-reliance by a cheap-energy transport subsidy to the forces of global economic integration, or Monopoly restraints on the global overuse of both a basic resource and a basic life-support service of the environment, with automatic protection of local production and self-reliance provided by higher (full-cost) energy and transport prices, and with sink rents redistributed to the poor?

Monopoly restraint results not only in conservation and reduced pollution, but also in a price incentive to develop new petroleum-saving, and sink-enhancing, technologies, as well as renewable energy substitutes. Unfortunately there would also be an incentive to use non-petroleum fossil fuels such as coal, which would be a very negative effect from the point of view of controlling carbon dioxide. Independent national legislation limiting emissions from coal (and natural gas) may well be a necessary complement.

Ideally most of us would prefer a genuine international agreement to limit fossil fuel throughput, rather than a monopoly-based restriction imposed as a discipline by a minority of countries only on petroleum. But the Western high consumers, especially the U.S. as resoundingly reconfirmed in its recent election, have conclusively demonstrated their inability to accept any restrictions that might reduce their GDP growth rates, even in the likely event that GDP growth has itself become uneconomic. The conceptual clarity and moral resources are simply lacking in the leadership of these countries. Perhaps the leadership reflects the citizenry. But perhaps not. The global corporate “growth forever” ideology is pushed by the corporate-owned media, and rehearsed by corporate-financed candidates in quadrennial television-dominated elections.

A lack of moral clarity and leadership in the mass-consumption societies does not necessarily imply the presence of these virtues in the OPEC countries. Do there exist sufficient clarity, morality, restraint, and leadership in the OPEC countries to undertake this fiduciary function of being an efficient collector and an ethical distributor of sink scarcity rents? As argued above, there is surely an element of self-interest for OPEC, but to gain general support OPEC would have to take on a fiduciary trusteeship role that would go far beyond its interests as a profit-maximizing cartel. But a strong moral position might be just what OPEC needs to gain the legitimacy necessary to increase and solidify its power as a cartel. Could such a plan, put forward by OPEC, provide a stronger power base for the goals that Kyoto tried and failed to institutionalize? Might the WTO and World Bank recognize that sustainable development is a more basic value than free trade, and lend their support? I do not know. Maybe the whole idea is just a utopian speculation. But given the post-Kyoto state of disarray and the paucity of policy suggestions, I do believe that it is worth initiating a discussion of this possibility.

If sustainability is to be more than an empty word we have to evolve mechanisms for constraining throughput flows within environmental source and sink capacities. Petroleum is the logical place to begin. And OPEC is the major institution in a position to influence the global throughput of petroleum.

* “Sustainable Development and OPEC,” Chapter 15 in Herman E. Daly, Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development, Edward Elgar Publishers, Cheltenham, UK, 2007.

Herman Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. He was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. He is closely associated with theories of a Steady state economy. He is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the NCSE Lifetime Achievement Award

Message from President al-Assad to Venezuelan Counterpart, Conveyed by Mikdad

Nov 29, 2012

CARACAS, (SANA) – President Bashar al-Assad sent a letter to President of Venezuela Hugo Chafez, conveyed by Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister Dr. Fayssal Mikdad.

Vice-President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro Moros relayed salutation from President Chafez and hopes that President al-Assad will overcome the terrorist campaign against Syria.

Moros stressed that the stances of Venezuela regarding the events in Syria are firm and clear, and that Caracas is confident that the conspiracy will be foiled, affirming that Syria’s victory is a victory to all countries that fight for preserving their sovereignty and independence.

He highlighted Venezuela’s resolve to enhance cooperation with Syria in all domains as to enable Damascus to overcome the effects of the imperialistic western aggression.

Moros said that the leadership and people of Venezuela are watching the steadfastness of the Syrian people and consider it a heroic struggle representing the conscience of free peoples that defend their countries’ independence and sovereignty.

He also expressed rejection of foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs and voiced condemnation of the media campaign which aims at undermining Syria and its ability to confront the imperialistic schemes in the region.

For his part, Dr. Mikdad talked about the situation in Syria and the western aggression which aims at weakening its stances that oppose the western and Israeli schemes which aim at imposing the US and Israeli control on the region in cooperation with their tools in the Arab Gulf and in Turkey who fund, harbor and arm terrorist groups responsible for massacres against innocent Syrians.

Dr. Mikdad valued highly Venezuela’s stances in support to Syria in the political and economic fields and in international forums and organizations, stressing the importance of coordination between the two countries and the powers that support the rights of peoples to defend their independence and sovereignty.

The meeting was attended by Venezuela’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Temer Porras, and Syria’s Ambassador in Venezuela, Dr. Ghassan Abbas.

Earlier, Dr. Mikdad met with members of the parliament and members of the Syrian-Venezuelan Friendship Committee.

Dr. Mikdad also held a meeting with reporters from Venezuelan public and private media outlets and agencies and answered questions on the situation in Syria and the region.

Dr. Mikdad also met with members of the Syrian community in Venezuela and briefed them on the situation in Syria.

Thirty-Four Martyrs, Remnants in 10 Medical Covers and Scores of Injured People in Two Car Bomb Blasts in Jaramana

Nov 28, 2012

DAMASCUS COUNTRYSIDE, (SANA)- Terrorists on Wednesday blew up two car bombs loaded with large amounts of explosives in the Main Square in Jaramana city in Damascus Countryside, killing a number of citizens and injuring others and causing huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops.

A source at the Interior Ministry told SANA reporter that the death toll of the two car bomb blasts reached 34 martyrs and remnants in 10 medical covers.

The source added that the bombings also resulted in injuring 83 people and caused heavy damage to 6 residential buildings and tens of cars parking in the explosion site.

Meanwhile, a source at al-Muwasat Hospital that the bodies of 33 martyrs were received, in addition to 20 injured people, including women, some in critical situation.

A source at Damascus Hospital pointed out that 41 injured people, including women, were admitted to the hospital to be treated.

SANA reporter in al-Radi and Jaramana hospitals said tens of wounded people were received and given first aid, while serious injuries were transferred to al-Muwasat and Damascus hospitals.

SANA reporter said the two terrorist bombings coincided with the detonation of two explosive devices by terrorists in al-Nahda and al-Qerayyat neighborhoods in the city.

The explosive device blasts resulted in minor material damage.

Visiting the injured in al-Muwasat Hospital, Minister of Higher Education, Mohammad Yehya Moalla, stressed that the timing of the terrorist bombings was intended to cause harm to the largest number of citizens, describing them as “heinous and inhuman”.

He indicated the readiness of all educational hospitals, particularly al-Muwasat, to receive all citizens and provide them with necessary medical services, hailing the efforts of its nursing, medical and administrative staffs in shouldering their responsibilities to ensure the best healthcare services.

On the other hand, Governor of Damascus Countryside, Hussein Makhlouf, described Jaramana terrorist bombings as “the most horrible crimes” against innocent citizens while they were heading to their workplaces, schools and universities.

He added that those who are behind the bombings made use of the Syrian’s good will who rushed to help the injured to carry out the second bombing and cause more victims.

Touring Jaramana and al-Muwasat hospitals, Makhlouf said that targeting Jaramana by the armed terrorist groups for many times reflect these terrorist groups’ hatred and grudge on its residents who rejected extremism and the involvement on the conspiracy against their country.

A Number of the Martyrs Escorted to Final Resting Place

In a solemn procession, a number of Jaramana terrorist bombings martyrs were escorted to their final resting place with wide official and popular participation.

Thousands of locals participated in the funeral ceremony held for the martyrs who fell in the two terrorist bombings which hit the main square in Jaramana city in Damascus Countryside.

Speeches delivered at the funeral ceremony hailed the glory of martyrdom and the Syrian people’s sacrifices to defend the homeland’s sovereignty and independence.

The participants’ speeches stressed that terrorists’ targeting of children and residential areas will not undermine the Syrians’ determination to combat and eliminate terrorism.

They added that the scheme to dominate Syria and undermine its national unity will fail, indicating that all spectrums of the Syrian people will stand steadfast against all attempts to destroy their unity.

Families of the martyrs held the U.S., France and their agents in the region who supply terrorists with money and arms responsible for the blood of their sons.

They affirmed that the repeated terrorist attacks against Jaramana city and residents will not prevent them from standing side by side with their state and the Syrian army in the face of extremism and terrorism which the homeland’s enemies try to justify under fake slogans that call for freedom and democracy.

Al-Qaeda-linked Terrorists Killed, Their Vehicles and Weapons Destroyed in Several Areas

Nov 28, 2012

PROVINCES, (SANA) – The Armed Forces on Wednesday eliminated tens of terrorists belonging to al-Qaeda and destroyed their vehicles in qualitative operations in Aleppo and its countryside.

An official source told SANA reporter that a unit of the Armed Forces eliminated scores of terrorists in a qualitative operation in al-Mislmyeh, adding that terrorist Omar al-Abdullah, of the Libyan nationality and a member of al-Qaeda, was identified among the dead.

Another army unit clashed with terrorists in Daret Izza and destroyed two terrorists’ hideouts and 5 cars transporting weapons and terrorists.

The army also destroyed 4 cars with loaded with terrorists and weapons on the road between Kafar Hamra and al-Lairamon areas and targeted terrorists’ gatherings in al-Mintar, Azzan and Ain Jara, inflicting heavy losses upon the terrorists.

In Aleppo city, the Armed Forces arrested 17 terrorists who tried to infiltrate to al-Lairamon area and seized an armored vehicle used by terrorists to transfer weapons and munitions.

Dozens of terrorists were killed in the area, among them was terrorist Medhat Eid.

Another army unit clashed with terrorists in Bustan al-Basha, al-Salheen and Masaken Hanano, inflicting heavy losses upon them.

The army also targeted terrorists’ gatherings in al-Tananeer Square and Karm al-Jizmani in old Aleppo, killing and wounding scores of the terrorists.

The army ambushed a terrorist group in al-Lairamon Roundabout in Aleppo, killing the leader of the group, terrorist Mahmoud Hamada and all members of the group and seizing large amounts of weapons, including machineguns, rifles and RPG launchers.

Armed Forces Restore SYP 100 Million worth Medicines Seized at Terrorist Dens in Aleppo

A unit of the Armed Forces gave Aleppo Governorate an amount of medicines seized at dens of armed terrorist groups.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the medicines worth about SYP 100 million, adding that the armed terrorist groups stole these medicines from Aleppo hospitals and healthcare centers.

Armed Forces Inflict Heavy Losses upon Terrorists in Damascus Countryside

Units of the Armed Forces continued pursuing terrorists from al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra in Daraya, Hejjeira, al-Dhiyabiyeh and al-Bowaida areas in Damascus Countryside.

An official source told SANA reporter that a unit of the Armed Forces destroyed terrorists’ gatherings, hideouts and equipment in Daraya city.

The source added that scores of terrorists were killed near al-Forn and al-Zaiyton roundabouts in the city, indicating that the Armed Forces seized their weapons and ammunition.

The source said that the army restored security to al-Basel Roundabout area in Daraya after killing scores of the mercenary terrorists.

The source added that the Armed Forces killed and wounded all members of a terrorist group affiliated to al-Qaeda linked Jabhet al-Nusra in the area, adding that the leader of the group, nicknamed Abu Huzayfah, was identified among the dead.

The Armed Forces also carried out several operations against terrorists in Hejjeira, al-Bowaida and al-Dhiyabiyeh, destroying a mortar launcher and killing a number of terrorists.

Terrorists Khaled Salloum and Mohammad Kheir Eddin were identified among the dead.

The source said that all members of an armed terrorist group were killed at Fayez Mansour Street, including terrorists Yaser al-Sabbagh, Maher Shadid, Fatehi Hammoudeh, Ammar Abdul-Razaq and the Iraqi terrorist Samer al-Basrawi.

In Zamalka and Erbeen in the eastern Ghouta, units of the Armed Forces pursued the terrorists groups which attack citizens and commit criminal acts.

Jordanian Security Forces Arrest Terrorist Group Heading for Syria

A Jordanian security source said that the security forces arrested 5 terrorist gunmen while trying to infiltrate to Syria.

In a statement to UPI agency, the source added that the arrested terrorists had large amounts of weapons and ammunition, noting that one of the terrorists, who is a salafi, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2007 and released in 2012 after a special amnesty was granted to him.

Two citizens Martyred, many others wounded by Suicide Terrorist Explosion in Bosra, Daraa

A suicide terrorist  blew up a booby-trapped pickup, loaded with vegetables in the west neighborhood in Bosra, Daraa,  claiming the lives of a number of martyrs and injuring many others.

An official source told SANA reporter that the terrorist explosion led to the martyrdom of two citizens and injuring 7 others as well as causing grave material losses.

The source added that the suicide terrorist blew himself inside the car which was loaded with vegetables when the families and citizens were approaching him.

8 Terrorists Killed, 13 Others Injured while Filling a Car with Explosives in Hejjeira

Meanwhile, eight terrorists were killed while 13 others injured in a blast of a car they were filling the car with explosives at al-AKshak Street in Hejjeira.

Terrorist Mohammad Shahin was identified among the dead.

Armed Terrorist Groups’ Leaders Killed, Several Inflitration Attempts from Lebanon Foiled in Homs

The Armed Forces destroyed terrorist dens belonging to Jabhat al-Nusra which is affiliated with al-Qaeda in al-Khalidiyeh and Bab Hud neighborhoods in Homs city.

An official source told SANA that the Armed Forces eliminated a number of terrorists, including leaders of armed terrorist groups.

The Armed Forces pursued terrorists from al-Qaeda linked Jabhet al-Nusra in al-Houla area in Homs countryside and eliminated scores of them and destroyed many vehicles and a communication center.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the army eliminated all the members of a terrorist group in al-Houla, adding that “among the killed terrorists were Abu Mansour al-Shirqawi, of the Saudi nationality, Mahmoud Kreijan, Radwan Shlash and Thaer al-Hanash.”

The source added that a factory to manufacture missiles and explosive devices in addition to 6 machinegun-equipped vehicles were destroyed.

The source said that an advanced communication center used by the terrorists to coordinate their terrorist acts was also destroyed.

In a relevant cotext, a unit of the Armed Forces repelled terrorists’ infiltration attempt from Lebanon into Syrian territories at al-Armouta area in the countryside of Talkalakh in Homs.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the infiltration attempt coincided with heavy fire on border guards’ centers.

It added that the Armed Forces responded to the sources of fire, killing a number of terrorists and injuring others while the rest fled into the Lebanese territories.

SANA reporter said that other units of the Armed Forces confronted members of another terrorist group which attempted to infiltrate into Syria after opening fire from inside the Lebanese territories, adding that the Armed Forces forced terrorists to run away inside the Lebanese territories.

The Armed Forces foiled a third infiltration attempt by terrorists riding motorcycles through the same border crossing, killing and injuring many of them.

Terrorists Killed, 15 Explosive Devices Dismantled in Idleb

A source in the province told SANA reporter that a unit of the Armed Forces destroyed two vehicles equipped with DShK machineguns in Harem city.

A number of terrorists from the so-called “Shuhadaa Idleb Brigade” were killed, including Mais Saqer, Anwar al-Muhajer and Abu Ali Janem.

Other units of the Armed Forces destroyed gatherings for terrorists in Bensiya town in the countryside of Harem, killing an injuring many of them.Terrorists Omar Bakro and Nader Salim were identified among the dead.

The armed forces pursued terrorist groups in Ein al-Hamra and Jannet al-Qoura villages in the countryside of Jisr al-Shughour, killing all of their members.

Meanwhile, the engineering units dismantled 15 explosive devices, weighed between 75 to 100 kg, which were ready for remote detonation.

The dismantled explosive devices were planted by terrorists on Jisr al-Shughour – Muhammbel road in the countryside of Idleb.

On the other hand, units of the Armed Forces pursued last night armed terrorist groups in Idleb countryside and inflicted heavy losses upon the terrorists.

A source in Idleb province told SANA reporter that the Armed Forces destroyed terrorist hideouts in Filon, Kafar Rohin, Binnish, Bikaflon and Korin towns and eliminated several terrorists and inured others.

A Number of Terrorists Killed in Hama

A unit of the Armed Forces clashed with terrorists who were cutting off roads and terrifying citizens in a town in the countryside of Hama province and seized their weapons.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the clashes resulted in the killing of a number of terrorists.

Terrorist Khaled Mohammad Ali Khleif from “Khaled bin al-Walid Brigade” was identified among the dead.

Authorities Seize Large Amounts of Munitions and Weapons in Lattakia

The authorities in Lattakia Province seized a large amount of munitions, weapons and sniper rifles inside a den of an armed terrorist group in al-Tabiat neighborhood in Lattakia city.

An official source in the province told SANA reporter that the seized weapons included 7 rifles, 5 M16 rifles, 3 NATO sniper rifles, in addition to Polish sniper rifles, pump-action shotguns and anti-tank mines.

The source added that 11 grenades, 10,000 bullets, 50 ammunition magazines, 3 night binoculars and a number of mortar rounds were also seized.

Terrorists from al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra Killed, 16 Explosive Devices Dismantled in Daraa

A unit of the Armed Forces clashed with terrorists from al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra in Tafas town in the countryside of Daraa province, inflicting heavy losses upon them.

SANA reporter quoted a source in the province as saying that the clashes resulted in the killing of many terrorists and the injury of others, in addition to seizing their weapons.

The source added that the engineering units dismantled 16 explosive devices of different weights planted by terrorists around the town and at its entrances.

Al-Jaafari: The Syrian People Want a Syrian-led Democracy but Not an Imposed One through Blood

Nov 28, 2012

NEW YORK, (SANA)- Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Bashar al-Jaafari, stressed that the Syrian people want to build a Syrian-made democracy based on a Syrian experience that meets the Syrians’ needs and is led by them, but not a bloody, sectarian and salafi democracy that is imposed from abroad through armed violence.

Al-Jaafari was speaking during a session of the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee discussing a draft resolution on Syria in the framework of item 69 of the agenda titled ‘The Promotion and Protection of Human Rights’.

The Syrian Ambassador stressed that the draft resolution doesn’t lie in the framework of goodwill and has nothing to do with transparency of the care for human rights in Syria as it holds the Syrian government responsible for all what happened in Syria without addressing any condemnation to the armed terrorist groups and the countries manipulating them.

He expressed regret that some delegations exploit the Third Committee’s work to impose their political and interventional goals which violate the provisions of the UN Charter, the principles of the international law and the international humanitarian law.

Al-Jaafari said that what is taking place today is considered a regrettable precedent that endangers the future of the international collective action in the field of promoting and protecting human rights.

He slammed the stances of the some member states of the Arab League (AL) as they accepted to be used as the ‘Horse of Troy’ by the western group through submitting in their name a draft resolution claiming care for human rights in Syria which was submitted last year by western delegations that are overtly interfering in Syria’s internal affairs.

He said this maneuver has unveiled that some Arab countries have turned into a destructive tool of the joint Arab action in the service of condemned interventional western agendas.

The Syrian Ambassador added that by submitting this draft resolution against Syria, the Arab countries, including Qatar, made Israel an invaluable favor in its aggression on Gaza at the same day when the Israeli warplanes were bombarding the Strip.

Al-Jaafari underscored that the Syrian people want to build a society where justice and equality prevail away from the foreign interference of some countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia which know nothing of human rights.

He highlighted how the rule in these two countries is monopolized by one family and how they lack the simplest rights of equality between genders and between the citizens and the non-citizens, in addition to the absence of parliament and the smothering of the opposition by the authorities of the two countries.

Al-Jaafari also referred to the fact that Qatar and the Saudi Arabia are not yet part of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which has become an international reference since 1976, nor are they part of many international agreements related to the issues of the promotion and protection of human rights, whereas Syria has joined the Covenant since 1969 before Qatar gained its independence from the British occupation.

He expressed great astonishment over justifying the crime and massacres committed by the armed terrorist groups against the Syrian people in the statement of the countries which submitted the draft resolution as “few separate violations”.

“Are homicide, cutting off dead bodies, decapitation, displacing inhabitants on sectarian bases and killing entire families according to sectarian affiliations considered, according to those who submitted the draft resolution, minor violations that are not worth even reference?” asked al-Jaafari.

He added that “Does this mean that there is a legitimate terrorism that is represented by the acts of the armed terrorist groups holding wahhabi, takfiri and salafi thinking…with Qatari, Saudi and Libyan funding and direct Turkish involvement and French and British sponsoring?”

Al-Jaafari wondered how the claim about protecting human rights in Syria goes in line with the imposition of packages of unilateral coercive economic and financial sanctions against the Syrian people by those who endorsed the draft resolution.

He expressed regret that the member countries of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation were among the first to impose such inhumane sanctions transgressing against the rights of the Syrian citizens.

“It’s a shame that many of the financially rich countries in those two organizations have not offered a single dollar to help the Syrian people, while they are giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the mercenary terrorists and al-Qaeda members to shed blood in Syria and destroy the infrastructure of the Syrian state,” he added.

The Syrian Ambassador exposed the flagrant political hypocrisy of some countries in terms of adopting a Security Council resolution condemning the acts of the takfiri and ‘jihadi’ trends in Mali, while rushing to provide funds to send similar takfiri, wahhabi and ‘jihadi’ groups to practice terrorism in Syria.

He blasted the preparers of the draft resolution on Syria not only for being biased and non-transparent but also for neither calling even in one paragraph for the need to halt the violence and disarm the terrorist groups, nor hinting at the necessity of sitting around the national dialogue table to resolve the crisis according to the basics of peaceful solution based on Kofi Annan’s six-point plan, Geneva statement and the mission of the UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi.

He reminded those countries of hundreds of international and press reports which confirm that foreign terrorists are fighting in Syria, referring particularly to the report of the Head of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, Paulo Pinheiro, which indicated the presence of foreign fighters in Syria and considered those gunmen as a dangerous element in increasing extremism.

He cited a statement by Pinheiro as saying in a press conference in New York last October that those foreign mercenary gunmen are operating in Syria having their own motives and not necessarily to build a democratic state and that they come from 11 countries and not only from the neighboring countries.

Al-Jaafari noted that few days ago he circulated on behalf of the Syrian government an official letter to the Security Council members, the UN Secretary General and the Head of the UN General Assembly which included the names of 143 foreign terrorists who had been killed in battles in Aleppo, among them were Libyans, Tunisians, Saudis and Qataris.

He stressed that the reform in Syria should be national and not in the form of draft resolutions of political brokerage, affirming that the optimal way to help Syria in the reform process is for some of the countries which adopted the draft resolution to halt funding, arming and sheltering the armed terrorist groups and smuggling them across the border, particularly across Turkey.

Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN called on the member countries to show their respect to human rights by relying on facts away from intimidation, conspiring and politicization and through realizing that what the Syrian government is doing aims only to go ahead with the reform process and secure a decent life for the Syrian people in light of uncompromised sovereignty and political independence.

Lavrov Renews Russia’s Rejection of  Intervention in Syria, Technical Military cooperation Contributes to Region’s stability

Nov 28, 2012

MOSCOW, (SANA) – Russian Foreign Minister , Sergei Lavrov, renewed his country’s stance in rejection of foreign intervention in Syria, stressing that Russia is exerting great efforts to end violence in Syria and support resorting to dialogue, through which the Syrians should reach an agreement based on the structure and the future of their country.

In an interview with Argumenty i Fakty Russian Newspaper, Lavrov said that the cooperation between Russia and Syria in the technical military domain contributes to supporting the stability in the Middle East, adding that the material technical supply point of the Russian naval fleet in Tartous works normally.”

He stressed that there is no possibility of dragging Russia into the armed conflict taking place in Syria, pointing out to the importance of applying Geneva Statement to solve the crisis in Syria, as Russia works closely with the Syrian government and all parties for its implementation.

Lavrov pointed out to the necessity that all foreign sides and those who have influence on the ‘the Syrian opposition’ play their role to fulfill the approach agreed on in Geneva.

He warned that the continuation of violence in Syria would lead to the aggravation of the situation which may erupt in the region, stressing the presence of a lot of foreign extremists, mercenaries and terrorists linked to al-Qaeda among the armed opposition. He also expressed worry over the transition of the conflict to the neighboring countries.

Moscow Strongly Condemns terrorist Bombings in Jaramana, Damascus Countryside

The Russian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the terrorist explosions which hit Jaramana in Damascus countryside, indicating that these bombings bear the imprints of al-Qaeda.

“Such acts represent familiar methods of the international terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda which aim to ruin any effort  to restore stability to Syria and resolve the crisis peacefully,” a statement for the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

The statement added ” we vehemently condemn the terrorist crimes which can’t be justified.”

Deployment of Patriot Missiles along Turkish-Syrian Borders Creates More Problems rather than Solve Them

Russian First Deputy Foreign Minister, Andrey Denisov, stressed that the deployment of Patriot missile systems at the Turkish-Syrian border would rather create more problems than solve them, as it implies hidden threats behind.

Denisov told a news conference following a security conference in Berlin “We don’t like this idea because we see hidden threats in it,” Denisov noted.

“If these hidden threats are justified or if our partners provide clear explanations of the real meaning of the decision to deploy these missiles, it will contribute to peace efforts,” he added.

Denisov pointed out that the deployment of Patriot missile systems along the border with Syria might stem from plans to establish the so-called no-fly zones, which have not been made available to Moscow. “It might well be wrong, but as long as we know nothing we need more information,” he stressed.

“If it implies restrictive measures against Syria, such measures must be sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council,” Denisov stressed.

The Russian diplomat said that from the technical point of view and in terms of maintenance, the Patriot system is complex whose personnel undergoes long training and can enjoy high professional skills, adding “It is a serious weapon and it must be targeted against serious challenges… That is why we have such questions as what kind of challenges it is aimed at and who threatens who and from where?”

Denisov went on saying “All the answers we have been receiving are reduced to soothing statements, but as far as military political problems are concerned, we want clear and exhaustive explanations: where ‘a threat comes from’, for what purposes, for what term and why.”

“We believe that the decision of deploying missiles is creating more problems than it might solve,” he said. “This is why Moscow showed restrained attitude towards this idea,” the Russian official concluded.

People’s Assembly Discusses Situation of Electricity in the Country

Nov 28, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Committee of Budget at the People’s Assembly on Wednesday discussed with Minister of Electricity Eng. Imad Khamis the Ministry’s report on the 2013 state budget.

Minister Khamis said that 28,31 billion SYP was allocated for the General Establishment of Electricity Generating in the 2013 state budget, adding that the sum will be used to create new electricity-generation stations, expand the current stations and improve their work.

Khamis noted that the 2013 state budget allotted 7,407 billion SYP for the General Establishment of Transportation and SYP 7 billion for the General Establishment of Distribution.

” 500 million SYP was allocated to the National Center of Energy Researches to build two photovoltaic power plants with 10 megawatts capacity each” funded by China”, in addition to 10-megawatts photovoltaic plant and wind plants with 50-100 megawatts capacity,” Khamis said.

He highlighted that 1-3 main high voltage cables, out of 82 one, are being attacked and sabotaged by terrorists per day, adding that there are currently 30 main high voltage cables out of service.

He stressed that the electricity sector in Syria is still the best in the region despite all the terrorist attacks and sabotage acts committed by the terrorists against its infrastructure, adding that the readiness of the power plants in Syria is 98%.

The state budget allocated approbations by 43,222 billion SYP to the Ministry of Electricity for the year 2013.

Minister of Health: Scale of Damage Caused by Terrorist Attacks to Health Sector Estimated at SYP 7 Billion

Nov 28, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Minister of Health, Saad al-Nayef, estimated the scale of damage cause by the terrorist groups’ attacks to the health sector at SYP 7 billion, adding that the national health sector is facing great challenges under current circumstances.

The Minister was speaking in front of the Budget Committee at the People’s Assembly which discussed the report presented by the Ministry of Health on its plans for 2013.

The minister said that 25 hospitals, 105 health centers and 150 ambulances went out of service due to the armed terrorist groups’ attacks. The minister said that these challenges and difficulties delayed the implementation of a large number of projects, stressing that the medical staffs and equipment art hospitals and health centers helped the sector to face all circumstances, adding that the locally-manufactured medicines cover 93% of needs.

He said that the Ministry is providing its needs of medicine for cancer and other chronic diseases and vaccines through grants, loans or direct purchase from other countries such as Iran, Korea and Russia, adding that there is a factory for manufacturing cancer drugs already in service while another factory will begin operation in the beginning of the next year.

He added that the Ministry’s priorities in the current stage focus on the emergency sector and providing vaccines and medicines for chronic diseases, in addition to providing best healthcare services to citizens at the temporary makeshift centers to prevent the spread of epidemics.

Regarding pharmaceutical industries, al-Nayef said that 10 out of 67 pharmaceutical factories went out of service because of the armed terrorist groups’ transgressions, stressing that all medicine are available and the main problem lies in means of delivering them.

Larijani: Western Behavior Regarding Crisis in Syria incorrect

Nov 28, 2012

Tehran, (SANA)-Speaker of the Iranian Shura council Ali Larijani underlined that the western behavior regarding the crisis in Syria is wrong, saying that the desire to shift to democracy through weapon lead to the escalation of terrorism.

At a press conference with Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi in Baghdad, Larijani said that intervention should be in the interest of the peoples, and the western countries have to adopt peaceful intervention, away from desire to change into democracy through weapon.

For his part, al-Nujaifi affirmed that since the beginning, Iraq has announced its stance towards the crisis in Syria and the Syrian people’s right in self-determination without any foreign intervention or any gathering for the terrorist groups.

Earlier, Larijani affirmed that Tehran seeks to resolve the crisis in Syria according to better conditions, but the intervention of some countries create difficulties in front of the Syrian people.

Larijani comments came during a meeting with the Iraqi scholar Ayatollah Mohammad Said al-Hakim in the Iraqi city of al-Najaf.

Al-Hakim , for his part, considered that the continued violence in Syria leads to moving tension into other countries which will affect all, adding “The achievement of calm and stability in Syria depends on the internal sides and international politicians.”

Abdullahian: All Should Support the Will of the Syrian People

Meanwhile, Hussein Amir Abdullahian, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for the Arab and African Affairs said that the international organizations and world countries have to support the collective will of the Syrian people to boost the national dialogue in order to realize reforms on a democratic ground in the country.

Meeting representatives of international organizations, ambassadors and Heads of political missions accredited in Tehran, Abdullahian added that the latest meeting of the Syrian National Dialogue which was held in Tehran aimed at offering help to restore peace and calm to Syria through an Iranian initiative.

Venezuela fully Supports Syria in its War against Terrorism

Nov 27, 2012

CARACAS, (SANA)-Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister Fayssal Mikdad on Tuesday discussed with Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Temir Parras the political developments in the Middle East and Latin America.

During the meeting, the two sides described as deep the strategic relations between the two countries and peoples, founded by Leaders of the two countries, Presidents Bashar al-Assad and Hugo Chavez, expressing satisfaction over the implementation of agreements and programs which were signed in Damascus and Caracas.

The Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister expressed his country’s full support to Syria as leadership and people in the face of foreign conspiracy which seeks to deviate Syria’s attention from the main conflict in the region, the Arab-Israeli conflict.

He condemned the terrorist acts carried out by armed groups supported by external countries which pose a threat to the security, safety and stability of Syria, calling for stopping the support of terrorism, funding it or hosting those who perpetrate criminal acts.

For his part, Mikdad expressed Syria’s appreciation for the true support of Venezuela to Syria in all fields, indicating to the targets and dimensions of the attack of the western countries, particularly the US, France and Britain in cooperation with Turkey, some Gulf states and Libya and their support to the terrorists, proving them with fatal equipment to weaken Syria and divide its national unity and foil its stances against the Israeli occupation.

The Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister affirmed inevitability of Syria’s victory in its war against the terrorism and the foreign intervention in its affairs, this victory which will be considered as a victory for all powers which defend their countries’ independence and sovereignty.

By Scott Dodd, On Earth

29 November 12

@readersupportednews.org

Susan Rice, the candidate believed to be favored by President Obama to become the next Secretary of State, holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline. If confirmed by the Senate, one of Rice’s first duties likely would be consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project.

Rice’s financial holdings could raise questions about her status as a neutral decision maker. The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rice owns stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada, the company seeking a federal permit to transport tar sands crude 1,700 miles to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, crossing fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest freshwater aquifer in North America.

Beyond that, according to financial disclosure reports, about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel — including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 — the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history.

Rice also has smaller stakes in several other big Canadian energy firms, as well as the country’s transportation companies and coal-fired utilities. Another 20 percent or so of her personal wealth is derived from investments in five Canadian banks. These are some of the institutions that provide loans and financial backing to TransCanada and its competitors for tar sands extraction and major infrastructure projects, such as Keystone XL and Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would stretch 700 miles from Alberta to the Canadian coast.

In 2010, for instance, when Rice and her husband held at least $1.5 million in Royal Bank of Canada, the institution was labeled Canada’s most environmentally irresponsible company by the Rainforest Action Network for its support of tar sands development. Public pressure from environmentalists and Canada’s First Nations tribes convinced the bank to stop funding tar sands projects earlier this year.

“It’s really amazing that they’re considering someone for Secretary of State who has millions invested in these companies,” said Bill McKibben, a writer and founder of the activist groups 350.org and Tar Sands Action, which have organized protests against the Keystone XL project. “The State Department has been rife with collusion with the Canadian pipeline builders, and it’s really distressing to have any sense that that might continue to go on.” Emails obtained by an environmental group last year show what critics call a “cozy and complicitous relationship” between State Department officials and a lobbyist for TransCanada, who was also a former deputy campaign director for current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential bid. The agency also assigned an environmental impact review of the Keystone project to a company with financial ties to TransCanada.

As ambassador to the United Nations, Rice has not been directly involved in the State Department’s Keystone XL review, which came to a head at the end of 2011. After initially indicating it would likely approve TransCanada’s application, the State Department ordered a review of alternate routes to avoid putting critical water sources in Nebraska at risk. The move, which officials said would likely push the approval process back to the first three months of 2013, was an attempt to spare the Obama administration a politically risky decision just before an election year.

Greenlighting the pipeline would have hurt the president with environmental advocates — more than 1,200 people were arrested in anti-Keystone protests led by McKibben at the White House in Summer 2011. But denying it outright would have given Republicans an election year attack line, saying Obama had cost the nation much-needed jobs (although independent studies have shown that TransCanada’s job creation claims for the pipeline are greatly exaggerated). As it was, the president still received significant heat, and Mitt Romney pledged to approve the pipeline on Day 1 if he had won the election.

Were she to become Secretary of State, Rice would be in charge of the new environmental review process and would be in a position to decide whether to issue TransCanada a permit for sections of Keystone XL stretching from Oklahoma to the Canadian border. (The pipeline’s southernmost leg has already been approved and is under construction in Texas — with protesters perching in trees and chaining themselves to construction equipment in an attempt to stop it.)

Rice is reportedly Obama’s favorite to take the helm at the State Department next year. Clinton has said repeatedly that she plans to step down shortly after Obama’s second inauguration in January. In addition to Rice, reportedly the president’s lead candidate for the job, U.S. Senator John Kerry had also reportedly made it onto the president’s short list. Kerry, whose net worth of at least $232 million makes him far wealthier than Rice, does not own shares of TransCanada or Enbridge, the major tar sands pipeline companies, although he does have stock in some other Canadian energy interests.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Rice’s net worth sat somewhere between $23.5 million and $43.5 million in 2009, the latest year for which the center has done a full analysis of her finances. That makes her either the wealthiest person currently serving in the executive branch or a close second to Clinton. (The uncertainty surrounding these figures is due to the way officials are required to disclose their investments; instead of declaring the specific amount of stock they own, they are required by law only to declare a range.)

Other public officials have been criticized for pushing for the Keystone XL project while standing to benefit financially. The nonprofit Sunlight Foundation watchdog group reported in December 2011 that four members of Congress who own shares in TransCanada had pressed for the pipeline’s approval — either by supporting bills that would have forced the State Department to issue a permit or by writing to Clinton or Obama, urging them to give the go-ahead. Rice’s ownership of TransCanada stock was noted by the Sunlight Foundation but not considered a conflict of interest at the time, because she had no direct role in the approval process.

Neither Rice’s office nor the White House returned OnEarth’s calls for comment about her financial holdings.

It’s unclear when Rice began investing in Canadian energy and banks, but the Stanford University graduate and Rhodes Scholar worked for the prestigious McKinsey & Company consulting firm’s Toronto office from 1990 to 1993, marrying Canadian-born TV producer Ian Cameron in 1992. She then joined the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton. (Financial disclosure forms aren’t available for Rice’s security council tenure; by law, they’re destroyed after six years.) Rice later became President Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, then joined the nonprofit Brookings Institution think tank during the George W. Bush administration. She advised both the Kerry and Obama presidential campaigns on foreign policy.

According to the reports she filed in May 2012, Rice and her husband have a wide-ranging portfolio that includes more than 100 securities, such as IBM, Monsanto, Apple, BP, and McDonald’s. Dan Auble, a researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics who studies the personal finances of public officials, said it’s not unusual to see energy investments play a significant role in their financial portfolios, as they do with Rice and her husband. (Auble said the holdings of a public official’s spouse are included in financial disclosure reports because they have the same potential to create a conflict of interest.) In their case, however, nine of the 14 holdings they claimed that top $500,000 are Canadian energy interests or banks.

If Rice does get the Secretary of State job, federal ethics officials could recommend that she sell her stock in TransCanada and related companies before deciding on Keystone XL, Auble said. But that’s not a sure thing.

Leading Keystone opponents say they wouldn’t necessarily oppose Rice’s nomination — but they would want someone else in charge of deciding the pipeline’s fate. “It would be one of the first decisions she would make, and she’s not qualified to make an unbiased decision,” said Jane Kleeb, the executive director of Bold Nebraska, a group that has fought to block the Keystone XL pipeline.

“It’s one more clear sign that the State Department should not be handling this,” added McKibben (who is also an OnEarth contributing editor). Both advocates believe the Environmental Protection Agency or the White House Council on Environmental Quality would be more qualified to assess the environmental impacts of Keystone XL. But an executive order issued by President George W. Bush in April 2004 makes the Secretary of State responsible for approving pipelines that cross the U.S. border. Kleeb suggested that Obama could change that order to shift the decision-making responsibility elsewhere.

Environmental advocates (including the Natural Resources Defense Council, which publishes OnEarth) have sought to block the Keystone XL pipeline and further development of the Alberta tar sands fields due to their climate impact and potential for pollution and dangerous oil spills. Extracting bitumen — a heavy, viscous black oil — requires intensive open-pit mining in the heart of Canada’s boreal forest. More dirty and corrosive than conventional crude, bitumen requires extensive refining to become useable fuel. The entire process uses vast amounts of energy and water and creates three times the global warming pollution of conventional fuel, while shipping the bitumen through pipelines means an additional risk of corrosion and leaks.

Despite the environmental risks, tar sands development has become a major focus of the Canadian government and pillar of the country’s economy, championed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose administration has denounced environmental advocates and First Nations tribes opposed to pipeline construction as extremists. Alberta’s tar sands contain the world’s third largest proven oil reserve, but they’re landlocked and remote — hence the desire for more pipelines to provide Canadian energy companies with access to ports and refineries.

According to her most recent financial disclosure reports, along with her TransCanada investments, Rice and her husband own at least $1.5 million worth of stock in Enbridge (Canada’s No. 3 oil producer, according to Forbes), Cenovus (No. 7), and Encana (No. 8), as well as at least $1.25 million in Imperial (No. 2), $50,000 to $100,000 in Suncor (No. 1), and $15,000 to $50,000 in Canadian Natural (No. 6). (TransCanada is ranked at No. 5 by Forbes.) The couple has at least $1.25 million invested in Transalta, Alberta’s largest coal-fired electricity power producer, and at least $1.5 million in Canadian Pacific Railway, which transports coal, oil, and gas and has been a major financial beneficiary of the North American energy boom.

On the banking side, Rice has investments totaling at least $5 million and up to $11.25 million in Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Royal Bank of Canada, and Toronto Dominion. A report by the Dutch consulting firm Profundo Economic Research says several of these same banks are largely responsible for underwriting the expansion of Canada’s tar sands industry. “Investment in tar sands infrastructure now surpasses that of manufacturing across all of Canada,” according to the report.

Which means that regardless of Keystone XL’s fate, Canadian companies will continue to seek ways to pump bitumen from northern Canada to coastal refineries and ports, where it can be shipped to Europe, China, and other overseas markets. NRDC and other environmental groups have presented evidence that Enbridge is making plans to reverse a pipeline that currently carries regular crude from the New England coast to Montreal, and use it to ship tar sands oil in the other direction instead.

Since it crosses the U.S.-Canadian border, that plan would also require State Department approval.