Today's Insight News

Toxic entrenchment — U.S. in Iraq story

2011-12-19T18:54:00.000-05:00

U.S. State Department staffer Peter Van Buren’s account in We meant well: How I helped lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people is illustrative of an endemic pattern of criminal recklessness in U.S. foreign relations.

Excerpting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

“This story really began in the early 1990s,” says the Foreign Service Officer who had been posted in Iraq with an embedded-with-military U.S. State Department Provisional Reconstruction Team (ePRT) before writing We Meant Well. From that time forward, Van Buren writes, “Iraq had been continually under siege by the United States. It was a seamless epic as the war of 1990-91 continued through the non-fly zones and the sanctions of the nineties — to be capped off by the 2003 invasion and the ensuing years of occupation.

“During Desert Storm, we [U.S. and allies] destroyed large portions of Iraq’s infrastructure. We had gone out of our way to make a mess, using clever tools such as cruise missiles that spat metallic fibers to short out entire electrical systems we would have to reconstruct.

“In the years that followed Desert Storm, three [four] U.S. Presidents bombed and rocketed Iraq, running up the bill we would later have to pay.

“Sanctions meanwhile kept [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] fat and happy on black-market oil profits while chiseling away Baghdad’s cosmopolitan First World veneer and plunging most of Iraq’s population into poverty.…

“The Script for the 2003 invasion did not include an extended reconstruction effort.” What the Americans imagined, Van Buren says, was a greeting “as liberators like in post-D-day France with cheerful natives rushing out to offer our spunky troops bottles of wine and frisky daughters.”

63 billion, still counting

However, “the reconstruction of Iraq was the largest nation-building program in history, dwarfing in cost, size, and complexity even those undertaken after World War II to rebuild Germany and Japan,” Van Buren writes. “At a cost to the U.S. taxpayer of over $63 billion and counting, the plan was lavishly funded, yet, as government inspectors found, the efforts were characterized from the beginning by pervasive waste and inefficiency, mistaken judgments, flawed policies, and structural weaknesses” [Chapter 1 “Help Wanted, No experience necessary,” pp. 3. 5-6].

Reconstruction a lot like the war itself — almost existential, he says.

We fought the war because we were in Iraq to fight the war.

We ran projects because we had money for projects [Chapter “Midcourse correction,” p. 149].

Burning billions

“What the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) called a ‘legacy of waste’ in an August 2010 report included —

A $40 million prison that was never opened,

A $104 million failed sewer system in Fallujah,

A $171 million hospital in southern Iraq (that Laura Bush ‘opened’ in 2004 but that still has never seen a patient), and

More totaling $5 billion

“Audits resulted in the restitution of only $70 million worth of embezzled funds, practically a rounding error, given the $63 billion spent overall on reconstruction” [Chapter “Everyone was looking the other way,” p. 214].

Vatican-size Emerald City U.S. Embassy

“The World’s Biggest Embassy” sits on “104 acres with twenty-two buildings, thousands of staff members, and a $116 million vehicle inventory.” Physically, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq was “larger than the Vatican” — a sign, Van Buren says, “of our commitment, at least our commitment to excess.

Vice President Biden
U.S. Embassy
Baghdad

“‘Along with the Great Wall of China,’” he quotes the U.S. Ambassador, “‘it’s one of those things you can see with the naked eye from outer space.’

“The new Embassy compound isolated American leadership at first physically and soon mentally as well. It generated its own electricity, purified its own water from the nearby Tigris, and processed its won sewage, hermetically sealed off from Iraq.

Vice President Biden
U.S. Embassy
Baghdad

“In the process of deposing Saddam, we [the United States Government] placed our new seat of power right on top of his [Saddam Hussein’s] old one…. Saddam’s old palaces in the Green Zone were repurposed as offices; Saddam’s old jails became our new jails. …The place you went to visit political prisoners who opposed Saddam [had become] the place you went to look for relatives who opposed the Americans [Chapter “The Embassy laws, where the grass is always greener,”154-155].

Notes and sources

We meant well: How I helped lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people Peter Van Buren. New York: Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company, 2011

TERMS:

ePRT: embedded Provisional Reconstruction Team

FOB: Forward Operating Base

SIGIR: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction

FSO: Foreign Service Officer

Author Peter Van Buren at the time of the book’s publication had served with the

U.S. Foreign Service for more than 23 years. The book jacket notes say, Peter Van Buren has served overseas as a State Department Foreign Service Officer for more than two decades in places such as Thailand, Japan, and Iraq, among other places.

BRITANNICA NOTES
1990-2011
Bush dynasty through Barack Obama

Occupied Persian Gulf

Persian Gulf War (1990–91)

The international conflict that was triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990.

Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the apparent aim of acquiring that nation’s large oil reserves, canceling a large debt Iraq owed Kuwait, and expanding Iraqi power in the region.

On August 3, the United Nations Security Council called for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait; on August 6, the council imposed a worldwide ban on trade with Iraq. (The Iraqi government responded by formally annexing Kuwait on August 8)

Occupied Kuwait

Iraq’s invasion and the potential threat it then posed to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer and exporter, prompted the United States and its western European NATO allies to rush troops to Saudi Arabia to deter a possible attack. Egypt and several other Arab nations joined the anti-Iraq coalition and contributed forces to the military buildup, known as Operation Desert Shield. Iraq meanwhile built up its occupying army in Kuwait to about 300,000 troops.

The Persian Gulf War began on January 16–17, 1991, with a massive U.S.-led air offensive against Iraq that continued throughout the war. Over the next few weeks, this sustained aerial bombardment, named Operation Desert Storm, destroyed Iraq’s air defenses before attacking its communications networks, government buildings, weapons plants, oil refineries, and bridges and roads. By mid February, the allies had shifted their air attacks to Iraq’s forward ground forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq, destroying their fortifications and tanks.

Operation Desert Saber, a massive allied ground offensive, was launched northward from northeastern Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and southern Iraq on February 24; and within three days, Arab and U.S. forces had retaken Kuwait city in the face of crumbling Iraqi resistance.

Meanwhile, the main U.S. armored thrust drove into Iraq some 120 miles (200 km) west of Kuwait and attacked Iraq’s armored reserves from the rear. By February 27, these forces had destroyed most of Iraq’s elite Republican Guard units after the latter had tried to make a stand south of Al-Baṣrah in southeastern Iraq. By the time that U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire for February 28, Iraqi resistance had completely collapsed.

Occupied Iraq

No official figures for Iraqi military operation

Estimates of the number of Iraqi troops in the Kuwait theatre range from 180,000 to 630,000; estimates of Iraqi military deaths range from 8,000 to 100,000.

By contrast, the allies lost about 300 troops in the conflict.

Sanctions

The terms of the peace were, inter alia [among other things], that Iraq [should] recognize Kuwait’s sovereignty and divest itself of all weapons of mass destruction (i.e., nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons) and all missiles with ranges exceeding 90 miles (150 km). Pending complete compliance, economic sanctions would continue.

Post-U.S.-led Gulf War on Iraq

[KURDS: Estimated to be the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East after Arabs, Turks, and Persians, important Kurdish minorities are in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, and Iraq’s Kurds are concentrated in the relatively inaccessible mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, which is roughly contiguous with Kurdish regions in those other countries. Kurds constitute a separate and distinctive cultural group. They are mostly Sunni Muslims who speak one of two dialects of the Kurdish language, an Indo-European language closely related to Modern Persian.]

No-fly action

Kurds in the north of the country and Shīites in the south rose in a rebellion that was suppressed by Saddam with great brutality.

The United States and Britain then prohibited Iraqi aircraft from operating in designated ‘no-fly’ zones over the areas in conflict. Other allies gradually left the coalition but U.S. and British aircraft continued to patrol Iraqi skies and UN inspectors sought to guarantee that all illicit weapons were destroyed.

Operation Desert Fox and no-fly zones

Iraq’s failure to cooperate with inspectors led in 1998 to a brief resumption of hostilities (Operation Desert Fox). Iraq thereafter refused to readmit inspectors into the country, and regular exchanges of fire between Iraqi forces and U.S. and British aircraft over the no-fly zones continued into the 21st century.

Rising U.S./UK aggression

In 2002, the United States sponsored a new UN resolution calling for the return of weapons inspectors, who then reentered Iraq in November.

Member states of the UN Security Council differed in their opinion of the degree to which Iraq had cooperated with inspections.

2003 U.S./UK re-invasion of Iraq, “The Iraq War”

The United States and the United Kingdom had previously begun to mass troops on Iraq’s border. On March 17, 2003, the U.S. and UK dispensed with further negotiations.

[Pattern similar to that used this year by the U.S. and UK before invading Libya]

U.S. President George W. Bush — seeking no further UN endorsement — issued an ultimatum demanding that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein step down from power and leave Iraq within 48 hours or face war.

President George W. Bush even suggested that if the Iraqi leader did leave Iraq, U.S. forces might still be necessary to stabilize the region and to hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

When Saddam Hussein refused to leave, the Untied States and allied forces launched an attack on Iraq on March 20 and thus began what became known as the Iraq War.

U.S. PRESIDENTS’ 21 years of United States INVASIONS, OTHER AGGRESSION, OCCUPATION of IRAQ and Persian Gulf

41st George H.W. Bush 1989–93

42nd William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton [William Jefferson Clinton, original name: William Jefferson Blythe III] 1993–2001

43rd George W. Bush 2001–09

44th Barack Obama 2009–

____________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
____________________

Good people melting ‘democracy’ glacier — Arundhati Roy

2011-12-18T16:33:00.000-05:00

Siachen Glacier
source for part of
Indus River System

Sidebar remembrance

“I really do inhabit a system in which words are

capable of shaking the entire structure of government

where words
can prove mightier

than ten military divisions”

[VÁCLAV HAVEL, 1936-2011]

Good People's Melting-Glacier Democracy — Arundhati Roy

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

“…What happens once democracy has been used up,” Arundhati Roy asks — when it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous — ‘Democracy’ [fused with] the free market into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit?

“… Can governments whose very survival depends on immediate, extractive, short-term gain provide what we need today, for the sake of the survival of this planet: long-term vision?”

Will democracy — “the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams — turn out to be the endgame for the human race?”

“…Perhaps the story of the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, is the most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times.

“Thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been deployed there, enduring chill winds and temperatures that dip to minus 40 degrees Celsius. Of the hundreds who have died there, many have died just from the elements.

Wars, Geopolitical Conflict zones
Indus River Basin
India, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China

“The glacier has become a garbage dump, littered with the detritus of war — thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice axes, old boots, tents, and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings generate. The garbage remains intact, perfectly preserved at those icy temperatures, a pristine monument to human folly.

“While the Indian and Pakistani governments spend billions of dollars on weapons and the logistics of high-altitude warfare, the battlefield has begun to melt.

“… It has shrunk to about half its size. The melting has less to do with the military standoff than with people far away, on the other side of the world, living the good life.

They are good people who believe in peace, free speech, and in human rights.

They live in thriving democracies whose governments sit on the UN Security Council and whose economies depend heavily on the export of war and the sale of weapons to countries like India and Pakistan (and Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, the Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan … the list is long).

“The glacial melt will cause severe floods on the subcontinent, and eventually severe drought that will affect the lives of millions of people. That will give us even more reasons to fight. We will need more weapons. Who knows? That sort of consumer confidence may be just what the world needs to get over the current recession.

“Then everyone in the thriving democracies will have an even better life — and the glaciers will melt even faster.”

Sources and notes

“What have we done to democracy?” (Arundhati Roy, September 28, 2009, at Third World Traveler, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Arundhati_Roy/WhatHaveWeDoneDemocracy.html

India-born Arundhati Roy is an author and lecturer. Among her books are Listening to Grasshoppers: Fields Notes on Democracy and An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

Siachen Glacier: One of the world’s longest mountain glaciers lying in the Karakoram Range system of Kashmir near the India–Pakistan border, extending for 44 miles (70 kilometers) from north-northwest to south-southeast. It has a number of fast-flowing surface streams and at least 12 medial moraines. It is the source for the 50-mile-long Nubra River, a tributary of the Shyok, which is part of the Indus River system.

The United Nations Security Council is composed of five permanent members: China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States

The current ten non-permanent members (with year of term's end) are:

Austria (2010), Japan (2010), Turkey (2010), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2011), Lebanon (2011) Uganda (2010), Brazil (2011) Mexico (2010), Gabon (2011) Nigeria (2011)

Britannica images (Siachen Glacier)

Photo: The upper Indus River, between Skārdu and the confluence with the Gilgit River, northern Pakistan, Jaroslav Poncar/Bruce Coleman, Ltd.

Map: The Indus River basin and its drainage network, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

News Notes:

VÁCLAV HAVEL DIED TODAY

Czech Republic

Havel (b. October 5, 1936, in Prague) was a writer and dramatist; one of the first Spokesmen for Charter 77, a leading Figure of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the previous President of Czechoslovakia, the first president of the Czech Republic.

Václav Havel grew up in a well-known entrepreneurial and intellectual family closely linked to the cultural and political events in Czechoslovakia from the 1920’s to the 1940’s.

The intellectual tradition of his family compelled Václav Havel to pursue the humanitarian values of Czech culture, which were harshly suppressed in the 1950’s. Following his return from two years of military service, he worked as a stage technician — first at Divadlo ABC, and then, in 1960, at Divadlo Na zabradli. From 1962 until 1966, he studied Drama by correspondence at the Faculty of Theatre of the Academy of Musical Arts, and completed his studies with a commentary on the play ‘Eduard,’ which became the basis of his own ‘The Increased Difficulty of Concentration.’

Because of political links, the communists did not allow Havel to study formally after having completed required schooling in 1951. In the first part of the 1950's, a young Václav Havel entered into a four-year apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory assistant and simultaneously took evening classes to complete his secondary education (which he did in 1954). For political reasons he was not accepted into any post-secondary school with a humanities program; therefore, he opted to study at the Faculty of Economics of Czech Technical University. He left this program after two years. http://vaclavhavel.cz/index.php?sec=1&id=1&setln=2

Quote attributed to VÁCLAV HAVEL, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/vaclav_havel.html#ixzz1gvFSymbm

Anti-WAR PROTESTS in LONDON TODAY

_____________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
_____________________________

Washington's WARS far from over

2011-12-17T20:52:00.000-05:00

Brits Sunday Dec 18
Protest
West's attack on Iran

Continuing carnage in Middle East
This week's protests, commentary on lies

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

U.S. in Iraq

“Fifty-seven (57) percent of all Iraqis lived in slums,” Van Buren cites a 2009 UN report. “In the worst areas, such as Maysan and Diyala, more than 80 percent lived in slums.”

IRAQ

Before the 2003 U.S. invasion, “the average number of slum dwellers in Iraq was 20 percent.”

The foreign service officer wrote, “After years of seeking a military solution, followed by years of building ineffective privies through our embedded (with military) Provisional Reconstruction Teams (abbreviated ePRTs), we [the U.S.] simply declared victory and started to pack up.

Van Buren said one of the sheiks commented that the U.S. “‘dug a deep hole in 2003 and now are walking away leaving it empty.’ America sneezed and Iraq caught the cold.”

Van Buren seems to excuse the inexcusable not only with his book title “We meant well”; but he concludes, “Hubris stalked us; we suffered from arrogance and we embraced ignorance.… [W]e lacked the courage to be responsible. It was almost as if a new word were needed, disresponsible, a step beyond irresponsible, meaning you should have been the one to take responsibility but shucked it off.”

This week as the Nobel laureate president claimed, “mission accomplished,” many reports and commentators assessed the continuing carnage.

Iraqis protest U.S. wall

IRAQ

Women suffer most

The President of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, Yanar Mohammed, said Friday on the Democracy Now program, “Iraqi cities are now much more destroyed than they were” before the U.S. invasion and years of foreign occupation. “All the major buildings are still destroyed. If you drive in the streets of the capital, your car cannot survive more than one month, because all the streets are still broken. There was no reconstruction for the buildings, for the cities.”

Because of the policies that were imposed in Iraq, Yanar Mohammed said, “we have turned into a society of 99 percent poor and 1 percent rich.… Destruction is everywhere. Poverty is for all the people except the 1 percent who live inside the Green Zone.”

More than one million women have been widowed, some reports give higher figures. “These widows try to survive on a salary of $150” but, because of internal displacement, most widows “cannot get this salary.” Yet the 1 percent of Iraqis living in the Green Zone — where there was a loss $40 billion from the annual budget — “drowns in a sea of money.” After nine years, she said, “we have the most corrupt government in the world and nobody is accountable for it.

“We are divided into a society of Shias, who are ruling, and Sunnis, who want to get divided from the country of Iraq. We are now on the verge of the division of country according to religions and ethnicities; it has already happened.

The biggest losers are the women. “Poverty and discrimination against women has become the norm.” Under the new constitution “are articles referring to the Islamic Sharīah according to which “women are worth half a man legally and one-quarter of a man socially in a marriage.”

Her organization, the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, she says, meets women daily “who are vulnerable to being bought and sold in the flesh market.”

Iraqis, she said, “are living in a huge military camp in which a million Iraqi men are recruited into the army.” In addition, there are “almost 50,000 militia members.”

Irrevocable Malevolence

Refugees
UNHCR image

In an article republished at Press TV, Chris Floyd (author of Empire Burlesque) observes much more forcefully that the U.S. president, in claiming an end to the war on Iraq, uttered not a single word “about the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of Iraqis killed by this ‘fulfilled mission,’ this ‘extraordinary achievement,’ this ‘success.’

“These human beings — these sons and daughters, fathers, mothers, kinfolk, lovers, friends — cannot be acknowledged; they cannot be perceived. It must be as if they had never existed. It must be as if they are not dead now.

U.S. in Iraq

“This divorce from reality is beyond description. It is the all-pervasiveness of the disassociation that obscures its utter, its obvious insanity. There is something intensely primitive and infantile in the reductive, navel-gazing, self-blinding monomania of the U.S. psyche today.…

“The Iraq War has not ended. Not for the dead, not for their survivors, not for the displaced, the maimed, the lost, the suffering, not for all of us who live in the degraded, destabilized, impoverished world it has spawned, and not for the future generations who will live with the ever-widening, ever-deepening consequences of this irrevocable malevolence.”

Carnage over there, simultaneously over here

USA

Local U.S. municipalities bankrupt

Federal shutdown 3

School closings

Institute for Policy Studies vice chair Saul Landau spoke in interview this week about U.S. breakdown and Americans’ denial.

“There is a level of denial in the ruling group of Americans, the political class and Congress and in the administration,” Landau said. “They are denying climate change. They are denying the extent to which the economy has tanked and really is close to going under in certain places, or indeed, has gone under; and they continue to equate the Republic, which is in terrible shape. We see empire: look at the defense budget that passed, $700 billion not counting the money that goes for various wars, for nuclear weapons, for the CIA, all of that adds up to almost a trillion dollars.”

Military tactics
USA

Money goes for a new fighter plane nobody wants and absolutely nobody thinks is necessary — all the while U.S. schools are closing, people have no access to health care, the cushion people used to be able to fall back on has diminished, for the really poor it no longer exists and they are falling onto hard concrete.

“The system is collapsing,” he said, “and government officials and those running for office are not facing it. … They want to cut, but not the military — a military power greater than any in the world — because the military stands for the empire.”

Landau says, “There is a disconnect, [and] we have now found a new enemy, Iran. All of a sudden Iran is going to be the bane of the new cold war, which is totally ridiculous.”

IRAN

British activists call for end to hostility, provocation against Iran

Today protesters dressed in white gather at the Bank of Ideas next to Finsbury Square, make banners, share ideas in preparation for tomorrow’s protests.

On Sunday, Britain’s peace activists will hold a peace march in protest of ‘the British Government’s aggressive, illegal, and dangerous policy toward Iran.’ The anti-war protesters will also protest against ‘the unjust war in Afghanistan, which is at its bloodiest after ten years.’

“The protesters declared that the British government’s involvement in wars around the world is ‘only in the interest of the 1 percent — a government cabinet of millionaires and their friends in the oil and arms companies.’”

Announcing protest plans was Britain’s most prominent campaigner against unjust wars, the Stop the War Coalition.

Oil Rig - Iran

From Tehran, the Director of the Iranian Armed Forces Center for Strategic Studies, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, has restated Tehran’s view of a dangerous Western hypocrisy: that “the West and the U.S. are the founders and sponsors of terrorism in the world and use terror tactics against their opponents.”

The U.S. is using the imposition of sanctions on Iranian military commanders as a means of exerting “psychological pressure and for propaganda purposes.”

Iran, Iraq
Afghanistan, Pakistan
Saudi Arabia

The officer was referring to recent sanctions imposed on Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi and Deputy Commander of the Ground Forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Abdullah Araqi.

Press TV today is reporting Shamkhani saying, “‘Given that both commander Firouzabadi and Araqi on the list of [individuals targeted by] U.S. sanctions, such a measure (imposing a ban) is questionable.’” Criticizing Western double standards regarding terrorism, he said, “‘Some Western countries, which promote terrorism and sponsor assassination, accuse other countries and their officials of terrorism.’

“As signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the IAEA,” the news article reports, “Tehran has stood by its right to develop and acquire nuclear technology meant for peaceful purposes.”

Continuing to terrorize Afghanistan and Pakistan

Afghan woman's body

AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN

AFGHANISTAN

A pregnant Afghan woman died and four other women suffered wounds today when U.S. forces raided a house in Afghanistan’s southeastern Paktia Province.

Two sons of the director of the counter-narcotics department of Paktia Province, Hasibullah Ahmadzai, were reportedly detained during the raid.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of eradicating Taliban militants. Since the invasion countless civilians have died or been injured. The security situation remains fragile in Afghanistan despite (or because of) the presence of nearly 150,000 U.S.-led foreign forces.

bombed minibus Afghanistan

The slaughter of civilians has caused deep anger among Afghans and prompted violent demonstrations throughout the country.

Yesterday in Kabul, a police station came under attack. A bomber blew himself up at a police station in Kotai Sangi area. In a second incident, a group of armed militants broke into police headquarters and detonated an explosive.

On Thursday, at least two Afghan soldiers died and two others were wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s northwestern province of Badghis.

Also on Thursday at least four civilians died and eight others were injured when a roadside bomb exploded in Afghanistan’s western province of Farah. A minibus came upon the explosive device on a road in the Malai area of Pur Chaman district in the province.

On Wednesday a roadside bomb had killed an anti-Taliban district governor and two of his bodyguards in the southern Helmand Province.

Roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices are reportedly the most lethal weapons Taliban militants have used against foreign troops, Afghan forces, and civilians.

PAKISTAN

Demanding end to assassination drones, breach of sovereignty

On Thursday at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, Pakistani officials reportedly made a presentation about the November 26 NATO cross border attacks that left Pakistani officers dead.

Senior Pakistani officials showed relevant material that they said could prove what happened in NATO’s deadly assault on a pair of Pakistan’s army border outposts at the Afghan border was no mistake.

“The evidence presented to international journalists also showed that the shooting by helicopter gunships continued for an hour after NATO forces told Pakistani officials at the posts that it would stop.”

Acting Pakistani envoy Iffat Imran Gardezi said, “‘We want to offer our view of the incident as we see it.’”

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Islamabad will continue blocking of NATO convoys.

Meeting on Friday with the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said that the United States had to guarantee that it would commit no more breaches of the country’s borders in the future.

The United States, Gilani said, “must respect Pakistan’s red lines as well as the Central Asian nation’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Pakistan has closed the border crossings the Western military alliance uses to send fuel and other supplies to the U.S.-led forces in landlocked Afghanistan. Around 40 percent of the non-lethal supplies travel across the Pakistani soil.

On Thursday in the eastern city of Lahore, hundreds of Pakistanis took to the streets to voice their anger over the NATO cross-border airstrikes that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers in that late November attack. NATO helicopters and fighter jets on November 26 attacked two military border posts in northwest Pakistan and killed 24 Pakistani troops.

Protesters continued their chants of anti-U.S. slogans. They burned NATO in effigy and lit candles to mourn for Pakistani soldiers who died in the attack.

DRONES

Britain interrogated on collusion

In the face of many reports indicating that UK intelligence has assisted U.S. CIA with providing locations of alleged militants later targeted by U.S. drones, law firm Leigh Day and Co, acting on behalf of Noor Khan, have called on British Foreign Secretary William Hague “to clarify the role of the British intelligence in CIA drone attacks.… Reveal how British intelligence has assisted America’s ‘targeted killing’ campaign in Pakistan.”

Together with the killing of hundreds of Pakistani civilians, among the dead was Noor Kahn’s father. He was a victim of U.S. drone strikes in northwest Pakistan.

“‘Unless it is categorically denied that the UK continues to pass such information to the U.S. government forces,’” said the head of the law firm’s human rights department, “‘we require a clear policy statement of the arrangements which are in place and circumstances in which the UK considers it to be lawful to do so.’”

AFRICA

Libya- War crime?

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, says there are serious suspicions that the death of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi may be a war crime.

On October 20, eight months into the revolution that put an end to his 42-year-long rule, “Revolutionary fighters found Muammar Qaddafi hiding inside a concrete sewage pipe in his hometown of Sirte.” Videos taken at the time show the Libyan leader injured but alive and surrounded by a frenzied crowd. “He is hustled through revolutionaries and beaten to the ground on several occasions.” Qaddafi “then disappears in the crush and the crackle of gunfire.”

On October 25, Qaddafi and his slain son, Mu’tassim, are buried in a secret location in the North African country.

Somalia hospital
Displaced people

SOMALIA

Hardest hit in worst drought in the Horn of Africa in six decades.

This week in a 12-hour period, 50 children died in refugee camps between Mogadishu and Afgoye. Cholera and malaria had broken out in the camps of this famine-stricken country where there are insufficient medicines to help those stricken with diseases. Close to 580 children went to hospitals.

Drought and famine have affected millions of people across Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. United Nations reports say a quarter of Somalia’s 9.9 million people are either internally displaced or living outside the country as refugees.

Reports have shown that the Somali people have also come under attack by U. S. drones.

Cairo October

EGYPT

Protests against army persist

Yesterday in Cairo two people died in Egyptian army rulers’ crack down on protesters who are demanding an end to military rule in the country. Close to a hundred people were injured.

Los Angeles immigrants

Activists told reporters that the clashes originally erupted on Thursday evening after the police beat up a young man participating in a sit-in protest outside the cabinet building.

YEMEN

Egyptian protesters accuse the military junta of carrying on with practices used by the former ruler, Hosni Mubarak. They are calling for his successor, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, to hand over power to a civilian government.

BAHRAIN

Protests and military-style crackdowns also continued this week in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and in the United States.

Persistent casualties of persistent war

“Despite the conventions of modern warfare that forbid armies to target civilians,” Ann Jones writes of the unhealthiness of war, it is civilians who die in far greater numbers than soldiers.

“The more high-tech the army, the more sophisticated its weaponry, the safer the soldiers; but that shield does not extend to civilians.

“In fact, in many conflicts today, ruthless leaders use an effective strategy to destroy the civil society and culture of the enemy: a deliberate but unacknowledged war against women.”

Sources and notes

IRAQ

We meant well: How I helped lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people

Peter Van Buren. New York: Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company, 2011, pp. 253-254

“Iraqi Women’s Activist Rebuffs U.S. Claims of a Freer Iraq: ‘This is not a Democratic Country,’” December 16, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/16/iraqi_womens_activist_rebuffs_us_claims

Sharīah (also spelled sharia): the fundamental religious concept of Islam, namely its law, systematized during the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Muslim era (8th–9th centuries AD).

“The Costs of War: Tens of Thousands Dead, Billions Spent, and a Country Torn Apart,” December 16, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/16/iraqi_womens_activist_rebuffs_us_claims

“War without end, amen: the reality of America’s aggression against Iraq” (Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque, December 17, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/216254.html

Further excerpt from Chris Floyd’s article

“In March 2003, the United States of America launched an entirely unprovoked act of military aggression against a nation that had not attacked it and posed no threat to it.

“This act led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It drove millions more from their homes, and plunged the entire conquered nation into suffering, fear, hatred and deprivation.

“This is the reality of what actually happened in Iraq: aggression, slaughter, atrocity, ruin. It is the only reality; there is no other. Moreover, it was done deliberately, knowingly, willingly.

“Indeed, the bipartisan American power structure spent more than $1 trillion to make it happen. It is a record of unspeakable savagery, an abomination, an outpouring of the most profound and filthy moral evil.

“Line up the bodies of the children, the thousands of children — the infants, the toddlers, the school kids — whose bodies were torn to pieces, burned alive or riddled with bullets during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Line them up in the desert sand, walk past them, mile after mile, all those twisted corpses, those scraps of torn flesh and seeping viscera, those blank faces, those staring eyes fixed forever on nothingness.

“This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; there is no other reality. …You cannot make it otherwise. It has already happened. It always will have happened. You can of course ignore it. This is the path chosen by the overwhelming majority of Americans, and by the entirety of the bipartisan elite. This involves a pathological degree of disassociation from reality.”

CHRIS FLOYD

Chris Floyd is an U.S. journalist whose work has appeared in print and online in sources including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium; and co-founder and editor of the ‘Empire Burlesque’ political blog.

“War Without End, Amen: The Reality of America’s Aggression Against Iraq” (Chris Floyd), Friday, December 16, 2011, http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/frontpage

“Divide widening between US rich, poor — The ‘incredibly unequal top-down distribution of wealth’ in the U.S. has formed an elite group who controls most aspects of the country’s affluence, according to analysts,” December 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216090.html

Saul Landau is an internationally known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker on foreign and domestic policy issues. In 2008, the Chilean government presented him with the Bernardo O’Higgins Award for his human rights work. Landau has written fourteen books. He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona and a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies, http://saullandau.com/

IRAN

“UK protesters urge policy shift on Iran,” December 17, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216215.html

“‘U.S. uses sanctions as psywar tactic,’” December 17, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216244.html

AFGHANISTAN

“U.S. forces kill pregnant Afghan woman, December 17, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216210.html

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216170.html

“Police station bombed in Afghan capital,” December 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216066.html

“Bomb blast kills 2 Afghan soldiers,” December 15, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/215858.html

“Roadside bomb kills 4 Afghan civilians,” December 15, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/215850.html

PAKISTAN

“Pakistan: NATO raids were deliberate” (citing Christian Science Monitor reporting), December 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/215958.html

“Pakistan: U.S. must heed our red lines,” December 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216099.html

“Pakistanis protest deadly NATO attacks,” December 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/215973.html

http://www.presstv.ir/section/351020401.html

DRONES

“Britain questioned over CIA drone strike” [“‘CIA drone strikes are killing hundreds - if not thousands - of civilians and destabilizing Pakistan’”], December 17, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216274.html

AFRICA

LIBYA

“Qaddafi killing could be war crime: ICC,” December 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/215990.html

SOMALIA

“Diseases kill 50 more Somali children,” December 15, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/215815.html

EGYPT

“Two protesters killed in Cairo violence,” December 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/216089.html

Jones, Ann

War is not over when it’s over: women speak out from the ruins of war, Ann Jones, New York: Metropolitan books, 2010, p. 7

______________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

U.S. lawmaker challenges deepening BREAKDOWN

2011-12-15T16:43:00.000-05:00

Human Rights Day
December 10, 1950
Eleanor Roosevelt (left)
Marian Anderson (right)

U.S. global war on terror continues in violation of law, human rights

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Brennan Center on
Counter-terrorism law

Three years ago, the

Brennan Center was looking toward a new and corrective era and they wrote this. The U.S. President “has asserted that he is above our laws and has simply flouted those with which he disagreed. … He has subjected American citizens to warrantless wiretapping in violation of our law and Constitution and has cast aside the Geneva Conventions. This pattern of ignoring the law must end with the next President. For this to occur, we must first understand how it came about.

“On the eve of a new Administration, many voices are calling for an accounting of the abuses that have been documented in the course of the ‘war on terror,’ while others suggest that the election of a new President ushers in a new era in which we do not need to look back.

“A critical issue of our time is how the rule of law and the requirements of our Constitution should inform our response to the ‘terrorist’ threat we face at home and abroad. To answer this question, we must understand what our response has been and the successes and failures of our policies.”

A year earlier, on Human Rights Day, then-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, wrote this. “In today’s growing divisions between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the vulnerable, the technologically advanced and the illiterate, the aggressors and the victims, the relevance of the Declaration of Human Rights and the universality of the enshrined rights need to be loudly reaffirmed.”

Eleanor Roosevelt with
Universal Declaration of
Human Rights
1948

“The Universal Declaration and its core values — inherent human dignity, justice, non-discrimination, equality, fairness and universality — apply to everyone, everywhere, always.”

Despite laws domestic and global and despite their clear articulation, super-powered lawlessness continued and spread far and wide.

Virus of lawlessness, human rights abuse

U.S. “global war on terror”

In 2009 the New Internationalist Magazine reported, “While many state agencies torture and kill people who stand in their way, these agencies now increasingly use counterterrorism as a justification.

“With the United States, the world’s remaining superpower, rebranding torture (which is absolutely prohibited under international law) as a form of interrogation, and holding suspects without trial for years or hauling them before unfair military commissions, human rights have taken a beating.”

Hotspots conveniently U.S.-allied committing rights violations, the New Internationalist reports attributing 2009 human rights organization data:

Afghanistan
Pakistan

Afghanistan: arbitrary arrests, detentions and torture by intelligence agents; NATO and U.S. forces have handed over detainees to them. Confessions made under torture are permissible in court. Prisoners held in U.S.-run Bagram facility have no legal representation whatsoever.

Pakistan: Inter-Services Intelligence agency responsible for numerous ‘disappearances’ with the Government admitting to 1,102 people disappeared in Baluchistan province alone. The problem was exacerbated by bounty offered by the CIA for terror suspects. CIA-sanctioned drones targeted to blow up terrorists have caused many civilian casualties both in Pakistan and

Afghanistan.

Africa
South Asia's
Gulf States

Algeria: torture, prolonged secret detention without trial, prison beatings and unfair trials with courts accepting ‘confessions’ as evidence are the norm for terrorist suspects; Hundreds on death row on terror charges. Security forces given legal immunity against charges of human rights abuses.

Egypt: widespread torture by State Security Investigation officials and police; trials by military courts; 1,500 people detained without charge according to official figures: 10,000 according to other sources. Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. aid.

Iraq: in 2008, U.S. forces held 15,500 people (despite the release of 13,000 earlier that year) without charge or trial for security purposes, and the Iraqi authorities held at least 26,000.

Israel: hundreds of Palestinians (including children) detained in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, many held incommunicado for long periods. Most released without charge but trials are held before military courts. Also uses aerial drones, which have killed civilians.

Jordan: thousands held under suspicion of being ‘a danger to society’

Morocco/Western Sahara: over 1,000 Islamist suspects held since 2006; torture is routine; Legacy of enforced disappearances.

Saudi Arabia: barbaric punishments for vague ‘offences’; 2,000 detained in secrecy on security grounds; United States and Britain praise and promise to learn from a Saudi ‘re-education’ program that keeps suspects detained without charge or trial.

Syria: arbitrary and incommunicado detention widespread for people suspected of the slightest involvement in terrorist activity. Some 17,000 disappeared people, mainly Islamists, remain untraced.

A few within U.S. government challenged this impunity in lawlessness.

New Internationalist Magazine image

Yesterday, U.S. Representative Alcee Hastings reminded the Congress of the United States that what throwing billions at counterterrorism has accomplished in the past decade is a deepening breach of legal and human rights protections under domestic and international laws.

“We tell the American public that we are fighting overseas in order to protect our freedoms,” Congressman Hastings said, “but we pass legislation that undermines those very same freedoms here at home.

“We tell the rest of the world to emulate our democratic traditions and our rule of law, but we disregard those values in a mad rush to find out who can pretend to be the toughest on terrorism.

“We will not defeat terrorism by using the military to lock up innocent people for the rest of their lives on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing.

We will not defeat terrorism by claiming the entire world as a battlefield.

“We will not defeat terrorism by replacing our rule of law with reckless, uncontrolled, and unaccountable powers.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died and many more have been wounded in two U.S. wars, Hastings recalled, and he U.S. has engaged in military action in numerous other countries since September 11, 2001. The United States has “spent more than a trillion dollars. Osama bin Laden is dead, and Obama administration officials have declared that al-Qaeda is ‘operationally ineffective.’”

The United States should therefore “take this opportunity, this moment in our history,” he challenged, “to seriously and carefully deliberate our nation’s counterterrorism efforts.

“We ought to consider which polices are effective and which, in the end, only create more anti-American sentiment.

“We ought to consider which policies align with our national values and which undermine them.

“We ought to consider whether we should continue using the full thrust of United States Armed Forces in country after country or whether a more nuanced approach might better serve our needs.

“…The legislation before us [The National Defense Authorization Act] does not attempt to answer these questions.…

It commits us to drive even further down the road of fear.
It commits us to more war and more wasteful spending.
It commits us to ceding our freedoms and liberties on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing.

“The legislation establishes an authority for open-ended war anywhere in the world, and against anyone.

“It commits us to seeing a ‘terrorist’ in anyone whoever criticizes the United States in any country, including this one.

“The lack of definitions as to what constitutes ‘substantial support’ and ‘associated forces’ of al-Qaeda and the Taliban mean that anyone could be accused of terrorism.

“While this measure includes an exemption for U.S. citizens, it does not protect them from indefinite detention. In one fell swoop, we have set up a situation where American citizens could have their 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th amendment rights violated on mere suspicions. This legislation goes too far.…

“We spend billions of dollars every year on counterterrorism, but we weaken those efforts by tossing aside our own system of justice.”

Sources and notes

http://www.brennancenter.org/page/-/pull%20quotes/investigating.pull.2.png

Statement by High Commissioner Louise Arbour on the occasion of Human Rights Day December 10, 2007

New Internationalist Magazine

http://www.newint.org/features/2009/11/01/427-08-war-on-terror.jpg

http://www.newint.org/features/2009/11/01/world-of-counterterrorism/

Congressman Alcee L. Hastings serves as Senior Member of the House Rules Committee, Ranking Democratic Member of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, and Democratic Chairman of the Florida Delegation.

“Hastings Blasts Passage of National Defense Authorization Act — (Washington, D.C.), Today, Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-Miramar) made the following statement blasting the passage of the Conference Report for H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. The measure passed the House by a vote of 283-136” — December 14, 2011, http://www.alceehastings.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1039:december-14-2011-hastings-blasts-passage-of-national-defense-authorization-act&catid=72:2011-press-releases&Itemid=

Congressman Alcee Hastings

U.S. Representative Alcee Lamar Hastings has been a member of the U.S. Congress since 1993. Before entering the Congress, he was a United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida (1979-1989), a judge of the circuit court of Broward County, Florida (1977-1979), and a lawyer in private practice.

Representative Hastings took his academic credentials at Howard University School of Law (Washington, D.C.) and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (Tallahassee, Florida (1963)) Juris Doctor; Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee) Baccalaureate. Hastings was born September 5, 1936 in Altamonte Springs, Seminole County, Florida.

__________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
_________________________

High-placed killer among us boasts

2011-12-14T13:46:00.000-05:00

Portrait of Peace Laureate whose role no one should model

Excerpt from Stop the War Coalition, re-reporting, comment by

Carolyn Bennett

“In comments that were surprisingly bellicose even for the current political environment, President Barack Obama bragged loudly about the number of people he’s killed, urging hawks who don’t think he’s hawkish enough to ‘ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field.’

U. S. 2012
presidential crew

“He could’ve also advised them to ask thousands of Pakistanis, Afghans and Iraqis as well, or the family of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen he assassinated earlier this year, but the point was already made: an Obama Administration kills lots of people, and they’re pretty sure that’s what voters are in the market for.

“Moving beyond that, Obama went on to more familiar hawkish territory, trotting out his usual ‘all options are on the table’ threat against Iran, comments which appear timed to resonate through the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference, which itself centered on potential Obama foes bragging about how quickly and on how little pretext they’d attack Iran.

“‘Today Iran is isolated and the world is united in applying the toughest sanctions that Iran has ever experienced,’ added Obama, saying his administration had done more to unite the world against Iran than the Bush Administration had.

Unconscionable role to model

ECHO

“‘Peace’ president Obama brags about how many people he's killed”

December 9, 2011 (Jason Ditz USA and the War on Terror … Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is waging war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Uganda and bragging about starting another in Iran), http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/peace-president-obama-brags-about-how-many-people-hes-killed

My count of countries in this entrenched U.S. global war is even higher and I don’t think my count comes close to the real total.

The United States is at WAR with the world’s peoples and their countries —

Arming and bankrolling to create domestic and regional pressure • assassination with impunity • direct aggression • direct/indirect threat/intimidation • displacement/destabilization • economic/financial sanctions • failing nations • failure to negotiate with words or nonviolent diplomacy • provocation/incitement to protracted violence • occupation • unlawful search and detention • torture…

1. Afghanistan	2. Bahrain
3. Cuba	4. Djibouti
5. Eritrea	6. Ethiopia
7. Haiti	8. Honduras
9. Iran	10. Iraq
11. Japan (Okinawa)	12. Kenya
13. Libya	14. Mexico
15. Nigeria	16. North Korea
17. Pakistan	18. Palestine
19. Russia	20. Saudi Arabia
21. Somalia	22. South Korea
Syria	24. Turkey
25. Uganda [dominoes The Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of the Congo (*Kinshasa*)]	26. Yemen

_____________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
_____________________________

Dem/Repub One-Party colluding against public interest

2011-12-13T23:42:00.002-05:00

BREAKDOWN

Rocky Anderson

Notes from today’s Democracy Now interview with Justice Party-USA presidential candidate Rocky Anderson

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

one party corrupting, corruptible

Sides against public interest

The Republican-Democratic regime “through its collusion has brought this country to its knees economically,” Rocky Anderson said today on the Democracy Now program. Without the Democrats colluding with the Republicans, we would not have engaged in an illegal, aggressive war against Iraq.”

Democrats and Republicans grant retroactive immunity from prosecution for clearly felonious acts

Before winning the 2008 Democratic primary for the U.S. presidency, U.S. Senator Barack Obama promised to “join a filibuster against telecom company immunity.” As soon as he won the nomination, he not only did not join a filibuster, he voted for the legislation grating retroactive immunity.

Sides with criminals, against public interest

Reaching the Oval Office, U.S. President Barack Obama said, “‘Let’s look forward, not backward,’ when it comes to war criminals — people who have engaged in torture, clearly in violation not only of international law, but domestic law.”

The system of government is two-tiered, Anderson said, not only relative to the economy. The courts allow the executive branch to come in and they dismiss cases on the basis of the subversive state secrets doctrine; the executive branch gets to determine whether these cases go forward—victims of torture, people who are challenging illegal government surveillance programs.

In the economy, a very few privileged people “clean up while the rest of us are suffering in so many dramatic ways because of the economic upheaval.” Related to criminal activity, this two-tiered system allows “this special class of people to escape being held accountable under the law.”

All three branches of government are part of this system, a state of affairs “unprecedented in this nation and completely contrary to the notion of an equal justice system.”

Sides with the money against public interest

“President Obama received more money from Wall Street than any other candidate has ever received in a presidential or any other election campaign and he surrounded himself with all these alumni from Goldman Sachs.

“Not one person has spent one day in prison as a result of the massive financial fraud that we know took place by these Wall Street firms, and the people that work for them, that did so much damage to the American people.

“All any of us have to do is look at our pension plans, our 401(k) accounts, and we can see the direct impact of this economic disaster — brought to us by and large through these criminal acts committed by these Wall Street firms and their employees.

Not one of them has been brought to justice under the Obama administration.

Polluting industries make their campaign contributions, the EPA tries to impose stricter ozone standards, President Obama basically vetoes the EPA. He is serving the interest of those polluting industries.

We’d have a universal healthcare system (real healthcare reform) like other nations in the industrialized world — were it not for the corrupting influence of the money flowing in from the medical insurance industry.

embraces corrupting influence against public interest

Corporate campaign contributions make a very good return on their investment. Follow the money and you’ll see why Congress and the White House are pursuing policies that go contrary to the interest of the American people.

The failure of every major public policy issue intended to serve the public interest can be attributed to the corrupting influence of money.

Source
“Ex-Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson, Former Democrat, Launches Third Party Presidential Bid Against Obama, GOP,” Democracy Now December 13, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org

Uprising against “oppression, corruption, nepotism, bribery” —

2011-12-13T18:33:00.001-05:00

Protests in Yemen

Yemeni revolution envisions restructuring from “ruins of repressive, militarized, corrupt rule”

Excerpt, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett from Democracy Now transcript

Yemeni Activist Tawakkol Karman accepting the Nobel Peace Prize

U.S.-allied with Saleh regime in Yemen
Across Red Sea
U.S. bombs
Horn of Africa (Somalia)

“… I stand before you in … one of the most important moments of human history — coming from the land of the Arab Orient, coming from the land of Yemen, the Yemen of wisdom and ancient civilizations, the Yemen of more than 5,000 years of long history, the great Kingdom of Sheba, the Yemen of the two queens, Bilqis and Arwa, the Yemen that is experiencing the greatest and the most powerful and the largest eruption of Arab Spring revolution, the revolution of millions throughout the homeland which is still raging and escalating today.…

Tawakkol Karman
Human rights activist
Journalist
Nobel laureate

“… [W]hen I heard the news that I had received the Nobel Peace Prize, I was in my tent in the Tahrir Square in Sana’a. I was one of millions of revolutionary youth. There, we were not even able to secure our safety from the repression and oppression of the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“At that moment, I contemplated the distinction between the meanings of peace celebrated by the Nobel Prize and the tragedy of the aggression waged by Ali Abdullah Saleh against the forces of peaceful change. However, our joy of being on the right side of history made it easier for us to bear the devastating irony.

“Millions of Yemeni women and men, children, young and old, took to the streets in 18 provinces demanding their right to freedom, justice and dignity, using nonviolent but effective means to achieve their demands. We were able to efficiently and effectively maintain a peaceful revolution in spite of the fact that this great nation has more than 70 million firearms of various types.

Yemeni Protests

Southwest Central Asia (Arabia)
East/Horn of Africa

“Here lies the philosophy of the revolution, which persuaded millions of people to leave their weapons at home and join the peaceful march against the state’s machine of murder and violence just with flowers and bare breasts, and filled with dreams, love and peace. We were very happy because we realized, at that time, that the Nobel Prize did not come only as a personal prize for Tawakkul Abdel-Salam Karman, but as a declaration and recognition of the whole world for the triumph of the peaceful revolution of Yemen and as an appreciation of the sacrifices of its great, peaceful people.

'Day of Rage" - Yemen

“… This revolution will soon complete its first year since the moment it was launched as a peaceful and popular revolution of the youth, with one demand: peaceful change and the pursuit of free and dignified life in a democratic and civil state governed by the rule of law. This state will be built on the ruins of the rule of a repressive, militarized, corrupt and backward family police rule, which has consistently brought Yemen to the edge of failure and collapse during the last 33 years.

…“… [T]he Arab Spring revolutions have emerged with the purpose of meeting the needs of the people of the region for a state of citizenship and the rule of law. They have emerged as an expression of people’s dissatisfaction with the state of corruption, nepotism and bribery.

Yemeni protesters

“These revolutions were ignited by young men and women who are yearning for freedom and dignity. They know that their revolutions pass through four stages, which can’t be bypassed:

TOPPLING the dictator and his family,

TOPPLING his security and military services and his nepotism networks,

ESTABLISHING the institutions of the transitional state, and

MOVING TOWARD constitutional legitimacy and establishing the modern civil and democratic state.

“…Many nations, including the Arab peoples, have suffered, although they were not at war, but were not at peace either. The peace in which they lived is a false ‘peace of graves’ — the peace of submission to tyranny and corruption that impoverishes people and kills their hope for a better future.

United Nations
192 member nations

“… [A]ll of the human community should stand up with our people in their peaceful struggle for freedom, dignity and democracy, now that our people have decided to break out of silence and strive to live and realize the meaning of the immortal phrase of Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab — ‘Since when have you enslaved people, when their mothers gave birth to them free?’…

Tawakkol Karman shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with three other women “for non-violent struggle, for the safety of women, and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Sources and notes

TAWAKKOL KARMAN BRIEF

Tawakkol Karman shares the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with: Leymah Gbowee (Residence at time of award Liberia); and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (at the time of the resident and President of Liberia).

She is the first Arab woman, the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate to date, and the second Muslim woman to receive a Nobel Prize

Tawakel Karman (Arabic: توكل كرمان ‎ Tawak[k]ul Karmān; Anglicized: Tawakul, Tawakkol, Tawakkul or Tawakel Abdel-Salam Karman) (32, b. February 7, 1979, became the international public face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising that is part of the Arab Spring uprisings.

2011 protests include protest on the ‘Day of Rage’ that Karman had called for in Sana’a, Yemen, from February 3, 2011. During the ongoing 2011 Yemeni protests, Tawakel Karman organized student rallies in Sana’a in protest against the long-standing rule of Saleh’s government. [Wikipedia note, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tawakel_Karman&printable=yes]

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/karman.html

“‘The Arab People Have Woken Up’: Yemeni Activist Tawakkol Karman Accepts Nobel Peace Prize” [Speech given Saturday December 10, re-broadcast with transcript on Democracy Now, December 13, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/13/the_arab_people_have_woken_up

_________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
_________________________

Lecturing Russians while U.S. voters burn

2011-12-12T16:59:00.000-05:00

Hypocrisy, arrogance, fake championing of voter rights

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

USA lectures Russians

“...We see setbacks for democratic institutions, the rule of law, and electoral processes,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lectured last week before the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) member-countries in Vilnius, Lithuania.

“[W]hen authorities fail to prosecute those who attack people for exercising their rights or exposing abuses,” Clinton said, “they subvert justice and undermine the people’s confidence in their governments.

“… [W]e have seen in many places, and most recently in the Duma elections in Russia, elections that are neither free nor fair have the same effect. We have serious concerns about the conduct of those elections.…[T]he preliminary report by the OSCE cites election day attempts to stuff ballot boxes, manipulate voter lists, and other troubling practices.

Russia and Vilnius, Lithuania

“We’re also concerned by reports that independent Russian election observers, including the nationwide Golos network, were harassed and had cyber attacks on their websites, which is completely contrary to what should be the protected rights of people to observe elections, participate in them, and disseminate information. … Russian voters deserve a full investigation of electoral fraud and manipulation.”

“The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted. And that means they deserve fair, free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.”

U.S. voters burned

Where was Hillary Clinton when her country was violating voting rights law and suppressing voters’ expression of their right to vote for whom they chose?

In the United States, there has been widespread voter suppression for many years without a peep from Clinton.

The voting and elections watchdog group Black Box Voting has found these voting rights and vote suppression issues:

‘Shorting’ voting machines in targeted areas, forcing voters to wait in line for hours • Last-minute switching of targeted polling places without adequate notice Purging and ‘caging’ manipulations with voter registration lists: Purging valid voters and targeting specific groups for special or unfair purges …

Wikipedia describes the suppression of voter rights known as “caging” a tactic that is both legal and illegal in the United States, depending upon state of residence.

Caging is a method of challenging the registration status of voters potentially to prevent them from voting in an election. Caging refers to the practice of sending direct mail to addressees on the voter rolls, compiling a list of addressees from which the mail is returned undelivered; and, on the grounds that the voters do not legally reside at registered addresses, using that list to purge or challenge voters’ registrations.

This typically results in voters’ having their votes thrown out or submitted by using provisional ballots, which require further registration confirmation.

U.S. Election 2008

Unlawful actions in six states, according to a New York Times’ review of state records, led to widespread voter purges, which could have [had] impact on the 2008 elections. Some of the actions were apparently the result of mistakes by the states’ handling of voter registrations and files as they tried to comply with a 2002 federal law related to running elections. While neither party was singled out, because the Democratic Party registered more new voters this year, Democratic voters were more adversely affected by such actions of state officials.

Montana 2008

On October 5, 2008 the Republican (but elected on the Democratic ticket) Lt. Governor of Montana, John Bohlinger, accused the Montana Republican Party of vote caging to purge 6,000 voters from three counties which trend Democratic. These purges included decorated war veterans and active duty soldiers.

Michigan

Michigan’s Republican Secretary of State was found purging voters from voting rolls when voter ID cards were returned as undeliverable. In the court challenge, the federal judge ordered the state to reinstate the voters.

December 2007 Kansas

Kansas GOP Chair Kris Kobach sent an email boasting, ‘[T]o date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!’

Florida

Republicans sent out fundraising mailers to voters in five Florida counties: Duval, Hillsborough, Collier, Miami-Dade and Escambia, with ‘do not forward’ on the letters.

The mailers included inaccurate Voter ID numbers and ostensibly confirmed with voters they were registered as Republican. The RNC declined to discuss the mailer with the St. Petersburg Times. A representative denied the mailing had anything to do with caging.

Two top Florida elections officials, both Republicans, faulted the GOP mailing, calling it ‘confusing and ‘unfortunate’ because of a potential to undermine voter confidence by making them question the accuracy of their registrations.

California

Reports of voter caging emerged in Northern California when letters marked ‘do not forward’ were sent to Democrats with fake voter ID numbers. The description of the letters matches the letters that were sent out in Florida… Many details on the letters were false; for example, the letters referred to a Voter Identification Division but RNC personnel said they had no such department. The RNC did not return calls from a news organization regarding the letters.

Black Box Voting, in its latest report, continues a litany of voting rights breaches in the United States.

Among the frequent examples of suppression are: Voter intimidation • Traffic blockages obstructing or delaying access to targeted polling places • Inappropriate police activity or harassment around polling places • Inconsistent procedures for provisional ballots (provisional ballots are available to voters who have reason to believe they are registered but their names do not appear on the rolls on Election Day) • Obstructive procedures, such as requiring poll workers to get permission by phone from busy election-day elections headquarters before offering a provisional ballot thus preventing eligible voters from voting • Candidate name not appearing on some ballots (especially a problem in touch-screen areas, where the computer programming for the touch-screen ‘ballot’ is not as carefully checked as the printed paper ballots) • Late polls openings

Coast to coast, the Wikipedia article continues

California

According to court testimony in a 2004 [U.S.] case, 23-count embezzler Jeffrey Dean gained access to both voter databases and remote access into several California elections systems. He had obtained contracts as a vendor for the Vote Remote absentee vote-processing system, and was accessing and adjusting California data from his location in the Seattle area.

New York

In another incident, a laptop containing sensitive information was stolen from the Diebold ballot printing plant that processes absentee ballots. This division had access to nearly 1 million King County voter registrations, including the social security numbers of King County residents.

Russian State Duma

Russians react to U.S. lecture

Rodhan’s rhetoric is rich indeed

A senior Russian official described HRC’s statements as “strange.”

NATO expert Rick Rozoff said pointedly the United States is in no position to criticize Russian elections. In an interview after Clinton’s December 6 statements, Rozoff told Voice of Russia journalist John Robles, “Regardless of what the actual details are about the recently concluded Duma elections (parliamentary elections) in Russia, the statements emanating from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others are arrogant to a degree.

“If the situation were reversed and Russian and other major political figures in other nations commented similarly on U.S. elections, which are not without their flaws, I hope, there would be as strong as possible protests from the State Department and the White House.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s statements — “presuming to speak on behalf of the Russian people, stating that Russian voters deserve ‘a full investigation of electoral fraud and manipulation’” are coming from “somebody who is from the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge.

Moreover, like her commander-in-chief, Barack Obama — who is from Chicago and is a product of the Chicago political machine — she is hardly in a position to complain about electoral fraud and manipulation and ballot box stuffing. They are products of the political machine that all but invented the process.”

Rick Rozoff said he had spoken with Chicagoans who had lived in the former Soviet Union who talked about the fact that when elections were held, election days were on holidays so that people were off work and could not only vote but could participate in the political process, including in the polling place.” This, he said, “is not a luxury accorded to Americans,” though many in the U.S. brag that the country is “the model for democratic processes, including elections…”

He concluded that U.S. State Secretary “is concerned about Russian ‘democracy’ as Washington’s plans for building a ring of missile ‘defense’ systems encircling Russia continue full steam ahead — whether that country ‘likes it or not.’”

Russia

The Russian Ministry is reported saying, “We expect the U.S. side to refrain from unfriendly statements running counter to the general positive vector of our bilateral relations. … Pointing to a ‘very low voter turnout at [U.S.] elections at all levels,’ the Ministry noted that the U.S. election system can hardly be considered ‘a paragon of openness and fairness.’ Therefore, the statement continued, U.S. executive authorities should focus their analysis on the reasons for this situation and ways to improve it.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described Clinton’s remarks as ‘disrespectful’ and urged the U.S. Secretary not to use the rostrum of the Organization for Security and Cooperation as a means to court voters and obtain political points ahead of the U.S. presidential elections but “to utter criticism in the format of a dialogue.”

The Foreign Ministry concluded, “Russian citizens have made their choice by taking an active part in the vote. Only they have the right to define the country’s future regardless of someone’s biased accounts and politicized recipes.”

Today in U.S. History: The year 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States effectively awarded the U.S. presidency to George W. Bush, ruling that a fair recount of ballots in Florida could not be performed by the deadline for certifying the state’s electors. [Britannica]

Sources and notes

“U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesperson REMARKS Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton OSCE First Plenary Session, December 6, 2011, LitExpo Conference Center, Vilnius, Lithuania, MC.DEL/31/11, 6 December 2011, Original: ENGLISH

“Clinton: Russia elections ‘neither free nor fair,’” http://en.rian.ru/world/20111206/169399214.html

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/presskit.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_(voter_suppression)

“U.S not in a position to criticize Russian elections – expert,” Interview: Clinton Lectures Russia On Elections, NATO Chief On Missiles Voice of Russia, December 8, 2011 (John Robles, Audio interview with Rick Rozoff, the manager of the Stop NATO website and mailing list and a contributing writer to Global Research.ca), http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/interview-clinton-lectures-russia-on-elections-nato-chief-on-missiles/

“Clinton Lectures Russia On Elections, NATO Chief On Missiles,” http://www.voltairenet.org/Clinton-Lectures-Russia-On

“Clinton, who had previously chastised Russia’s State Duma elections, stepped up the rhetoric while speaking at an Organization for Security and Cooperation, OSCE, ministerial meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Tuesday … She was quoted as saying by Reuters ‘When authorities fail to prosecute those who attack people for exercising their rights or exposing abuses, they subvert justice and undermine the people’s confidence in their governments.’ She went on to say, ‘As we have seen in many places, and most recently in the Duma elections in Russia, elections that are neither free nor fair have the same effect.’”

“Russia Slams U.S. Over Criticism of Duma Elections,” December 7, 2011, http://tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=7448

“U.S. comments about Russian polls ‘unacceptable’” — Foreign Ministry Russia, http://en.rian.ru/russia/20111206/169419272.htm

“Clinton’s Russia election statement ‘disrespectful’ – Lavrov,” December 7, 2011,

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/07/61775269.html

“Get It Done” — Youth rep. Appadurai at COP17

2011-12-09T14:43:00.001-05:00

Protests at COP 17

Global climate movement on course of real solutions — Michael Dorsey

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Representing youth delegates, Anjali Appadurai, a student at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, spoke today [Democracy Now rebroadcast] at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban.

“I speak for more than half the world’s population,” she said. “We are the silent majority. You’ve given us a seat in this hall but our interests are not on the table.

Anjali Appadurai
Democracy Now image

“What does it take to get a stake in this game — Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money? You’ve been negotiating all my life. In that time, you have failed to meet pledges, you’ve missed targets, and you’ve broken promises. But you’ve heard this all before.

“We are in Africa, home to communities on the front line of climate change. The world’s poorest countries need funding for adaptation now. The Horn of Africa and those nearby in KwaMashu needed it yesterday.

“But as 2012 dawns, our Green Climate Fund remains empty. The International Energy Agency tells us we have five years until the window to avoid irreversible climate change closes. The science tells us that we have five years maximum. You are saying, ‘Give us 10.’”

Youth protest at Durban

Betrayal

The starkest betrayal of your generation’s responsibility to ours is that you call this ‘ambition.’

Where is the courage in these rooms? Now is not the time for incremental action. In the long run, these moments will be seen as the defining moments of an era in which narrow self-interest prevailed over science, reason and common compassion.

There is real ambition in this room, but it has been dismissed as radical, deemed not politically possible.

Stand with Africa. Long-term thinking is not radical. What is radical is to completely alter the planet’s climate, to betray the future of my generation, and to condemn millions to death by climate change. What is radical is to write off the fact that change is within our reach.”

Movement Now

“Two thousand eleven [is] the year in which the silent majority found their voice, the year when the bottom shook the top.

“Two thousand eleven [is] the year when the radical became reality.

Common but differentiated and historical responsibilities are not up for debate.

Respect the foundational principles of this convention.

Respect the integral values of humanity.

Respect the future of your descendants.

“‘It always seems impossible,’ Mandela said, “until it’s done.’

Protests at Durban

Distinguished delegates and governments around the world, governments of the developed world — deep cuts now. Get it done!

Mic check!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Mic check!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Equity now!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Equity now!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Equity now!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Equity now!

ANJALI APPADURAI: You’ve run out of excuses!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: You’ve run out of excuses!

ANJALI APPADURAI: We’re running out of time!

Protests at Durban

HUMAN MICROPHONE: We’re running out of time!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Get it done!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Get it done!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Get it done!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Get it done!

ANJALI APPADURAI: Get it done!

HUMAN MICROPHONE: Get it done!

Kumi Naidoo

Published at Common Dreams, Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo writes about super powered obstruction of binding agreements at UNFCCC

“Here in Durban, the U.S. is once again trying to kill off the global climate talks by eviscerating the mid-summit draft agreement. On Saturday, the U.S. axed a whole section of the draft agreement that would have offered real protection to those who are being hardest and fastest hit by global warming.

“During the talks, the U.S. is fond of insisting that they want to be involved [and] at the same time makes derailing demands and announces commitments that barely survive the plane trip home.

“All of this wastes valuable time we can ill afford to waste as the most vulnerable citizens, economies, and habitats reel under the increasing impact of global warming.”

Before

“It has not always been so.

“With the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the first Earth Summit in 1992, the world agreed that human-caused climate change was an important enough global issue that it deserved its own international law, like issues such as trade, war crimes, and human rights.

“The U.S. signed and ratified that treaty, which also included a plan for later Protocols and legally-binding targets to reduce climate pollution.

“Over the next several years, the U.S. delegation pushed aggressively for a treaty that included a pollution-reduction regime on greenhouse gases and a compliance mechanism ... and then it hit them — if the U.S. ratified Kyoto Protocol, they would have to deal with being the largest climate polluter!”

Bush to Obama governments trend backward

“It is deeply depressing that signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 was the beginning of U.S. climate treaty obstructionism, although U.S. neglect of treaties is par for the course. It’s been downhill ever since. The next step in bludgeoning any progress was when the U.S. ‘unsigned’ the Kyoto Protocol.“

U.S. President George W. Bush

“President George W. Bush made history by being the first to un-sign a treaty, which is possibly unprecedented in international law. Before Bush left office, his delegation at the Bali climate talks agreed to negotiate on the main issues that needed global cooperation, culminating in a controversial outcome two years later, in 2009, in Copenhagen. But, in Copenhagen they went on to play a huge part in making that conference possibly the most disappointing and controversial out of all 15 up to that point.“

Protests at Durban

U.S. President Barack Obama

“Team Obama picked up where Bush left off, introducing words and concepts into the negotiations in an attempt to mask that the U.S. was not prioritizing the climate. One of the first bombs was announcing that 2005 would be the new base year for a U.S. pollution target, and to speak as if any increase in emissions since 1990 was irrelevant. At the time, 2005 was the year of highest recorded U.S. climate pollution.

“The U.S. implied that EU efforts to reduce emissions between 1990 and 2005 were no longer a factor of the negotiations. This allowed the U.S. to argue that ‘comparability’ demonstrated the U.S. was as tough on climate pollution as the EU. The nearly business-as-usual U.S. target was 17 percent under 2005 levels by 2020. It would be 32 percent by 2020 if they were in compliance with the U.S. Kyoto commitment.

“Obama’s team was now disparaging Kyoto as a method of shirking fair and equitable commitments.

“Anyone can have an ambitious goal for 2050, forty years away. In Copenhagen the U.S. delegation did everything they could to undermine the importance of a legally binding agreement. They rolled out phrases such as ‘politically binding’ (meaning not legally binding) and ‘pledge and review’ (meaning not legally binding).

“We also know, because of Wikileaks, that the U.S. was strong-arming countries behind the scenes, with undiplomatic threats and tactics to bolster their bargaining power in the climate talks.“

COP17 protests

Now obstruction, COP 17 Durban

“Durban is not seeing any change in the carnage caused by the U.S.’s participation in these talks.

The negotiating position of the largest historical polluter has reached a new low in refuting that scientific consensus demands urgent and rapid pollution reduction. Leading up to Cancun, a year later, the U.S. was already backing away from weak commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord. It contained an agreement by the U.S. to contribute long-term finance, some portion of $100 billion per year by 2020.

The U.S. had also agreed to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the entity with intended responsibility for this long-term finance — No longer for the U.S. Some of their contribution would go to GCF — maybe; some of it would be public finance.

The U.S. raves about ‘leveraging private finance’ and includes loan guarantees and funding to U.S. companies as part of their contribution.

Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation together are the largest sources of its ‘fast-start finance,’ or $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, Export-Import provided over $4 billion to fossil fuel projects last year alone.

“While it is true that the personalities, egos, and IDs of individual delegates affect overall progress, for the United States, it is the basic negotiating position that is tarnishing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] process now and for the last thirteen years.“

Therefore, Naidoo concludes —

“The time has come for the U.S. to stand aside. If it is not willing to save lives, save jobs and save whole ecosystems then it should get out of the way and let those who are willing move on. Any failure to move beyond U.S. obstructionism will be measured in lives.“

Politics, U.S.-led Regression

Friends of the Earth policy analyst Kate Horner today with Democracy Now spoke about the U.S. killing the only legally binding instrument that we have to address climate change: the Kyoto Protocol.

Horner and Dorsey
Durban DN discussion

The United States, she said, “has a long history in multilateral affairs of weakening and delaying international deals where they don’t have domestic legislation in place.” The U.S. position at COP 17 is shaped substantially by polarized politics and its failure to secure legislation at home. “First they refused to commit to the Kyoto Protocol; then they led [and continue to lead] an exit strategy from the Kyoto Protocol.

“They are proposing a far weaker system called a pledge and review wherein pledges countries submit are determined merely by their domestic action — not by the global community’s determination of what will keep the world safe.”

Solutions rising not from State but from Global Justice Movement

Michael Dorsey, a professor in environmental studies at Dartmouth College, hears the loud-mouthed climate change-denying politicians and focuses on the real movement. He suggests voting out the irrational climate change deniers.

“The American people,” Dorsey said in that Democracy Now interview, “are sick and tired of sinister, mindless [denial of climate change] talk. The fact is that what is going on is a global climate movement, now grown beyond itself into a movement about climate justice.”

It is a “global outreach — putting people together to collaborate around the world on tackling this problem. Unlike the delayed diplomacy that we see coming out of the State, it is a global climate movement taking us on the course of real solutions.”

Sources and notes

“‘Get it done’: Urging Climate Justice, Youth Delegate Anjali Appadurai Mic Checks U.N. Summit,” Democracy Now, November 9, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/9/get_it_done_urging_climate_justice

“U.S. Obstructionism Is Hurting Climate Talks” [Kumi Naidoo, published on Thursday, December 8, 2011 by The Huffington Post]; also at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/08-6

Kumi Naidoo is Executive Director of Greenpeace International,

“Obama Admin Denounced for ‘Startling Level of Obstructionism and Defeatism’ on U.N. Climate Deal,” December 9, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/9/obama_admin_denounced_for_startling_level

________________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
________________________________

GSRBO — Presidentially certifiable

2011-12-08T16:24:00.001-05:00

Center for Responsive Politics
image

Lethal mixture of insanity, ignorance, prone to violence

Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

We can do better than this staged “leadership”

Madison was right: “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” Knowledge — not threats and drones. Critical judgment, independent thought — far from the herd, moneyed politics and partisanship, celebrity and fan worship, messianic mentality.

Without it, we are screwed — as in what goes for “leadership” in the United States of America today. This cast is not only antagonistic to U.S. public interests but it is the Number One enemy of global well being. Glaring examples are to be found in the U.S. presidential candidates declaring war on countries, increased destabilization in the Middle East, and assassination of foreign nationals.

U.S. presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on the record

“… [T]here are a number of ways to be smart about Iran and there are also a few ways to be dumb, and the administration has skipped all the ways to be smart.…

“First of all, maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable.

“Second, maximum coordination with the Israelis in a way which allows them to maximize their impact in Iran.

“Third, absolute strategic program comparable to what President Reagan, Pope John Paul II and a Margaret Thatcher did to the Soviet Union of every possible aspect short of war of breaking the regime and bringing it down.”

Daniel Larison comments on Gingrich

“Many Republicans flatter Gingrich by treating him as one of the party’s intellectuals, but Gingrich frequently shows that he is unable or unwilling to make crucial distinctions in his treatment of international problems.

“He complains on his campaign website that ‘we currently view Iraq, Afghanistan, and the many other danger spots of the globe as if they are isolated, independent situations,’ and that America ‘lacks a unified grand strategy for defeating radical Islamism.’

“However, these conflicts are largely separate from one another, and there is no such thing as a monolithic, global, radical Islamism that can be addressed by one strategy. No conflicts around the world can be properly understood except by focusing on local circumstances, but for Gingrich, the ideological emphasis on a unified global threat takes priority over proper analysis.

“There is every reason to expect that U.S. foreign policy under a President Gingrich would become even more militarized and confrontational, and America’s relations with much of the world would deteriorate quickly.

U.S. presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s quest to murder scientists

“On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead … I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly.…

“I think we should send a very clear message that if you are scientist[s] from Russia or North Korea or from Iran, and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb for Iran, you are not safe.”

In addition to his quest for murder and the U.S. presidency, he was a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and on occasion has “declared that life was a civil right” not extended apparently to “scientists in other counties.”

American Iranian Eleanor Ommani comments on candidates’ Iran “cover”

Ommani said she was appalled by “American political figures’ talk against all international laws and the U.S. Constitution [which any student knows] “do not advocate assassination, killing scientists, breaking down the regime …”

However, she suggested that both major U. S. political parties and candidates are using Iran as a cover. The reasons being, “To boost their own career and at the same time strengthen U.S. capitalism, U.S. imperialism, which has been dealt a blow by Washington failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and changes in Egypt and Tunisia, and the fight going on in Yemen.

“It is truly regional uprising of the oppressed people,” she said, “of poor people against the very wealthy people; and the center of wealth exists in the United States, in my country.”

Former U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate Mike Gravel also responded to the rhetoric of murder.

“I can't tell you how dangerous this kind of rhetoric is in the United States,” Gravel said, “and how the American people have been hoodwinked by these people and by U.S. mainstream media organizations that give credibility to these statements, which have no credibility.

“They’re immoral. They’re dishonest. They’re wrong, internationally. I just can’t give you enough reaction to the stupidity of Newt Gingrich, the irresponsibility of Mitt Romney, and the insanity in the others in articulating this.”

For the past five, six to eight years, the American government has been doing this … Congress has been appropriating money on average about $200 million a year to bring about regime change in Iran. … Now we see this [latest] incident with the drone that was over Iranian territory.”

“Iran is doing nothing illegal. The intelligence community has repeatedly said that Iran is not pursuing any weaponization program. Yet the president has said it twice — once he said that they [Iranians] are not pursuing, and then on another occasion he said that they are.”

Even if weaponization were a fact in Iran, Gravel said, “In this insanity of our global situation,” to acquire such use, “is for self defense. Morally, international law dictates that any country is entitled to pursue its self defense.”

However, “to go out and advocate war when we’ve just been through ten years of it … and for these people to be considered as presidential candidates in the United States, [this is] really a sad reflection on the state of our government.

“… As an American, I am deeply ashamed of the ridiculous nature of these charges,” Gravel said. “The kindest thing I can say about [the candidates] is that they are morally bankrupt and somewhat insane.”

SOMEWHAT?

Again, Madison, “Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty but also by the abuse of power. …

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

I believe the progressive must take the best from the past — not entrench or merely reference leaders such as Lincoln or Roosevelt (FDR or ER), Eisenhower, Kennedy or King; but intelligently, critically, consciously (with conscience and care) push constructively forward, beyond ideas and actions and leadership which might have, to the best of our knowledge, seemed to contain the best.

Sources and notes

James Madison (1751-1836) was the fourth President of the United States (1809-1813).

“Newt Gingrich Advocates Assassinating Iranian Scientists as Drum Beat for War Continues at GOP Debate,” posted November 12, 2011, at http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/newt-gingrich-advocates-assassinating-iran

“Newt Gingrich’s dangerous, self-aggrandizing foreign policy” (Daniel Larison The Week), http://news.yahoo.com/newt-gingrichs-dangerous-self-aggrandizing-foreign-policy-104800717.html

“Santorum: Dead Foreign Scientists a ‘Wonderful Thing,’ posted October 27, 2011, at http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/santorum-dead-foreign-scientists-wonderful-t

“U.S. Gingrich says kill Iranian scientists — U.S. presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has openly called for sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program through terrorism and assassinating Iranian scientists as part of Washington’s policy,” November 14, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/210013.html

Press TV has conducted an interview with Co-founder of American-Iranian Friendship Committee Eleanor Ommani.

“‘Insane’ U.S. politicians to wage more wars — Republican presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum U.S. Republican presidential candidates have renewed calls for covert operations including acts of sabotage, assassination and aid to terrorist groups against Iran” [Press TV interview], December 8, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/214513.html

More related news context, update

Bachmann, Obama

U.S. Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann reveals plans to close the U.S. embassy in Iran though the U.S. has had no embassy there since 1980. The candidate reportedly told a crowd in Waverly, Iowa, “‘That’s exactly what I would do [if I were president]. … We wouldn’t have an embassy in Iran. I wouldn’t allow that to be there.’”

The sitting president apparently “slipped up when “denouncing the storming of an ‘English’ embassy in Tehran, which is actually ‘British.’”

“Oops! Presidential hopeful plans to close U.S. embassy in Iran,” December 1, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/213227.html

“Speaking at a Wednesday gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington D.C, former House speaker and leading Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said he would resort to ‘covert capability’ to bring about ‘regime replacement’ in Iran. ‘They only have one very, very large refinery. I would be focused on how to covertly sabotage it every day’ [AFP quoted him as saying].

“Last month, Gingrich proposed that Washington kill Iranian scientists to disrupt the country’s atomic energy program. At the Wednesday gathering, former senator Rick Santorum redoubled the call for assassination of Iranian scientists. ‘We need to say very clearly that we will be conducting covert activity to do everything we can to stop their nuclear program.’

“The other Republican presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, called on Washington to even openly help seditionists in Iran. ‘We should also have covert and overt activities to encourage voices of dissent within the country. Ultimately regime change is what's going to be necessary in that setting.’

“On November 12, during a debate among a number of Republican presidential hopefuls, calls ranging from executing covert operations such as terrorism and assassinations to launching a military strike on Iran to subvert Tehran’s nuclear program were made.

“The calls for assassinations and terrorist acts directed at Iran are not idle threats as a number of Iranian scientists have been assassinated over the past few years, including Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, who were both killed in 2010.

“On Nov. 4, 2011, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, announced that Tehran had irrefutable evidence proving that the U.S. government was involved in anti-Iran conspiracies and dispatched elements to carry out acts of sabotage and terrorism in Iran and other regional countries.

“The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used the false charge as a pretext to push for the imposition of sanctions on the country.

“Iran argues that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

“Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that such a measure could spark a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.” [ASH/GHN/MA], Press TV transcript of news report

“GOPers call for covert ops on Iran,” December 8, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/214448.html

MIKE GRAVEL

A former U.S. presidential candidate (2008) Maurice Robert ‘Mike’ Gravel (b. May 13, 1930) is a former U.S. Senator (1969-1981) from Alaska most prominently known for his release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War. After the New York Times published portions of the leaked study, the Nixon administration moved to block any further publication of information and to punish any newspaper publisher who revealed the contents.

From the floor of the senate, Gravel (a junior senator at the time) insisted that his constituents had a right to know the truth behind the war and proceeded to read 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page document into the senate record. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Senator Gravel did not have the right and responsibility to share official documents with his constituents.

He then published The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers, Beacon Press (1971). This publication resulted in litigation, Gravel v. U.S., resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision (No. 71-1017-1026) relative to the Speech and Debate Clause (Article 1, Section 6) of the United States Constitution.

Mike Gravel is said to be “a passionate advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative” and ran for the presidency on these ideas in the 2007-08 campaign/election season.

Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives (1963-66), and as Speaker (1965-66). He then represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate (1969-81) where he served on the Finance, Interior, and Environmental and Public Works committees, chairing the Energy, Water Resources, Buildings and Grounds, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees.

In 1971, Gravel waged a successful one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft in the United States.

Senator Gravel served in the U.S. Army (1951-54) and as special adjutant in the Communication Intelligence Services and as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps. His academic credentials are in economics (B.S., Columbia University); and in law and public affairs (four honorary degrees). Mike Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to French Canadian immigrants.

He was founder and president of The Democracy Foundation, Philadelphia II, and Direct Democracy, nonprofit corporations dedicated to the establishment of direct democracy in the United States, through the enactment of the National Initiative for Democracy by American voters. Senator Gravel is author of Jobs and More Jobs, and Citizen Power. He lectures and writes about governance, foreign affairs, economics, Social Security, tax reform, energy, environmental issues and democracy. http://www.mikegravel.us/bio

___________________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
___________________________________

Climate Change — Women, UNSG urgency now

2011-12-07T18:22:00.001-05:00

Tibetan women

Critical voices at Conference of Parties (COP17)

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Tibetan women speak

Old ways essential

Southern Plateau Tibet

Termed by the scientists as the ‘Third Pole,’ owing to its storage of glacier ice and its status as a reservoir for the world’s largest rivers which feed one billion people in 10 downstream countries in South East Asia, Tibet now faces a rapid ecological disturbance, said Tibetan women at COP 17.

“Despite the climate-change crisis, China has begun constructing mega-dams and water diversion projects to capture and redirect water from India and South East Asia to its increasingly thirty provinces.”

Human Rights emergency

Tibet, China, Island nations

“The forcible removal of all of Tibet’s 2.25 million nomadic herders by China under the pretext of conservation has caused a human rights emergency. This crisis has cropped up despite scientific evidence that proves that nomads have a positive role in promoting a balance in the ecosystem, diversity and resilience.”

Grenada’s UN ambassador, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States speaks

Small Island nations need destruction stopped now

Grenada

Speaking from COP 17 with Democracy Now producer Amy Goodman in Durban, South Africa, Ambassador Dessima Williams said, “Waiting until 2020 … is a nonstarter.”

Last year “was the hottest year on record and the impact on our countries, our island states in particular, is intolerable — for water supply, food, health. The sea-level rise is going to swallow up more of our islands. Waiting until 2020 to regulate the system is certainly a nonstarter here.

Grenada's UN Ambassador

“The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) along with the Least Developed Countries Group has been pushing for more immediate and urgent actions in the negotiations as a whole, and particularly with regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

Politics

Dessima Williams acknowledged the political influence of individual nations but kept the voice of urgency, impact and effort focused on small and island nations. “Every country is playing according to its own national politics,” she said. “The politics of the U.S. has to be discussed with U.S. politicians.

“For the LDCs [Least Developed Countries] and the island countries, our national politics have to do with our existentialist survival — that the islands are experiencing floods and hurricanes and typhoons.

“The African continent, the Asian countries are experiencing, expecting droughts and floods — all of which are unusual compared to the pre-industrial period; and all are attributed to the escalation in the temperature of the earth.

“Here at the United Nations are 107 countries that we represent together …, who know that there is a threat to our food crops, to our healthcare, to our coastal regions — so I don’t think you will find among us any climate deniers.”

Looking across the globe, Williams said, it is not only the least developed and island countries. “In Thailand, in Russia, in Los Angeles—everywhere in the world — we are having these unnatural and abnormal weather systems.

“We have a regime in place that can respond to it so we are calling for urgency. We are calling for effective response that will protect the most vulnerable right away and protect everybody altogether.”

Rural Women of Southern Africa speak

“We’ve come to join other rural women farmers from the southern African region,” said Thandiure Chidararume, a member of ActionAid, an international organization that helped bring together a meeting of the Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly.

“We have come as one voice from Africa. We are saying ‘no’ to damning deals. Africa is not for sale. We want this air pollution that is causing climate change to stop now.”

Director of the South African Trust for Community Outreach and Education Mercia Andrews, in solidarity with the Rural Women’s Assembly, is reported saying, “We have a responsibility, we have to begin to mobilize and we have the power. … We have shaken this country before, we brought down apartheid; now is another turn.

“This is a bigger struggle, a more important struggle and this is a struggle that we must unite around. We must say, ‘No to climate apartheid.’

The Rural Women’s Assembly published demands.

Destroyers called to account, honor human rights, get serious about climate change

DEMANDS

A climate deal that will take meaningful steps to halt the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions. Historical emitters who are responsible for 75 percent of GHGs [Greenhouse gases] must face trade and investment sanctions if they refuse to cut emissions, particularly from African governments. Africa contributes least to climate change but is the worst affected.

Proper recognition of women’s critical role — despite widespread violation of their equal right to land — in fighting climate change and protecting livelihoods and the environment. Equal rights to land and natural resources are critical to fighting climate change. Further, that governments implement the principle of 50/50 land to women through a radical program of land redistribution and agrarian reform.

Financial support for women farmers commensurate to their numbers and crucial role — women produce 80 percent of the food consumed by households in Africa; 70 percent of Africa’s 600 million people are rural. We stress that adaptation strategies and building resilience starts at the household level. Governments must address the crisis in the care economy in order to build resistance to climate change. Further, that 50 percent of funding training and other support to agriculture go to women farmers secured by a special allocation within the Green Climate Fund and public budgets.

COP 17 Plenary

Climate change solutions put indigenous knowledge systems at the center of policies to promote biodiversity, to rehabilitate our ecosystems and to rebuild the livelihoods destroyed by colonialism, apartheid and economic imperialism. Rural women are the holders of indigenous knowledge — our marginalization from economic production, scientific knowledge generation and social systems has resulted in the steady loss of such knowledge to Africa, thereby making us more vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

An end to false climate solutions, which are resulting in a deterioration of our environments, the destruction of marine life as well as land and resource grabs and the takeover of food systems by corporations and speculators. We reject the participation of Africa in carbon markets, GMO projects and biofuels farming. Climate change can be addressed [seriously] only by changing the current economic system, which encourages unsustainable resource extraction and consumption.

Africa's Rural Women

“We commit ourselves to continue forward with the struggle against the injustices of climate change and to build our movement to end the shameful marginalization of rural women,” said the Rural Women’s Assembly of the Southern Africa region. “We will continue to strive for the re-creation of equitable vibrant, prosperous and healthy rural communities.”

UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon

For all on the planet, UN Secretary-General laid out the global case, cause and challenge

Taking his turn at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), COP17, dais, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday reflected on the job that takes him around the world. In one of his travel stops on the Pacific island of Kiribati, Ban Ki-moon said he met a young boy who said he was afraid of sleeping inside his home at night — afraid of being swept away by the tide.

Nations in rising waters

The boy’s land, his island “is slipping beneath the waves,” Ban Ki-moon reported to the Conference of Parties; and “there are many such islands in the Pacific and elsewhere.

“In the Andes and the Alps, I have seen melting glaciers. At both of the Earth’s Poles, I have seen open sea where ice once dominated the horizon. I have seen arid lands wherein the sun once shone on mighty rivers and great lakes — in the Amazon, flying over Lake Chad in the African Sahel and flying over the Aral Sea on the vast steppe of Central Asia.… Last month, I flew over miles and miles of devastated virgin forest and peat land in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

“I have met, personally, with thousands of people who have lost all they had to catastrophic floods and spreading deserts.”

He then asked, “Is this the future we want?”

Surrounded

“The science is clear,” he said.

“The World Meteorological Organization has reported that carbon emissions are at their highest in history and rising. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us, unequivocally, that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by half by 2050 — if we are to keep the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees since pre-industrial times. According to the International Energy Agency, we are nearing the ‘point of no return,’ and we must pull back from the abyss.”

Challenge

UNITED NATIONS

To the Conference of Parties, the Secretary-General challenged, “You are the people who can bring us from the edge. The world is looking to you for leadership. Everywhere, people ask me for help — they ask for our help as the United Nations — as nations, united.

“We must keep up our momentum. That is the challenge before us today. That is the imperative. It is difficult to overstate the gravity of this moment. Without exaggeration, we can say the future of our planet is at stake: People’s lives, the health of global economy, the very survival of some nations.

“A world of out-of-control climate change, a devastating scarcity of vital resources? A world divided bitterly between rich and poor, between the vulnerable and the privileged — is that what you want? Or do we want a sustainable future that fulfils the promise of the United Nations Charter?”

The exact path may not be clear but the answer is clear, Ban Ki-moon said. “We all recognize the realities of our time: the economic crisis, the dictates of fiscal austerity, often difficult domestic politics. Yet the world and its people cannot accept ‘no’ for an answer in Durban. To the contrary … now is the moment to be ambitious.”

Sources and notes

TIBETAN WOMEN

“Tibetan Women Speak out on Climate Justice for Tibet at UN Conference,” two members of Tibetan Women’s Association [Tenzin Woebum, Head of Women’s Environment and Development Desk; Tenzin Dolma, Joint Secretary of TWA] representing Tibet Third Pole are participating in the two-week Conference of Parties (COP17), an undertaking of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Durban, South Africa, posted December 6, 2011 by Rajeshwari K, The Tibet Post International http://www.thetibetpost.com/en/features/environment-and-health/2227-tibetan-women-speak-out-on-climate-justice-for-tibet-at-un-conference

“Least Developed Countries, Small Island States Face U.S. Resistance to Binding Climate Deal,” December 7, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/7/least_developed_countries_small_island_states

Dessima Williams is chair of the Alliance of Small Island States and Grenada’s ambassador to the United Nations [also on the Democracy Now segment was Pa Ousman Jarju from The Gambia is the Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Group].

DESSIMA WILLIAMS

Dr. Dessima Williams, chair of AOSIS Bureau and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of Grenada to the United Nations

Dr. Williams’ diplomatic service includes serving as Grenada’s NGO observer/delegate to various General Assembly sessions; NGO delegate to the 1995 Fourth United Nations Conference on Women and NGO Forum in Beijing; and NGO delegate to the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen, Denmark, also in 1995. She serves on the board of the Inter-Agency Group of Development Organizations in Grenada, and the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C.

She is author of the report Gender Dimensions of HIV/AIDS in Grenada; and co-author of a multi-volume report to the United Kingdom Department for International Development, Realization of Human Rights in the Caribbean Territories (2002). Her academic credentials include a doctorate in international relations and master’s in international development (American University, Washington, D.C.); international relations baccalaureate (University of Minnesota)

Dr. Williams has extensive academic experience as an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Brandeis University (2003 to 2006); visiting Professor at Florida Atlantic University (2002); and Jacob Ziskind Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology (Brandeis, 1992-1995). http://www.sidsnet.org/aosis/bureau.html

AOSIS

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that share similar development challenges and concerns about the environment, especially their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. AOSIS functions primarily as an ad hoc lobby and negotiating voice for small island developing States (SIDS) within the United Nations system.

AOSIS has a membership of 42 States and observers drawn from all oceans and regions of the world: Africa, Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Pacific and South China Sea. Thirty-seven are members of the United Nations, close to 28 percent of developing countries, and 20 percent of the UN’s total membership. Together, SIDS communities constitute some five percent of the global population.

Member States of AOSIS work together primarily through their New York diplomatic Missions to the United Nations. AOSIS functions on the basis of consultation and consensus. Major policy decisions are taken at ambassadorial-level plenary sessions. The Alliance does not have a formal charter. There is no regular budget, nor a secretariat. With the Permanent Representative of Saint Lucia as its current chair, AOSIS operates, as it did under previous leadership, out of the chairperson’s Mission to the United Nations, http://www.sidsnet.org/aosis/about.html

News from AOSIS December 1, 2011 — “AOSIS rejects delay until 2020, demands urgency for climate agreement,”

Durban, South Africa – The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) says it will not accept outcomes at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP17 that propose to delay any new binding agreement or more ambitious emissions reductions until 2020, as these cannot safeguard livelihoods and guarantee the survival of our nations.

http://aosis.info/2011/aosis-rejects-delay-until-2020-%e2%80%93-demands-urgency-for-climate-agreement/

CAPTION

Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States Dessima Williams urges negotiators to uphold the Kyoto Protocol (AFP/File, Attila Kisbenedek), http://aosis.info/2011/un-talks-start-in-panama-on-climate-deadlock/

Statement of Grenada’s representative to the United Nations: “Countries that are serious about addressing climate change should be using this meeting to raise, not lower, expectations for Durban.”

AFRICA’S RURAL WOMEN

At Climate Change Conference of the Parties in Durban

The Southern African Rural Women’s Assembly unites women’s farming and agricultural unions and movements from around the world. The women’s assembly is mostly skeptical about whether governments are acting on their behalf. They say COP17 conferees “are not acting in the peoples’ interest.”

Women’s movements in Latin America have also expressed solidarity with the African women’s assembly.

Caption: Members of African rural women's movements gather in Durban, South Africa to rally for progress at the nearby U.N. climate summit, November 30, 2011. (Photo VOA - Gabe Joselow)

Caption, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/Rural-Women-in-Africa-Speak-Out-at-Climate-Conference-134825718.html

Memorandum from the Rural Women’s Assembly to the UNFCCC, the government of the Republic of South Africa and the Governments of Africa, http://www.climate-justice-now.org/memorandum-from-the-rural-womens-assembly-to-the-unfccc-the-government-of-the-republic-of-south-africa-and-the-governments-of-africa/

Free Speech Radio News “At climate talks U.S. inaction prompts activists to shift strategy as deforestation plan debated” [News Segments Tuesday 12/06/2011, MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

Climate talks in Durban, South Africa, entered their high-level phase, which means negotiations between more senior officials with more power to cut deals. Attention is turning to efforts to protect the world’s forests. This is seen as a key part of fighting climate change but the strategy so far has yielded mixed results. http://fsrn.org/audio/climate-talks-us-inaction-prompts-activists-shift-strategy-deforestation-plan-debated/9526

UN SECRETARY-GENERAL

“Remarks to High Level Segment of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP17” [Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Durban, South Africa], December 6, 2011, http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/statments_full.asp?statID=1404

Sahel (Arabic Sāḥil), semiarid region of western and north-central Africa extending from Senegal eastward to The Sudan. It forms a transitional zone between the arid Sahara (desert) to the north and the belt of humid savannas to the south. The Sahel stretches from the Atlantic Ocean eastward through northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, the great bend of the Niger River in Mali, Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, south-central Chad, and into The Sudan [Britannica note]

_________________________

Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

_________________________