Jack A. Smith : Climate Change Confab Brings Too Little Too Late

Climate change activists in Warsaw, Friday, November 22, 2013, portray, from right, French President Francois Hollande, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, President Obama, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Photo by Czarek Sokolowski, / AP.

Climate Change meeting in
Warsaw brings too little too late


Given the number of drastic reports about climate change... the accomplishments at COP19 are useful but hugely disproportionate to what is needed.

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / December 23, 2013

The sharply increasing scientific indicators of impending disastrous global climate change have failed to motivate the principal developed countries, led by the U.S., to accelerate the lackluster pace of their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This was the principal conclusion of several key environmental groups attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) November 11-23 in Warsaw, Poland. The meeting lasted a day and a half longer than scheduled to resolve a dispute about new greenhouse emission targets. About 10,000 people attended the 19th annual meeting of the so-called Conference of Parties (COP19) that drew nearly all the UN’s 193 member states.

About 800 attendees associated with environmental groups walked out of the conference November 21, protesting the lack of progress. In a joint statement on the day of the walkout, the World Wildlife Federation, OxFam, Friends of the Earth, Action Aid, and the International Trade Union Federation declared:

Organizations and movements representing people from every corner of the Earth have decided that the best use of our time is to voluntarily withdraw from the Warsaw climate talks. The conference, which should have been an important step in the just transition to a sustainable future, is on track to deliver virtually nothing.

According to Professor Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics and a leading British expert on climate change: “The actions that have been agreed are simply inadequate when compared with the scale and urgency of the risks that the world faces from rising levels of greenhouse gases.”

There were also street protests and marches in Warsaw composed largely of younger conference attendees and local youth. One slogan, referring to climate disasters, was “The Philippines, Pakistan, New Orleans: Change the System, not the climate.”

On November 18, delegates from 133 developing countries -- under the umbrella of the G77 group plus China -- walked out temporarily “because we do not see a clear-cut commitment by developed countries to reach an agreement” to financially help poor countries suffering the effects of climate change for which they are not responsible. The U.S., for instance, was reluctant to help developing countries adapt to sea level rise, droughts, powerful storms and other adverse impacts, even though it is historically the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases.

By the end of the conference, perhaps encouraged by the walkout, the world body agreed to set up a “Loss and Damage” process for “the most vulnerable countries” experiencing losses from global warming. The details remain vague.

A distressing aspect of the conference came when four major developed countries took actions in contradiction to fighting global warming.

• Japan -- the fifth largest carbon polluter -- announced it was breaking its pledge to reduce greenhouse gases by 25% of 1990 levels by the year 2020, blaming the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.
• Canada and Australia recently declared they would not support the Green Climate Fund -- the UNCCC program to transfer money from the developed to the developing countries to assist them in dealing with climate change.
• Conference host Poland, a major coal producer, worked with the World Coal Association to simultaneously host the International Coal and Climate Summit in Warsaw. (Greenpeace and others protested outside the coal meeting.)

COP19 was permeated with corporate lobbyists from “fossil fuels, big business groups, carbon market and financial players, agribusiness and agrofuels, as well as some of the big polluting industries,” according to the oppositional “COP19 Guide to Corporate Lobbying.” Corporations appeared at previous COP meetings but, witnesses say, never in such large number.

Obviously, one of the most important issues confronting the world community is reducing greenhouse carbon emissions to impede global warming. This is a perennial UNCCC goal but hardly sufficient so far to prevent substantial increases in carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere, now exceeding 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in at least 3 million years since the Pliocene era.

Greenhouse reductions hark back to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which obligated developed countries to specific -- and in the main incongruously low -- emissions reduction targets while developing countries were encouraged to reduce emissions without a binding requirement.

Since 1997, despite Kyoto, emissions have increased substantially. According to a new report from research teams coordinated by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, “The gap between where emissions are and where emissions would need to be in order to keep climate targets within reach is getting bigger and bigger.”

Kyoto, which the U.S. refused to join because of its so-called “bias” toward developing countries, has in effect been extended from 2013 to 2020 when new emissions targets will go into effect. Unless these new targets are far greater than the old, CO2 ppm will jump much higher.

At issue during COP19 was a proposal by the EU, U.S., and a number of developed countries to eliminate Kyoto’s nonbinding reductions for developing countries. Under this plan, each and all countries would set specific targets over next year. These targets would then be inspected by the other countries to assure they are adequate for the mission at hand. The final targets would be published in early 2015 and presumably approved by that year’s COP, and implemented in five years.

An intense 36-hour struggle between a group of developing countries and most developed countries over this proposal went into an extra session lasting throughout Nov. 22 and into the early hours of the 23rd. Opposing removal of the distinction between developed and developing countries was a group called the “Like-Minded Developing Countries on Climate Change” (LMDC), including such countries as China, India, Venezuela, Bolivia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Thailand.

According to an account in the mass circulation Indian newspaper The Hindu:

India, China and other countries in the LMDC group take the position that the new climate agreement must not force developing countries to review their volunteered emission reduction targets. Setting themselves up in a direct confrontation with the developed countries, the LMDC opposes doing away with the current differentiation between developing and developed countries when it came to taking responsibility for climate action.

In other words, the developing countries will do what they can to reduce emissions, but the principal task by far belongs to the developed countries. They argue that developed industrial countries have been spewing fossil fuel-created greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for 100 to 200 years or more, and most of these pollutants have yet to dissipate. The carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere could warm the planet for hundreds of years.

The richer countries reject this argument, pointing to the increasing industrialization taking place in the developing world. Writing in the Guardian November 25, Graham Readfearn points out: “Rich countries are desperate to avoid taking the blame for the impacts of climate change.... The developed countries won't let any statements slip into any UN climate document that could be used against them in the future” in terms of financing mitigation, adaptation, and compensation costs.

Most developing countries are very poor and have contributed miniscule emissions, but a few of them -- China, India, and Brazil, among others -- have become major industrialized powers in relatively recent years. China, now the largest annual contributor to global warming, has been seriously industrialized for less than 30 years and also functions as a global factory for many nations, including the U.S.

These recently industrializing developing states, most of which are former exploited colonies of the rich countries, argue that the developed states became major powers based on burning fossil fuels and thus have the major responsibility to take the lead in reducing emissions.

China points out that while it has recently displaced the U.S. as leading producer of Greenhouse gas emissions, its population is three times greater. On a per capita basis, Beijing notes, the average American in 2011 produced 17.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide; the average Chinese, just 6.5 tons. (A metric ton is 205 pounds heavier than a 2,000 pound ton.) The U.S. rejects these arguments.

Climate activists in downtown Warsaw, Poland, Saturday, November 16, 2013. Photo from AP.

The developed-developing conflict over emissions was finally resolved when China and India withdrew demands for including Kyoto’s exception for developing countries, in return for which “commitments” to a specific target were changed to “contributions.” Clearly this is a vague stopgap measure that will eventually change. The important matter is the total of emissions reductions to be agreed upon in 2015.

The U.S., as the most influential developed country, has taken hardly any action at all to significantly reduce CO2 emissions when it was the number one emitter of carbon in the atmosphere or now when it is number two, tut-tutting about China’s smokestacks while President Obama boasts about expanding drilling for oil and fracking for gas.

Ironically, though China is a mass polluter today it is investing far more heavily than the U.S. in renewable resources such as solar and wind energy. This may eventually pay off, but not before an unacceptable level of CO2 continues.


Given the number of drastic reports about climate change from the scientific community in the last several months, the accomplishments at COP19 are useful but hugely disproportionate to what is needed. In addition to the agreement on contributions to lower greenhouse emissions this also happened: The countries agreed on a multi-billion dollar program to combat global deforestation. The Loss and Damage project was passed, and developed states were urged to increase levels of aid to poorer countries. A plan was hammered out to monitor emissions reductions.

A few of those recent drastic reports include these facts:

• Greenhouse gas emissions are set to be 8-12 billion tons higher in 2020 than the level needed to keep global warming below 3.6 Fahrenheit, the UN Environment Program said. (Above 3.6 F, the world’s people will begin to experience extreme effects)...
• According to the American Meteorological Society, there is a 90% probability that global temperatures will rise 6.3 to 13.3 degrees Fahrenheit in less than 100 years...
• According to the Associated Press, a leaked report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change means that “Many of the ills of the modern world -- starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease -- are likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change”...
• The U.S. is likely to become the world’s top producer of crude oil and natural gas by the end of 2013 due to increased oil drilling and fracking for gas...
• The U.S. is pumping 50% more methane into the atmosphere than the government has estimated, reports Science News...
• In a new study, the team of researchers reports a global loss of 888,000 square miles of forest between 2000 and 2012 and a gain of only 309,000 square miles of new forest.

Summing up the Warsaw conference, an observer for Christian Aid, Mohamed Adow, declares:

In agreeing to establish a loss and damage mechanism, countries have accepted the reality that the world is already dealing with the extensive damage caused by climate impacts, and requires a formal process to assess and deal with it, but they seem unwilling to take concrete actions to reduce the severity of these impacts.

“We did not achieve a meaningful outcome,” said Naderev Sano, the head of the Philippines delegation who had been fasting throughout the meeting in solidarity with the victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

Samantha Smith, representing the World Wildlife Fund at COP19 declared:

Negotiators in Warsaw should have used this meeting to take a big and critical step towards global, just action on climate change. That didn't happen. This has placed the negotiations towards a global agreement [on emissions] at risk.

The next major UNCCC conference, COP20, will take place in Lima, Peru, in December 2014. The extremely important 2015 meeting, when the countries will decide on new emissions targets, will be in Paris.

There is positive news as well as the negative.

• A majority of the American people now seek to limit global warming, according to a recent report from Grist Environmental News. Stanford University Professor Jon Krosnick led an analysis of more than a decade’s worth of poll results for 46 states. The results show that the majority of residents of all of those states, whether red or blue, are united in their worries about the climate. At least three-quarters of residents are aware that the climate is changing. Two-thirds want the government to limit greenhouse gas emissions from businesses. At least 62% want regulations that cut carbon pollution from power plants. At least half want the U.S. to take action to fight climate change, even if other countries do not.


• The walkout by environmental NGOs is highly significant. They are clearly “mad as hell” and presumably are “not going to take this anymore!" to evoke the famous line from the film Network. Their unprecedented action in Warsaw undoubtedly reflects the views of millions of people back in the United States who have been following the scientific reports and want Washington to finally take dramatic action.


• At issue is mobilizing these people to take action in concert with others to force the political system to put climate sanity and ecological sustainability on the immediate national agenda. Two things are required: 1. A mass education program is called for because the broader and deeper implications of reforms must be understood and acted upon. 2. Unity in action is necessary to bring together many constituencies to fight for climate sanity and justice with a view toward protecting future generations from the excesses of the industrial era.


• There are up to a score of major environmental organizations in the U.S. Some, like Greenpeace and 350.org are willing to offer civil disobedience; some are important education and pressure groups; and some -- far fewer -- are too cautious and compromising, such as those advocating for nuclear power or natural gas. There must be many hundreds and more small and medium size environmental groups throughout our country, with anywhere from five to 50 or even 100 local followers. And then there are the numerous progressive and left organizations that basically agree with the environmental cause. None have to give up their individual identities, but they can come together around specific global warming and ecological issues and fight the power of the 1% to 5% who essentially rule America.


• The actions of the developing societies at COP19 were important, too, particularly their brief walkout. The majority of these countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are not only vulnerable to the consequences of climate change but rarely possess the economic wherewithal to adequately survive. They will struggle for their demands in future global conferences.


• Despite the foot-dragging of many developed countries, all of them contain environmental and progressive/left organizations. They, too, are “mad as hell” and will grow stronger.


• Time may not be on sanity’s side, but as the CO2 ppm rises and the hopes for significant reductions in greenhouse gases fall in the next few years, conditions will be ripe for a global climate justice uprising.

At this point it seems that only a mass mobilization of the U.S. and world’s peoples will be able to provide the strength to stand up to the fossil fuel interests, the corporations, big business, banks, financiers, and the weak or corrupt politicians who impede the way to build an equal and ecologically sustainable society including rational conservation of resources and reduction of excess consumption.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Peruvian Scholar/Activist Cristina Herencia, UN Observer on Indigenous Issues

Peruvian social psychologist Cristina Herencia in the studios of KOOP Radio, Austin, Texas, Friday, June 14, 2013. Photos by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio podcast:
Social psychologist Cristina Herencia,
UN observer on Indigenous Issues

Sponsored by the United Tribal Nations of North America, Herencia has been an observer at the UN's Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues yearly since 2004, participating in caucuses on World Indigenous Women and Latin American Indigenous Peoples.

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / June 26, 2013

Peruvian social psychologist Cristina Herencia, active in United Nations efforts on behalf of the world's indigenous peoples, was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, June 14, 2013.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Cristina Herencia here:


Cristina Herencia is a Peruvian social psychologist and activist who works in interdisciplinary social sciences, specializing in issues of gender and identity among Andean indigenous peoples and the effect of globalization on native peoples and cultures.

Sponsored by the United Tribal Nations of North America, Herencia has been an observer at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues yearly since 2004 -- most recently in May 2013 -- and has participated in numerous UN caucuses, including World Indigenous Women and Latin American Indigenous Peoples, and others addressing educational policies, resource management, climate change, water issues, and indigenous youth.

Cristina Herencia on Rag Radio.

The Permanent Forum is the UN's central coordinating body for matters relating to the concerns and rights of the world's indigenous peoples. It has played a major role in bringing to international attention the plight of and increasingly important role being played by the world's native peoples, especially in the Global South. At this year's UN meeting, Herencia participated in planning for a World Conference on Indigenous Peoples to be held in New York in September 2014.

Herencia, who is of mixed heritage, has been working in the Indian movement in Peru since she was 27 years old.

Cristina Herencia has a doctorate from the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and a masters in experimental psychology from the State University of New York.. She is an adjunct professor at Austin Community College and has taught at Universidad Particular Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru, and at the Universidad Nacional Mayor De San Marcos de Lima.

She has also served as a consultant with UNICEF, UNESCO, Swiss Technical Cooperation with Peru, the UN World Labor Organization, and the World Bank.

Cristina Herencia was previously our guest on Rag Radio on June 29, 2012. Jeff Zavala's video of our earlier interview with Herencia can be seen The Rag Blog.


Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, June 28, 2013: Democratic political consultant and writer Glenn W. Smith on abortion and the Texas legislature, voting rights and the Supreme Court, and more hot political dish!

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Danny Schechter : Is Iran Shifting its Message?

Diplomacy, Murdoch style. Image from Twitchy Media.
Is Iran trying to tell us
something we won’t hear?

The rhetoric of the well-orchestrated anti-Iranian crowds outside was even bloodier than the Iranians had ever been...

By Danny Schechter / The Rag Blog / October 2, 2012

NEW YORK CITY -- Sometimes major media are the last to recognize shifts in policy positions. Iran is a case in point.

In the lead up to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s annual speech to the General Assembly, the American TV stations were preparing their audiences for another provocative Israel-hating rant.
Brace yourself, we were told; it is his last appearance in office so he would go off and all out in denouncing Israel and the world’s Jews.

Secretary General Moon cautioned him publicly to restrain his rhetoric even as right wing media outlets like Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, that has never seen a far right wing Zionist cause it hasn’t embraced, went into full deionization mode with a front cover featuring his picture and the words, “Peace of Sh!t.” (It was reminiscent of the Saddam baiting in U.S. media in the run-up to the Iraq War.)

The rhetoric of the well-orchestrated anti-Iranian crowds outside was even bloodier than the Iranians had ever been, with former Republican speaker of the House and GOP presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich calling for immediate U.S. airstrikes. Gingrich sounded like his main financial backer, right-wing casino mogul and supporter of Israeli settlers, Shedon Adelson, who poured millions into his failed campaign before shifting his resources to Mitt Romney.

But, surprise, surprise, the Iranians shifted tack, and offered a subdued and non-inflammatory, even analytical, speech indicting big power pressure and capitalism but with no quotable excesses. Its tone may have reflected the fact that Iran is now leading the Non-Aligned Movement.

What is going on? The latest Iran Review, a respected policy journal, carries an article calling for dialogue with The U.S., not more diatribes. The magazine describes itself this way:

Iran Review is the leading independent, non-governmental and non-partisan website -- organization representing scientific and professional approaches towards Iran’s political, economic, social, religious, and cultural affairs, its foreign policy, and regional and international issues within the framework of analysis and articles.

On Monday, just as UN week was beginning, Nasser Saghafi-Ameri wrote:

After talking to several top diplomats and international security experts from different countries in a couple of meetings that I attended during the past two weeks, I am now more convinced than ever that the normalization of relations between Iran and the U.S. should be a top priority of the leaders of both countries if they wish to avert a military clash that could easily turn into a regional or international conflagration. These direct and comprehensive talks could also set a better understanding between them to work more effectively in bringing peace and stability in the crisis ridden region of the Middle East.

Focusing only on Iran's nuclear program as premise for confrontation with this country has practically deprived the U.S. to seek Iran's much prized assistance on some critical issues that both countries have shared interest such as the stability in the post-occupation Iraq and Afghanistan, peace and stability in the wider Middle East region following the Arab Spring’s upheavals, and preference for a "soft landing" of revolutionary fervors in the region and especially if it spreads to Saudi Arabia with all consequential effects including on the world oil markets.

Note, also, that the new Egyptian President Morsi suggested that Iran could play a valuable role in dampening tensions with Syria. When Kofi Annan, suggested something similar, the idea was rejected by the United States and he later stepped down as a mediator.

I was recently at a TV appearance by a negotiations expert on Saudia Arabian TV. He told me that he is involved in two back-channel negotiations on the issue. Iranian nuclear experts are also offering compromise proposals reported by IPS journalist Gareth Porter but not yet any major media outlets:

Iran has again offered to halt its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, which the United States has identified as its highest priority in the nuclear talks, in return for easing sanctions against Iran, according to Iran's permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, who has conducted Iran's negotiations with the IAEA in Tehran and Vienna, revealed in an interview with IPS that Iran had made the offer at the meeting between EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and Iran's leading nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Istanbul Sept. 19.

And so, there are clearly initiatives underway to build bridges, but so far, media outlets, eager to fan the flames of confrontation and polarization, have ignored them. Is it ignorance or something worse?

[News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs at Newsdissector.net. His latest books are Occupy: Dissecting Occupy Wall Street and Blogothon (Cosimo Books). He hosts News Dissector Radio on PRN.fm. Email Danny at dissector@mediachannel.org. Read more articles by Danny Schechter on The Rag Blog.]

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Harry Targ : Syrian Policy Looks Familiar to Cubans

Members of UN General Assembly vote on Saudi Arabian-sponsored draft resolution against Syria. Photo by Kathy Willens / AP.
Syrian policy looks familiar to Cubans

Those who sponsored the resolution condemning violence were the same nations that had 'played a major role in the militarization of the situation in Syria, by providing weapons to the terrorist groups.'

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / August 7, 2012

The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution Friday, August 3, 2012, that The New York Times said, “severely criticized the Syrian government, blaming it almost exclusively for the killings and other atrocities that have come to shape the 17-month uprising there.”

The resolution condemning Syria ironically implied that it was that country that refused to carry out the peace plan that was proposed four months earlier by Kofi Annan. No mention was made in the resolution that the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, among others had been feeding supplies to anti-government militias that encouraged them to violence rather than negotiation.

While 133 Western and Arab League allies voted for the resolution, 33 countries abstained, and 12 voted“no.” These were portrayed as Syria’s “slim group of backers, which include Russia, China, and Iran.”

Syria is a dictatorship that in the recent civil war has leveled brutal violence against its own people. But the Syrian Ambassador was correct in asserting that those who sponsored the resolution condemning violence were the same nations that had “played a major role in the militarization of the situation in Syria, by providing weapons to the terrorist groups.”

It is not surprising that The New York Times failed to mention that Cuba has been one of the longstanding critics of U.S. inspired wars on weak countries such as Libya and now Syria. The Cuban Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Pedro Nunez Mosquera, warned that the resolution which was adopted would encourage more violence from the opposition and retaliation by the state. With growing instability, he asserted, foreign intervention would become legitimized the way it was in the Libyan case.

In an article in Prensa Latina, the Cuban diplomat’s position was summarized: “Cuba considers that all acts of violence, massacres and terrorist acts that claim innocent lives in Syria should cease” but this will require that the anti-Syrian coalition “must put an end to arms smuggling and money to insurgent groups and their training.” Nunez also criticized the major Western media’s one-sided reporting on the violence in Syria.

It is clear that Cuba’s criticisms of the wars on Libya and Syria and the Western economic blockade and military threats toward Iran are motivated by self-interest as well as principle. Cuba, as a country that has suffered an economic blockade by the United States for over 50 years and a U.S. policy designed to diplomatically isolate it, sees similarities between its experiences and U.S. policies toward Syria and Libya.

Despite some U.S. liberalization of travel to the island nation, government agencies and counterrevolutionary organizations in Miami continue to funnel funds, technology, and propaganda to create an opposition that, they hope, will lead to an armed resistance against the Cuban government. If the Cuban government responds to terrorist acts, a U.S orchestrated coalition of dependent allies can justify the transfer of arms, propaganda campaigns, and escalating calls for revolution.

What may be called today the "Libyan Model of Destabilization” is not new to Cubans and as a result they see the necessity of continued vigilance.

Alan Gross, hired by the United States Agency for International Development, was caught distributing computer technology to selected communities on the island. A global propaganda campaign was raised about a recent car accident in which two well-known opponents of the regime who were traveling with rightwing Europeans in the countryside were killed. No evidence of foul play was provided concerning the accident although charges by Miami Cubans of government violence have been broadly distributed.

Also a recent Miami scholarly conference was organized with presentations by counterrevolutionaries who argued that the recent economic reforms on the island will never work. And repeatedly U.S. and British media highlight alleged growing disenchantment with the regime.

The Libyan Model of Destabilization, which has its roots in the years of economic blockade of Cuba, terrorist acts and assassination plots, the creation of counter-revolutionary groups in Florida and New Jersey, and even an armed invasion, is not likely to work in the Cuban case. First, the Cuban regime has broad popular support. Second, Cuba’s first priority remains social and economic justice. Third, Cuban health care and education are among the best in the Global South.

And, finally, Cuba remains an inspiration to those countries throughout the Western Hemisphere (such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador) who seek to create political and economic autonomy in the 21st century. As evidenced in positions taken at the recent Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, Latin American countries defended Cuban national sovereignty and are demanding that the latter be included in future meetings of Hemisphere nations.

But as the Libyan model and now the Syria crisis suggest, weak countries everywhere in the world must remain vigilant. Imperialism still survives.

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical -- and that's also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ's articles on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Cristina Herencia on Indigenous Peoples and Globalization

Peruvian social psychologist Cristina Herencia on Rag Radio, Friday, June 29, 2012. Video by Jeff Zavala of ZGraphix who filmed the show live at the KOOP studios in Austin.
Rag Radio:
Peruvian social psychologist Cristina Herencia
on indigenous peoples and globalization

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / July 5, 2012

Peruvian social psychologist Cristina Herencia discussed the effect of globalization on the world's indigenous peoples with Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio, Friday, June 29, 2012.

Rag Radio features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. The syndicated show is produced in the studios of KOOP-FM, Austin's cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station. It is broadcast live on KOOP and streamed live on the Internet, and is rebroadcast on Sunday mornings on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA.

You can listen to Cristina Herencia on Rag Radio here:


On the show Herencia, who works in interdisciplinary social sciences with a specialty in the study of indigenous peoples, discusses the effect of globalization and the spread of global capitalism on native peoples, especially in the Americas.

She also addresses the historical -- and continuing -- injustices committed against native peoples; the reemergence of indigenous peoples' movements on the public scene and the role of the United Nations in providing them with a forum; and what she believes the non-patriarchial, egalitarian, earth-rooted Indian cultures have to offer a contemporary world in crisis.

Herencia, who has been teaching introductory sociology at Austin Community College, has a Masters in Experimental Psychology from the State University of New York (SUNY) and a Ph.D in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Her primary research deals with social identity in Native Andean peoples and cultures, especially in relation to gender, and the impact of globalization on their lives.

She has presented talks and papers in the United States and in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Peru, and Spain -- and in Havana and Paris. She attended the 1992 Columbus Quincentennial Commemoration and for the last nine years has participated in United Nations forums on indigenous peoples.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP, 91.7-fM in Austin, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio: THIS FRIDAY, July 6, 2012, Maria Elena Martinez and Luz Bazan Gutierrez examine the legacy of the historic Raza Unida Party of the 1970s.

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Ansel Herz : Behind the Barricades in Haiti

Coffins used as street barricades in Cap-Haiten, Haiti. Photo by Ansel Herz / Mediahacker / The Rag Blog.
Streets barricaded in Cap-Haitien:
Protests in Haiti have popular support

By Ansel Herz / November 19, 2010

CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti -- The first barricade looked harmless enough. Foot-long rocks piled next to each other in a line.

But as the bus driver slowed down, flying rocks landed in the street -- thrown by youths crouching in the bushes up the hill.

“We don’t really have a country! The police don’t do anything!” a nun sitting across from me complained after the bus driver negotiated, with a little cash, our way past.

The man next to her said the country will always be mired in problems until a leader like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro takes power.

We must have passed a dozen more barricades, most unmanned.

After Limbe, where cholera has killed at least 100 people, we came to the biggest “barikad” yet in the highway. Thick trees lay across the road and hundreds of people, a few holding machetes, blocked the way.

The bus driver once again descended to negotiate, but didn’t appear to be making any progress. Most passengers grabbed their belongings and got out.

I decided to go too. As I gathered my things, there was a debate among the remaining passengers:

“He’s a blan (foreigner), he’s going to get hurt.”

“No no no, he speaks Creole, he’ll be fine.”

“They’re going to think he’s MINUSTAH. They’re not logical.”

MINUSTAH is the acronym for the UN peacekeeping mission. As I stepped off the bus, people standing at the road called me over and urged me not to go. It was the third day of so-called “cholera riots” against foreign troops blamed for introducing the disease into the country.

Someone said the protesters are violent “chimere,” a word for political gangs. I explained that it’s my job as a journalist to go talk to them.

Then two Haitian journalists who were on the bus pushed their way through the crowd and wrapped their arms around me. Everyone agreed, finally, that together with the two guys I could get through the barricades.

Elizer and Duval were coming back home to Cap-Haitien. They were scared for me, saying under no circumstances should I talk with protesters or take photos. I reluctantly agreed to follow their instructions.

I wondered if perhaps the UN peacekeeping mission was right in saying these protests were organized by a politician or gang. “Enemies of stability and democracy,” MINUSTAH mission head Edmond Mulet called them. So far, I’d only seen young men in the street.

But as we passed through each barricade, everyone -- young girls and rotund market women mingling with demonstrators -- yelled out, “MINUSTAH ou ye?”

I yelled back, “Non, mwen se yon journalis Amerikan.” The suspicious stares softened into smiles and understanding looks. After passing the third barricade that way, we started laughing.

One teenager who threw a rock at us as we approached on motorcycle said, “pa gen pwoblem” -- no problem -- after I held out my press badge.

As we arrived on the outskirts of Cap-Haitien proper, the streets were deserted except for people gathered around barricades. One was still flaming. At another, dozens of men milled around a burnt out car.

“Press! Press!” I called out, and they beckoned me through the crowd, many hands pushing me forward until I was through.

I was glad when an elderly man walking in the street stopped me. I finally had a chance to do an interview, against the advice of my companions. I whipped out my audio recorder. He was Amos Ordena, the local section’s elected Kazek -- an official dispute mediator.

“The population has information that MINUSTAH introduced cholera,” he told me. “So many people have died. They’re obligated to hold fast, to demonstrate, so that the authorities will take responsibility. They’re asking MINUSTAH to leave the country.”

Haitian street demonstrators want the UN's MINUSTUH troops to leave. Photo by Ansel Herz / Mediahacker / The Rag Blog.
Asked if the protests are by a single group or the general population, he said all elements of society are participating in “the movement.” He said MINUSTAH are not firing weapons in self-defense, in the air to disperse protesters, but firing at people. He heard that at least one person had died earlier in the day.

We finally turned off the main road and walked into an alleyway. Elizer’s modest home was at the end (he lost his wife, children, and house in the capital in the earthquake). One of his brothers, blind and handicapped, lay on the floor beneath a television showing a soccer match. He smiled and introduced himself when I walked in.

Elizer reminded me to use hand sanitizer. Then his frail mother, beaming at us, served us fresh mais moule (corn) and papaya juice.

A neighbor of Elizer called up TV reporter Johnny Joseph, who came to meet me and help me get to the house where I was planning to stay. Elizer refused to accept any money for all his trouble.

Before leaving with Johnny, I spoke to Aristil Frito, a 24-year-old student standing outside talking with his neighbors. “The objective of the movement is clear: they’re asking for the departure of MINUSTAH.”

He said irresponsibility by the leaders of the country had led to this situation. In a more developed country, without so many young unemployed people in the street, the protests might have been more peaceful, he said.

“But the real solution is for people to live in a climate of peace, in dialogue. Today all Haitians should work together finish with hunger and poverty,” he said. “The best solution is the promotion of social dialogue.”

Johnny and I hopped on a motorcycle taxi, taking backstreets to bypass the barricades. We passed a five-foot deep trench dug in a narrow dirt road. Johnny said a MINUSTAH vehicle fell into the trench Wednesday and people threw bottles at them. The troops opened fire, killing an innocent bystander whose body was taken downtown, he said.

MINUSTAH blamed the death on local gangs.

At one junction, a young man in a purple shirt and black cap blocked our path and stuck out a knife as his friends looked on. I realized my press badge was tucked into my shirt. I pulled it out as Johnny talked the man down.

“You need to have your badge out,” the young man told me, glaring. “It’s a principle.” That’s been the only instance of serious hostility directed at me since I arrived in Cap Haitien.

So it’s bewildering to read the reporting of CNN’s Ivan Watson, who claimed that armed rioters control the city. He told viewers while being filmed on the back of a fast-moving motorcycle that it’s only way to move about the city amidst “violent protests.”

He doesn’t use that adjective to describe the actions of UN troops, accused of killing at least three demonstrators since Monday.

“They shot many people. We took them to the hospital. We’re asking MINUSTAH to leave the country,” a middle-aged man who declined to give his name told me.

He stopped bicycling past an intersection barricaded with coffins to stop and share his anger. “We have bottles, we don’t have guns to shoot them, but they’re shooting us. We have to defend our rights, MINUSTAH is a thing that doesn’t work in this country.”

Another of Watson’s reports claimed that Christian missionaries were forced to speed on a bus away from out-of-control-mobs, like in a Hollywood-style chase scene.

High drama = high ratings.

As I walked towards the downtown’s central public square on Wednesday, finally nearing the house, I saw several dozen people facing Haitian police in full riot gear standing in their way.

They said they had no beef with foreigners generally -- only MINUSTAH.

Theodore Joel said they respected the Haitian police, because they’re brothers and family -- though two police stations were reportedly set on fire during the first day of protests.

“Those soldiers are tourists! The money that’s invested in MINUSTAH -- they could invest that money in education. They could invest in constructing hospitals, in cleaning up the country. but they’re paying those soldiers instead. We don’t have guns like in 1803... but each time we put our heads together, we’re marked in history.”

Thursday marked 203 years since the Battle of Vertières, where Jean-Jacques Dessalines led the final major assault on French armies to drive them off Haitian soil. They renamed the city: from Cap Francois to Cap-Haitien.

While many expected demonstrations to continue in commemoration of Haiti’s independence struggle, the streets were quiet. No further confrontations were reported. I walked around downtown Cap on my own, trying to find an Internet connection to send out a radio story.

I’m asking everyone I meet here -- from local journalists, vendors, men at the barricades, to a local magistrate -- if these protests were organized by a gang or political group.

The unanimous answer is no -- people are fed up with UN peacekeepers and the cholera outbreak is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The magistrate said he understands and respects the people demonstrating, but he wishes the barricades weren’t impeding the transportation of medical supplies to fight cholera in his commune, where people are dying in the street.

As the head of MINUSTAH warned that “every second lost” because of protests means more suffering and death from cholera, the anti-UN demonstrations continued in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.

CNN’s Watson led his report this way: “Like cholera itself, Haiti’s protests against the United Nations spread Thursday to the capital, Port-au-Prince, as angry people took to the streets demanding the global body get out of their country.”

Seems that for Watson, these protests are like a disease. It continues: “a planned protest began peacefully in the center of the city but turned violent as it moved toward the presidential palace, with one woman overcome by tear gas, witnesses said.”

Again, the protesters are the ones implicated in the violence. But a timeline report released by International Action Ties, an independent human rights monitoring group, said the demonstrations were largely peaceful after returning to Champs de Mars plaza.

UN troops and Haitian police fired at least 30 tear gas canisters into the Faculty of Ethnologie and surrounding tent camps, the report said, sending children and old women fleeing into the streets. Police ignored the group’s pleas to stop firing.

Are protests against the UN meant to destabilize the country? Are Haitians who’ve taken to the streets being used, like puppets, by powerful politicians for their own ends? Are the protests violent?

The foreigners I’ve talked to say yes. A few American liberals living in Haiti tell me they fear the protests are violent and meant to cause chaos, echoing the statements of MINUSTAH and reporters like Watson. Some Haitians in the professional middle class don’t want to participate.

But most Haitians I’ve spoken with say no. They say this is the inevitable outcome when troops who operate in Haiti with seeming impunity may have introduced a deadly, misery-multiplying disease into the country. It’s an angry, popular movement -- protesting however they can, emotions running high -- against a five-year-old foreign occupation.

What do you think? We’ll see how this plays out in the next nine days, ahead of the Nov. 28 election. Stay tuned.

[Ansel Herz, a former Austin activist, is a multimedia journalist and web designer based in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. This article first appeared on Ansel's blog, Mediahacker.]

Source / Mediahacker

• Listen to Ansel Herz speaking about the protests on Democracy Now! and Flashpoints Radio.
• Read Landon Yarrington’s account of how the protests began, which the magistrate disputes.
• See more pictures from the Cap Haitien anti-MINUSTAH movement series on Mediahacker's photostream on Flicker
• And see Ansel Herz's earlier posts from Haiti on The Rag Blog.

Video posted by Pierre Durohito De Venchy of the first three days of protests:



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Margarita Alarcón : 50 Years of Cuban Embargo is Enough

Cuban president Raul Castro at Cuba's National Assembly in Havana. Photo by Ismael Francisco /AFP/ Getty images.
'Four Riders' and the Cuban embargo:
Fifty years should be enough

By Margarita Alarcón / The Rag Blog / November 6, 2010

In 1992, a little over 19 years ago during one typical hot summer season in New York City as the calm was smothering midtown and Murray Hill and the lethargic heat made it almost impossible to lift even an Italian Ice, four guys jokingly referred to as the Four Riders of the Apocalypse conceived of a work plan to fill up those slow muggy afternoons.

(The "Four Riders" were my father, the ambassador, and the three men below him in order of rank, while they were all at the UN during Cuba's tenure in the Security Council as a non-permanent member, 1990-1992.)

There really wasn’t much to do in those days; the first Gulf War was “over,” the sanctions were in place, Saddam Hussein was still president, and the Iraqi people were suffering the after-effects of war and would do so till this very day; the Israeli Palestinian conflict was still going to be an issue one way or another; Puerto Rico was not going to be an independent island (at least not yet); North Korea and Iran had not yet made a peep over nukes.

Life was pretty slow in the UN. Well, for most, it was slow.

There were those who called them crazy -- almost harebrained -- given the extreme circumstances and what they were up against. To others it was remarkable how this particular topic had never been put forth.

Finally by the end of the summer, right as autumn was turning the Central Park leaves from green to the bright hues of auburn and yellow, they presented their plan to the largest world audience around, the United Nations. So it was that Resolution 59/11 of the United Nations General Assembly was adopted during the fall of the year 1992.

The way UN resolutions work is pretty simple. A nation -- or a group of nations -- get together and present a draft resolution which is then voted upon by the entire body of the General Assembly in order to become a topic of each year’s GA agenda. If it receives enough votes, it continues on the agenda.

Not very complicated, pretty straight forward, really not rocket science. As far as the rules and the regulations of the UN charter are concerned, member states have rights and responsibilities. One of the responsibilities is to adhere to the democratic voting process of the organization, its Charter, and its Security Council -- whichever the case may be.

The United States of America is a founding member of both the General Assembly and the Security Council and has used both privileges on many occasions.

For almost two decades now, in what appeared to be a slow rise at first and has now become unwavering, the General Assembly has been voting in favor of resolution 59/11. Each year, gaining votes in favor, and losing abstentions with the same two nations voting against.


187-2-3

This year, the vote on resolution 59/11 on October 26th was once again described by the media as “an overwhelming majority” in favor of the resolution. Of the 192 member states that make up the entire body of the United Nations, 187 voted in favor of the resolution, Two -- Israel and the United States -- voted against it. And here is the punch line for geography buffs: the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Micronesia decided to abstain.

Resolution 59/11 is entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” This is basically a fancier and nicer way of stating the following: put an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

This is a legislated issue within the United States and thus does not fall automatically in the hands of the president. It isn’t President Obama’s embargo. Technically it belongs to Congress. Under law the only way the U.S. embargo against Cuba can be lifted is if two-thirds of the United States Congress (both houses) vote to do so. This has been a given since President William Clinton signed the Helms Burton Bill into law in 1996 serving at the pleasure of the Cuban American National Foundation and a few legislators.

It’s not President Barack Obama's Embargo; it belongs to Congress and to the voters in the United States.

The irony is that Cuba is a Third World nation which has never had -- and has never expressed -- any intent of harming the people of the United State. Though unable to acquire practically anything on the open world market, this island has managed to achieve a 78-year life expectancy rate and an infant mortality rate at birth that would be the envy of any First World nation.

This is even more interesting if you take into account that the embargo has been around as long as the Cuban Revolution, so the “punishment” was not inflicted because of anything Cuba did or did not do to the United States or anyone else, but rather as a response to its sheer existence: radical social change 90 miles off the coasts of Florida.

So, I must ask the readers of The Rag Blog to urge the current President to advise his Congress (and yours) to lift this unjust, insane, ludicrous, and internationally condemned policy that is leading nowhere.

Those Four Riders of the Apocalypse didn’t spend their summer months writing in vain. Don’t let this president become the eleventh administrative head responsible for yet another year of unjust punishment of Cuba -- for its simple desire for independence and sovereignty, something the forefathers of your own great nation also achieved through that “evil” word: revolution.

[Margarita Alarcón Perea was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in New York City. She studied at Karl Marx Stadt in East Germany and Havana, and is a graduate of Havana University in linguistics. She has taught English translation and North American Twentieth Century Literature, and worked in the Cuban music industry. She is currently a news analyst for Cubadebate in Havana and contributes to The Huffington Post. Margarita's father is Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly.]

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Ansel Herz : Cholera Spreads in Haiti

Above, MINUSTAH soldier points his gun at former Austin activist/independent journalist Ansel Herz in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 15, 2010, at a demonstration against the renewal of MINUSTAH, the UN peackeeping mission. Photo from Gaentantguevara / Flickr.

For more about photo see sidebar story below.

Port-au-Prince fears the worst
as cholera spreads in Haiti

By Ansel Herz / The Rag Blog / October 24, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Days after an outbreak of cholera began in Haiti’s rural Artibonite region [see story below], killing at least 200 people, there are now five confirmed cases of cholera in the busy capital city.

The cases “do not represent spread of the epidemic” because they originated in central Haiti, according to a bulletin circulated by Haiti’s UN peacekeeping mission with the heading “Key Messaging,” obtained by IPS.

“The fact that these cases were picked up and responded to so fast demonstrates that the reporting systems for epidemic management we have put in place are functioning,” it concludes.

Residents of the capital city are not so confident. “It’s killing people -- of course, I’m scared. We’re in the mouth of death,” 25-year-old Boudou Lunis, one of 1.3 million made homeless by the quake living in temporary settlements, told the Miami Herald.

Radio Boukman lies at the heart of Cite Soleil, an impoverished slum crisscrossed by foul trash-filled canals where cholera could be devastating. The station has received no public health messages for broadcast from authorities, producer Edwine Adrien told IPS on Saturday, four days after reports of cholera-related deaths first emerged.

At a small, desolate camp of torn tents nearby, a gleaming water tank is propped up on bricks. Camp-dwellers said it was installed by the International Organization for Migration last week, more than nine months after the January earthquake damaged their homes.

But it’s empty because no organization has filled it with water. “We need treated water to drink,” a young man named Charlot told IPS matter-of-factly.

Cholera, transmissible by contaminated water and food, could be reaching far beyond the capital city. There are suspected cases of the disease in Haiti’s North and South departments, according to the Pan-American Health Organization, as well as confirmed cases in Gonaives, the country’s third largest city.

In Lafiteau, a 30-minute drive from Port-au-Prince, Dr. Pierre Duval said he had stabilized two cholera-infected men in the town’s single hospital, but could not handle more than six more patients. One died yesterday. All of them came from St. Marc, near the epicenter of the epidemic.

The main hospital in St. Marc is crowded with the infected. Supplies of oral rehydration salts were spotty when he arrived Friday after rushing from Port-au-Prince, American medic Riaan Roberts told IPS.

“We first talked to some lady from the UN who told us, ‘Oh I have to go to a meeting, I’ll mention your names, but just come back tomorrow,’” he said. “These microcosms of operational logistics are just beyond them.”

Roberts said a Doctors Without Borders team quickly put his skills to use, adding, “[The UN] is so top-heavy with bureaucracy that they can’t effectively react to these small outbreaks which quickly snowball and spread across an area.”

Buses and tap-taps filled with people speed in both directions on the dusty highway connecting the Haiti’s stricken central region to Port-au-Prince. There are no signs of travel restrictions or checkpoints near the city.

At a Friday meeting convened by the Haitian government’s Ministry of Water and Sanitation, “there were conversations around shutting down schools and transportation routes,” said Nick Preneta, Deputy Director of SOIL, a group that installs composting toilets in displacement camps.

“But if that’s the conversation now, however many hours after the first confirmed case, it’s already too late,” he continued. “One of the recommendations was to concentrate public health education at traffic centers... there were a lot of no-brainers at the meeting.”

Cholera bacteria can cause fatal diarrhea and vomiting after incubating for up to five days, allowing people who appear healthy to travel and infect others. The medical organization Partners In Health calls it “a disease of poverty” caused by lack of access to clean water.

The Artibonite river, running through an area of central Haiti known as “the breadbasket” for its rice farmers, is considered the likely source of the epidemic after recent heavy rains and flooding. Analysts say the regional agrarian economy has been devastated by years of cheap American imports of rice to Haiti.

Be sure to check the Haiti Documents Index for the latest internal reports, (mostly) free of spin, from officials.

[Ansel Herz, a former Austin activist, is a multimedia journalist and web designer based in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. This article also appears on Ansel's blog, Mediahacker, and was distributed by IPS.]

Relatives of Haitians struck by cholera, outside a local hospital in Saint Marc, Haiti, October 22, 2010. St-Felix Evens / Reuters.

Health workers scramble to keep
cholera out of crowded camps

Some 1.3 million people have lived in makeshift camps throughout Port-au-Prince since the January earthquake devastated the city. Living conditions are "appalling," according a recent report by Refugees International.

But one bright spot of the multi-billion-dollar relief effort, touted by the United Nations and Haitian President Rene Preval, has been the prevention of the spread of a highly infectious, catastrophic disease.

Until now.

At least 160 people have died this week [the number has now passed 200] from an outbreak of cholera in the central Artibonite region, according to Zanmi Lasante, the Haitian arm of renowned health organization Partners in Health.

The fear now is that the disease will reach Port-au-Prince [see story above] and wreak havoc in the crowded camps by contaminating the water.

There are already six suspected cases of the illness in the capital city, Monica Ferreira, a Portuguese medic, told IPS on Friday. Her team has operated a health clinic for quake victims since January.

"All defensive countermeasures should immediately focus on Cite Soleil and Lafiteau if they want to save Port-au- Prince," said Dr. James Wilson of the Haiti Epidemic Advisory System (HEAS).

A HEAS partner reported that a market woman and child died from cholera in the small town of Lafiteau, just 25 kilometres from the capital.

Melinda Miles, director of the Haitian organization KONPAY, told IPS she witnessed a man die of cholera Friday afternoon at the Hospital Centre of the Haitian Academy in Lafiteau. Doctors at the hospital could not be reached for comment before publication.

"We went into the room and he died right in front of us," she said. "He came from St. Marc. The doctor said there are a lot more patients on their way with cholera."

"If a case from St. Marc has had time to arrive in Lafiteau, then it's had time to arrive in Port-au-Prince. So I'm really scared," she added.

The Haitian government says the disease is cholera, a waterborne bacterium that can incubate in bodies for days and suddenly cause death by dehydration. Officials from the Pan American Health Organization, the regional arm of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, said Friday that laboratory tests had confirmed the outbreak.

Authorities have rushed medical resources to St. Marc, about 70 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, where a single hospital is overcrowded with patients. Villagers who traveled from far away are lying on the floors, hooked up to IV drips, while lines amass outside the gate.

Attempting to cope with the overwhelming patient load, a Doctors Without Borders team has moved from the hospital to construct their own treatment center, spokesperson Petra Becker told IPS.

Other medical teams are gathering information from rural villages to isolate areas where the illness is concentrated and discourage people from moving, she said.

In a blog post on Partners in Health's website, Chief Medical Officer Joia Mukherjee called cholera "a disease of poverty". She wrote that loans from the Inter-American Development Bank meant for the development of a public water supply in the Artibonite region were blocked on political grounds during the tenure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

"The international community's failure to assist the government of Haiti in developing a safe water supply has been violation of this basic right," Muhkerjee continued.

If the disease reaches Port-au-Prince, the number of victims is likely to skyrocket.

The New York Times reported Friday that cholera cases are surfacing on the island of La Gonave, as well as the areas of Arcahaie and Croix-des Bouquets closer to the capital.

The United Nations and Haitian government are holding emergency meetings in Port-au-Prince to counter the cholera outbreak. Daily truckloads of water delivered by relief group Pure Water for the World to the seaside slum of Cite Soleil have received double the usual chlorination, said Noelle Thabault, the group's deputy director.

Nesly Louissaint, who lives in Camp Carradeux, an officially recognized camp for thousands of quake victims, received a short text message on his cell phone alerting him to the outbreak of the disease. But no authorities have visited the camp with further information, he said.

It's not clear what prevention measures have been taken in the capital city. Traffic, schools, businesses and markets were open Friday and the streets appeared to be bustling as usual.

"I have not seen any general information distributed in the streets or camps at this time. I don't see relief groups out here," Mark Snyder, a development worker with International Action Ties, told IPS.

"I do see U.N. peacekeeping trucks full of troops, but they are not being utilized to spread information," he continued. "They're doing security patrols, which seems like a waste of resources."

Earlier this week, at least 12 people died when heavy rains flooded some of Port-au-Prince’s displacement camps. Dr. Wilson warns that October is the peak of Haiti's rainy season, making any further outbreak of the disease more difficult to contain.

-- Ansel Herz / Oct. 22, 2010

MINUSTAH peacekeeper guards food in Haiti, January 17. Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images.

UN peacekeeper to photographer:
'Shoot me and I'll shoot you'

By Mac McClelland / October 21, 2010

SEE PHOTO AT TOP OF POST

When I showed this amazing picture [at top of post] to my friend, after she registered what she was looking at, her eyes went huge while she exclaimed, "Oh my god!" with her hand over her mouth.

The scene is a protest last week in Port-au-Prince. The guy on the left is a clearly unarmed and videotaping journalist from Texas named Ansel Herz, whom I happened to work with when I was in Haiti last month. The uniformed fellow pointing a gun directly at his face is a United Nations peacekeeper.

I didn't meet many (okay, any) Haitian fans of MINUSTAH, the UN stabilization force that's been in the country since 2004. I have, for the record, met some MINUSTAH who are definitely good guys and have, for example, helped a woman in labor get to the hospital, and helped stop a man who was trying to kill his wife for refusing to have sex with him.

But the force has also shot civilians. It's had to have meetings about how not to sexually abuse the Haitian population. In fact, last week's protest erupted after the UN officially renewed MINUSTAH's mandate.

Some of the protesters' complaints, which echo those I heard while in-country, are that MINUSTAH doesn't actually do anything to protect civilians living in filthy, violent, rape-infested displacement camps, and that the money could be better spent dealing with those issues.

I asked Ansel how he ended up on the business end of a UN gun, just in case there was any kind of conflict or missing context surrounding this photo. Not so much, he says: "Maybe they felt threatened by my camera."

--Mac McClelland / Mother Jones

Also see:

• Citizen Protests, Government Repression Mount in Haiti by Beverly Bell / Oct. 18, 2010 / CommonDreams.
• Previous posts from Haiti by Ansel Herz on The Rag Blog.

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Amy Goodman : Climate Change is the Real Deal

This Greenland glacier split in two, sending a 100 sqare mile iceberg floating off into the Arctic Ocean. Image from Mirror, U.K.
News at 11:
How climate change affects you

By Amy Goodman / August 13, 2010

Our daily weather reports, cheerfully presented with flashy graphics and state-of-the-art animation, appear to relay more and more information.

And yet, no matter how glitzy the presentation, a key fact is invariably omitted. Imagine if, after flashing the words "extreme weather" to grab our attention, the reports flashed "global warming." Then we would know not only to wear lighter clothes or carry an umbrella, but that we have to do something about climate change.

I put the question to Jeff Masters, co-founder and director of meteorology at Weather Underground, an Internet weather information service. Masters writes a popular blog on weather, and doesn't shy away from linking extreme weather to climate change:

"Heat, heat, heat is the name of the game on planet Earth this year," he told me, as the world is beset with extreme weather events that have caused the death of thousands and the displacement of millions.

Wildfires in Russia have blanketed the country with smoke, exacerbating the hottest summer there in 1,000 years. Torrential rains in Asia have caused massive flooding and deadly landslides in Pakistan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, and China. An ice shelf in Greenland has broken off, sending an ice island four times the size of Manhattan into the ocean. Droughts threaten Niger and the Sahel.

Masters relates stark statistics:

• 2010 has seen the most national extreme heat records for a single year: 17.
• The past decade was the hottest decade in the historical record.
• The first half of 2010 was the warmest such six-month period in the planet's history.
• The five warmest months in history for the tropical Atlantic have all occurred this year (likely leading to more frequent and severe Atlantic hurricanes).

"We will start seeing more and more years like this year when you get these amazing events that caused tremendous death and destruction," Masters said. "As this extreme weather continues to increase in the coming decades and the population increases, the ability of the international community to respond and provide aid to victims will be stretched to the limit."

Men row a boat carrying supplies while fleeing the flooded village of Karam Pur in Pakistan's Sindh province on August 10, 2010. Photo by Akhtar Soomro / Reuters.
And yet the UN talks aimed at climate change seem poised for collapse.

When the Copenhagen climate talks last December were derailed, with select industrialized nations, led by the United States, offering a "take it or leave it" accord, many developing nations decided to leave it. The so-called Copenhagen Accord is seen as a tepid, nonbinding document that was forced on the poorer countries as a ploy to allow countries like the U.S., Canada, and China to escape the legally binding greenhouse-gas emissions targets of the Kyoto Protocol, which is up for renewal.

Bolivia, for example, is pursuing a more aggressive global agreement on emissions. It's calling for strict, legally binding limits on emissions, rather than the voluntary goals set forth in the Copenhagen Accord. When Bolivia refused to sign on to the accord, the U.S. denied it millions in promised aid money. Bolivia's United Nations ambassador, Pablo Solon, told me: "We said: ‘You can keep your money. We're not fighting for a couple of coins. We are fighting for life.'"

While Bolivia did succeed in passing a UN resolution last month affirming the right to water and sanitation as a human right, a first for the world body, that doesn't change the fact that as Bolivia's glaciers melt as a result of climate change, its water supply is threatened.

Pacific Island nations like Tuvalu may disappear from the planet entirely if sea levels continue to rise, which is another consequence of global warming.

The U.N. climate conference will convene in Cancun, Mexico, in December, where prospects for global consensus with binding commitments seem increasingly unlikely. Ultimately, policy in the United States, the greatest polluter in human history, must be changed. That will come only from people in the United States making the vital connection between our local weather and global climate change. What better way than through the daily drumbeat of the weather forecasts? Meteorologist Jeff Masters defined for me the crux of the problem:

A lot of TV meteorologists are very skeptical that human-caused global climate change is real. They've been seduced by the view pushed by the fossil-fuel industry that humans really aren't responsible ... we're fighting a battle against an enemy that's very well-funded, that's intent on providing disinformation about what the real science says.

It just may take a weatherperson to tell which way the wind blows.

Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.

[Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 800 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.]

Source / Truthdig / CommonDreams

American tourists visiting Red Square wear masks to protect them from Moscow's air, filled with toxic smoke from raging wildfires. Photo by Pavel Golovkin / AP.
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Ted McLaughlin : Access to Water Is a Human Right

Clean water should be a human right,
Not a capitalist commodity

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / August 5, 2010

A vote took place in the United Nations a few days ago that could eventually have far-reaching effects on everyone on this planet. The vote was on a resolution, introduced by the Bolivian representative to the U.N., that extended basic human rights. The resolution officially made access to clean water and sanitation a basic fundamental human right.

This just makes sense. After all, water is not a luxury but an absolute necessity for human life. Humans cannot live with water. This puts water in a special category with food and shelter. These items are more important than any other resources because they are a must for sustaining human life. So how could anyone oppose this resolution?

Actually there were no votes against the resolution. It was approved 122 to 0. One might think that was a unanimous victory for human rights, but that would not be completely true. Although no nation voted against the resolution, about 40 nations abstained from voting on the resolution. And, interestingly enough, most of those nations abstaining are the very countries that preach the loudest about human rights.

Among the nations refusing to vote for access to clean water and sanitation as a basic human right were the United States, Canada, Australia, and many European countries -- the so-called industrialized and "civilized" first-world nations. Why would they not vote for the right of every human to have access to clean water?

That's simple. Voting for access to clean water as a fundamental human right would expose their own hypocrisy. You see, these countries don't see water as something everyone should have a right to. They see water as simply another commodity to be bought and sold, and those who cannot afford to buy it have no right to it. This may sound harsh, but it is true.

The United States has never recognized the right of humans to have access to water. In this country, we give lip service to providing access to clean water for everyone, but the fact is that access is granted only to those who are willing and able to pay for that access. If you don't think this is true, just try not paying your water bill for a while. You will find your water cut off. Your access to water will be denied by the very government that proudly claims to provide that access.

I have always thought this was wrong. No one should be denied access to clean water just because they cannot afford to buy it. No one should be reduced to having to steal this basic resource just to sustain their lives. Clean water should be provided by the government (as it is in most places in the United States), but it should not be sold -- it should be paid for through taxes and provided free of charge to all citizens.

Now I know that some of you are thinking that if water is provided for free then some people will waste this precious resource. That is true -- some people will waste the water, and there should be a punishment (probably monetary) for that. Anyone who uses more than a reasonable amount of this precious resource should be fined severely, but no one should be completely denied access to a reasonable amount of water (and that reasonable amount can be determined by the community-at-large).

Frankly, much water is already being wasted. Here in Texas we know that our water resources will not meet our future and growing demand. And yet we continue to waste water. In fact, many communities actually encourage that waste. As example, does it really make sense to keep planting and watering lawns (a requirement in many communities and subdivisions) in a state where water becomes more scarce every year?

And the waste is even more egregious in the richer communities, where one family lives on a large estate and to water many acres of lawns will use more water than that necessary to sustain hundreds of families with clean water. But Americans are in love with their lawns and, even in a state with scarce water resources, are currently unwilling to give them up and stop wasting that valuable resource -- and the future be damned.

But such wasteful use of water may not be possible in the future. Especially in light of global climate change (and that change is happening whether you believe it is caused by humans or not), water is becoming scarcer all over the world. There are those who believe (including myself) that future wars will be fought over water rather than oil or other capitalist commodities.

The resolution introduced by Bolivia and passed by 122 nations was nothing less than a gauntlet being thrown down. The developing nations and their allies are telling the industrialized world that water is not a commodity to be sold only to those who can afford it. It is a scarce resource that must be shared by all of humanity.

Like it or not, the industrialized world must reconsider and change it's wasteful use of this scarce resource, and they must no longer view it as a commodity to make the rich even richer -- a commodity that can be denied to the poor. The industrialized world, especially the United States, loves to preach equality and human rights. It is now time for them to start practicing what they preach. The future of humanity demands it.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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