C E B O . org

Posted 5:14 PM by Mary

BBC: The Doomsday Clock - a barometer of nuclear danger for the past 55 years - has been moved one minute further away from the "midnight hour".

The concept timepiece, devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) now stands at six minutes to the hour. The group said it made the decision to move the clock back because of a more 'hopeful state of world affairs'.

The clock was first featured by the magazine in 1947, shortly after the US dropped its A-bombs on Japan. The clock had been adjusted 18 times before today since its initial start at seven minutes to midnight.

Most recently, in January 2007, the clock moved to five minutes to midnight, when climate change was added to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. The concerns then included Iran's nuclear ambitions and the inability to halt the international trafficking of nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium.

Labels: Doomsday clock, NNPT, nuclear weapons

Posted 5:10 PM by Mary

MOSCOW — The Russian Parliament on Friday reversed its longstanding opposition to reforms in the European Court of Human Rights, as part of a new push to smooth over differences with the country’s European partners.

Legislators in the lower house voted 392 to 56 to ratify the reforms, news agencies reported.

The international human rights court, based in Strasbourg, France, has been clogged in recent years with a backlog of complaints, nearly one-third of them filed against Russia. The reform plan, Protocol 14, aims to speed up the court’s work, in part by reducing the number of judges necessary to make major decisions.

Since 2006, Russia has been the only one of 47 participating states to refuse to ratify Protocol 14. Moscow’s opposition seemed colored by its overall suspicion of the court, which has found Russian officials guilty of corruption, torture and other misconduct.

But Dmitri F. Vyatkin, who serves on Parliament’s legislative committee, said European ministers had finally addressed Russian complaints about the proposals, in part by guaranteeing that Russian judges would be involved in reviewing complaints against Russia. He said the decision showed that Russia and the other European states were seeking common ground.

Labels: Criminal court, EU, russia

Posted 10:23 AM by Mary

Israel is denying Palestinians access to even the basic minimum of clean, safe water, Amnesty International says.

In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.It says that in Gaza, Israel's blockade has pushed the already ailing water and sewage system to "crisis point".

Israel says the report is flawed and the Palestinians get more water than was agreed under the 1990s peace deal.

In the 112-page report, Amnesty says that on average Palestinian daily water consumption reaches 70 litres a day, compared with 300 litres for the Israelis.

Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians' access to water

It says that some Palestinians barely get 20 litres a day - the minimum recommended even in humanitarian emergencies.

While Israeli settlers in the West Bank enjoy lush gardens and swimming pools, Amnesty describes a series of Israeli measures it says are discriminating against Palestinians:

* Israel has "entirely appropriated the Palestinians' share of the Jordan river" and uses 80% of a key shared aquifer
* West Bank Palestinians are not allowed to drill wells without Israeli permits, which are "often impossible" to obtain
* Rainwater harvesting cisterns are "often destroyed by the Israeli army"

Labels: gaza, israel

Posted 4:33 PM by Mary

Tailor climate policy for women, U.N. says
19 Oct 2009 15:01:00 GMT
Written by: Laurie Goering

Climate change is expected to hit the world's poorest and most vulnerable first and hardest. That puts women, who the U.N. says make up 70 percent of the world's poorest, squarely in its path.

In many of the most vulnerable parts of the world, women are chiefly responsible for farming and for collecting water and firewood. Women and children also die at much higher rates than men in natural disasters, studies show.

If climate change brings more droughts, floods, severe storms and land degradation, as expected, the implications for women are obvious.

That's why policies now being created to deal with climate change need to focus strongly on threats to - and opportunities for - women, argue the United Nations Population Fund and the Women's Environment and Development Organization in a new resource kit on gender and climate change.

The information, aimed at policy makers and aid organizations, aims to provide data and guidance on incorporating gender issues into climate change adaptation plans, finance agreements and other policy.

"Women are sometimes seen only as victims of climate change and natural disasters, when in fact they are well positioned to be agents of change," the report argues. Incorporating their concerns into planning and policy "is crucial to ensuring that women contribute to and benefit from equitable climate solutions."

How will women be affected by climate change? Drought, flooding and increasing difficulty growing food in some regions means that women may be forced to spend more time bringing in needed water, fuel and food. That could result in fewer girls attending school, and earlier marriage as parents try to reduce the mouths they need to feed and as the households of potential husbands look for additional female labour.

Pregnant and lactating women and their young children are among the most vulnerable to a host of disease threats that are expected to expand their range as climate change takes hold.

And as the world's population rises toward 8 billion or more by 2050, with most of the growth in the world's poorest and most vulnerable regions, women are expected to have an increasingly hard time hanging onto land in the face of growing competition for it.

How can the threats be countered? Some solutions are simple. Girls, in many places, are not taught the survival skills - swimming, tree climbing - that save their brothers and fathers during tsumanis and other disasters, the report notes. A little practice might make a big difference.

Other threats will be more difficult to counter. But focusing policy and aid on some likely impacts coming down the road - fewer calories available to girls and women, threats to their land tenure, weaker access to medical care in disaster zones, more pressure to take girls out of school - could make a real difference, the report

Labels: clim, women

Posted 12:28 AM by Mary

Birth registration campaign protects Nigerian children's rights
Source: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Date: 09 Sep 2008
[Old article, looking for updates]

By Samuel Kaalu

KANO, Nigeria, 9 September 2008 – In the ancient town of Dawakin Kudu, in Kano State, northwest Nigeria, Aisha Sanusi, 13, proudly displays the certificate she recently acquired through a state-wide, door-to-door exercise in birth registration. Her brother, Nura Sanusi, 15, is also proud of his newly issued birth-registration certificate.

The Sanusi children represent the success of this 'mop-up' exercise, which targeted roughly 2.3 million unregistered children in Nigeria – most of whom were not registered at birth.

"This birth certificate gives me an identity and a gateway to many possibilities," says Aisha. "With it, I can secure a Nigerian passport easily, facilitate my registration in a higher institution or prove my real age to prospective employers, if need be."

The registration campaign was initiated by the Kano State Government. Technical support came from UNICEF and other partners such as the National Population Commission, the only agency legally authorized to register the birth of children in Nigeria.

Clearing the backlog

Although Nigeria is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child – whose Article 7 prescribes the mandatory registration to give children an identity at birth – only 30 per cent of children here are registered at birth.

Nigeria domesticated the international Convention by enacting the Child Rights Act (CRA) at the national level in 2003. Sixteen of the country's 36 states currently have the CRA in place, but this has not translated into birth registration on a massive scale.

Mindful of the large number of unregistered children in Nigeria, UNICEF encouraged the convening of a strategic meeting with representatives of the National Population Commission, the States Universal Basic Education Boards and the Ministries for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs.

"That meeting resolved that all the states that had a backlog of unregistered births should define specific periods within which to clear the backlog," says UNICEF Nigeria Child Protection Specialist Maryam Enyiazu, who is managing the project.

The Kano State Government established a special task force to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate the registration exercise.

The task force set up a public enlightenment campaign at the state and local levels involving the media, traditional and religious leaders, and government mobilization officers. (Among the latter were state and local officials from the National Orientation Agency.) They were charged with generating awareness, acceptance and demand for birth registration in 44 Local Government Areas.

In collaboration with the authorities in Kano, UNICEF ensured that a total of 4,140 special birth-registration staff were trained to go door to door.

The District Head of Dawakin Kudu, Alhaji Yusuf Bayero – one of the traditional rulers who gave full support to the exercise – hopes birth-registration efforts will continue. "Whilst thanking the government for the full mobilization of traditional leaders for the mop-up birth-registration exercise, I'd like to call on all the relevant government agencies to ensure that birth registration is sustained," he says.

Labels: Africa, birth registrations, Unicef

Posted 3:22 PM by Mary

UN talks fail to set climate target

Some had hoped China's Hu, would point the way forward for action on climate change [AFP] China has pledged to put a "notable" brake on its rapidly rising carbon emissions, but disappointed those hoping for a firm numerical commitment.

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that Beijing would pledge to cut "carbon intensity", or the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each dollar of economic output, over the decade to 2020.

His promise is a landmark because China has previously rejected rich nations' demands for measurable curbs on its emissions, arguing that economic development must come first while millions of its citizens still live in poverty.

But the leader of the world's biggest emitter dashed hopes that he would unveil a hard target to kickstart stalled climate talks due to be reconvened in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December aimed at negotiating a broader climate pact to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Hu said only that carbon intensity would come down "by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 levels", which still leaves Beijing and other major emitters room to manoeuvre before the talks.

Rich nations are likely to come under further pressure at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh later this week to commit to dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Incidences of heat waves and droughts are on the increase and there has been an acceleration in the melting of glaciers and the recession of the Greenland ice sheet, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said earlier this week.

Tim Flannery, the chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council and professor at Sydney's Macquarie University, told Al Jazeera that there are "a large number of people who are disappointed" with the lack of substantive progress at Tuesday's climate summit.

"This day really should have been a day of triumph for climate diplomacy ... we would have hoped for great progress, but on the surface at least, I think, it appears that progress has been quite limited," he said from New York.

Commenting on China's pledge, he said "it is a positive step but a 'notable margin' is not something you can measure". Todd Stern, the US special envoy on climate change and one of the most vocal critics of China's emissions policy, said he "didn't hear new initiatives so much" in Hu's speech.

"It depends on what the number is and he didn't indicate the extent to which those reductions would be made," he said. But Xie Zhenhua, China's most senior environment official, later said China would soon unveil a target, based on projections that by 2020 it will double its use of renewable energy and dramatically cut energy use per dollar of GDP.

Flannery said Hu and Barack Obama, the US president, both "offered rhetoric, they offered promise, but not substantial, documented, commitment and that's what we need at this stage".

Labels: China, Climate change

Posted 11:06 PM by Mary

Indonesia's province of Aceh has passed a new law making adultery punishable by stoning to death, a member of the province's parliament has said.

The law also imposes severe sentences for rape, homosexuality, alcohol consumption and gambling.

Opponents had tried to delay the law, saying more debate was needed because it imposes capital punishment.

Sharia law was partially introduced in Aceh in 2001, as part of a government offer to pacify separatist rebels.

A peace deal in 2005 ended the 30-year insurgency, and many of the former rebels have now entered Aceh's government, which enjoys a degree of autonomy from the central government in Jakarta.

Labels: Human rights, muslim, Sharia

Posted 1:07 PM by Mary

Afghanistan passes barbaric law against women's rights
Rehashed legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demands. Guardian

Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.

In early April, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown joined an international chorus of condemnation when the Guardian revealed that the earlier version of the law legalised rape within marriage, according to the UN. Although Karzai appeared to back down, activists say the revised version of the law still contains repressive measures and contradicts the Afghan constitution and international treaties signed by the country.

Islamic law experts and human rights activists say that although the language of the original law has been changed, many of the provisions that alarmed women's rights groups remain, including this one: "Tamkeen is the readiness of the wife to submit to her husband's reasonable sexual enjoyment, and her prohibition from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband's permission. If any of the above provisions are not followed by the wife she is considered disobedient."

The law has been backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni, who is thought to have influence over the voting intentions of some of the country's Shias, which make up around 20% of the population. Karzai has assiduously courted such minority leaders in the run up to next Thursday's election, which is likely to be a close run thing, according to a poll released yesterday.

Human Rights Watch, which has obtained a copy of the final law, called on all candidates to pledge to repeal the law, which it says contradicts Afghanistan's own constitution. The group said that Karzai had "made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election".

Brad Adams, the organisation's Asia director, said: "The rights of Afghan women are being ripped up by powerful men who are using women as pawns in manoeuvres to gain power. "These kinds of barbaric laws were supposed to have been relegated to the past with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, yet Karzai has revived them and given them his official stamp of approval."

Labels: afghanistan, Human rights, Shia

Posted 10:13 AM by Mary

Failed states and climate change.

Hopelessly overcrowded, crippled by poverty, teeming with Islamist militancy, careless with its nukes—it sometimes seems as if Pakistan can’t get any more terrifying. But forget about the Taliban: The country's troubles today pale compared with what it might face 25 years from now. When it comes to the stability of one of the world's most volatile regions, it's the fate of the Himalayan glaciers that should be keeping us awake at night.

In the mountainous area of Kashmir along and around Pakistan's contested border with India lies what might become the epicenter of the problem. Since the separation of the two countries 62 years ago, the argument over whether Kashmir belongs to Muslim Pakistan or secular India has never ceased. Since 1998, when both countries tested nuclear weapons, the conflict has taken on the added risk of escalating into cataclysm. Another increasingly important factor will soon heighten the tension: Ninety percent of Pakistan's agricultural irrigation depends on rivers that originate in Kashmir. "This water issue between India and Pakistan is the key," Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami, a parliamentarian from Kashmir, told me. "Much more than any other political or religious concern."

Until now, the two sides had been able to relegate the water issue to the back burner. In 1960, India and Pakistan agreed to divide the six tributaries that form the Indus River. India claimed the three eastern branches, which flow through Punjab. The water in the other three, which pass through Jammu and Kashmir, became Pakistan's. The countries set a cap on how much land Kashmir could irrigate and agreed to strict regulations on how and where water could be stored. The resulting Indus Waters Treaty has survived three wars and nearly 50 years. It's often cited as an example of how resource scarcity can lead to cooperation rather than conflict.

But the treaty's success depends on the maintenance of a status quo that will be disrupted as the world warms. Traditionally, Kashmir's waters have been naturally regulated by the glaciers in the Himalayas. Precipitation freezes during the coldest months and then melts during the agricultural season. But if global warming continues at its current rate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates, the glaciers could be mostly gone from the mountains by 2035. Water that once flowed for the planting will flush away in winter floods.

Research by the global NGO ActionAid has found that the effects are already starting to be felt within Kashmir. In the valley, snow rarely falls and almost never sticks. The summertime levels of streams, rivers, springs, and ponds have dropped. In February 2007, melting snow combined with unseasonably heavy rainfall to undermine the mountain slopes; landslides buried the national highway—the region's only land connection with the rest of India—for 12 days.

Normally, countries control such cyclical water flows with dams, as the United States does with runoff from the Rocky Mountains. For Pakistan, however, that solution is not an option. The best damming sites are in Kashmir, where the Islamabad government has vigorously opposed Indian efforts to tinker with the rivers. The worry is that in times of conflict, India's leaders could cut back on water supplies or unleash a torrent into the country's fields. "In a warlike situation, India could use the project like a bomb," one Kashmiri journalist told me.

Water is already undermining Pakistan's stability. In recent years, recurring shortages have led to grain shortfalls. In 2008, flour became so scarce it turned into an election issue; the government deployed thousands of troops to guard its wheat stores. As the glaciers melt and the rivers dry, this issue will only become more critical. Pakistan—unstable, facing dramatic drops in water supplies, caged in by India's vastly superior conventional forces—will be forced to make one of three choices. It can let its people starve. It can cooperate with India in building dams and reservoirs, handing over control of its waters to the country it regards as the enemy. Or it can ramp up support for the insurgency, gambling that violence can bleed India's resolve without degenerating into full-fledged war. "The idea of ceding territory to India is anathema," says Sumit Ganguly, a professor of political science at Indiana University. "Suffering, particularly for the elite, is unacceptable. So what's the other option? Escalate."

"It's very bad news," he adds, referring to the melting glaciers. "It's extremely grim."

The Kashmiri water conflict is just one of many climate-driven geopolitical crises on the horizon. These range from possible economic and treaty conflicts that will likely be resolved peacefully—the waters of the Rio Grande and Colorado River have long been a point of contention between the United States and Mexico, for instance—to possible outright wars. In 2007, the London-based NGO International Alert compiled a list of countries with a high risk of armed conflict due to climate change. They cited no fewer than 46 countries, or one in every four, including some of the world's most gravely unstable countries, such as Somalia, Nigeria, Iran, Colombia, Bolivia, Israel, Indonesia, Bosnia, Algeria, and Peru. Already, climate change might be behind the deep drought that contributed to the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Rising global temperatures are putting the whole world under stress, and the first countries to succumb will be those, such as Sudan, that are least able to adapt. Compare the Netherlands and Bangladesh: Both are vulnerable to rises in sea levels, with large parts of their territory near or under the level of the waves. But the wealthy Dutch are building state-of-the-art flood-control systems and experimenting with floating houses. All the impoverished Bangladeshis can do is prepare to head for higher ground. "It's best not to get too bogged down in the physics of climate," says Nils Gilman, an analyst at Monitor Group and the author of a 2006 report on climate change and national security. "Rather, you should look at the social, physical, and political geography of regions that are impacted."

Indeed, with a population half that of the United States crammed into an area a little smaller than Louisiana, Bangladesh might be among the most imperiled countries on Earth. In a normal decade, the country experiences one major flood. In the last 11 years, its rivers have leapt their banks three times, most recently in 2007. That winter, Cyclone Sidr, a Category 5 storm, tore into the country's coast, flattening tin shacks, ripping through paddies, and plunging the capital into darkness. As many as 10,000 people may have died.

Bangladesh's troubles are likely to ripple across the region, where immigration flows have been historically accompanied by rising tensions. In India's northeastern state of Assam, for instance, rapidly changing demographics have led to riots, massacres, and the rise of an insurgency. As global warming tightens its squeeze on Bangladesh, these pressures will mount. And in a worst-case scenario, in which the country is struck by sudden, cataclysmic flooding, the international community will have to cope with a humanitarian emergency in which tens of millions of waterlogged refugees suddenly flee toward India, Burma, China, and Pakistan.

Indeed, the U.S. military has come to recognize that weakened states—the Bangladeshes and Pakistans of the world—are often breeding grounds for extremism, terrorism, and potentially destabilizing conflict. And as it has done so, it has increasingly deployed in response to natural disasters. Such missions often require a warlike scale of forces, if not warlike duration. During the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for instance, the United States sent 15,000 military personnel, 25 ships, and 94 aircraft. "The military brings a tremendous capacity of command-and-control and communications," says retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of U.S. Central Command. "You have tremendous logistics capability, transportation, engineering, the ability to purify water."

As the world warms, more years could start to look like 2007, when the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs announced it had responded to a record number of droughts, floods, and storms. Of the 13 natural disasters it responded to, only one—an earthquake in Peru—was not related to the climate.

Worryingly, some analysts have suggested the United States might not fully grasp what it needs to respond to this challenge. The U.S. military has been required by law since 2008 to incorporate climate change into its planning, but though Pentagon strategic documents describe a climate-stressed future, there's little sign the Department of Defense is pivoting to meet it. "Most of the things that the military is requesting are still for a conventional war with a peer competitor," says Sharon Burke, an energy and climate change specialist at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security. "They say they're going to have more humanitarian missions, but there's no discussion at all of ‘What do you need?'" The rate at which the war in Iraq has chewed through vehicles and equipment, for instance, has astonished military planners. "Is this a forewarning of what it's like to operate in harsher conditions?" Burke asks.

To be sure, some of the more severe consequences of climate change are expected to unfold over a relatively extended time frame. But so does military development, procurement, and planning. As global warming churns the world's weather, it's becoming increasingly clear that it's time to start thinking about the long term. In doing so, the West may need to adopt an even broader definition of what it takes to protect itself from danger. Dealing with the repercussions of its emissions might mean buttressing governments, deploying into disaster zones, or tamping down insurgencies. But the bulk of the West's effort might be better spent at home. If the rivers of Kashmir have the potential to plunge South Asia into chaos, the most effective response might be to do our best to ensure the glaciers never melt at all.

Stephan Faris is the author of Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley, from which reporting for this article is drawn.

Labels: Climate change, failed states

Posted 7:04 PM by Mary

Draft U.N. climate texts mark step towards treaty
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Reuters Environmental Online Report


OSLO (Reuters) - The United Nations took a step toward a new climate treaty on Friday by publishing the first draft negotiating texts to help bridge a "great gulf" between options for rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Two documents totaling 68 pages also laid out choices on controversial issues such as nuclear power, emissions trading, forests, shipping or aviation in a new U.N. global warming pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

"This is intended to move the negotiating process forward," John Ashe, Antigua and Barbuda's ambassador to the U.N. who compiled the texts as head of a U.N. group looking at future cuts in emissions by rich nations, told Reuters by telephone.

"There is a great gulf between the various numbers presented by parties," he said. "It won't be possible to please everyone. Everyone will be unhappy with the outcome in Copenhagen, but my hope is that what comes out will be good for the planet."

Developing countries, which blame the rich for stoking global warming by burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, are calling for far deeper cuts than planned by recession-hit governments in developed nations.

One of the deepest suggestions is for rich nations to more than halve their emissions below 1990 levels by 2018-2022 to rein in global warming that the U.N. Climate Panel says will cause rising sea levels, heatwaves, floods and droughts.

President Barack Obama, for instance, aims by 2020 to cut U.S. emissions to 1990 levels, about 14 percent below 2007 levels.

The existing Kyoto Protocol, of which the United States is not a member, binds 37 industrialized nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Posted 10:51 PM by Mary

Published on Monday, May 11, 2009 by Haaretz (Israel)
Israel Knows That Peace Just Doesn't Pay

by Amira Hass

Successive Israeli governments since 1993 certainly must have known what they were doing, being in no hurry to make peace with the Palestinians. As representatives of Israeli society, these governments understood that peace would involve serious damage to national interests.

Economic damage:

The security industry is an important export branch - weapons, ammunition and refinements that are tested daily in Gaza and the West Bank. The Oslo process - negotiations that were never meant to end - allowed Israel to shake off its status as occupying power (obligated to the welfare of the occupied people) and treat the Palestinian territories as independent entities. That is, to use weapons and ammunition at a magnitude Israel could not have otherwise used on the Palestinians after 1967. Protecting the settlements requires constant development of security, surveillance and deterrence equipment such as fences, roadblocks, electronic surveillance, cameras and robots. These are security's cutting edge in the developed world, and serve banks, companies and luxury neighborhoods next to shantytowns and ethnic enclaves where rebellions must be suppressed.

The collective Israeli creativity in security is fertilized by a state of constant friction between most Israelis and a population defined as hostile. A state of combat over a low flame, and sometimes over a high one, brings together a variety of Israeli temperaments: rambos, computer wizards, people with gifted hands, inventors. Under peace, their chances of meeting would be greatly reduced.

Damage to careers:

Maintaining the occupation and a state of non-peace employs hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 70,000 people work in the security industry. Each year, tens of thousands finish their army service with special skills or a desirable sideline. For thousands it becomes their main career: professional soldiers, Shin Bet operatives, foreign consultants, mercenaries, weapons dealers. Therefore peace endangers the careers and professional futures of an important and prestigious stratum of Israelis, a stratum that has a major influence on the government.

Damage to quality of life:

A peace agreement would require equal distribution of water resources throughout the country (from the river to the sea) between Jews and Palestinians, regardless of the desalination of seawater and water-saving techniques. Even now it's hard for Israelis to get used to saving water because of the drought. It's not difficult to guess how traumatic a slash in water consumption to equalize distribution would be.

Damage to welfare:

As the past 30 years have shown, settlements flourish as the welfare state contracts. They offer ordinary people what their salaries would not allow them in sovereign Israel, within the borders of June 4, 1967: cheap land, large homes, benefits, subsidies, wide-open spaces, a view, a superior road network and quality education. Even for those Israeli Jews who have not moved there, the settlements illuminate their horizon as an option for a social and economic upgrade. That option is more real than the vague promises of peacetime improvements, an unknown situation.

Peace will also reduce, if not erase entirely, the security pretext for discriminating against Palestinian Israelis - in land distribution, development resources, education, health employment and civil rights (such as marriage and citizenship). People who have gotten used to privilege under a system based on ethnic discrimination see its abrogation as a threat to their welfare.
© 2009 Haaretz

Labels: israel, Palestine

Posted 2:41 PM by Mary

ICRC complete torture memo PDF HERE
Medical personnel actively participated in abusive U.S. Central Intelligence Agency interrogation sessions of suspected al-Qaida militants in support of the interrogators and in violation of medical ethics, according to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. This is the first time details of medical professionals' participation have emerged from the 2007 report on U.S. detention and interrogation techniques.

Labels: torture

Posted 9:58 AM by Mary

Late Late Nite FDL: 150 Years of Military Rule Ends Tonight in El Salvador
By: Jane Hamsher Sunday March 15, 2009 10:00 pm

Roberto Lovato checks in from El Salvador:

Just spoke with electoral commission people on the DL and they told me that their latest count shows a 17-18 point advantage, which, even with fraud, even with missing ballots, even with illegal voters means El Salvador has ended 150 years of rule by oligarchs and military dictatorships.


Hard to put into words what this feels like. It's a historic triumph that will, one hopes, put right a lot of things that went very, very wrong.

Congratulations to Roberto and everyone both in and out of El Salvador who struggled so hard for this moment. It's a great day.

Posted 11:44 AM by Mary

FGM - 92 million women mutiliated - and rising
Huffington Post via Independent.co.uk
94 per cent of girls who undergo FGM in Sierra Leone. The practice - which forms part of a ceremony of initiation rites overseen by women-only secret societies such as bondo and sande - can cause severe bleeding, infection, cysts and sometimes death, but is largely ignored.

Reasons for the process vary, but many people cite tradition and culture, saying it is essential preparation for marriage and womanhood; binds communities to each other and to their ancestors; and restricts women's sexual behaviour.

Last year, UN agencies came out strongly against the practice, labelling it "painful and traumatic", a violation of human rights and demanding it be abandoned within a generation. "It has no health benefits and harms girls and women in many ways," said the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO). "The practice causes severe pain and has several immediate and long-term health consequences, including difficulties in childbirth."

Yet many international aid organisations are too scared to do anything about it in public for fear of being labelled cultural imperialists. A recent Sierra Leone child rights bill dropped any mention of FGM at the last minute, and politicians - including President Ernest Bai Koroma - baulk at the mention of the subject.

A decade ago, a female politician who later became the minister for social welfare said: "We will sew the mouths up of those preaching against bondo." More recently, politicians are rumoured to have sponsored mass cutting ceremonies, which can be relatively costly affairs in one of the world's poorest countries, in an effort to secure votes in elections.

"Secret societies have become intertwined with modern political life in Sierra Leone and retain considerable power and influence," wrote the anthropologist Dr Richard Fanthorpe in a paper commissioned by the UN.

Labels: FGM

Posted 10:04 AM by Mary

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Climate change is "largely irreversible" for the next 1,000 years even if carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could be abruptly halted, according to a new study led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The study's authors said there was "no going back" after the report showed that changes in surface temperature, rainfall and sea level are "largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after CO2 emissions are completely stopped."

NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon said the study, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, showed that current human choices on carbon dioxide emissions are set to "irreversibly change the planet."

Researchers examined the consequences of CO2 building up beyond present-day concentrations of 385 parts per million, and then completely stopping emissions after the peak. Before the industrial age CO2 in Earth's atmosphere amounted to only 280 parts per million.

The study found that CO2 levels are irreversibly impacting climate change, which will contribute to global sea level rise and rainfall changes in certain regions.

The authors emphasized that increases in CO2 that occur from 2000 to 2100 are set to "lock in" a sea level rise over the next 1,000 years.

Rising sea levels would cause "irreversible commitments to future changes in the geography of the Earth, since many coastal and island features would ultimately become submerged," the study said.

Decreases in rainfall that last for centuries can be expected to have a range of impacts, said the authors. Regional impacts include -- but are not limited to -- decreased human water supplies, increased fire frequency, ecosystem change and expanded deserts.

Labels: Climate change